Author: Wayne L. Trotta

Why Trust Science?, by Naomi Oreskes (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2019, ISBN 9780691179001). 360 pp. Hardcover, $24.95. Naomi Oreskes’s new book, Why Trust Science? asks a question that secular humanists should be able to answer. We are often touting the trustworthiness of science, or at least scientific reasoning, over faith. But exactly how …

Bible Nation: The United States of Hobby Lobby, by Candida R. Moss and Joel S. Baden (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2017, ISBN 978-0-691-17735-9) 223 pp. Hardcover, $29.95. I have to say I felt a bit misled at first by the subtitle of Bible Nation: The United States of Hobby Lobby. The implication seemed …

The culture wars have left us with a country that is polarized to the point of paralysis and a national political discourse that becomes more divisive, childish, and vulgar with each passing election year.

Review of The Rabbi’s Atheist Daughter: Ernestine Rose, International Feminist Pioneer, by Bonnie S. Anderson

“No matter how committed you are to logic and evidence, you cannot escape yourself, and, yes, this means that there is always a subjective
element to our thinking.”

“Problems and questions keep mounting. Why in the [Grand Canyon] is there no mixing of land and marine animals as should have occurred in the turbulence of a massive flood?”

Whatever the future, the history of this issue presents yet another example of religion’s continual reliance on secular forces to show it the way.

“For Baggini, the idea of free will is best understood by listening to those for whom the issue is a daily, vital reality.”

A review of Madison’s Music: On Reading the First Amendment, by Burt Neuborne.

Phil Ryan’s new book, After the New Atheist Debate, is an invitation to move past the vitriol and to open a dialogue between believers and nonbelievers.

A review of Life After Faith: The Case for Secular Humanism, by Philip Kitcher.

A review of Death and the Afterlife, by Samuel Scheffler.

A review of Just Babies: The Origins of Good and Evil, by Paul Bloom.

You hear often enough the cry from the religious Right that our schools are teaching secular humanism. What is this all about?

A review of The Rocks Don’t Lie: A Geologist Investigates Noah’s Flood, by David Montgomery.

The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion, by Jonathan Haidt (New York: Pantheon Books, 2012, ISBN 978-0-307-37790-6) 448 pp. Hardcover, $28.95. Are consequentialist ethics adequate? According to University of Virginia social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, they are not. They suffer from two crucial flaws. First, they depend too heavily on reasoning …

The Bible, the School, and the Consitution: The Clash That Shaped Modern Church-State Doctrine, by Steven K. Green (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012, ISBN 978-0-19-982790-9) 304 pp. Hardcover, $29.95. Steven K. Green is the Frank H. Paulus Professor of Law and an adjunct professor of history at Willamette University and director of the interdisciplinary …

I used to call myself the world’s worst atheist. It seemed that whenever I would get comfortable with disbelief, the rationale for believing would begin stalking me again. “Life is pointless,” whispered my pursuer, “without a supernatural context to endow it with meaning and value, and to provide objective standards for right and wrong.” So …