I am pretty sure that everyone has seen the video clip that has gone viral of CNN’s Wolf Blitzer asking Rebecca Vitsum who, with her husband Brian and infant son Anders, narrowly escaped the tornado though their home was destroyed, whether she ‘thanked the Lord’ for her narrow escape. When she mumbles her reply, he …
Category Archive: Religion
May 23 2013
An opening prayer we can live with?
Recall my earlier post about an upcoming US Supreme Court case concerning the constitutionality of opening government meetings with a prayer, thus seeming to re-open an issue that it had addressed in 1983 in Marsh v. Chambers and which had served as the precedent for all subsequent cases.
May 22 2013
A better way of starting meetings
Via Jonathan Turley I learned about an Arizona state representative Juan Mendez who, when it was his turn to open the session with a prayer, chose instead to use the occasion to reveal that he was a secular humanist.
May 22 2013
God backs ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, Don’t Support’
Fred Phelps Jr., the son of the head of the Westboro Baptist Church Fred Phelps, knows what caused the massive tornadoes in Oklahoma. It was the fact that Kevin Durant of the Oklahoma Thunder spoke in support of Jason Collins coming out as the first openly gay active player in a major US professional sport.
May 21 2013
Supreme Court to hear case on prayer at government meetings
I went as a guest to a big function recently that was organized by a major corporation to honor its long-service employees. There must have been close to a thousand people in the ballroom. The program began with a prayer, as if the organizers did not care that in such a large group there would …
May 19 2013
The government’s role in a child’s education
In a previous post, I wrote about how in the US, the Supreme Court has ruled that although the government cannot force parents to send their children to public schools, the states can set reasonable standards that must be met by the educational system they do choose, whether it be private, parochial, or home school. …
May 18 2013
Thinking about heaven, hell, purgatory, and other ways to waste your time
There is a conference scheduled to be held to try and bring together Catholics and Evangelicals to see if they can resolve their differences on heaven, hell, and purgatory. The announcement says:
May 18 2013
What are the limits of parental rights?
The balance between the rights of parents and the state to determine the wellbeing of young children is a delicate one. Few would argue that the rights of the parents cannot be infringed on in any way. If a child’s life and health is endangered because of abuse or neglect, the state should and does …
May 17 2013
Leaving the Hassidic community
Ultra-orthodox Jewish communities known as the Hassidim create a cocoon to protect their people from the influences of the outside world. At least when it comes to other groups that seek to separate themselves out, like the Amish, they live in fairly isolated rural communities. But the Hassidim live right in the middle of urban …
May 16 2013
Charles Knowlton and the golden age of freethought
If you asked me to list the names of 19th century American atheists, I would have said Robert G. Ingersoll (1833-1899) and stopped. He is clearly the most famous but it turns out that there is another person who preceded him, and that was Dr. Charles Knowlton. I became aware of him because of a …
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