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Dear Scientists: Please Stop Bashing Free Will!

By John Horgan

…ill can operate if our behavior is determined by physical law,” the physicist Stephen Hawking writes in The Grand Design, his latest bestseller, co-written with Leonard Mlodinow, “so it seems that we are no more than biological machines and that free will is an illusion.” Similarly, the neuroscientist Sam Harris, author of The End of Faith, contends in his new book The Moral Landscape that “no account of causality leaves room for free will.” He ad…

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

By Susannah Crockford

…from Covid-19 and start to change—but others will not. What comes across most strongly is how difficult it is to help; how even trying can pull you down instead. The moments where family members lose friends or fail exams because of their QAnon-afflicted spouse or parent are some of the most affecting. Getting out is a matter of the person wanting to change. They have to be ready to accept that they might be wrong and to take real accountability a…

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

By Matthew Bowman

…liens had besieged their farmhouse. At seven o’clock in the evening on August 21st, a young man named Billy Ray Taylor sprinted to the back door of a farmhouse a few miles north of Hopkinsville in the small township of Kelly. He had left to fetch water from the well a few minutes before, and as he hauled up the bucket he glanced to the southwest and saw a gigantic silvery flying saucer cruising silently toward the house. Billy Ray watched until th…

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

By Joseph Laycock

…it was a satanic cult thing.” Dobson’s attorney has found three psychiatrists to testify that Dobson was not criminally responsible because he was psychotic and schizophrenic. However, Dr. Andriy Kolchak, a psychiatrist for the prosecution, has argued that Dobson was performing a ritual in accordance with his religious beliefs, and therefore was not mentally ill. In an eerily similar case, Pamela Christensen of Montgomery, Illinois, is awaiting t…

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

By Peter Laarman

…ease us from debt even as we release others from debt?” (Luke 11:3) I suggest that struggling against the banks is actually a sacred calling, a holy obligation, in relation to the central tenets of biblical faith. The stakes, in fact, are still higher than even Geoghegan imagines, as the big bankers are now actively in the process of putting the rest of us into new and horrific double debt peonage. As Matt Taibbi explains in Rolling Stone, the Pau…

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

By Eric Reitan

…if one blindly accepted the idea that every passage in the Bible, in its most straightforward reading, represents the inerrant word of a perfectly loving God. But if we accept this idea, either we’ll need to ignore the lessons drawn from sensitive and empathetic attention to our gay and lesbian neighbors, or we’ll need to refrain from practicing such attention at all. After all, when we do attend to gays and lesbians (as love for them calls us to…

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

By Sarah Morice-Brubaker

…s, so much so that I now view things much differently than I did when I first started ministry. Now I tend to think that the Bible reflects the prejudices of ancient culture on this matter in the 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 outco…

Ricky Gervais: Why I’m an Atheist

By Lauri Lebo

…ly 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 piece, it’s actually more of a sweet thoughtful response to all the people who ask him and other atheists why they don’t believe in God. And as my husband noticed, Gervais i…

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

By Carolyn S. Briggs

…y. To a secular world where tolerance is praised above all else, a literalist Christian is deemed nearly as disgusting and morally intolerable as a racist or a sexist demanding voice. I see that all the time, and it’s so unfair. You must admit this, my former friends, it is more pleasant to have answered questions rather than to be saddled with ambiguity. There is great joy in surrender, genuine bliss to never be overwhelmed with mystery and uncer…

Why is Liberty Institute Still Defending Phillip Monk?

By Rob Shryock

…(Monk had lied) but did not punish him, I figured Monk’s defenders would just stop caring, since the story no longer fit their worldview. I was very, very wrong. The Liberty Institute, which represents Monk legally, is doubling down. After the release of the Air Force investigation, they produced two documents which show that Monk’s transfer date was moved from September 30th to August 14th. The Liberty Institute believes that, This documentation…