Posts
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God Has Died Before
I only just now realized that today the Guardian published a piece I did for them on the “death of God” theological controversy in the 1960s. It is geared, especially, as a reflection on the New Atheist debates that have been going on lately: Unlike some of the prominent atheists of today, these thinkers knew…
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The Shooting Gallery
Once again in the New York Times Happy Days blog, I’m testing myself. Last time, I was testing my faith. This time, it’s my trigger finger: I’ve always really liked guns. Growing up, I fantasized about them endlessly, though my parents discouraged it every way they could. I came to agree with them in principle…
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The Fullest Yahya Investigation Yet
Halil Arda has done a great service with a new report in the New Humanist about Harun Yahya, the Turkish creationist whom I interviewed last October. He fortunately had the resources and connections to reveal far more than I was able in my articles on the man. Nevertheless, I am pleased to see that he…
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Religion for Radicals
Today at The Immanent Frame, I talk with literary critic Terry Eagleton about his new book, Reason, Faith, and Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate. Arguments about God and religion, he insists, are more than just tiffs about lofty ideas; they are deeply political and should be understood as such. Dawkins and I were recently…
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The Recession and the Arms Trade
This morning I finally did a long-time-coming blog piece (cross-posted at Waging Nonviolence and The Huffington Post) about the connection between the recession and the growth of the military-industrial complex. This is something that has been disturbing me quite a bit in recent months, but I’ve been slow to getting around to writing anything on…
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The Pleasure of Proof
I’m really pleased to report that the excellent New York Times blog Happy Days—a series of reflections on “the pursuit of what matters in troubled times”—has just posted an essay of mine: “The Self-Thinking Thought.” It’s a reflection on my experience spending part of a summer with St. Anselm, the 11th-century monk-turned-archbishop who introduced the…
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Erik Prince and the Spell of Freedom
Fueled by Jeremy Scahill’s recent revelations about Blackwater and its founder Erik Prince in The Nation, I’ve got a new essay at Religion Dispatches exploring the concept of freedom in relationship to the business of free-market warfare. Erik Prince discovered a passion for freedom long before founding Blackwater. Freedom is a mighty thing. Its exercise…
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The Proof Industry
Today at The Guardian, a bit of a glimpse into my ongoing obsessions about proofs for the existence of God. Just last night, sifting through a novella I wrote as a freshman in college, I discovered a whole forgotten chapter about the proofs—for some reason, they have been following me so doggedly all these years.…
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Visual Metaphysics
Passing through the Met’s Pen and Parchment: Drawing in the Middle Ages show this week, I was thrilled to discover a new fascination: the works of Opicinus de Canistris, a 14th-century Pavian who worked in the papal court in Avignon, France. According to the accompanying text, he survived a traumatic sickness, after which “he worked…