Woody Allen Interviews Billy Graham

One of the great things about YouTube is discovering great (often little-discussed) moments in television history that you never knew existed, or that you have never seen. Scott Ross of NBC Philadelphia called the below gem "the kind of encounter made in TV heaven: the neurotic intellectual New York Jew and the fire-and-brimstone televangelist arguing about what it all means."

Good stuff.

Reflections on The Rapture That Wasn't

It appears that we needed the rapture more than it needed us.  The cultural and political landscape was ripe for Harold Camping and his May 21 prediction.  We have witnessed earthquakes, tsunamis, flooding, and tornadoes that rival the most devastating natural disasters on record. We have seen, time and time again, religious leaders state that these events were doled out as punishment, or warnings, from an angry god.  We have heard repeated claims that President Obama is the antichrist.  This was simply the next step in ratcheting up the heightened religious rhetoric of recent years.  But Camping and his ilk are really not as crazy as we'd like to think.

In America, 38% believe that God employs natural events to dispense judgment.  If we look at evangelicals, this number jumps to 60%.  So, clearly, this idea of an angry god who punishes non-believers is far from fringe stuff.  Nearly 4 out of 10 people actually believe that God punishes humans through violent devastation and catastrophic loss of life.

Is it really a stretch to go from belief in an angry, punishing god to the belief in the rapture?  Based on modern interpretations of the rapture, the wrath doled out during the tribulation would include war, disasters, famine, sickness, etc.  The same stuff, yet on a grander scale.  And approximately the same numbers believe in the rapture as believe God punishes us with disasters: 41% say the rapture will occur within the next 40 years (80% believe the rapture will occur at some point in time). 

So, when we look at Harold Camping and Family Radio, most of us see a bunch of loons.  Yet so many of us believe the same things Harold Camping believes.  How do we reconcile this?  There is only one detail that separates him from 80% of Americans: the fact that he believed he knew the date. It reminds me of the Woody Allen joke:

This guy goes to a psychiatrist and says, "Doc, my brother's crazy; he thinks he's a chicken." And, the doctor says, "Well, why don't you turn him in?" The guy says, "I would, but I need the eggs."

Family Radio is a tax-free non-profit venture. They own 66 radio stations worldwide, and are worth $72 million according to 2009 IRS statements.  Most of us find this to be maddening.  He has amassed a fortune by swindling people into believing his crazy stories!  Yet, his story is one with which 80% of Americans agree -- except that one detail: the date.  If he preached all of the same stuff, yet never set a date, he wouldn't be any different from the majority of us.  This should be alarming.

I wonder if perhaps the difference between Camping and the other 80% of Americans who believe the rapture will occur is the fact that Camping (and many of his followers) were willing to put their money where their mouth was.  If the 80% of rapture believers were put to some kind of test -- whether putting their face on a billboard that says, "I believe that the rapture will occur!" in the town that they live and work, or, for those who believe the rapture will occur in the next 40 years, signing over all their belongings at the 40 year mark, I wonder how many would think again.

The failed rapture prediction was not harmless.  Many sold all their belongings and wiped out their savings.  Families were torn apart.  In Vietnam, hundreds of ethnic Hmong were forced into hiding after security forces dispersed thousands who had convened to await Jesus' return.  There are reports of rapture-related suicides.

One of the more heartbreaking stories involved a California woman who slit her two daughters' throats with boxcutters, before slitting her own throat. Her intention was to save her family from suffering the tribulation. Fortunately, all survived, but certainly the event has caused irreparable psychological damage that will affect this family, and those close to them, for the rest of their lives.  Of course, we do not know if this woman was mentally ill (one would certainly think so), but if we take the rapture claims into consideration, the act could be considered one of great compassion.  When we believe in fantastical religious concepts, we can justify nearly anything.

We are able to cast judgment on others who do things that we believe to be crazy.  We believe these people to be crazy because their beliefs are different from ours.  Often, however, their beliefs are closer to our own than we might realize.  How many degrees separate our beliefs? How many degrees until our beliefs cross the line into delusional?

