Few have heard of the movement usually called humanism, even though it is well over a century old. Humanism is a post-Christian movement that rejects the supernatural and emphasizes the inherent moral capacities of the human animal and our ability to be good without the trappings of traditional scriptures. Many…

Western thinkers have long searched for the “unmoved mover,” meaning . . . some sort of god, or, at the least, something solid that is changeless, unlike . . . well, all of the reality that we actually observe. The concept was that — given all the movement in our…

As I write this, on Labor Day weekend of 2022, unemployment is at a fifty-year low. Sections of restaurants are closed due to staff shortages; businesses are opening late and closing early due to staffing shortages. …

In our strange world today, there is a lot of anti-Enlightenment sentiment. …

Everything in American religion changed after the media spectacle of the State of Tennessee v. John Thomas Scopes in the summer of 1925. The Scopes Monkey Trial, as it came to be known. That event left an indelible mark on the American psyche. The Scopes trial underlined for many —…

Medieval Europeans believed that God revealed valuable lessons in morality to humanity through nature itself. A very popular way of teaching those lessons — through a bit of church intervention — were books called Bestiaries, or “Books of Beasts.” Now, I hasten to add that by “nature” and “lessons of…

Listen for a few moments to US media (at least some US media) and you are likely to hear the bashing of something called “identity politics.” Why, some ask, do you want to force . . . well . . . everything from race to gender to sexual orientation …

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…