James M. Martin's Page

            I had never until very recently known the word for what might be called a “reverse anachronism”: the selective grafting of mores as indicated in ancient writings onto today’s standards of conduct.  I am now aware that the practice I mention is known as “presentism,” and I extend an apology to all who read this with a smile at having learned this term before I glimpsed it at one website or another, possibly Religious Dispatches, possibly one of the links at Crooks and Liars, my…

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Atheist Movies pores over the Net to bring us YouTube and other clips depicting topics of interest to non-believers, with a decided emphasis on evolutionary science.  In their latest email link, they take us to evolutionary biologist Lewis Wolfert's new work, Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast: The Evolutionary Origins of Belief, which I hope to get to when I finish things like Jennifer Michael Hecht's Doubt.  I say "things like" because I set works aside to read…

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I always felt a kinship with Hitchens because we shared infection with the big "C"; his, esophageal; mine, chronic lymphocytic leukemia, or CLL.  Cancers are tricky little bastards: they can take someone out in a month or two, or let him live with the disease as best he may for years and years.  I am not bragging, but I am over a decade into my inconveniences and humiliations.  If I ask, why did Hitchens go so fast but I am yet alive, I waste both his time and yours.  I am not comparing…

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I was on my to the check-out at Circuit City (now defunct) when I glanced at "Blackstone," a fellow attorney I knew only by reputation, and then only that he practiced in one of my own fields of concentration, consumer law.  It is not a particularly lucrative field but it's a satisfying one, striking back at people who violate our state's consumer protection and deceptive trade practices act.  Most clients come in with a lemon auto on their hands, often a used vehicle, or a fly-by-night…

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Many years ago I founded and incorporated as a non-profit organization my very own church. Many are the roads to atheism and many the side streets. My life has been one long exploration of religion, and I had to experience it so fully that I invented a religion that I called the American Gnostic Church. It is listed in one of the encyclopedias of American religions, and it was mostly active in the late 80s and early 90s. It died about two weeks ago when I received a letter from D.C. saying I… Continue