We often forget that the Bible is full of crazy.  It is full of crazy by anyone's standards.  Let's take a look at a few examples:

• No one whose testicles are crushed or whose male organ is cut off shall enter the assembly of the Lord. (Deuteronomy 23:1)

• If two men, a man and his countryman, are struggling together, and the wife of one comes near to deliver her husband from the hand of the one who is striking him, and puts out her hand and seizes his genitals, then you shall cut off her hand; you shall not show pity. (Deuteronomy 25:11-12)

• Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man, but save for yourself every girl who has never slept with a man. (Numbers 31:17-18)

• Happy [shall he be], that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones. (Psalm 137:9)

• This is what the Lord says: Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have; do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass .... And Saul ... utterly destroyed all the people with the edge of the sword. (1 Samuel 15:3,7-8)

• The Lord is a jealous and avenging God; the Lord takes vengeance and is filled with wrath. The Lord takes vengeance on his foes and maintains his wrath against his enemies. The Lord is slow to anger and great in power; the Lord will not leave the guilty unpunished. His way is in the whirlwind and the storm, and clouds are the dust of his feet. He rebukes the sea and dries it up; he makes all the rivers run dry. Bashan and Carmel wither and the blossoms of Lebanon fade.The mountains quake before him and the hills melt away. The earth trembles at his presence, the world and all who live in it. Who can withstand his indignation? Who can endure his fierce anger? His wrath is poured out like fire; the rocks are shattered before him. The Lord is good, a refuge in times of trouble. (Nahum 1:2)

Yes, a real refuge in times of trouble, it appears.

I'm not naive. I know that the above scriptures cannot be cherry-picked and paraded around as evidence of God as a maniacal, genocidal, barbaric, egotistical monster. There is context, to be sure. (Although, I'm not convinced that context can explain away some of those examples.)  I also know that we cannot ignore these passages and only cherry-pick those which suit our carefully honed personal idea of God.  You have to accept him, warts and all, or do a hell of a lot of shoehorning. 

My reason for listing a few examples (believe me, there's plenty where that came from) depicting God as what we would define by modern DSM standards as psychopathic is to illustrate that folks like Camping, and the lady who sliced her girls' throats, are really no crazier than the scripture which likely informed their ideology (and their actions).

What do you believe? And why? Are your reasons rational? Isn't life and death (and possibly eternal life) important enough for us to really examine the rationale for our beliefs? Are your beliefs supported by anything other than an ancient text which we know to be replete with contradictions, errors, and highly questionable morality? (Yes, there are also many wonderful instances of beauty, and fine instances of morality as well.)  Are these beliefs essential to living a fulfilling life as a contributing member of society?

There is a thought experiment put forth by Sam Harris in The End of Faith that underscores the fact that most of our beliefs have more to do with tradition and our place in space and time than they do anything else:

"What if all our knowledge about the world were suddenly to disappear? Imagine that six billion of us wake up tomorrow morning in a state of utter ignorance and confusion. Our books and computers are still here, but we can't make heads or tails of their contents. We have even forgotten how to drive our cars and brush our teeth. What knowledge would we want to reclaim first? Well, there's that business about growing food and building shelter that we would want to get reacquainted with. We would want to relearn how to use and repair many of our machines. Learning to understand spoken and written language would also be a top priority, given that these skills are necessary for acquiring most others. When in this process of reclaiming our humanity will it be important to know that Jesus was born of a virgin? Or that he was resurrected? And how would we relearn these truths, if they are indeed true? By reading the Bible? Our tour of the shelves will deliver similar pearls from antiquity, like the "fact" that Isis, the goddess of fertility, sports an impressive pair of cow horns. Reading further, we will learn that Thor carries a hammer and that Marduk's sacred animals are horses, dogs, and a dragon with a forked tongue. Whom shall we give top billing in our resurrected world? Yaweh or Shiva? And when will we want to relearn that premarital sex is a sin? Or that adulteresses should be stoned to death? Or that the soul enters the zygote at the moment of conception? And what will we think of those curious people who begin proclaiming that one of our books is distinct from all others in that it was actually written by the Creator of the universe?

There are undoubtedly spiritual truths that we would want to relearn—once we manage to feed and clothe ourselves—and these are truths that we have learned imperfectly in our present state. How is it possible, for instance, to overcome one's fear and inwardness and simply love other human beings ? Assume, for the moment, that such a process of personal transformation exists and that there is something worth knowing about it; there is, in other words, some skill, or discipline, or conceptual understanding, or dietary supplement that allows for the reliable transformation of fearful, hateful, or indifferent persons into loving ones. If so, we should be positively desperate to know about it. There may even be a few biblical passages that would be useful in this regard—but as for whole rafts of untestable doctrines, clearly there would be no reasonable basis to take them up again. The Bible and Koran, it seems certain, would find themselves respectfully shelved next to Ovid's Metamorphoses and the Egyptian Book of the Dead."

