Author: Adam Lee

In a post earlier this week, I wrote about how retailers and advertisers play on the sentiments associated with the holiday season as a way to make money, and how the religious right is actually, unbelievably, accelerating this trend by demanding the commercialization of their most sacred symbols. However, I failed to note at that…

As the solstice holiday draws near, the annual complaints by the religious right about the alleged “War on Christmas” are ramping up in volume, as usual. Every store greeter who says “Season’s Greetings” is bitterly denounced; every municipality that erects a “holiday tree” is reviled with a level of shrillness that used to be reserved…

In the United States, the day after Thanksgiving is often called Black Friday, both because of the chaos it engenders and because it is the day when many businesses are “in the black”, in other words able to show a net profit, for the first time of the year. Both reasons are because Black Friday…

The spectacular public downfall of Ted Haggard last month continues to reverberate through the media. And now, an aftershock: Paul Barnes, founder of the 2,100-member evangelical Grace Chapel in Colorado, has resigned after admitting he had engaged in homosexual sex acts. (Predictably, Barnes’ former church wasted no time in trying to erase his existence from…

At this the spirit raised a frightful cry, and shook its chain with such a dismal and appalling noise, that Scrooge held on tight to his chair, to save himself from falling in a swoon. But how much greater was his horror, when the phantom taking off the bandage round its head, as if it…

For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts. —Isaiah 55:8-9 One of the apologist replies frequently raised against atheist arguments such as the argument…

ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) – Shivering under a tattered blanket, a young woman tries to sleep at the foot of the mist-shrouded Entoto Mountain, north of the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa. …”I decided to come to Entoto to seek a cure from the holy water after a doctor told me that I am HIV-positive,” Abebech Alemu,…

As the end of 2006 draws within sight, the annual holiday season is upon us. This year, I have noticed an interesting pattern in these familiar rituals. It is striking how many of the holidays that fall around this time of year involve the ceremonial kindling of light as an element of the celebration. Chief…

Meet Keith Ellison. Ellison is one of the new Democratic representatives elected in the November midterms, the winner of an open seat in Minnesota’s 5th District. Representative-elect Ellison is also a Muslim, the first member of that religion ever to be elected to the United States Congress. As such, when he takes his oath of…

When I was a child, I read and devoured C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia books. I was too young then to understand most of the religious symbolism, and didn’t realize that Lewis had intended the series as a Christian allegory until the end of the very last Narnia book, The Last Battle, which makes the…