Everyone loves to go for a picnic in Bhutan. The young do not feel intruded when the old tag along with packed lunches. The old have no qualms about sharing high school jokes with their grandchildren as the pines and the cypresses shade their walk to the picnic. They carry packed lunches [...]

The ancient art of cherry picking passages from the Bible to support this or that argument has found new life in recent decades as conservatives claim Jesus as their political ally and in the past year with the Tea Party movement invoking Christ’s conservativism. What Would Jesus Do? (WWJD?) has [...]

In writing about the mosque/Ground Zero flap today in The New York Times, Clyde Haberman brings up a point that has been bothering me too:

...we have learned that many people must have been out sick the day the teacher taught prepositions. The center is routinely referred to by [...]

I find the arguments against building a mosque at Ground Zero in New York City pretty unconvincing and – if I may borrow a rather loathsome term – downright un-American so far as I can tell. The last I checked, in America we have a freedom to practice whatever religion [...]

Sarah Palin is doubling down on bigotry, with yet another Facebook post that brushes aside minor issues like tolerance and openness to get to what she really wants to say: Muslims shouldn’t have the same constitutional rights as other Americans. Sarah Palin: An Intolerable Mistake on Hallowed Ground | Facebook. [...]

In case you hadn't heard, France is well on their way to banning the Burqa from all public places, and Belgium, Spain, and the Netherlands may not be far behind. A nice idea, if it wasn't so unjust. The plan in these countries is to keep their female citizens from having [...]

From the National Republican Trust Political Action Committee, this is the advertisement that was rejected by NBC and CBS. The fear mongering is so completely over the top in this little piece of hate propaganda, there’s not much to say about it. I’ll just point out that contrary to what the [...]

I'll start by saying this: If there is a god (there's not), that god really enjoys putting the Pope's PR firm through hell.  As if the near constant reports that Pope Benedict protected child molesters wasn't reason enough to flee the Church, a new study has shown that Vatican Radio [...]

Consistent across the big three Western monotheisms is a theme notable only for its inconsistency: God is love, except for when he’s a belligerent tyrant with an unquenchable bloodlust. Ask most people in the big three if their God condones cruelty, and you’ll get a definitive “no!” But anyone can flip [...]

On these pages, my colleague Ethan Epstein explains his opposition to the right to die via assisted suicide.

Assisted suicide laws do not, therefore, guarantee a right to die. Rather, they create a new right through legislation: the right of doctors to kill their patients. The only [...]