I was contacted by www.askimo.com , a new internet portal featuring video interviews of experts talking on their field of expertise.  I decided that my field of expertise would be “what the Torah really says” (since I am one of the few laypeople who has actually bothered to find out), along with related questions about atheism, blasphemy and the “clear alternative to the Torah” (It's SCIENCE!). 

The questions were partly supplied by me, generally…

In an email exchange, an old friend and fellow English-prof colleague wrote this:

"I know you're 'the Jewish atheist,' but don't you feel a strong sense of identification with the Jewish ethos, aside from religion? You've sought out Jewish wives, and friends to some degree could be, the way I might seek out writers as friends. I think of my former Catholicism not angrily but gratefully. When I grew up, I decided on my own that I didn't believe. But my Catholic education was excellent;…

"In America it is sport that is the opiate of the masses."

--Russell Baker

"Pro football is like nuclear warfare.  There are no wionners, only survivors."

--Frank Gifford

"Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play.  It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules, and sadistic pleasures in witnesssing violence: in other words it is war minus the…

“The Biblical account of Noah’s Ark and the Flood is perhaps the most implausible story for fundamentalists to defend.  Where, for example, while loading his Ark, did Noah find penguins and polar bears in Palestine?”

Judith Hayes

“We have fools in all sects and impostors in most; why should I believe mysteries no one can understand, because [they were] written by men who chose to mistake madness for inspiration…

“Men never do evil as completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.”

Blaise Pascal

“The religions of mankind must be classed among the mass-delusions of this kind.  No one, needless to say, who shares a religious delusion ever recognizes it as such.”

Sigmund Freud

Back in the day, the insane were considered evil, possessed.  You had to beat, torture or drown the demon within.  But the…

“God is the immemorial refuge of the incompetent, the helpless, the miserable.  They find not only sanctuary in His arms, but also a kind of superiority, soothing to their macerated egos: He will set them above their betters.”

H.L. Mencken

“I find it necessary to wash my hands after I have come   into contact with religious people.”

Friedrich Nietzsche

Recent A/N threads have generated much thoughtful…

“If God wants us to do a thing he should make his wishes sufficiently clear.  Sensible people will wait till he has done this before paying much attention to him.”

Samuel  Butler

“I cannot believe in a God who has neither humor nor common sense.”

W. Somerset Maugham

Followers of the riveting “Zachary’s Brain” series will remember that Zach is my 6-year-old stepson (7 this month) whose task of configuring the world – his…

“Without knowing the force of words, it is impossible to know men.”

Confucius

I recently heard some women discussing a “women’s spirituality group.”  They wanted to determine whether there was such a thing as “female spirituality”?

It’s impossible to say, since no one can really be sure what someone else means when he/she uses this word.

Spirituality is very popular these days.  Everybody wants to be known as “spiritual.”  That’s not…

“Men make themselves believe that they believe.”

Montaigne

“The idea of God is the sole wrong for which I cannot forgive mankind.”

Marquis de Sade

What does it mean to “believe in God,” as 95% of the population professes to do? As an academically-trained linguist and a secular humanistic Jew, I’ve thought about this question for many years and listened to how people answer it. I’ve collected several…

“Imagine the Creator as a low comedian, and at once the world becomes explicable.”

H.L. Mencken

“Infidel, n.  In New York, one who does not believe in the Christian religion; in Constantinople, one who does.”

Ambrose Bierce

“Properly read, the Bible is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived.’

Isaac Asimov

“Our Bible reveals to us the character of our God with minute and remorseless…