"It is misguided to regard the growth of Creationism as a major threat to Western civilization. On the contrary, Creationism is exactly what we can expect to see from a collapsing religion. It's last-ditch defensive behavior—the equivalent of a hedgehog rolling into a ball. It's what's left of Christianity when all the behavioral precepts have been discarded. It is belief for the sake of belief. So if you're an atheist, please don't waste too much energy on Creationism."

"Let me be succinct and clear: prayer is a useless exercise, undertaken by those who, in a fit of childish delusion, believe they can effect change in the real world by falling to their knees and murmuring to themselves. These people, oftentimes adults who have been properly educated and who can function in day-to-day society quite serviceably, are under the distinctly infantile impression that muttering under their breath can affect the outcome of some circumstance in which they have a stake, emotional or otherwise."

"One huge problem I have with football (one that certainly crops up elsewhere in our society) is the preponderance of players and coaches who continually invoke the Almighty as a major force in their lives, and in the progress of their careers. Certainly if they're hell-bent, so to speak, on deluding themselves about the nature of the universe and their place in it, that's their own affair. But at the start of the 2009 season, I noticed yet another reminder about the level many football players (and other athletes, to be sure) are willing to take this nonsense to."

Given the overwhelming majority people of faith have in holding positions of leadership in this country, we must not fear to ask: what role does the willingness to treat unsubstantiated and even absurd suppositions that haven't a shred of evidence to support them as unassailable facts play in their decision-making process? And what role should it play?

The beginning of the end of Jesus as we knew him: the Vatican looks to heavens for signs of alien life.

No documents tell the how, when and where of events of the Neolithic period, yet many of the artifacts that we use today were invented then, as were such technologies as the husbandry of plants and animals. So also did the worship of a god begin within the walls of settlements. The manner in which such worship occurred and then spread reveals patterns of thinking that have survived even to this day. Now—at the outset of the Nuclear Era—a new dimension in thought is needed.

This note is intended to describe why, from an artistic and anatomical perspective, the shroud image is an embarrassingly obvious fraud committed by a Gothic artist following the standard conventions of his time. The artistic errors are so severe that it is impossible for the shroud to record the image of an actual human body—unless it was a very seriously pathological person with a brain the size of a Homo erectus.

The question is, how does consciousness arise in biological systems? There are at least two theories that account for consciousness. One is the idea that something is added to the body—an élan vital, a soul, or an independent mind (mind/body dualism). The other idea is that complexity (i.e., consciousness) emerges from the interactions of simple parts. Is there a way to choose one of these as being correct? Yes, by hypothesizing an emergent consciousness in a system that is not yet conscious—the computer. If we hypothesize that consciousness will emerge in a computer, given enough component parts, we can determine by rigorous testing if the hypothesis is proved. If the test proves that consciousness emerges in a computer, we will have proved that a soul is not necessary for consciousness—neither in computers nor in humans.

Julian Jaynes was one of the original psychologists, philosophers, and scholars, of the 20th century. While Charles Darwin connected human consciousness with biological unconscious, Sigmund Freud with psychological unconscious, and Karl Marx with social unconscious, Jaynes connected evolution of human consciousness with the breakdown of the bicameral mind, the Half God/Half Human mind. Although his theory did not become as popular as other theories it is nevertheless worthy of serious consideration.

"Last week I dreamt I had died and surprisingly gone to Heaven. St. Peter's computer system had developed a glitch and although our Boarding Passes on the Shuttle that took us there had a very different destination printed on them, we tore them all up as we passed the moon and partied the rest of the way..."