Religious Dress Codes

When a woman covers her entire body, following a dogmatic doctrine to the letter to improve her relationship with her community and her god, she is performing a ritual.

Yes, Yes, Much Better

As you can see, I’ve finally gotten around to tampering with the presentation of my web blog. The issue was a matter of readability: the comments were far to faint on the page, and I found myself straining to read them. May I encourage those who had once protected their eyes by abstaining to try [...]

Chris Hitchens on Ritual

I am back near my books, and, as such, will be posting in the next couple of days a two part article on religious garb (“God’s Dress Code.”) In the meantime, I wanted to post this, a transcribed piece of the Q and A section from the Al Sharpton Chris Hitchens debate at the New [...]

Bananas and the Absence of Fungal Growth in Peanut Butter Jars Prove Allah’s Existence

As if the Ted Haggard Debacle wasn’t enough to begin estranging some belonging to the ministry, there is a series of novels written by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins about the apocalypse, beginning with Left Behind, all dealing with the rapture and the fallout. Kirk Cameron, an evangelist and actor, portrayed the lead in [...]

Housekeeping and the Hidden Contingent: Notes on Potential Atheists and Hitchens

First a little housekeeping: I want to thank all of those who took time out of their lives to engage in the debate on circumcision. I encourage readers to look at the comments on both Circumcision Pt. 1, Pt. 2, and the Encore, as Josh Amos and Tony both wrote very thoughtfully on the issue, [...]

Tony Responds: Circumcision’s Encore

Although I know that comments are for the comment section, I wonder if we can’t already tell that this rule will remain, at least for now, broken. I couldn’t help but bring attention to Tony’s fantastic response to my articles on circumcision:
It’s clear that we all engage in rituals and imagine some significance to those [...]

And On A Lighter Note: Richard Dawkins Talks Juju

In light of all of these lengthy posts, I thought it time to throw something out that I find funny and hideous simultaneously. I want to begin to hint at the fact that a Science God, a deity who is quickly becoming the deity-elect of a growing society of skeptics, is one of the larger [...]

Ms. Lawless Responds: On Meaningless/Meaningful Ritual

Allow me, first, to post Ms. Lawless’s thoughtful response to some of some of my talk on ritual:
This probably has nothing to do with what you’re interested in but I couldn’t help but notice that you’re interested in re-imagining meaningful ritual. What about un-meaningful rituals? And have you fully defined what the word meaningful really [...]