‘Scientology, The Aftermath’: A reminder that ‘religious freedom’ can be dangerous
Reading Time: 7 minutes After I recently finished watching the Emmy-winning 2016-2019 A&E docuseries, “Leah Remini: Scientology and The Aftermath,” I was further convinced of how supremely dangerous the concept of “religious freedom” can be as practiced in America, as I stressed in my 2018 book, Hol
Water crisis: Now may be the perfect time to install stingy faucets
Reading Time: 2 minutes For years, I hated the fact that whenever I tried to get hot water from a faucet, I had to wait seemingly forever for it to arrive—as cold water poured pointlessly into the sink, wasted, in the process. It was a double-negative whammy: annoying inconvenience as well as waste
Are GOP’s social media villains being coached?
Reading Time: 4 minutes The seemingly instantaneous, coordinated blow-back by Donald Trump supporters on social media whenever they believe the former president has been attacked begs the question: Are they being coached? The matches that ignite these online conflagrations are strident public alarms
One man’s transformative journey from Republican to Democrat
Reading Time: 4 minutes My longtime best pal, Paul Sauser, a recent conservative-Republican-turned-Democrat and an evangelical Christian now uneasily reassessing his faith (without chucking it altogether), has, like many, Americans experienced somewhat of a religious and political transformation in
Why are AR-15-style rifles so wildly popular in America?
Reading Time: 6 minutes Why does the United States all-too-casually allow virtually anyone to buy an AR-15-style rifle, a fearsomely lethal weapon millions of American civilians have already joyfully acquired? I ask myself that question every time one of these awful weapons is used to kill many, man
Is it transphobic to believe trans female athletes have an advantage?
Reading Time: 9 minutes I hate to admit it because it sounds so reactionary in the 21st century, but I believe some male-to-female transgender athletes, without mitigating intervention, may have an unfair advantage in women’s sports. I say this knowing that trans female athletes are a tiny minority
The real meaning behind ‘When in Rome, do as the Romans do’
Reading Time: 5 minutes A few years ago, I watched a documentary about a remote Amazonian tribe whose sexual practices were far different from our own in contemporary, mainstream America. A young indigenous woman on camera described a previously normal practice of her tribe to thoroughly enjoy each
Do Americans mistrust all news media, or just other people’s?
Reading Time: 2 minutes A huge majority of Americans ostensibly still mistrust the news media writ large, according to data released this week by the Gallup Poll organization. But, then again, maybe not so much. Nonetheless, a scant 16% of U.S. adults now say they have “a great deal” or “quite a lot
Mark Twain sums up the absurdity of God in a single quote
Reading Time: 2 minutes As I meander along the sometimes remote byways of the nonreligious environment, I frequently come across some lovely sunlit glens. I recently found one in the form of a quote posted by someone named u/Lazy_boa in Reddit’s r/atheism tributary, titled “Mark Twain summed up the
Why are so many evangelicals so un-Christian?
Reading Time: 6 minutes Even conservative American evangelicals are becoming increasingly aware—and alarmed—that so many of their fellow brethren continue to model decidedly un-Christian behavior while devotedly embracing the aggressive, heretical cruelties of their beloved but former president, Don
Anybody out there? Why our search for extraterrestrials is nearly pointless
Reading Time: 6 minutes “Where is everybody?” Italian-American physicist Enrico Fermi, reportedly once threw out this seemingly offhand question to colleagues during a lunch hour in 1950. But there was nothing offhand about it; the question is one of humanity’s most burning, ageless questions. “[Fer
Mass killings: Why we need to see the murdered innocents
Reading Time: 7 minutes For several decades beginning in the 1950s, driver education classes in the United States included screenings of “shock films”—documentary shorts, narrated in police drama style, created to bring the reality of high-speed collisions home to young drivers. Names like Highway o