Stephen Jay Gould’s Weak Argument For Science And Religion’s ‘Separate Domains’

Stephen Jay Gould‘s famous ‘Two Separate Domains‘ argues, roughly, that religion and science operate in different domains of inquiry, and as such do not conflict with each other: We get the age of rocks, and religion retains the rock of ages; we study how the heavens go, and they determine how to go to heaven.Continue reading “Stephen Jay Gould’s Weak Argument For Science And Religion’s ‘Separate Domains’”

Samuel Bagenstos On The Mistaken Decision To Jail Kim Davis

Over at The New Republic Samuel Bagenstos offers some spot-on analysis of the decision to jail Kim Davis, ” the Rowan County, Kentucky, clerk who defied a U.S. Federal Court order requiring that she issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples” and concludes: To many observers…the drama is the point. By making a prominent example of those who obstinately refuseContinue reading “Samuel Bagenstos On The Mistaken Decision To Jail Kim Davis”

Kill All The Cartoonists; God Will Sort Them Out

You read or view a satirical piece or a cartoon in a newspaper or a magazine. It offends you; you are enraged; your deepest sensibilities–personal, religious–have been ravaged and injured. Unable to assuage your feelings by acknowledging the abstract free speech rights of those who have so insulted you, and still caught up in aContinue reading “Kill All The Cartoonists; God Will Sort Them Out”

Polygamy And Joseph Smith’s Convenient Revelations

In Under The Banner Of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith, Jon Krakauer cites Fawn Brodie‘s No Man Knows My History, her classic biography of Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism: Monogamy seemed to him–as it has seemed to many men who have not ceased to love their wives, but who have grown weary ofContinue reading “Polygamy And Joseph Smith’s Convenient Revelations”