Recent Comments

1. about 3 hours ago on Non Sequitur

   Quite true that the road to hell is paved by good intentions (alone).

   You totally missed my point. To get you directed on point, please provide an example of a good deed NOT motivated by good intention.

2. about 3 hours ago on Non Sequitur

   “Spoken like someone who thinks thots are more important than deeds.”

   Rather, just asserting the simple truth that right deeds are motivated by proper intention and motivation, making for a healthy society.

   The simplicity and truth of that relationship seems to, unfortunately, elude you.

   (Those who have acted, only act, without proper forethought fill our prisons or are institutionalized under serious medication for their own good and the good of society.)

3. about 11 hours ago on Non Sequitur

   “The parts about religion I admire are the parts that could easily stand on their own”

   Sorry, separating action from motivation is not a credible move.

   You or your loved ones ever need hospital care? Interesting history of a religiously-motivated institution for the good:

   “Public hospitals, per se, did not exist until the Christian period.1 Towards the end of the 4th century, the “second medical revolution”2 took place with the founding of the first Christian hospital in the eastern Byzantine Empire by Basil of Caesarea, and within a few decades, such hospitals had become ubiquitous in Byzantine society.3 The hospital would undergo development and progress throughout Byzantine, medieval European and Islamic societies from the 5th to the 15th century. European exploration brought hospitals to colonies in North America, Africa, and Asia. St Bartholomew’s hospital in West Smithfield in London, founded in 1123, is widely considered the oldest functioning hospital today. Originally a charitable institution, currently an NHS hospital it continues to provide free care to Londoners, as it has for 900 years. In contrast, the Mihintale Hospital in Sri Lanka, established in the 9th century is probably the site with the oldest archaeological evidence available for a hospital in the world.4 Serving monks and the local community, it represents early advancements in healthcare practices.56

   Early Chinese and Japanese hospitals were established by Western missionaries in the 1800s…"

   Hospitals played an important role during the Crusades, with the Hospitallers of Saint John building many hospitals in Jerusalem to serve pilgrims traveling to the Holy Land. The first hospital was established in 1080 by Italian merchants from Amalfi under the guidance of Brother Gerard, a Benedictine monk. The hospital was dedicated to John the Baptist and provided care for sick, poor, and injured Christian pilgrims. The Hospitallers cared for anyone, regardless of race or faith …

4. about 15 hours ago on Non Sequitur

   Shank list:

   1. CEO

   2. Folks in Legal

5. 1 day ago on Non Sequitur

   “simple basic fact that we’re all human beings.”

   I and religionists I know say, “Check!” We just go a bit further than you are willing to go in contemplating “What does that mean?”

   “favor society in general (and government more particularly) organizing itself to make life better for common people”

   Struggling Irish and Italian Catholics who gave there blood to establish unionism in this country couldn’t agree more. (My equally struggling East Slav great grandparents came to this country as scabs because they were willing to work for a dollar a day because it was a better situation than what they were fleeing back in the “old country" – can’t fault them for that.)

   “if the crops are suffering from lack of water we’d rather build irrigation systems"

   Lots of religious inventors hold patents that alleviate such challenges.

   “our shared humanity.”

   See first point. Religion has done much to serve “the least who shall be first.” You choose not to acknowledge such efforts and accent the far-outweighed negatives because it serves your agenda.

   “people deserve to be rewarded materially for hard work, innovation, or both.”

   The “Protestant work ethic” in a nutshell, though I am not of that Tradition in all of its other aspects.

   “alarmed at the vision that the nationalist Christians”

   So am I and those religionists I with whom I most closely associate. So why denigrate religion as a whole?

6. 1 day ago on Non Sequitur

   “Communists in particular didn’t have anything against religion per se,”

   Wrong. wrong. wrong!

   I’ve toured the anti-religion “museums of education” in Russia in times pre-1988, of course housed in repurposed churches, synagogues and mosques. The exhibits demonstrated vile hatred of religion per se. (E.g., Orthodox and Catholics portrayed on posters as cannibalistic aliens.)

   Please, in no way do I no accuse you of advocating force, but your dismissive “Bible is just fairy tales” talk is too remindful of the rhetoric of exhibit texts.

   Again, I get that you react against the incursion of religion into state, but I reflexively react against scientizers’ invasion (looking back, I mistakenly wrote “evasion,” though that applies in context as well) into religion by way of insipid assumptions about the religion.

   “In the NAME of religion” is correct, but religion used badly in no way invalidates religious sensibility per se.

7. 2 days ago on Non Sequitur

   “Aztecs didn’t behead enuf people? Muslims didn’t push enuf gay people out the windows of tall buildings? Christians didn’t burn enuf heretics? Africans performed insufficient clitorectomies? Residents of Jonestown didn’t drink enuf Kool-Aid? "

   Yes, religionists acting badly, but you absolve anti-religionists, who have been responsible for thousands of times more lost lives, as just being politically competitive.

8. 2 days ago on Non Sequitur

   " was nothing more than a totalitarian dictatorship trying to wipe out the competition"

   You play out of the very same playbook as the Marxist-Bolsheviks. A losing game plan if there ever was one.

9. 2 days ago on Non Sequitur

   “We hold these truths to be self evident ….”

   How is that not dogmatic?

   Oh, wait, that is not scientifically verifiable, so it holds no value whatsoever.

   So, never mind.

10. 2 days ago on Non Sequitur

    “So I believe that my time criticizing religion is extremely well spent”

    It is indeed well spent to the degree it calls religious to be accountable to their religious ideals to which we religious fail often, but not to the extent as to further the “Do away with religion!” enterprise (“racket,” to again employ Wieseltier’s felicitous term).

    “for the same reason I campaign against Communism, fascism, and other forms of authoritarian mind control.”

    Please, do sally forth, and Tally Ho! for that!!

    “that try to substitute dogma for reason”

    Umm. The two, as should be obvious, are not mutually exclusive.