I know that the above passage will anger many who read it.  We put up defenses when our long-held beliefs (and for many, our religious heritage) are compared to the many dead religions of the world.  Yet we must not hide from the fact that there will be a time when our civilization will share shelf space with the ancient Greeks, the Mayans, or the Egyptians who built the pyramids.  To deny this is to deny the vastness of time.  How and why are your supernatural beliefs going to outlive our civilization? (If the rapture doesn't come first, of course.)  If you, like 80% of Americans, believe that the rapture will occur, why do you believe it?  Most likely, because you read it in a book or heard it in church.

Dave Muscato, of MU SASHA (University of Missouri Skeptics, Atheists, Secular Humanists, & Agnostics) wrote:

Now, imagine that a pharmaceutical company had a drug that repeated, controlled-condition clinical testing had confirmed did not work. If the pharmaceutical company were to say about this drug, “We know that scientific tests and clinical trials demonstrate that this drug is actually ineffective. But despite that, we believe that it works, and selling this product, including implying and telling people directly that it really does work if you just believe it, too, should not be considered fraud on that basis.”

Muscato states that there would be an uproar. We would not stand for it.  This is what Harold Camping and his ilk do on a daily basis, tax-free, as they rake in millions of dollars, and continue to scam followers out of their money.  Yet, Camping is a Man of God, and is entitled to do what he does.  He can rationalize his beliefs in the same way you rationalize yours, using the exact same text. 

Harold Camping was MIA on Saturday, May 21. His Website was scrubbed of any information about the Rapture.  He didn't comment immediately on the failed prediction.  According to the Associated Press, the Family Radio camp has responded to the failed rapture prediction with the following:

May 21 had instead been a "spiritual" Judgment Day, which places the entire world under Christ's judgment, he said...But because God's judgment and salvation were completed on Saturday, there's no point in continuing to warn people about it, so his network will now just play Christian music and programs until the final end on Oct. 21.

Certainly, fewer people will be lining up to be raptured as were on May 21.  Once bitten, twice shy.  However, there will be others who continue to believe Camping. Others will ignore the realities of life and march towards Oct. 21 with the expectation that they will no longer have a need for money, a home, a car, or a family.  And Americans will continue to gawk and remark how crazy it is that these people believe that  all the Christians in the world will be gathered into the air to meet Jesus when he comes down from heaven on October 21, when in actuality all the Christians in the world will be gathered into the air to meet Jesus when he comes down from heaven some other time.

There is no scientific basis for Harold Camping's rapture predictions, or for any religious rapture scenario, period.  There are plenty of ways, explainable in scientific terms, in which the end of the world might actually occur.  Each possibility is extremely unlikely to occur in our lifetime. Each possibility is infinitely more likely to occur than the rapture we find in Christian eschatology. 

Religious beliefs have consequences.  Our beliefs should not interfere with the lives of others, specifically those who do not share them.  They certainly should not lead to the cutting of throats of children.  It is in society's best interest to call into question religious claims for which there is no basis in reality, especially those which prevent or impede others' pursuits of life, liberty, and happiness. 

As Dave Muscato, in the aforementioned MU SASHA blog entry, writes:

I don’t care one bit if people want to believe irrational things in the privacy of their own minds, so long as their outward actions are in accordance with what logic, evidence, and reason would lead them to do. There is no logical, evidential, or reasonable excuse for not allowing gay people to marry. There is no logical, evidential, or reasonable excuse for barring stem-cell research. There is no logical, evidential, or reasonable excuse for teaching creation myths in science classes. There is no logical, evidential, or reasonable excuse for denying women & transgendered men the right to safe and affordable abortions.

What does Harold Camping's failed rapture prediction have to do with all of this?  It provides us with an opportunity to see firsthand that our religious beliefs can greatly affect the lives of others.  It provides us with an opportunity to examine the variety of beliefs regarding the rapture.  It provides us with an opportunity to question whether any number of our fantastical, supernatural beliefs culled from ancient texts are reasonable.  It allows us an opportunity to celebrate reason and to remind ourselves that many of the claims of scripture have been explained away (geocentrism, the firmament, the Genesis creation narrative) as we have learned more about the way the natural world works and how our holy books came to be.  Mostly, it reminds us that our religious beliefs are based on traditions -- constellations of beliefs, many drawn from a variety of previous traditions -- handed down generation by generation.   And often these beliefs (such as our modern ideas of heaven and hell) feature post-biblical components.  At any rate, these are not beliefs that are based on evidence.  As such, there are really no religious beliefs any more or less credible than Harold Camping's.

