Hi. My name is John, and I’m a spiritual atheist. Like “God,” the word “spirituality,” is a conveniently ambiguous term. That said, it’s not so vague as to be totally meaningless. I think it captures an area of concern better than any other term out there. I especially like Wikipedia’s definition: Spirituality can refer to [...]

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Let us take as a given that most (all?) awards for excellence in the entertainment industry are irredeemably political. The issuance of awards as well as the events during which such awards are given and announced are deeply affected by how the public will react—often from the standpoint of how such awards will affect ratings [...]

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I know that Amanda is often ampersanded with Neil Gaiman (and vise versa) these days, but I let myself take a little nostalgic trip back to the days when AFP and Brian Viglione worked a little magic together: Many thanks to my friend Erika for turning me on to this delectable madness, which I somehow [...]

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I cam across this illustration of how sexism and class differences are linked in the Wikipedia article on honor killing: There is a strong positive correlation between violence against women, and women’s social power and equality; and a baseline of development, associated with access to basic resources, health care, and human capital, such as literacy [...]

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In Germany, when a female turns 16, she ceases to be “Fräulein” (little woman) and becomes “Frau” (woman, or lady). I like this tradition and think that it speaks well of treating a child as a full member of the community, even before he or she actually becomes one. Similarly, the bar/bat mitzvah tradition recognizes [...]

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I’ll be spending this Super Bowl with my sisters, who are members of Feminists for Life (“because women deserve better”), who are “pro-life”, and who think that birth control is immoral and abortion should be illegal (with strong punishments for the doctor who performs the abortion and practically no punishment for the woman who chose [...]

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Once upon a time, the last star faded cooly into the dark universal night. It took hundreds of billions of years to die, but no one remained to count the eons. Eventually even the electrons died. This is not my story. Once upon a time, a sentient race was born under a sky full of [...]

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I have a several areas of my life that I’m looking hard at and reexamining right now. If this blogging experiment proves helpful, maybe I’ll follow up with a couple more personal explorations. I know I’m going to feel a little exposed, but here goes: During my last few years in Mormonism, I self-identified as [...]

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The First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America reads (in pertinent part): Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. This has, historically, been interpreted to include other official acts by the government. Here, “Congress” is read (due to the context of the [...]

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