If I were a mean-spirited person, I would say that I hope to be left behind when the Rapture comes.
Skepticism
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The future of Catholicism?
So now we wait for a new Supreme Pontiff. John Paul II will be hard to top.
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On the virtue of gray
There is no bright side to the story of Terri Schiavo, nor would it have been my place to suggest to her loved ones an appropriate course of action.
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In praise of the Enlightenment
In an essay “Why Religion,” the poet Czesław Miłosz tells us that he lived at a time when human imagination was dramatically changing. Heaven and Hell disappeared, he says, belief in an afterlife was weakened, and the borderline between humans and animals was blurred by the theory of evolution.
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Can a skeptic pray?
When two pagan Irish princesses, daughters of King Laoghaire, asked Patrick about his God, he is said to have answered: “Our God is the God of all things, the God of the sky and earth, the God of sea and stream, the God of sun and moon, the God of the great high mountains and the deep glens, the God of heaven, in heaven and under heaven.”
"Christ in the Storm on the Sea of Galilee" by Ludolf Backhuysen (1695)
Gladdening smiles, mournful tears
The stained glass window above the altar of St. Andrew’s Anglican Church on the island of Exuma shows Christ stilling the waters of the Sea of Galilee. However, the waters in the window do not seem particularly threatening, nor do the apostles seem anxious.
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The meaning of life?
“The most common of all follies,” wrote H. L. Mencken, “is to believe passionately in the palpably not true.”
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Prayer of the heart
Last week the New York Times had a front page story on scientific tests of the efficacy of prayer. The gist of the story was that although much energy and money gone into testing the power of prayer, not much has come of it.
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Rational skepticism vs. hopeful delusion
Here’s something that will ruin your day, if you haven’t heard it already.
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Scientists have ways to avoid superstition
It isn’t easy to draw the boundaries between reason and superstition, Voltaire observed. One person’s dogma is another person’s nonsense.