I was contacted by www.askimo.com , a new internet portal featuring video interviews of experts talking on their field of expertise.  I decided that my field of expertise would be “what the Torah really says” (since I am one of the few laypeople who has actually bothered to find out), along with related questions about atheism, blasphemy and the “clear alternative to the Torah” (It's SCIENCE!). 

The questions were partly supplied by me, generally…

In an email exchange, an old friend and fellow English-prof colleague wrote this:

"I know you're 'the Jewish atheist,' but don't you feel a strong sense of identification with the Jewish ethos, aside from religion? You've sought out Jewish wives, and friends to some degree could be, the way I might seek out writers as friends. I think of my former Catholicism not angrily but gratefully. When I grew up, I decided on my own that I didn't believe. But my Catholic education was excellent;…

Professionally I advertise myself as a “language expert,” which is quite accurate (see www.language-expert.net ), and I get a wide range of contacts from attorneys and private citizens regarding anonymous letters, plagiarism, contract interpretation, copyright infringement, and other issues where money, reputation, or something else of value is at stake. 

I also get questions about grammar and usage, which I answer gratis, just to…

I recently received an invitation to the bar mitzvah of the grandson of my first cousin; this ceremony is, as you may know, the induction of the youngster into Jewish adulthood. 

The invitation itself was colorful and cheery, produced, no doubt, with invitation-creation software and thus exhibiting neither coherence nor originality but just an electronic mad mix of fonts, patterns, and such, chosen from among an infinity of alternatives.

Strangely, the trifold invitation had a…

I didn't expect it to be so funny!!

I've had (literal) laugh out loud moments (in public too!) 

Very very interesting.  And I can see now how it builds on works like "Jesus interrupted" - the revelation about the last 12 verses of Mark / Jesus being Angry / The Woman Caught in Adultery  - is just scratching the surface of the complexity in the world of beliefs prior to the New Testament actually being written.

This book is utterly fascinating.

. . . b ut someone has to take it and it might as well be me. As a writer and sometimes humorist I could be banned for life from the Writer’s Guild for not picking the low fruit. I ran upon this large sign in Barnes & Noble while book shopping.

I stood there for a moment and thought,…

At last, I have achieved my goal!

I recently had a comment exchange on Deviant Art:

http://pjarrett.deviantart.com/  (not a safe site, as my McAfee always reminds me...but they seem to have solved some of their problems...be careful, in spite of its name "Deviant Art" they allow underaged children to post right along with adults!  If you're leary of the site...which I can't say I blame you...try my other blog at …

(Several years ago, I undertook to read the Torah.  For specific reasons, see below.  But basically I wanted to find out, to my own satisfaction, just what it said, to the extent possible, given that it's such an ancient text that's been repeatedly copied and edited. 

To rabbis, thus to most Jews, it is a repository of priceless wisdom.   I set out to find it. 

What I found was both enlightening and disappointing. …

The mailed invitation to the presumed induction of the daughter of my first cousin to Jewish adulthood read “We cordially invite you to celebrate with us on the occasion of the bat mitzvah of our daughter Carly Sarah on Saturday morning, the Twelfth of November, Two Thousand and Eleven at Nine Thirty in the morning. Congregation Adath Jeshrun…Elkins Park, Pennsylvania.” 

Apparently it’s more dignified to use no numbers and capitalize everything, as if it were 18th…

Pennsylvania legislators recently adopted a resolution that among other things encourages Pennsylvanians to study the tenets of the Bible and says there is a "national need to study and apply scripture." The Freedom from Religion Foundation filed suit charging that the resolution violates the "separation of church and state."…

“Imagine the Creator as a low comedian, and at once the world becomes explicable.”

H.L. Mencken

“Infidel, n.  In New York, one who does not believe in the Christian religion; in Constantinople, one who does.”

Ambrose Bierce

“Properly read, the Bible is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived.’

Isaac Asimov

“Our Bible reveals to us the character of our God with minute and remorseless…

Here is the setup, I am the only science teacher in my community. Four to five weeks ago, the bible study class for youth started on this small, remote island, with Austin at the head. Since then, I have been targeted by students because someone in the congregation, I’m not saying Austin directly, but someone is teaching these kids intolerance for science. I finally manned up and decided to address the problem at its most likely source. Here is the entirety of my initial email…

Chatting to a believer on facebook:

They had posted a status about their car. Thanks to a canny deal with the insurance this allowed them to pay off a loan outstanding and own their car completely, all the actions of which they attributed to the movement of the divine hand:

"we needed to give God another Acclamation (as He is due every moment of every day) for His next blessing in this saga. After giving us the value of the car in…

Terry 1:1 In the beginning no god created anything. Amen. The End.

My wife and I were privileged enough to be able to see the world premier of Hamlet in the Original Pronunciation (since Shakespeare's time) this past weekend.  There were some odd cuts in the script, and the original brogue took a little getting used to, but over all it was an excellent production beautifully acted and directed.

Why am I posting this on an Atheist blog?  Because of one particularly amusing bit of directing.  In the scene where Hamlet is reading a book and…