Author: Robert Louis Semes
Robert Louis Semes is a retired professor of history and former Episcopal priest. In 2004, he founded The Jefferson Center in Ashland, Oregon, a non-profit educational organization dedicated to fostering critical thinking and a secular worldview. He remains an Honorary Fellow of the organization. He has published several articles in scholarly journals on American social and political history. He lives in southern California and devotes his time to reading, writing, and professional genealogical research. Professor Semes is a member of the Center for Inquiry and other freethought organizations.
Religion’s Demoralizing Gift of Morality to the World
What It Means to Be Moral: Why Religion Is Not Necessary for Living an Ethical Life by Phil Zuckerman (Berkeley, California: Counterpoint Press, 2019, ISBN 978-1-64009-274-7). 360 pp. Hardcover, $28.00. Where does contemporary morality, with its historical emphasis on anything connected to sex, come from? Peter Heather, renowned English scholar, tells us in his marvelous …
The Destruction of Classical Civilization
The Darkening Age: The Christian Destruction of the Classical World, by Catherine Nixey (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2018. ISBN 978-0544800885). 315 pp. Hardcover, $28.00. In the final centuries of the Roman Empire, the Christian Church, as part of “God’s will,” annihilated the classical world of architecture, sculpture, painting, and literature to …