David Brooks gives atheists some advice

Uh-oh. For a moment there, I thought I was going to have to agree with David Brooks, and then I’d have to retire from the internet and live in a cave and flagellate myself until the stupidity was purged. He has written a column in which he says secularism has to be more than simple rationalism, and the opening had me worried that it was going to sound like my schtick:

As secularism becomes more prominent and self-confident, its spokesmen have more insistently argued that secularism should not be seen as an absence — as a lack of faith — but rather as a positive moral creed. Phil Zuckerman, a Pitzer College sociologist, makes this case as fluidly and pleasurably as anybody in his book, “Living the Secular Life.”

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It’s the same old story

Denialists claiming to be pro-science. Politicians insisting on a balanced treatment. A population ignorant of the science indignantly rejecting a clear and well-established, evidence-based conclusion.

I’m not talking about creationism, although it’s exactly the same story. It’s the anti-vax position now.

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I may not be able to do this

I thought it would be nice to have the superbowl playing in the background while I was working this evening — I have good memories of my father and uncles enjoying the game when I was young, even if I never got into it myself. But I turned it on 15 minutes ago, and it was actually rather intolerable: the self-importance, the hyperbole, Bob Costas (that was Costas, right?) fellating the players and telling them how important their ball-catching and people-hitting abilities are, and going on and on about trivial statistics from past games. It’s all kind of icky.

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