James M. Martin's Blog (27)

For months now I have allowed a prosperity gospel type cheap imitation megachurch to get my goat by sending out large-size postal cards in garish colors with pandering messages for their corporation, something they call the Bay Area Fellowship. It's run by a Barbee and Ken duo who post their mugs on every one of these sleazy solicitations, and when I finally saw them on one that inspired me to action, I thought, Now I have them! It was an almost all black card with neon red colors inviting me… Continue

There is a sublime moment in the Umberto Ecco novel, Foucault’s Pendulum, when one of the characters, upon meeting the legendary (perhaps, in a euhemeristic sense, mythical) Comte de Saint Germain and asked him if his reputation for having, miraculously, lived many centuries had given him insight into the human condition and its progress. He answers that living for so long has its pluses, but one meets the same fools and cowards, montebanks and lunatics. I am afraid that this would be… Continue

Given that many A|N members come to us from the mainstream faiths, while yet another, perhaps smaller number, graduated from paganism, Wicca, and the minority religions, I don't feel too terribly embarrassed to confess that in my relatively recent past I have practiced what is termed ceremonial magic(k) and been a follower of Vedanta, Buddhism, Wicca, and Gnosticism (in no particular order). I even founded a Gnostic church. If you don't believe me, get Melton's Encyclopedia of American… Continue

I suppose I should not have been surprised by Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia's dissent in a recent case before the court involving a wrongfully convicted African-American accused of murder, who, by writ of habeas corpus (what is known as an "extraordinary remedy" because it avoids claims that adjudicated issues are not to be relitigated), proved himself fully innocent of the crime for which he'd been imprisoned. In effect, Scalia, joined in his dissent by Clarence… Continue

Pier Paolo Pasolini said: "If you know that I am an unbeliever, then you know me better than I do myself. I may be an unbeliever, but I am an unbeliever who has a nostalgia for a belief." In the press, he was sometimes labeled a "radical Catholic," perhaps because he was acutely aware that Catholicism -- indeed Christianity itself -- had strayed so far from its roots that it no longer resembled the vision set forth by its prophet, an ordinary man who embraced prostitutes and publicans, threw… Continue

When Dino de Laurentiis announced his production of The Bible and told the press he had asked John Huston to direct, some thought the choice an odd one. After all, here was a movie-maker whose canon included bleak, misanthropic adventure films (Treasure of the Sierra Madre), gritty and godless crime molodramas (The Asphalt Jungle), and jaundiced views of Christian proselytization (The African Queen). Huston had shown no particular ecumenical zeal nor even for that… Continue

Am I crazy, or has anyone noticed that when Christer-loving cable news organizations like Fox Noise discuss atheists, someone almost always claims atheism is a "gay thing"? I have heard this a half dozen times, and, hey, I am not one to tune in Fox very often. Usually, it will be an obvious idiot like Sean Hannity, but others have said it, too. It's almost as if they were saying, "If you're an atheist, you're just a fag, so nobody should pay any attention to what you say." I met Madalyn Murray… Continue