“A Very Christian Atheist.” About George Orwell. I liked this quote from Orwell in particular:

…when one’s belly is empty, one’s only problem is an empty belly. It is when we have got away from drudgery and exploitation that we shall really start wondering about man’s destiny and the reason for his existence. One cannot have any worthwhile picture of the future unless one realises how much we have lost by the decay of Christianity.

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“Breaking Up with God: I Didn’t Lose My Faith, I Left It.” I’m interested in these kinds of stories because my doctoral research is going to focus on deconversion narratives. This paragraph caught my eye:

That there is more to God than most of us have been taught in church. That faith is an imaginative, constructive, ethical enterprise. That theology matters. That the way we think about God has a real effect on the earth and on other human beings. That we are the ones we have been waiting for. In the book I write, “This is my faith: a fragile hope in what humanity might be able to do when we stop looking for someone else to save us,” and I think that sentence sums up what the book is about.

Didn’t we just live through a century with that “fragile hope.” How did it work out?

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“How saying a blessing changed my secular family’s meals.” Well, if you’re going to be thankful, you need to be thankful to someone, right?

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“Dalai Lama: ‘I Am a Marxist, But Not a Leninist.’” If you’re a Marxist and a Buddhist, does that make you a Barxist? Or a Muddhist? Inquiring minds…

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Is Christian exclusivism bad? Part 1 of what promises to be an interesting two-part series.

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David Koresh Superstar? Uh, no thank you!

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“Arkansas atheists sue over bus ads on God-free lifestyle.” Of course they did.

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“Animal rights philosopher Peter Singer expands on why he is backing away from his famous philosophy.” Well, the “preference utilitarianism” part, anyway.

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“Inerrancy, Not So Arrogant.” In which Collin Hansen discusses what Jesus and Sarah Palin do not have in common.

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“How Not to Grow a Healthy Church.”