I was pleasantly surprised to see an op/ed by a professional philosopher in Sunday’s (1/29) Houston Chronicle. Karen Stohr’s essay “Our new age of contempt is on full display,” was first published in the New York Times. Stohr is an associate professor of philosophy at Georgetown and a senior research scholar at Georgetown’s Kennedy Center … A Qualified Defense of Contempt

It seems like a good time to re-post and update this. If Jesus had been a Republican… He would have said: “Render unto Caesar. And if thou catchest an illegal immigrant, render him also, yea, limb from limb.” “Blessed are the rich, who are the ones who REALLY inherit the earth.” “Love thy neighbor, unless … If Jesus had been a Republican…

I recently spoke at Christ the King Lutheran Church near the Rice University Campus. The topic was “Science and Religion.” This, of course, is a very big topic. How to deal with it in a single short presentation? I think the first thing to do is to some models for simplifying the multifarious complexities here. … Science and Religion: Four Models

In an editorial titled “Women at Risk,” today’s Houston Chronicle presented some very alarming facts: Put simply, the State of Texas is waging a war against women. This is not partisan rhetoric, but a sober statement of the unavoidable conclusion implied by these facts. Texas has conducted a furious vendetta against Planned Parenthood, the Affordable … The True Cost of Fundamentalism: Women’s Health

Will science matter in the Trump Administration? All signs are that it will not. Indeed, not only will science not matter, it will be actively opposed. The title of Lawrence Krauss’s article “Donald Trump’s War on Science,” published in the December 13 New Yorker, sounds alarmist. After all, haven’t we heard hype from the right … Science Matters

Is the empirical confirmation of miracles possible, in principle? Hume has often been interpreted as denying the possibility. However, Hume does say that it is conceivable that there could be testimony for a miraculous event that is so unlikely to be false that it would be a “greater miracle” for the testimony to be false … The Empirical Confirmation of Miracle Claims

In the nearly ten years that I have been contributing to Secular Outpost, I have enjoyed conversations with a number of outstanding theistic thinkers. I will not name them since that might lead some respondents to focus on these individuals rather than the general point I am making. While we deeply disagree on philosophical issues, … Truth: What Really Matters Now

Donald Trump sailed into the White House on an ocean of lies. His erstwhile political opponent, and then wishy-washy supporter, Sen. Ted Cruz called Trump a “pathological liar.” I take it that a liar becomes pathological when his lies are no longer conscious fabrications, but merely statements made with no regard to truth or falsity. … Living in the Post-Truth Era

There was an excellent editorial in this morning’s Houston Chronicle concerning the still-growing sexual assault scandal at Baylor University in Waco, Texas. For anybody who does not follow college football, for decades the Baylor Bears were a laughingstock, a delicious cupcake for the real teams like UT, A & M, and Oklahoma, who would regularly … How do you Spell “Hypocrite?” B-A-P-T-I-S-T

Apparently, the candidacy of Donald Trump is splitting evangelicals. Trump presents them with the ultimate dilemma: As president, Hillary Clinton and a Democratically-controlled Senate could change the Supreme Court in ways highly antithetical to evangelicals. Today’s Houston Chronicle quotes Robert Jeffress of the Dallas First Baptist Church as saying, “…in the end, the election is … Evangelicals and the Donald Dilemma