​https://www.ftsociety.org/wp-content/uploads/March-April-2024-FS-Ezine.pdf   While I have many problems with the Christian Bible, there are some portions I agree with. One is Luke 12:48: “To whom much is given, much is expected.” I recognize how fortunate I am to have been born in a country and a family where I had ample opportunities to attain a decent education and standard of living. But I ask myself what we should do about those to whom much is not given, whether born in this or another country. And I’ve noticed that people opposed to helping immigrants also seem less charitably disp ..read more

​My letter published in the February/March 2024 Vol 44 No 2 issue of Free Inquiry. https://secularhumanism.org/2024/01/letters-february-march-2024/      Re: “Why Am I Agnostic?” by Alejandro Borgo (FI, October/November 2023), Borgo mischaracterized atheism. He said, “The fact of being an atheist is a position taken in the conviction that there is a proof that the entity called ‘God’ does not exist.”    Not so.    I used to call myself an agnostic because I could not prove if a god exists, so I took the agnostic position that the existence of a ..read more

https://thehumanist.com/magazine/winter-2024/commentary/herbs-corner-what-is-wrong-with-atheists   When we atheists talk about religion, especially with Christians, we usually give good arguments about why Christian God beliefs can’t be true. We quote various biblical passages that make no sense to us, and explain how science contradicts many portions of the Bible. Our arguments rarely work with biblical literalists, because they don’t accept the science we show them. Most Christians don’t know the Bible very well and don’t care about the passages we quote.  ​  We tend to assume ..read more

https://www.ftsociety.org/wp-content/uploads/January-February-2024-Ezine.pdf    Many claim that the United States of America is a good and moral country because we are a “God-fearing nation.” Can you imagine what kind of morals and values we would have if we weren’t a God-fearing nation? Without religion, the United States would probably have the highest rates of violent crime — murder, rape, and robbery — in the developed world. Without a deep commitment to our faith- based values, we’d probably have an educational system that’s an embarrassment, with our children ranking among the ..read more

https://www.ftsociety.org/wp-content/uploads/July_August-2023-Ezine.pdf ​White Christian Nationalists frequently say “they” are coming after your children. But who are “they,” and how are they doing it? “They” are often liberal teachers and media who supposedly are turning students away from Christianity and toward Marxism, or “they” are gays recruiting children to become gay or trans.  “They” also favor illegal immigration, taking away your legal guns, and trying to convince pregnant women to obtain abortions. In addition, “they” are  purportedly talking young people into ..read more

https://shj.org/what-it-would-take-for-me-to-support-israel-again/ ​ ​My family shed “tears of joy” on May 14, 1948, when the Jewish State of Israel was established as a safe haven for Jews. I was five at the time and didn’t quite understand its significance, but I had been taught that an integral part of Judaism was anti anti-Semitism. A number of Jewish displaced persons (DPs) lived in my neighborhood, some of whom had been in concentration camps. I also had relatives who had died in the Holocaust, and my parents warned me to never trust the Goyim (Gentiles). When I grew up and evo ..read more

​https://thehumanist.com/commentary/what-did-he-know-and-when-did-he-know-it  During the Watergate investigation, Sen. Howard Baker (R- TN) famously asked the question about President Richard Nixon. The resultant scandal caused Nixon to resign the presidency on August 8, 1974. We can ask the same question of the biblical god about everything. Religious fundamentalists have a fundamental dilemma to resolve. Can God really be omniscient (all-knowing), omnipotent (all-powerful), and omnibenevolent (all-good)? Biblical literalists usually try to explain away the problem of evil by saying that ..read more

  https://shj.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/HJ-Spring-2023-Member-Subscriber.pdf ​ Growing up Jewish, I recognized at an early age that I was different from the goyim (gentiles) without knowing quite why. Our Jewish kinship seemed to come from a mutual fear of anti-Semitism. In Hebrew school, I learned that the “Shema,” which literally means “Hear,” was the major contribution Jews had given the world—the philosophy to live by. I was taught that the statement, “Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one,” transformed the world from polytheism to monotheism—from worshipping many fals ..read more

​https://www.ftsociety.org/wp-content/uploads/May-June-2023-Ezine.pdf   Jesus allegedly said in Mark 12: 29-31: “The first of all commandments is to love thy God, and the second is to love thy neighbor as thyself. No commandments are greater than these.” I think the second of these commandments is an excellent one and should be the foundation of our morality. We need to distinguish between crimes against humanity and crimes against “God.” Murder is a crime against humanity and universally condemned by everyone, regardless of religious belief.  On the other hand, some religious b ..read more

https://secularhumanism.org/2023/04/letters-april-may-2023/   Published in Free Inquiry magazine Re: “Lacktheism and the Burden of Proof,” by George Williamson, FI, December 2022/January 2023. I agree with George Williamson that the burden of proof is on the theist to give evidence for claims, not on the atheist to show why there are no gods. While I can’t disagree with him that an atheist lacks a belief in a theistic god, I dislike such terminology. I prefer saying that an atheist is without a belief in any gods. Dictionary definitions of lack include wanting or miss ..read more