On Medium: The Deeper Reason Why Skeptics Should Scoff at Christian Miracles

Read on about the difference between the profundity of authentic religion and the crassness of Christian literalism.

On Medium: Thomas Huxley’s Scientism and the Agnostic’s False Modesty

Here's an article that explores the potential for plausible forms of agnosticism, given Thomas Huxley's implausible scientistic formulation of the initial concept.

On Medium: Theistic Overreach and the Audacity of Secular Humanism

Here's a response to a rabbi that addresses scientific progress and the will to disbelieve in God.

On Medium: Why Only a Few Content Creators can be Superstars

Here's an article about how the dominant, most successful creators need herds of sheeple, and sheeple want to be ruled.

On Medium: Do Atheists Have or Lack a Belief In God?

Read on about atheism’s implications, the indifference to God, and whether atheists can dismiss theism or whether atheism amounts to the equivalent of a religion.

On Medium: The Parody of Religion in “Midnight Mass”

Here's a philosophical exploration of the Netflix series "Midnight Mass," focusing on its parody of how religion likely develops from a dubious source. 

On Medium: Are Atheists Hypocritical for Rejecting Faith-Based Evidence?

Here's an article that clarifies the differences between how religious and scientific or philosophical beliefs are sustained, and how some worldviews are more faith-based than others.

On Medium: Do Atheists and Theists have the Same Burden of Proof?

Read on about how historic shifts in default assumptions have stacked the deck against theists.

On Medium: Intimacy in “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind”

Here's an article about "Eternal Sunshine's" bittersweetness, how the movie's medium reflects its message, and the primacy of selfish love.

On Medium: Retreating to Faith When Struck by Unarmed “Militant” Atheism

Read on about why even “Backyard Church’s” easy-going Christianity is bad enough. 

This article responds to Eric Sentell's reply to my previous article on the feebleness of Dan Foster's ten arguments for Christian theism.

On Medium: Would Societal Collapse Degrade or Improve Us?

Here's an article about postapocalyptic fiction, original sin, and salvation by philosophy.

On Medium: The Rajneeshees’ Unmasking of American Hypocrisy in “Wild Wild Country”

Here's on article about how a documentary series shows that American culture is unlikely to be upgraded.

On Medium: An Atheist Eavesdrops on a Clash Between Christians

Here's an article on how to understand the conflict between classical theists and theistic personalists.

On Medium: Must Atheists Prove There’s No God?

Here's an article about how we play the odds with rational generalizations, due to the pragmatic side of atheistic epistemology, and why proof is irrelevant in nature. 

This is the first in a series on some confusions about the nature of atheism.

On Medium: Exposing the Sham of Televised Political Debates

Real on about narcissism, infantilization, and the fear of exposing the humiliating truth: why real debating is alien to politics and to television, but not to all new media.

On Medium: Existential Morality in “Crimes and Misdemeanors”

Read on about how Woody Allen wrestles with God’s absence in a rotten world: the argument from evil, and comic relief from the incel critique of conventional hypocrisy.

On Medium: Hyperreality In “Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain”

Read on about Bourdain’s life, suicide, and quasi-enlightened alienation from drugs, writing, travelling, filming, and fame.

On Medium: Is Deadpool the Most Enlightened Superhero?

Read on about comic book subversions and the dread of superpowers: from WWII propaganda and Nietzschean transhumanism to psychedelics and posthuman enlightenment.

On Medium: Revelatory Monologues in “Amanda Knox”

Here's an article on how a documentary uses its characters’ vices against them to present the deeper truth.

On Medium: The Feebleness of “Backyard Church’s” Ten Arguments for Theism

Explore what happens when a hapless Christian runs the gauntlet of reason.

On Medium: Outcasts in Cinema: “Saint Maud,” “Kajillionaire,” and “Nomadland”

Read on about how pop culture reckons with its excesses and victims.

On Medium: The Toothless Rage of Vaccinated Americans

An article about infantilization, hypocrisy, and the lopsided radicalism in the American culture war: why Democrats are so easy for bad-faith Republicans to troll.

On Medium: Depths of Subversion in “The Green Knight”

An article that explores the movie’s somewhat muddled post-Christian themes, including chivalry, Gnosticism, paganism, deep ecology, and feminism.

On Medium: From Pipe to Software: “Brazil” and the Evolution of Bureaucracies

Read on about the mechanisms of total control, and the relevance of Terry Gilliam's movie to a paperless dystopia.

On Medium: Tyranny and the Horror of Being God

Here's a thought experiment of recognizing the plight of being a deity, and how human tyrannies reflect the relation God would have to the world he created.