For now, we will continue on living our lives until the end of the world fails to materialize on October 21. We should have confidence that the scientific community will let us know if and when we have reason to fear a cataclysmic event of global proportions.  But people will continue to make claims about the end of the world -- without a doubt.  We have the evidence to support this.

Ask a Humanist, Vol. 3: What About Death?

(Part 3 of an ongoing, meandering stream of undefined scope.)

"I am not afraid of death, I just don't want to be there when it happens." - Woody Allen

Human beings are both blessed and cursed in that we evolved the cruel awareness of our own mortality.  We are cursed in that this awareness, combined with our fierce instinct of self-preservation, is the source of a great deal of fear and anxiety.  Yet we are blessed in that we can truly understand the great fortune we have been afforded by our very existence. This awareness also allows us to truly understand the value of each day we are alive.

It goes without saying that one of religion's major functions is to address the anxiety and fear that surrounds the concept of death, and to provide comfort for those who are facing death, as well as those who are left grieving after the death of a loved one.  The earliest archaeological evidence of religious thought is based on ritual treatment of the dead. Ritual burials signify not only an awareness of life and death, but also are strong indicators for belief in the afterlife. Of all the varieties of religious beliefs that have existed throughout history, very few were unconcerned with the promise of life after death.  After all, until very recently, with the advent of modern medicine, human life was fleeting. Death and religion have always been entwined. And, one would imagine, as long as religion exists, they will always be entwined.

"I was dead for millions of years before I was born and it never inconvenienced me a bit." - Mark Twain

For many of us who are not religious -- who are humanists, atheists, agnostics, and whatnot -- Twain hit the nail on the head. Death is simply the end of consciousness. We cannot remember anything about "life" before being born. That vast stretch of time prior to our birth existed without us. Why should we believe that the vast stretch of time following our death should be any different?  We have to stop and remind ourselves what comprises consciousness and the self.  Neither the self, nor consciousness, can carry on without our brains' billions of neurons and neuronal connections.  It is a fact that when we die, these neural processes stop. There is no evidence that any other secret metaphysical ingredient survives and is capable of simulating our organic brain, or carrying with it, like some celestial flash drive, the oceans of data stored in our gray matter.

What do we mean when we speak of a soul? Jesse Bering, Director of the Institute of Cognition and Culture and a Reader in the School of History and Anthropology at Queen’s University, states in his paper, The folk psychology of souls:

The soul is typically represented as the conscious personality of the decedent and the once animating force of the now inert physical form (Thalbourne 1996). Although there are many varieties of afterlife beliefs, each – at least implicitly – shares a dualistic view of the self as being initially contained in bodily mass and as exiting or taking temporary leave of the body at some point after the body’s expiration.

Mountains of literature, essays, poetry, and scientific papers have been devoted to death, and its stowaway passenger, the soul. We as humans seem incapable of conjuring a scenario in which we simply cease to exist. Certainly, the reasoning goes, we must go somewhere when we die.

The Spanish philosopher Miguel de Unamuno wrote:

Try to fill your consciousness with the representation of no-consciousness, and you will see the impossibility of it. The effort to comprehend it causes the most tormenting dizziness. We cannot conceive of ourselves as not existing.

It is not surprising that the concept of the soul evolved along with our self-awareness and our ability to understand our own mortality. However, despite the advancements in medicine and science, there has not been any evidence of the existence of a soul.

As V. S. Ramachandran, brain scientist at the University of California, San Diego, put it, there may be soul in the sense of "the universal spirit of the cosmos," but the soul as we have come to know it, "an immaterial spirit that occupies individual brains and that only evolved in humans — all that is complete nonsense ... basically superstition."

John F. Haught, a theologian at Georgetown University, has also written at length about the concept of the soul. He stated, "For many Americans the only way to preserve the discontinuity that’s implied in the notion of a soul, a distinct soul, is to deny evolution." Haught says this is unfortunate.

