"I have only a small flickering light to guide me in the darkness of a thick forest.  Up comes a theologian and blows it out."

Denis Diderot

“Imagine the religious principles which have, in fact, prevailed in the world. You will scarcely be persuaded that they are anything but sick men’s dreams.”

David Hume

The Non-Event

Another Passover is upon us. Jews around the world celebrate their founding…

“In your Easter bonnet, with all the frills upon it,

You’ll be the grandest lady in the Easter Parade…

On the Avenue, Fifth Avenue, photographers will snap us

And you’ll find that you’re in the rotogravure…”

Irving Berlin

“They tried to nail him down, but he got away.”

Marquee outside church in Massachusetts

Well, it’s that day again, and our Greek Orthodox friends, as well as our Roman…

My stomach has been roiling with nausea, my eyes perpetually rolling, at the outpouring of religiosity that accompanied the passing of the most successful fantasy merchant of the last century, perhaps of all time.

His message -- God loves you -- is absurd. George Carlin first described religion's visions of the tortures of hell -- then ended with "...but he LOVES you."  So much for God's love.  

I'm really sorry that major secular organizations didn't speak out -- or speak out…

“There is nothing that is too obvious of an absurdity to be

firmly planted in the human head as long as you begin to

instill before the age of five by constantly repeating it

with an air of great seriousness.”

-- Arthur Schopenhauer

Followers of the riveting “Zachary’s Brain” series of posts will recall that they are a narrative not of a horror movie…but of something equally disturbing: the…

I’m going to start publishing this post after every act of Muslim fanaticism, suicide, and murder. 

I felt like starting it after the Ft. Hood massacre.  A psychiatrist(!) with openly Muslim fanatic leanings cold-bloodedly murders dozens of soldiers in one of their own facilities (where they are prohibited from carrying guns).  Surprise! It’s called a workplace incident and buried forever.

WHEN will we call the enemy by its right name?  And I don’t mean the argument about…

I heard this well-documented etymological error explained again on Fareed Zakaria's CNN show, which told me that a lot of well-informed people aren't aware of it, and I wanted to be sure that my fellow heretics are.

Armies of crazed, angry young Muslim men, who never had a job, an education, or a date, are blowing themselves up every day because they expect a paradise of 72 virgins, but the holy text uses a word that could very likely mean "raisins," which makes sense -- fruit was…

“In your Easter bonnet, with all the frills upon it,

You’ll be the grandest lady in the Easter Parade…

On the Avenue, Fifth Avenue, photographers will snap us

And you’ll find that you’re in the rotogravure…”

Irving Berlin

“They tried to nail him down, but he got away.”

Marquee outside church in Massachusetts

Well, it’s that day again, and our Greek Orthodox friends, as well as our Roman…

As a secular humanist who was raised Jewish, I have learned to ignore the Christmas excesses and platitudes that inundate us for two months of every year. 

But one idea, especially on display at Yuletide, I have never accepted: America is founded on “Judeo-Christian values.”   This claim has no basis in reality.  “Judeo-Christian values” are either moral precepts so obvious (love thy neighbor) as to be ubiquitous among the world’s major religions, or they are rooted in the primitive…

As a secular humanist who was raised Jewish, I have learned to ignore the Christmas excesses and platitudes that inundate us for two months of every year. 

But one idea, especially on display at Yuletide, I have never accepted: America is founded on “Judeo-Christian values.”   This claim has no basis in reality.  “Judeo-Christian values” are either moral precepts so obvious (love thy neighbor) as to be ubiquitous among the world’s major religions, or they are rooted in the primitive…

"Dear Alan and Elisha,

"We are planning to have the unveiling service for Belle [my mother, who died last year] on Sunday, November 22 at the Haym Solomon Memorial Park, Frazer, PA at 11am.  We would love to have you join us, but please – [there’s] no pressure."

[Invitation to brunch afterward.]

The above is an invitation from my brother and sister-in-law (Deb, although a New Hampshire Congregationalist, follows along…

To expose yourself to any news medium today is to encounter a veritable tsunami of religious bullshit, enough to confirm my worst visions of humanity and make it all the more difficult to hope for a secular future, free of religion’s enslavement.

The Pope comes to America.  At incalculable cost, we learn, unprecedented security measures are being employed to protect his holy self.  Why not trust God to do it? 

A potpourri of Popery

A guy from Argentina…

“It is terrible to speak well and be wrong.”

- Sophocles

“Here comes the orator, with his flood of words and his drop of reason.”

- Ben Franklin

Preface: On the surrealness of the Trump candidacy

The Trump candidacy is giving me a creepy reality-warping experience.  Some portion of my brain, the business-as-usual, pattern-seeking lobe, believes that a typical Presidential…

Once again, a Muslim targets the military and slaughters Americans.  Once again, motives are sought.  He was such a nice guy.  He came back from the Middle East, and he was somehow different. I am still waiting for someone (why not a secular organization?) to have the courage to say that yes, he was different: his mind was taken over by a vile, heinous, psychotic RELIGIOUS fantasy.  

On CNN, law officers in impressive uniforms vow to find out why he did it.  The closest that the media…

A non-Jewish friend writes in an email:

"The Harry Potter film series star is Jewish. Radcliffe’s mother is Jewish, which makes Radcliffe a Jew in the eyes of the Halacha [Jewish law]. Plus, Radcliffe considers himself a ‘Jewish atheist.’  Willard is convinced I have Jewish ancestry. He's scheduled a DNA blood test to prove it.”

My response:

The question of "who is a Jew?" is right up there with "What do women want?".  Womb doctrine is the most enshrined and…

I have often said that Judaism is a religion for the obsessive-compulsive, with rule after rule, hundreds of them, interpreted and extrapolated to the finest nuance by generations of rabbis.  It could easily keep you busy most or all of your waking hours.

Nowhere is Jewish OCD on more florid display than in the 24 hours called Shabbat, from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday. (NOTE: The following is about truly observant Jews; practitioners of Judaism Lite, like my family,…

“The Bible.  That is what fools have written, what imbeciles command, what rogues teach, and young children are made to learn by heart.”

Voltaire

In my continuing efforts (I’ll be writing letters to the editor on this subject) to confront liberal Westerners, especially PC mealy-mouthed apologists like Obama, with the vile truth of what Muslims are required to believe, I provide a few quotes from Sam Harris’ The End of Faith.

I cringe when I…

My fellow Americans,

Tonight I speak from the heart.  My words are not ghostwritten or focus group tested.  This is what I, as leader of the free world, truly believe.

Let me talk about the real nature of terrorism (the kind that most affects us, since many different terrorist groups wreak havoc around the world).  And let me call the enemy by its real name.

Violent Muslim attacks on Western countries -- and let's face it, they ARE Muslim, and I apologize for my verbal…

“Now that I’ve shed my skin completely,

One true reality alone exists.”

Zen saying

Amid the twin excitements of Super Bowl and blizzard, we vaguely recall that today is also Groundhog Day, which was nothing more than a rather witless locally-oriented celebration until Harold Ramis’ brilliant movie of the same name.  It was and is my all-time favorite message film.

Groundhog Day explores the everydayness of life with an ingenious premise…

I have often observed that Judaism is a high-input, low output religion.  There are countless commandments (over 600) and obeying them is a full-time job...yet there is no well-defined promise of punishments or rewards in the after life.

So why do it?  Why bother with dietary laws, 3x/day prayer, a zillion Sabbath regs, and much more?

Occasionally my wife or I will take a walk on the wild side and visit chabad.org,, a nexus for Modern Orthodox Jews and a platform on which they…