Fundamentalists offer us a “loving” God who is some kind of divine stalker.

One hardly need believe that the events in your life are actually planned as bolts from the blue, sent special delivery from a deity who is testing and training you like a lab rat! And...

Warren knows God doesn’t chow down on Doritos or caviar. What he fails to see, however, is that there is no difference in principle between the old animal sacrifice theology and his own. Surely the...

But if subjective pietism is not the real crux of this all-important Gospel, if it is instead belief in the plan of salvation, how are we not dealing with “salvation by (cognitive) works” and Gnosticism...

I wonder how appropriate it is to try to ‘argue someone into the kingdom.’ Many apologists hotly deny any such charge, but I don’t believe them. The tenor of almost all apologetics literature makes it...

Catholicism … tries to grab all the poker chips on the table, kick everybody out of the game, and then pretend they were never there until the game was effectively over. It’s just a ridiculous,...

It means that your birth, with all your particulars, is a wildly improbable event, and hence precious. You won the sweepstakes by being born at all. Think of all the wallflower sperm and egg cells....

Real morality is not the product of fearing a spanking. But what does fundamentalist hell-belief encourage? It retards any developing moral judgment by freezing moral maturity right at the most primitive, most childish, stage: the...

Heresy,” by the way, simply means “choice.” It came to mean “thoughtcrime,” implying it was blasphemy to presume to choose your own belief instead of swallowing what the bishops spoonfed you.

The answer is simple: if you cannot find meaning inherent in life right now, as you live it in this visible world, the addition of an infinite amount more of the same isn’t about to...

My point is, however, that churches do promote beliefs that would more appropriately find a place in a context of intellectual debate. They wind up cheerleading for highly dubious opinions on historical, scientific, and metaphysical...

Whatever can be threatened, whatever can be shaken, whatever you fear cannot stand, is destined to crash. Do not go down with the ship. Let that which is destined to become the past slip away....

For the believer in divine creation, the open question of the Mystery of Being is like an open wound. It stings and gapes, and the believer cannot rest till it be healed up, closed up,...

I bet you’ve seen the fundamentalist bumper sticker that says, “God said it! I believe it! That settles it!” It must be a typo because what the driver really means is, “I said it! God...

When I heard of the shady tactics of the Moonies, my initial indignation was modified by empathy. I remembered only too well all the innocuous-sounding “fronts” operated by Evangelicals in order to witness to sinners,...