It’s obvious, but I forget: religion and philosophy are about self-improvement. Nowhere is this more apparent than in what happened to Calvinism in the United States. What? Yes, that Calvin. And that Arminius. No, I’m not one of those who thinks that the United States was in any way a…

“God is love.” Yes, I know that the phrase is biblical. The words appear in 1 John 4:8, to be precise. I had those three words underlined in a pocket New Testament (plus Psalms) I carried everywhere as a kid. Leather cover. I also know the rest of the verse: …

Many of us of a liberal theological bent consider religions in the category of stuff human beings in our communal groupings have made up over the millennia in order to survive and thrive on this planet. Human ideas are socially and historically “conditioned.” Philosophies and religions — and the truths…

In his Meditations, Stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius wrote: Consider your every word and deed, how each accords with nature and is right for you. Don’t be diverted by the complaints or blame of others. If saying or doing a thing is good, don’t consider it unworthy of yourself. Blamers have…

The American philosopher John Dewey was one of the signers of Humanist Manifesto I back in 1933. Most people know a little something about Dewey because of his theories of education. Like the nowadays more famous Maria Montessori, Dewey was a constructivist. Constructivism is complex idea that boils down to…

Frankfort School philosopher Theodor Adorno wrote: The need to let suffering speak is a condition of all truth. For suffering is objectivity that weighs upon the subject. (Negative Dialectics) Adorno was one of the creators of what is known as critical theory. Yes, look it up in a reputable source…

The media spectacle of the State of Tennessee v. John Thomas Scopes in the summer of 1925 underlined for many religious liberals that Charles Darwin’s natural selection would be the wedge that permanently split Western religious thinking into two broad camps. The question became what position the most protesting of…

I have loved what are called “the liberal arts” for most of my life. I can truthfully say that I moved from biblical fundamentalism to a lover of literary Modernism in the wink of an eye. I took one look at T.S. Eliot’s poetry and Allen Ginsberg’s poetry and I…

The Taoist Zhuangzi (4th century BCE) told this tale: Once there was a frog that lived in a deep, narrow well. He had never seen anything else. One day, a sea turtle came upon the well and shouted down the deep, narrow hole: “Hello! Anybody down there?” “Yes,” said the…