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When you’re helpless and at a serious physical disadvantage, your perceptions of potentially challenging situations can get a little skewed. Can you see why I’d see that and think immediately about religion?

If you were wondering what I mean by “Mary Sues” in a roleplaying environment, I give you Exhibit A. These are two attempts a player made to create a character for a Tolkien-based text-based online roleplaying game set in a gorgeous, lush forested area. I’ve changed none of his original Read more

Ken Ham and Bill Nye had a big debate recently. I was of two minds about watching the debate at all. It seemed like such a waste of time. I mean, really: it seems like Christian creationists get a lot more out of these things than the reality-endorsing folks do; Read more

This link is about the son of Virginia State Senator Creigh Deeds, who suffered a mental illness and was unlucky enough to need long-term professional care in a country that really doesn’t care about the mentally ill. We’ll talk tomorrow about the creationism debate, but I saw this and really Read more

This blog writes itself. Case in point: The night before last, my doorbell rang. I wasn’t decent, so Mr. Captain answered it. I heard a brief conversation, ending with him politely declining whatever the person at our door wanted to sell, and when he got back, I asked who it’d Read more

It’s been a really bad week to be a moralistic, paternalistic, patriarchal, slut-shaming, ignorance-glorifying Christian. We’ll talk about Mary Sues tomorrow, but I wanted to mention this while it’s on my mind, these two news pieces that I recently saw: First up, of course, is the news that abortion rates Read more

I realized something yesterday: It is not the person performing a loving deed who gets to decide if that deed is actually loving. It is the target of that deed who gets to make that call. The person receiving that deed acts as the referee here. That person’s call trumps whatever the doer of the deed thinks of it. I never learned that truth while I was Christian–and I can see that a lot of Christians today haven’t learned it either.

Insufferable misogynist Ross Douthat is wringing his hands over sex and no-fault divorce again. If women aren’t properly terrified of the “consequences” of sex and properly reined in to marriages they can’t easily escape, then the world will end. Pat Robertson thinks that women who demand equal rights will end Read more

I didn’t feel like updating the story I did about the Grammys yet again (hopefully the link works this time), but two more things about it that I thought were interesting and might be of interest to y’all as well: * A Christian rapper has done exactly what Christians have Read more

Many years ago, I was in a Bible study with a bunch of older married women one rainy, dark weeknight. Or rather, I was running late to a Bible study. I still don’t know what possessed me to get into this group; I think I was feeling it out for Read more