On Medium: How Religions Suppress Spiritual Epiphanies

Read on about religious divisions, existential unity, and the secret of entheogens: why religions are against real religious experiences (peak states of consciousness).

On Medium: Why Art Shouldn’t be Bought or Sold

Read on about art's ancient relevance to our existential mission, and capitalism’s degradation of artists in the pyramid schemes of showbusiness and the gig economy.

On Medium: Why the Evolution of Religion Should Worry Believers

An article about the telltale history of religions and why we should compare religious sanctimony with secular hubris.

On Medium: How to Defuse Trumpian Trolling on Vaccines

Read on for why Trumpian anti-vaxxers are only trolling and why they should be treated by intellectual elites like "acts of God" or like wayward children throwing a tantrum.

On Medium: The Haughtiness of “Success Magazine”

Read on about New Thought, Stoicism, and the pitting of reality's indifference against the vain delusions of wealthy consumers.

On Medium: The Inevitability of Atheism

Here's an article that turns the tables on “Backyard Church’s” case for the impossibility of atheism, to show theism's incoherence and some tricks of theistic arguments.

On Medium: Killing in the Names of Jesus and Canadian Imperialism

Read on about my diagnosis of Canada’s appalling mistreatment of Indigenous people.

On Medium: Why We’re Killing Off All Wildlife

Here's an article about our apparent role as anti-natural transformers of the wilderness.

On Medium: Proof That Free Markets Don’t Reward The Best Work

What happens when the greatest, most miraculous art is overlooked? What does that say about the meritocratic prospects for capitalism? Read on to find out how capitalism is only as concerned with merit as are the average buyers and sellers.

On Medium: Buddhist Nirvana And The Consolation of Nihilism

Here's an article about alienation, mindfulness, and the annulment of humanistic progress.

On Medium: How “The Startup” Whitewashes the Exploitation of Content Creators

Read on about how the hype of Medium's "The Startup" serves as covert PR for neofeudal tech giants, and sustains the ruse of the creator economy.

On Medium: Assessing the Meaning of Life in Pixar’s “Soul”

A philosophical movie review of Pixar's "Soul," and an assessment of whether that film's life lesson can be secularized.

On Medium: How Pessimists Should Avoid Despair

Here's an article about how philosophical pessimists should be uplifted by pantheism, comedic absurdity, and technological progress.

On Medium: The Telltale Confusions of “The Ascent’s” Submission Guidelines

Read on about the fallacies in The Ascent's submission guidelines and what those confusions say about consumer society and the self-help industry.

On Medium: Death By Expertise: The Decadence of Economists and Medical Doctors

Here's an article about the downside of technocracy, when capitalism sidelines the arts and the values that might check the Machiavellianism that evidently emerges in the highly-intelligent expert class.

On Medium: Why Real Art is Priceless and Most Artists are Poor

Read on about the clash between artistic and business standards, and how the profit motive conflicts with an artist's concern with maximizing the work's quality.

On Medium: Have We Been Conned Into Civilization?

Read on about how we may have clung to civilization despite its drawbacks because of a theocratic con, which could make even our modern defense of the civilized venture faith-based.

On Medium: The Collapse of New Atheism and the Rise of Godless Culture

Here's an article that contrasts the folly of the broken-up, politicized new atheist movement with the cosmicist, promethean heart of a viable atheistic worldview.

Longtime readers may recall my earlier treatment of this in "Clash of the Atheists," and see "Scientism and the Downfall of New Atheism" for another supporting discussion.

On Medium: From Academic To Freelance Writing: Coping With The Culture Shock

Read on how about how capitalist standards have corrupted both academic and freelance writing.

On Medium: How Jewish World-Weariness Puts Christianity and Islam to Shame

Here's an article on Jewish existentialism and the subversive miracles of Ecclesiastes.

On Medium: Mind Cafe's Infantilizing Standards

Read on for a look at some excuses for mediocrity in freelance writing, at the cult of happiness, the fixation of practicality, and the dread of oversimplification.

On Medium: How The Desert Metaphor Shaped Monotheism

Here's an article on how the inhospitable desert served as an extended metaphor for the founders of monotheism, making for a more realistic portrait of God's inhuman character.

On Medium: Animals Can Be Scoundrels Too

Read on for a satirical article about why we can’t take credit for all the world’s villainy.

On Medium: The Masterful Prank of Trumpism

Here's an article on trolling, protest votes, and the satirical power of the GOP’s repugnance.

On Medium: The Gall of Imagining God’s Reality

Here's an article about how when we think philosophically about religion, the creeds become absurd but so do our secular pretentions and ambitions since they're mocked by the unsettling suspicion of God's nearness.