I am.

At least according to a quiz put out by the Pew Forum on Religious and Public Life.

The quiz has 32 questions, of which atheists in America who took the quiz got an average of 20.9 questions right. American Jews got 20.5 right, American Mormons 20.3 right, American Protestants 16 right, and American Catholics 14.7 right.

I got all of them, but that’s nothing special since this is the field I work in professionally. I’m expected to know my own field. Give me a comparable quiz on another topic and watch the number plummet. I can say with great confidence that if you gave me a 32-question quiz on sports—something very large numbers of people would do very well on—I would be lucky to...READ MORE

Recently over on Facebook (where you can friend me if you like), I posted an item which stated:

Jimmy Akin would like the world to know that he has heard exhortations to “Go Green”/“Be Green”/“Save the Planet” so often that using any of these phrases drastically decreases the chance he will agree to the proposal in question—whatever it is.

I figured that this would generate a good bit of reaction, and it did. In less than a day there were over 100 responses. That was even more reaction than the item I posted about the spider in Madagascar that makes webs 82 feet across or the woman who fended off a bear by hitting it with a zucchini!

A big part of the reason the item got the reaction it...READ MORE

I’ve been thinking about writing a book to help people dealing with end-of-life situations. Between the deaths of my wife and my parents and other family members, I’ve been through enough of them that I’ve had to think hard about the spiritual, moral, and evangelistic aspects of these situations.

If I am able to write such a book, one aspect that I will definitely cover is the need for humility and caution in assessing the sick person’s will to live.

Very frequently these days people end up in situations where they cannot speak for themselves and clearly communicate what kind of care they want or whether they even want care. In such situations, family members are typically consulted, and...READ MORE

In their new book, The Grand Design, co-authors and physicists Stephen Hawking (pictured) and Leonard Mlodinow argue that God is not necessary to explain the existence of the universe as we experience it.

Why not?

After all, if you look at the universe it looks suspiciously like it has been deliberately designed with us in mind. This is something that Harking and Mlodinow go into in some depth. They point out, as have many theistic apologists, that the laws governing our universe seem finely tuned to allow the existence of life. There are any number of constants—the gravitational constant, the mass of the proton, etc.—that are set at just the value needed to allow life to exist. If any of...READ MORE

I’ve read a number of books by Stephen Hawking (pictured) and Leonard Mlodinow, writing both together and separately. I’ve enjoyed them. They’re informative and funny, and they make clear some pretty deep concepts of physics and mathematics—without burdening you with a bunch of equations (that’s some trick).

But their new book The Grand Design was a disappointment.

It’s a short read, which is fine, though I was surprised when I discovered that the last 25% of the already-short book to be composed of back matter (an exotic form of matter discovered by publishers; it consists of glossaries, indexes, author bios, acknowledgements, and the like).

Despite its brevity, it does a good job...READ MORE

“It’s happening again.”

So begins a column over at Irish Central by Cahir O’Doherty (pictured).

“What is ‘it’—the it that is happening again?” you ask.

I’m not entirely sure. The headline, which is the logical lead-in for the first line of the piece, says, “Catholic Church fires Mass woman for marrying.”

I know; I know. What is a “Mass woman”? A woman who serves at Mass? This is not an established term in the Church’s liturgical books. But it turns out that “Mass” in this case means “Massachusetts.” O’Doherty or his editor failed to include a period that would have clarified a bit.

But as far as I know, the Catholic churches in Massachusetts are not in the habit of firing women when...READ MORE

Al Gore Lied, James J. Lee Died.

That’s the premise of this piece at Big Hollywood (warning: language). Author John Nolte writes:

[M]ost environmentalists are lying liars who know they’re lying. Because if you honestly believe man is destroying the planet, that the apocalypse is nigh, you prepare for it. Most coastal elites are Global Warming believers and yet Global Warming, we’re told, will make the oceans rise to the point that will someday put much of the coast, especially Manhattan underwater. So why aren’t coastal elites moving inland? Why aren’t they pulling a Lex Luthor and buying up all that cheap property that will someday be the new coast?

Strongly worded! And you gotta give...READ MORE

This Sunday when I went to Mass there was a guest priest, someone I’d never seen before. As soon as I head him speak, I knew there was going to be trouble. While everyone as saying the Gloria, this is what the priest said:

Glory to God in the highest
And peace to

his

God’s people on earth.

“Oh, great,” I thought. “We’re already off to a bad start.”

Things went downhill from there.

Not only did Fr. Gender Edit tamper with the Gloria, he also was seemingly unaware of the existence of the subjunctive mood in English. Thus whenever the text called for him to say, “The Lord be with you,” he would instead say, “The Lord is with you.”

This is wrong for so many reasons. While it is true that...READ MORE