Nancey Murphy, a philosopher at Fuller Theological Seminary and ordained minister in the Church of the Brethren, wrote of souls:

"Evolutionary biology shows the transition from animal to human to be too gradual to make sense of the idea that we humans have souls while animals do not. All the human capacities once attributed to the mind or soul are now being fruitfully studied as brain processes — or, more accurately, I should say, processes involving the brain, the rest of the nervous system and other bodily systems, all interacting with the socio-cultural world."

In essence, what Murphy, and a host of other biologists, neuroscientists, and philosophers are saying, is: Yes, the concept of the soul is nice, but we can't prove that it's any more than a concept. When a plant dies, its plant soul does not leave the husk behind and embark on an eternal life elsewhere.  It simply ceases to live. Why would it be any different for humans, who share a common ancestor with that plant?  We did not evolve a soul, we evolved the capacity to entertain the concept of the soul.

"Life is full of misery, loneliness, and suffering - and it's all over much too soon." - Woody Allen

Life is short, and it is difficult. Of course we want life to have a sequel, preferably a longer one -- and strictly feel-good, this time around.

Neat concepts often develop into widespread beliefs (see: Noah's Ark, geocentrism, flat earth). Many of those beliefs seem silly to us now, but hindsight is 20/20. Until another explanation comes along which is obvious and is embraced by a majority of the population, those beliefs hang around. (For example, 16% of Americans believe people can cast curses or spells that cause harm to others.) But just because a concept is neat does not make it true. 

It makes sense that humans developed and perpetuated a belief in souls and the afterlife.  Until the Bronze Age, the average lifespan was in the lower- to mid-20s. Life was difficult, short, and uncertain.  Without the modern understanding of the way the brain works, or which bodily systems produce our senses of self and awareness (or without an understanding of the laws of nature in general) it would not have been terribly far-fetched to believe that when a person lost their life, it went somewhere. It is a comforting thought, especially when we lose a loved one, and even more so when we lose them too soon.

Which brings us to a question I hear often: "All of this sounds so cold and sad -- How do you find any comfort in it, and what do you tell your kids?"

"I don't want to achieve immortality through my work, I want to achieve it through not dying." - Woody Allen

I have written about the fact that, when I came to terms with my lack of religious belief, it was not without emotional impact. I would be lying to state that death doesn't bother me. As much as I accept the inevitability of death, it's not something I look forward to and hope to put off for as long as possible. But I have found that, in accepting that death is not a portal to some mysterious second chapter, I fear it less. I know that when I die, I will not miss life, for I won't feel or know anything -- just as it was before my life began.

"Living in the secular world gives us freedom from the dogmas and superstitions of the past, but it does not eliminate the mystery and power of life's endings. When parents share those essentially human feelings with their children, they are engaged in the profound task of making meaning together, which is one of the great privileges of parenthood, or indeed of any human relationship." - Rev. Dr. Kendyl Gibbons

In the book, Parenting Beyond Belief, Rev. Dr. Kendyl Gibbons writes with great wisdom and compassion about talking to children about death as secular parents. She states that "the particular challenge for secular parents is the absence of comforting answers supplied by doctrines and images from various faith traditions." Yet, she says, parents can equip their children with the necessary tools to understand death and accept it as a natural part of life, and to find meaning in their grief.

Gibbons details "Five Affirmations in the Face of Death." They are as follows (Note: Gibbons elaborates on each affirmation in detail -- the below are simply my own very brief summaries of each):

1. Acknowledge the reality - Helping the child accept death's finality. They are trying to understand the way the world works.
2. Validate sadness - Acknowledging and sharing in the reality of powerful feelings. Our sorrow is a function and measure of our love for the deceased.
3. Acknowledge the unknown - Even adults cannot know what happens when we die, communicate our own ideas, but leave room for them to explore their own. Discuss what you, and others, may believe about death.
4. Celebrate individuality - Each person is unique and irreplaceable. Memories are precious. Celebrate them, celebrate the life that was lived.
5. Affirm the continuity of life - The universe remains dependable. Life goes on, and we have family, friends, love, nature, and all that we trusted can be trusted as before. The opportunity to share love is worth the pain of grief.

Death is not an easy topic, at any time, for any age.  But I have found that, in dealing with death in terms that that are not draped in superstition and dogma, we can address death as a necessary aspect of the natural world.  We can avoid the metaphysical trappings associated with many religious views of death: reward, punishment, wrath, grace.  Certainly, we wish to teach our children about those concepts as they relate to the natural world at an appropriate time, but it is important to acknowledge and accept the death of their loved one without supernatural baggage.  Such concepts detract from acknowledging that dying is as natural, and as much a part off life, as is being born.

