Fairy tales have been on my mind a lot lately. I’m pretty hooked on Once Upon a Time, my mom can’t stop watching Grimm, I recently read Philip Pullman’s compendium of Grimm’s Fairy Tales, and On Being had a wonderful segment about fairy tales. They’re everywhere. They’re making a comeback. And here I am wondering why. The traditional fairy tales generally do not resonate with me. Especially the Di... »
I’ve just started working for a nonprofit that provides mental health services to kids, particularly kids with autism and developmental disabilities. One of the perks of my job is that sometimes I get to sit in on the lectures and continuing education classes that the therapists and other clinicians go to, which are pretty damn interesting. The most recent one was about sexuality and disabil... »
Over at Pharyngula, PZ Myers recently wrote an article in which he suggested that we remove all religious studies classes from education, because it’s “useless, distracting, and narrow”. Now as a religious studies major and someone thinking of going on in a religious studies program, I got a little pissy about this. Now why, you may ask, would a staunch atheist such as myself be ... »
Behold! The sequel to my previous post on the Teleological Argument: the Cosmological Argument for God as a creator! With the premise: “If the universe has a beginning, is God the best explanation for it?” »
(This is crossposted from Hubpages) As you may know, I also blog over on hubpages, and I recently agreed to answer some questions for a pastor over there about my beliefs as an atheist. Ya know, for improved understanding between our communities and stuff. Overall, it was a very good experience, but in the comments of the blog, I got a number of people saying things like “atheists really believe i... »
As an attempt to stray from my usual short posts, I’ve written up this piece on the Teleological argument for the existence of God. Read on to find out more about the argument and enjoy my attempt to be fair and balanced- with the premise: “The Teleological argument may indeed fail as a formal proof of the existence of the divine being but it has much to commend it as an expression of relig... »
My stepfather is a 60 year old retired minister of the United Church. His shtick is helping old people find meaning in life and discovering ways to “age well”. He is pretty well-read, was university educated, which, coupled with his personality and the fact that he has been in a position of authority for most of his life, makes him pretty pompous and arrogant whenever we discuss any sort of... »
Back in April, I criticized a video series titled ‘Spirit Science’ that defied the nomenclature it had adopted by denying scientific practices and continues to this day trying to convince its viewers that they can manipulate reality through their thoughts through wordplay that bastardizes scientific concepts and squashes them in a ball of wishful thinking and new age motifs until it l... »
