Latest Articles
What Did the Lions Eat on Noah’s Ark?
Volume 39, No. 2February / March 2019
Noah had no idea how old he really was, but since he was certainly the oldest person he knew it sometimes seemed like he must be six hundred, so that’s what he claimed as his age. Eventually he’d really come to believe that number. It’s what he told his eventual biographer. When the bad dreams …
Have Christians Accepted the Scientific Conclusion That God Does Not Answer Intercessory Prayer?
Volume 39, No. 1December / January 2019
In 1982, a young cardiologist at the San Francisco General Medical Center named Randolph Byrd had a brilliant insight that would motivate several important investigations of prayer during the following two decades. He realized that the standard research paradigm known as the double-blind randomized clinical trial could be used to test the efficacy of intercessory …
Popular Articles
The Importance of Being Blasphemous
Volume 35, No. 6October / November 2015
Looking back on the Satanic Verses affair from the time of the Charlie Hebdo massacre, it is clear that Western culture has hemorrhaged away its courage.
How Morality Has the Objectivity that Matters—Without God
Volume 34, No. 5August / September 2014
Morality is neither objective nor subjective—it’s a practical enterprise enmeshed in human relationships. That gives it objectivity enough.
The Fable of the Christ
Volume 34, No. 5August / September 2014
If the story of Jesus were true, ancient writers should have commented on it—yet 126 (and counting) who might have done so, did not.
Popular Articles
The Importance of Being Blasphemous
Volume 35, No. 6October / November 2015
Looking back on the Satanic Verses affair from the time of the Charlie Hebdo massacre, it is clear that Western culture has hemorrhaged away its courage.
How Morality Has the Objectivity that Matters—Without God
Volume 34, No. 5August / September 2014
Morality is neither objective nor subjective—it’s a practical enterprise enmeshed in human relationships. That gives it objectivity enough.
Looking Back
The Labyrinth: God, Darwin, and the meaning of life
Volume 31, No. 2February / March 2011
The simpler the society, the cruder the problems: we can imagine Neanderthals crouching in fear—of the tiger, of the dark, of thunder—but we do not suppose they had the leisure for exquisite neuro ses. We have changed all that. Replete with leisure time and creature comforts but nervously dependent on a network of unfathomable technologies, …
When Atheists Meet Jesus
Volume 31, No. 2February / March 2011
I came out of a blistering rainstorm and strode into the First Nazarene Church for the Upward Bound basketball program coaches’ orientation. After scribbling “Bado” on the sign-in sheet, I scooted into a pew far from the pulpit, like any good Christian attending services. With a Bible and hymnal just inches from my fingers, I …
The Unmaking of Wisdom
Volume 31, No. 2February / March 2011
How we compromise reason’s capacity to transform the human condition – Part 2: Recovering Reason Part 1 of this two-part essay identified a common assumption about reason and then traced its origin and uptake. Plato suggested that reason consists in a judgment’s being supported with sufficient evidence, and this idea went on to decisively shape …
The Labyrinth: God, Darwin, and the meaning of life
Volume 31, No. 2February / March 2011
The simpler the society, the cruder the problems: we can imagine Neanderthals crouching in fear—of the tiger, of the dark, of thunder—but we do not suppose they had the leisure for exquisite neuro ses. We have changed all that. Replete with leisure time and creature comforts but nervously dependent on a network of unfathomable technologies, …
When Atheists Meet Jesus
Volume 31, No. 2February / March 2011
I came out of a blistering rainstorm and strode into the First Nazarene Church for the Upward Bound basketball program coaches’ orientation. After scribbling “Bado” on the sign-in sheet, I scooted into a pew far from the pulpit, like any good Christian attending services. With a Bible and hymnal just inches from my fingers, I …