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For millennia, people have been talking about what happens after death. Lots of ideas have been proposed, and I've sometimes wondered if a desire to find meaning in death is one of the reasons religion has been so popular over time and across cultures. It seems like, to make a very broad generalization, people are… Continue reading What Does Death Mean to You?
This post flows from a few different things that other bloggers have been talking about lately. I'll refer specifically to a couple of posts about faith on Tisha B'Av, a Jewish day of mourning, but this also ties into what some other people have been talking about with regards to subjective vs. objective reality. This… Continue reading Faith, Attribution, and Cognitive Dissonance
I find religion to be quite fascinating, despite the fact that I don't personally believe the fundamentals of any of them. This post will be a bit of a meander through thoughts kicking around in my head related to religion and atheism. Hard vs. soft atheism I would say that I fall somewhere in the… Continue reading Some Thoughts on My Version of Soft Atheism
But Deliver Me From Crazy by Katie R. Dale is a memoir of living with bipolar disorder. You may know Katie from her blog, and she also contributed a story about bipolar I to my book Making Sense of Psychiatric Diagnosis. The book begins when Katie was in high school, when her illness first appears.… Continue reading Book Review: But Deliver Me From Crazy
21 Lessons for the 21st Century by Yuval Noah Harari was recommended to me by Nick of Fiction & Ideas after I reviewed Timothy Snyder's book On Tyranny. This will be even less of a review than I usually do; more of a mental chewing over what I read. The opening line was, "In a… Continue reading Book Review: 21 Lessons for the 21st Century
Bottled Memories by David Ritter is a short book (40 pages) of poetry capturing both active addiction and the process of recovery. While the poems relate to his own experiences, there are themes many others will relate to, including the lure of "one more," "praying to the porcelain throne," and doing the walk of shame.… Continue reading Book Review: Bottled Memories
Two men get killed. Some members of the Christian right are calling the man who killed them a hero and a patriot sent by God. Something isn't adding up here. On August 25, 17-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse grabbed his AR-15 style rifle and left his home in Antioch, IL, to head over to Kenosha, WI. He… Continue reading Kyle Rittenhouse as Christian Right Hero?
It seems like every year there is debate around the "right" thing to say come December. Some people say it's not politically correct to say "Merry Christmas", and the preferred alternatives might be "happy holidays" or "season's greetings." Then you've got the Great Pumpkin wanting to obliterate "happy holidays" because it's part of a war… Continue reading Is It Wrong To Say Merry Christmas?
As U.S. states like Alabama, Kentucky, and Georgia are passing laws restricting abortion and gearing up to challenge the Roe v. Wade decision in the U.S. Supreme Court, I look on from north of the border with dismay and disgust. I wouldn't want to live in a country where limited reproductive rights could mean that… Continue reading Abortion & Reproductive Rights: My Body Is My Own