How can people really believe this stuff? Rising from the grave isn’t even the most preposterous part of the Easter story. Far more bizarre is the claim that God had to send his son to die for our sins. And if God really wanted all humanity to heed his message, why did the resurrected Christ only reveal himself to a few select people before ascending to heaven?
ReadWalking in the snow, I was savouring the way in which normal life had been joyously suspended.
ReadBy the time you read this, something truly dreadful might have blighted the world. Pinker does not prophesy that this won’t happen; he simply reminds us why it should not and need not, as long as we don’t give up the notion of the emancipatory power of reason to help illuminate the way forward. If that is naive, even more naive is the belief that despair, fatalism or superstition supplies a credible alternative.
ReadDisgruntled Christians would do better to seek common cause with anyone else, including thoughtful atheists, who wants Christmas to stand for more than just shopping and gorging. If they did so, they would see that a good atheist Christmas looks a lot like a good Christian one.
ReadThere is no religion-shaped space that needs to be filled. Rather, there are many spaces which religions have managed to occupy. The need for meaning, for example, is not religious, but it is a need religions attempt to fulfil. The same is true of the needs for values, community, the marking of life-stages.
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