Nine year old shows up most Christians

I agree that it is not fair to compare most Christians to the wackos at Westboro Baptist Church.  They are extreme fundamentalists and quite honestly really have to be regarded as emotionally or mentally disturbed.  Criticizing them cannot be legitimately regarded as a criticism of Christianity in general. But recently, nine year old Josef Miles [...]

North Carolina’s Amendment 1

Freedom and democracy are when a duly elected legislature can vote on a question or a law, come to a resolution and then enact that law.  Why would a group want to insert a state constitutional amendment that restricts the legislature’s ability to do just that?  Why not have a straight up vote?  A constitutional [...]

“Life Is Wasted Without Jesus”

Once again we see a fundamentally different culture between the way the U.S. and Canada behave towards a potential problem. Last week a 19 year old Grade 12 student (?!) was suspended for wearing a t-shirt to school which stated “Life is wasted without Jesus.”  The argument was twofold.  The first was that the school [...]

O Canada

I consider myself to be well left of centre politically, but I have been thinking a lot lately about the extent to which the government imposes decisions and restrictions on us, supposedly for our own good.  I think that restrictions are important.  I think people should be required to wear seat belts.  I think a [...]

Chocolate, Easter, Child Slavery and Dumb Blindness

I was going to do an entry on child slavery being used to harvest the beans used to make Easter eggs.  Then, while researching the story, I stumbled upon something that just blew me away in its ignorance. First the chocolate story, best summed up here in a CNN video. There is another video, more [...]

Religion, Secular Humanism and Morality

A question pops up frequently on the forums that often discuss religion and atheism.  It’s about whether morality is inevitably tied to religion and the word of God, or whether morality can exist within secular humanism.  Religious people often argue that morality cannot be separated from religion and so a secular world is devoid of [...]

Santorum an anachonism

Rick Santorum is beating his anti-intellectual drums again.  I know I’ve made similar posts before, but nothing irks me more and makes me more frightened than a campaign to hobble intellectuals and scientists and to constrict reasonable discourse. In the past week, Santorum has made three clear statements on social issues in the media, without [...]

Abortion

Here’s my attempt to consider the question of abortion without drawing any moral conclusions, but rather to examine the facts and their various facets.  Amoung social conservatives, this by itself may be crossing some line, but an inability to discuss a topic rationally leads to totalitarian thinking.  I’m not trying to present either a pro [...]

Sex, Politics and Religion

Lots of stuff about sex these days.  No it’s not to try to boost my readership, but rather because it has become the new hot topic in the U.S. Republican election.  Once again right wing conservatives and especially social conservatives are pointing out that they think that they have no business in the boardrooms and [...]

Religious Irony

Last night Newt Gingrich made a statement in a situation where I think he thought that no-one was paying attention (as his hat wasn’t really in the ring for the evening’s votes).  It was perhaps one of the most ironic statements that I’ve ever heard out of the mouth of any politician. His comment was [...]

SHADOWS, SEX & DRUGS

I’ve spent a lot of time recently looking at the psychological issue of “Shadow Work”.  The main idea here is that we all bury and disown parts of ourselves that we don’t want to deal with.   It is nicely related to Hal and Sidra Stone’s Voice Dialogue theories and also the Big Mind work directed [...]

Bible study “introduced” to S. Dakota curriculum

Imagine living in a place where, when you went to school you were faced with learning religious doctrine and sacred texts.  No, I’m not referring to an Islamic country, but rather to South Dakota.  The state legislature of South Dakota has just passed a bill “encouraging” school boards to include more religious and Biblical study [...]