They Told Me So
How my parents swallowed a frog to save me from antisemitism.
Thomas P. Balazs
· 16 min read
Religion
A collection of 127 posts
Anti-Enlightenment Thinking, Past and Present
The Enlightenment was as remarkable as it was unexpected, but it led directly to the benefits we enjoy today.
Adam Wakeling
· 9 min read
New Atheism and the Demand for Dogma
The notion that we abandoned our old faiths and replaced them with new ones is too tidy and simplistic.
Matt Johnson
· 10 min read
Nick Cave: “Conservatism Is an Aspiration”
The lead Bad Seed shares his thoughts on creativity, marriage, and having a conservative temperament.
Claire Lehmann
· 13 min read
Hope, Trust, and Religious Faith
In the 1990s, religious Americans embraced science’s re-definition of spirituality. They would be unwise to repeat this mistake.
Ronald W. Dworkin
· 11 min read
Religious Permanence
The human brain evolved to be religious, but religion also evolved to appeal to the human brain.
Bo Winegard
· 10 min read
Scientology’s War on Psychiatry
What caused L. Ron Hubbard to turn on a discipline he had once accepted?
Jonathan Salem-Wiseman, Stephen Wiseman
· 16 min read
The Great Cover-Up
Islamists used a religious lie to crush Mahsa Amini, but women can win this war.
Asra Q. Nomani
· 9 min read
Our Glorious Unhead of State
The idea of an Australian republic is attractive to some, but there's a strong case for a humble head of state.
Harry Lehmann
· 4 min read
Salman Rushdie and the Islamic Punishment for Blasphemy
For centuries, the orthodox Muslim view has been that those who insult Muhammad must be summarily killed.
Gordon Nickel
· 14 min read
Myth-making Isn’t the Right Way to ‘Indigenise’ Our Universities
Too often, the noble goal of reconciliation is being co-opted by those seeking to invent fake histories and advance politicized narratives.
Terry Moore and Carol Pybus
· 16 min read
The Alchemist Emperor of Prague
As the Holy Roman Empire descended into religious conflicts, its Habsburg ruler surrounded himself with magicians, astrologers, and scryers.
Martyn Rady
· 8 min read
Pacifism and Papal Fallibility
The Pope is a perverse sort of pacifist, not a man of peace.
Brian Stewart
· 8 min read
Imagine There’s No Svarga: Rediscovering Cārvāka, India’s 2,700-Year-Old Atheistic Tradition
The Cārvākas considered only matter—that which could be sensed—to be real.
Kushal Mehra
· 8 min read
How the Christian Bible Became Separated Into ‘Old’ and ’New’
There is no firmly established technical term for the Bible in Judaism. The Hebrew scriptures may simply be referred to as “the Bible,” and the term “Jewish Bible” is sometimes used to distinguish it from the Christian Bible. In Hebrew, terms such as miqra (“scripture”) or kitve haqqodesh (“sacred texts”
Konrad Schmid and Jens Schröter
· 9 min read