Category: Bridging the Gulf
Introduction
By any measure, the period since the mid-twentieth century has been a golden age for both the science of sociology and the discipline (or business) of opinion polling. Never before have so many Americans been surveyed, measured, and compared on so many indices and by so many specialists. Still, across the age of surveys, men …
The Social Science of Secularity
Something novel happened during this century’s first decade: Social scientists (re)discovered the nonreligious. Call it “reaching critical ma ss” or a “tipping point,” but suddenly quite a few researchers in quite a few places began to focus their attention directly on the nonreligious—not just as a foil for better understanding the religious but as a …
Who Are These Doubters Anyway?
We seem to be poised on the threshold of a bright new era in which nonreligious Americans will be properly studied by the social sciences. What better time to review what we know about the various flavors of religious nonaffiliation and nonbelief? And what better time to review the facts and fallacies that have shaped …
The Evangelical Origins of the American Civil War
Our nation’s commemoration of the 150th anniversary of the Civil War presents an opportunity to reflect on the meaning of that war and what we can learn from its awful carnage. Most historians today would agree that slavery caused the Civil War. No slavery, no war. That interpretation is not wrong, but it is incomplete. …
Easter Explained: What the Sacrificial Death of the Son Tells Us about the Father
Even a minimal acquaintance with religious assertions and theological dicta makes one tiresomely familiar with claims affirming the truth and logic of a given faith. The faith in question may be specific (Catholic) or general (Christianity), but the assertion is always that the faith is true and logical. The truth of a faith cannot be …
Pascal’s Wager
Let us weigh the gain and the loss in wagering that God is. . . . If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. . . . Wager, then, without hesitation that He is. —Blaise Pascal (1623–1662) The religious frequently use Pascal’s Wager as a tool to try to convert …
Tom Flynn Responds to Daniel Maguire and Lawrence Rifkin
Most of what I have to say in response to these two articles is in my editorial starting on page 4 of this issue. Oddly, that editorial didn’t begin as a conscious rejoinder to these articles; only after I’d written it did I realize how it related to them. Still, I agree with Lawrence Rifkin …