I recently received an invitation to the bar mitzvah of the grandson of my first cousin; this ceremony is, as you may know, the induction of the youngster into Jewish adulthood. 

The invitation itself was colorful and cheery, produced, no doubt, with invitation-creation software and thus exhibiting neither coherence nor originality but just an electronic mad mix of fonts, patterns, and such, chosen from among an infinity of alternatives.

Strangely, the trifold invitation had a…

February 1 is the anniversary of the death of my father, Hyman William Perlman (1910-80). 

He was indirectly responsible for this blog – and in fact for all the secularism, skepticism, atheism, and humanism that have been the foundation of my intellectual life.  He was the first skeptic I ever met, and the effect was lasting.  Every time Mom would babble on about “God’s will,” he would snap back, “What’s God got to do with it?”

What indeed.  Things may happen for some reason or…

“C’mon people now, smile on your brother

Everybody get together try to love one another – right now.”

Lyrics, “Get Together,” The Youngbloods

“[Thomas Sowell’s book Migrations and Cultures] is a strong indictment of both affirmative action and multiculturalism. The former because it tends to be self-defeating, the latter because it discourages minorities from shedding old habits and adopting new and more functional…

“Heaven, as conventionally conceived, is a place so inane, so dull, so useless, so miserable that nobody has ever ventured to describe a whole day in heaven, though plenty of people have described a day at the seaside.”

--George Bernard Shaw

“It’s an incredible con job, when you think of it, to believe something now in exchange for life after death.  Even corporations, with all their reward systems, don’t try to make it…

“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…

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

Ambrose Bierce

It would be great to have reliable numbers on religious migration: how many people change religions each year, how many become new adherents, how many drift away, never to return?

Increasing the ranks

Different religions have different ways of increasing their ranks: birth rate (e.g., all…