"Everything has a natural explanation. The moon is not a god but a great rock and the sun a hot rock." - Anaxagorus, circa 475 BCE

What about near-death experiences? What about 90 Minutes in Heaven? What about the boy who met Jesus? What about the guy who went to Hell?

I will leave it to Mythbusters, and Skeptic Magazine to investigate some of those claims. But I will say that the great philosopher Anaxagoras, quoted above, was on to something way back then in 475 BCE. I will also say that we could all do well to invoke Occam's Razor when we hear such claims. Just because we can't understand something does not mean we need to accept the supernatural. As we make great strides in the relatively new field of neuroscience, we are learning more and more about the workings of the brain and the nervous system. A study by Lakhmir Chawla, an intensive care doctor at George Washington University medical center, adds to the growing body of evidence showing that near-death experiences (including sensations of leaving the body, visions of religious figures and loved ones, and the proverbial white light) may be caused by the cascade of electrical activity in the dying brain. Chalwa states, "We think the near-death experiences could be caused by a surge of electrical energy released as the brain runs out of oxygen. As blood flow slows down and oxygen levels fall, the brain cells fire one last electrical impulse. It starts in one part of the brain and spreads in a cascade and this may give people vivid mental sensations." Mental sensations that could be augmented by our vast store of mental images -- faces of deceased loved ones, religious figures, and other powerful memories. So, as Anaxagoras suggested, we are learning in this case that there may be a purely biological explanation for this once metaphysical phenomenon.  That's not to say that we must accept Dr. Chalwa's explanation as the truth, but such research reminds us that we still have much to learn about the power of the human brain. If we can dream such powerfully vivid dreams in times of health, it must be entirely possible to experience, during a surging fireworks display of electrical brain impulses associated with trauma, the vivid and fantastical narratives and imagery associated with the above near-death experiences.

The most important thing to me, as a secular parent, is to constantly be aware (and make my children aware) of our place in the vast timeline of history. We're only a tiny blip. The timeline is insanely long. And only within the last sliver of time have we begun to understand that the earth is round, that germs cause disease, that we share common ancestors with all living things (many still don't accept this). It's okay to not know everything. It's okay that some things will remain mysteries until that blip on the timeline has moved on a bit.  We should be suspicious of extraordinary claims for which there is no evidence. We have to be satisfied with what we do know.

Rev. Dr. Gibbons, in her essay mentioned above, states:

"For a secular person, the question is not 'Why did a universe designed for our benefit have to include death?' but 'Isn't it amazing that we have the matter of the world arranged in such a way that we find ourselves with this incredible opportunity for consciousness?' What is surprising is not that our awareness must cease to be at some point in the unknown future, but that it has arisen now in the first place. That we are able to think and feel, to learn things and to love people, is a gift. It might just as easily not have happened.  This gift of life is as arbitrary as the fact of mortality: both came about without consulting us. these are the terms on which we are here, and they are not negotiable."

I imagine that, to a religious person used to the doctrine of eternal life, the above might lack the comfort and reassurance afforded by religion. Nobody said non-belief was any easier. Having viewed life and death through both lenses, I can say that death is difficult no matter how you look at it.  At the end of the day, what is important is that, regardless of our beliefs, we find a way to come to peace with our mortality.

"I would love to believe that when I die I will live again, that some thinking, feeling, remembering part of me will continue. But much as I want to believe that, and despite the ancient and worldwide cultural traditions that assert an afterlife, I know of nothing to suggest that it is more than wishful thinking. The world is so exquisite with so much love and moral depth, that there is no reason to deceive ourselves with pretty stories for which there's little good evidence. Far better it seems to me, in our vulnerability, is to look death in the eye and to be grateful every day for the brief but magnificent opportunity that life provides." - Carl Sagan

Ask a Humanist

• Vol. 1: What Happened To Make You Angry At God?
• Vol. 2: Aren't You Denying Your Children the Opportunity to be Religious?
• Vol. 3: What About Death?
• Vol. 4: Isn't Humanism a Faith?
• Vol. 5: Why Do You Care What People Believe?
• Vol 6: Isn't It Sad To Live Without Faith?