4thaluv

Why I’m Not an Atheist #3: Straw Gods

If you listen closely to many atheist’s arguments you will notice that often they seem to be attacking religion rather than God. An overt example would be the title of Christopher Hitchens’ best selling book, god is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. Notice religion is doing the poisoning. Also Dawkins is famous for his t-shirt that says: “Religion, together we can find the cure.”…

Where On High Mountains

What a seismic shift

Running away into the backwoods

Playing at stories

To now being in

The epitome of anticlimax

~

Why out of all contingencies

Do we go with the lamest

Courting comfort

Without redefinition

On the flat of our backs

~

Who do you think

You are? Small fish of fate

Do not coax the uncoaxable

I will only go

Where I’ve got the knack

~

Where on high mountains

Or in the train station

Th…

Why I’m Not an Atheist #2: The Banality of Materialism and Scientism

One of the main reasons I’m not an Atheist is because I reject Materialism as a philosophy. Not all versions of Atheism rely on Materialist philosophy, but many in the Western world do. Materialism is a philosophy that postulates that all phenomena in the universe are reducible to material explanations. I don’t think Materialism or Naturalism works as an account of all of reality, and see it as…

Why I’m Not an Atheist #1: The Moral Universe and Power

Atheists often think that the theist position on morality is that ‘you can’t have any morals without god’ therefore you can’t be a moral person as an atheist. This is an unfortunate misunderstanding. The argument is not that atheists can’t be moral people. The argument is that without some sort of transcendent morality, the battle for right and wrong devolves into a power struggle between…

Reflections on the Superbowl

The NFL: that American institution, the pride of the beer drenched couch potato and the bane of the touchy liberal sensibility. On its greatest night of the year, all the more so. Corporate America sores high on ingeniously crafted commercials. The biggest names in music put on their best performances on neon stages that push the conceivable limits of pyrotechnics. Social media talks of nothing…

Getting Bored in the Culture Wars

courtesy of http://thesmartyattheparty.com — threadless.com

For too long popular imagination has assumed, even at times asserted, that political positions are inherently loaded with morality. “The left is evil in this way. The right is evil in that way.” In the most extreme corners of each vision, they may see just one party, or part of a party as the total embodiment of good or evil, ethically…

The Problem with Modern Feminism

  The basis of feminism is a good one to embrace, one that most everybody agrees on: Equality. Hard to go wrong with equality. One argues about whether it’s a flower of Christianity or a flower of the Enlightenment but there is not much argument about whether or not it’s a good thing to uphold, a good thing to strive after.

The 20th century and the beginning of the 21st are replete with examples…

“America’s history is longer, larger, more various, more beautiful, and more terrible than anything anyone has ever said about it.”

- James Baldwin

If one thing is clear after the events of last night it’s that the killing of Michael Brown is serving as an emblematic reality to a lot of people. It has become larger than the actual event itself, as physical events sometimes do: the breaking of…

Eyes and Human Hands, Love and Endless Plans.

P.S. I hope you know, I’ve never loved one like you

Sympathy and rags

Darlings of doctrine…

Simply stunning realities of trees and leaves; and of houses lining old streets of favor.

~

But long before I met you

I only saw blood & the heartless

Contract killings & puke

& card tables cluttered with glasses of vodka.

Men sleeping with women who only desired profit

The sliest cats reaching into my…

Short Story: After the Game

Summer would not let go of autumn’s heels. It was October – schools were back in session, the pools were closed, lemonade stands were packed up, lawn chairs tucked back in dusty corners of garages – but it was still hot with an aboriginal heat well into evenings. It was a typical Ohioan revolt against the fixed laws of Mother Nature. Even now, close to midnight, the damp air wrenched droplets of…