It can be natural  for an non-theist to experience fleeting hints, or even weightier thoughts relating to some personal responsibility or even guilt after events of murderous brutality at places of religious worship such as the latest at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. After all, we are organized around the idea that religions are regressive superstitions and have proved to be not very good fulfilling the role as a fundamental principle for directing the activity of improving […]

Editor’s note: The following is a continuing and expanded review of Steven Pinker’s newly released book referenced in the previous post. In what must be the most robust recent defense of the 18th Century social, political, and intellectual movement known as The Enlightenment, Steven Pinker stays true to the movement’s foundations by methodically presenting its case in his latest book Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress (Viking, 2018), affirming his  belief in the certainty of increasing […]

  The trend in mass shootings  has been to find the body of the perpetrator among or nearby the dead and dying, prone on  the killing floor with his victims— either from his own hand or “neutralized” by the rescuers. (I use the masculine pronoun since these atrocities are always carried out by men.) We are then left with the multiple crises of grieving, the unending questions of causes and answers, and attempts to ferret out some sense of closure […]

Lie-In, February 19 There’s something happening here, What it is ain’t exactly clear.  There’s a man with a gun over there, Telling me I got to beware. I think it’s time we stop, children, what’s that sound Everybody look what’s going down.   Stephen Stills, 1966.  One of the most significant and unlikely political movements involving constitutional policy in  United States history may have started Valentine’s Day, 2018. That day a mentally unbalanced teenager caught an Uber ride to his former […]

A Liberal Opinion from Mark Lilla  “…the most profound and potentially most radical politics come directly out of our own identity, as opposed to working to end somebody else’ oppression.” —from the Combahee River Collective Statement, 1977 “anything achieved through movement politics can be undone through institutional politics.”—Mark Lilla, The Once and Future Liberal   Once upon a time in recent history, someone altered the quotation  “All politics is local,” reportedly said by former Speaker of the U. S. House of […]

The Final Exit Network “is the only organization that educates individuals that are suffering, either with terminal illness long term untreatable pain, and provides a compassionate presence at their bedside,” said Julia Hanway, who had come to New Orleans to make a presentation at NOSHA’s October meeting. Most would agree with little argument that is a noble calling. Part of the “education” she refers to, however, is counseling the individual on humane ways to end suffering by terminating the patient’s […]

In the current (Sept/Oct 2017) edition of The Humanist, former president of the American Humanist Association Lyle L. Simpson marks the centennial anniversary of the modern humanist movement with a brief summary of its improbable beginning in a Minneapolis Unitarian Church, while also mentioning its ancient origins with Greek and Roman literati Epicurus and Lucretius. Epicurus’ teaching, “centered on each of us maximizing our life here on Earth instead of our life being regulated by the gods”  was “spelled out […]

  Someone once told me that opening up your Facebook app was like going to the neighborhood bar. The lyrics: “Sometimes you want to go Where everybody knows your name, and they’re always glad you came. You wanna be where you can see, our troubles are all the same You wanna be where everybody knows Your name.” soon came to mind and continue—complete with the sappy melody from the Cheers sitcom theme of the ’80s—to initiate a daylong ear worm every time […]