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Dear Scientists: Please Stop Bashing Free Will!

By John Horgan

…r contends, we explain our behavior—and that of others—in terms of such primitive, magical concepts as “the self” and “free will.” I choose to reject this conclusion. Yes, the mind can be hideously complicated, and divided, often working at cross-purposes. Ancient Greeks like Homer and Sophocles told us that. Yes, researchers have demonstrated that all our thoughts and actions are underpinned by physiological processes, but what else could they ha…

‘The Quiet Damage’ Details the Heartbreaking Effect of QAnon on Five American Families — But Critical Questions Linger

By Susannah Crockford

…f this book. It’s based on “hundreds of hours” of interviews in person, by phone, and online over three years. The pacing is fine, and by chapter 10 it becomes truly heartbreaking. Reading about people ruining their lives and the lives of their loved ones, over and again, is not a light read. In that sense it resembles an addiction memoir. This resemblance is made explicit in the afterword in which Cook argues that underneath the disinformation cr…

Eclipseville, USA: The Birthplace of ‘Little Green Men’ Proudly Hosts The Point of Greatest Eclipse

By Matthew Bowman

…of their pilots. Reflecting the optimism of the early nuclear age, a good number of these experiences portrayed these extraterrestrials as comical, or even friendly. A journalist named Frank Scully wrote a book claiming that aliens dressed in “the style of 1890” had been recovered from a saucer crash in the Mojave Desert in 1949. The Californian George Adamski claimed that in November 1952 a cigar-shaped spacecraft landed near his campsite in sou…

Religion or Insanity? Two Upcoming Murder Trials Will Ask the (Burning) Question

By Joseph Laycock

…ic organizations. Its website is rife with comments that are openly anti-Semitic and anti-Christian—but it does not advocate murder. One essay explains that Satanism “is not about human sacrifice,” and another insists that, “Satan never murdered anyone.” An essay on the afterlife contains no mention of other galaxies but does describe hell as a “safe place.” Satanists, it claims, will be escorted to hell by protector demons and treated as “VIPs.”…

I Owe, Therefore I Am: Why Struggling Against the Banks is a Holy Obligation

By Peter Laarman

…aw school” (Geoghegan). What began to ensue after longstanding statewide limits on interest rates got invalidated was entirely predictable: “When banks get 25-30 percent on credit cards, and 500 percent or more on payday loans, capital flees honest pursuits.” And did capital ever flee, according to Geoghegan’s great tale of cupidity unbound. He describes what happened, accurately, as an “autocatalytic reaction”: there was so much worldwide investm…

Gay Suicide and the Ethic of Love: A Progressive Christian Response

By Eric Reitan

…fight. If someone had pressed into his fingers at that pivotal moment the phone number for The Trevor Project, he might reach out and hear a voice of reassurance, a voice that gave him hope for life by, in part, repudiating the so-called biblical teaching that who he is amounts to an offense against God. If he’d had a sense of belonging to a community that embraced him for who he is, maybe his hope wouldn’t be so fully shattered. But while other…

Missouri Pastor Goes Viral on Gawker: ‘Separation of Church and Hate’

By Sarah Morice-Brubaker

…e same way it does regarding slavery, or viewing women as property, or any number of things that our culture no longer affirms or accepts. My perspective can best be summarized in a quote from my theological hero, John Caputo: “My own view is that the outcome of a careful debate about these matters would be to show that there simply are no arguments to show that homosexual love is of itself anything else than love, and that therefore, since the es…

Ricky Gervais: Why I’m an Atheist

By Lauri Lebo

…ou need to know to keep on reading? I’d cheerfully watch that man read the phone book. So, when my buddy Rev. El Mundo sent me the link to the comedian’s message, I eagerly clicked on it. I was surprised when I saw this wasn’t a clip of his latest hysterical stand up, but an essay he penned for the Wall Street Journal’s Speakeasy blog. The topic of his essay was how he came to be an atheist. The whole piece is here. While there is humor in the pie…

A Valentine for the World…and for the Church I Left

By Carolyn S. Briggs

…label them Unbelievers, and in this one word is both judgment and hate. Admit it—there is something akin to hate for those who have rejected what is perceived as precious and inarguable truth. And these Unbelievers, in turn, reject Believers as deluded, childish fools—grown adults who insist in their belief in something as juvenile as the Tooth Fairy. To a secular world where tolerance is praised above all else, a literalist Christian is deemed n…

Why is Liberty Institute Still Defending Phillip Monk?

By Rob Shryock

…appeared (in possible violation of military code) at the Values Voters Summit for a panel. The Liberty Institute’s Jeff Mateer put his hand on Monk’s shoulder and praised him, saying, “We’ve gotten phone calls from military members who are undergoing discrimination…and with the exception of him, those folks that have called us have all wanted to remain anonymous. Sergeant Monk, to his credit, is willing to stand up.” Let’s read between the lines…