The Daily Sabbatical
Music, Books, and Assorted Maunderings

Harper's gives us a peek into the sermons that Palin has been ingesting up there in the coldest state. Their main message? Most of us won't be cold for long. Read More

All Things Considered recently ran a feature on Camp Inquiry, a summer camp where the the main activity is not rounds of cumbaya but actual philosophical inquiry into the likelihood that there is a higher power. I'm all for it.
Thanks to skepchick.org for the link.
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Dawkins can certainly get tiresome, but this conversation with Nobel Prize winning physicist Steven Weinberg (at the University of Texas, by the way) is quite good.  It provides the simple reason why design and fine-tuning arguments for the existence of God, even on their best days, get you nowhere.  Read More

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"The God of many men is little more than their court of appeal against the damnatory judgment passed on their failures by the opinion of this world." --William James (The Varieties of Religious Experience) Read More

The south, not surprisingly, is a terrific place to write a book about God.   One can, at times, even feel the piety in the humid air.  If ever you should forget, though, that you are in God's country--and by God I mean Jesus, of course--there is the occasional billboard to remind you.  My favorite was a black and white sign quoting God, "It is finished," looming over a crew of construction workers who labored on despite the billboard's proclamation. (A good thing they continued to… Read More

Activists Keep the Faith, if Not Their Money By Jonathan Mummolo Washington Post Staff Writer Saturday, May 31, 2008; Page B05 The price of regular at a Shell gas station in Petworth gleamed defiantly in the midday sun: $3.91 a gallon. But unlike the customers rolling up to the station's pumps this week, resigned to the fact that their wallets were about to take a beating, Rocky Twyman and company had a plan to bring that number tumbling down. They would ask God to do it. "Our pockets are empty, but we're going to hold on to God!"… Read More