Star Trek, the Hobbit, and the Meaning of Christmas
One of my favorite characters in Star Trek: The Next Generation is Q, a being rather like Mister Mxyzptlk in Superman, who can alter reality...
Nietzsche’s eternal return – and its eternal answer
Nietzsche thought that Christianity’s chief perversion was its inability to appreciate life as it was; he thought we were always pining after some abstract, cold,...
What would Gandalf do?
In Lord of the Rings there are several wizards, but the ones I want to talk about in this post are Gandalf and Radagast. Let...
Worship music may be a bigger problem than you think.
This was going to be a quick facebook rant, but the more I thought about it, the longer it got, until it ended up being...
What gas turbines can teach us about being happy
For the past two weeks I have been studying engineering as it relates to the ship I’ll be working on for the next couple of...
Who are we to tell them what to believe?
“Who are we to tell people what to believe?” “You can’t arrest me any more than you can any priest or preacher; all I’m doing...
Church or State? The Fourth of July Dilemma
Every Fourth of July, my Facebook is dotted with two types of posts: pictures of patriotic church services and warnings about patriotic church services. The...
Why are Harvard students so sad?
“The Ivy Leagues are the darkest, most despair-filled campuses I’ve ever visited,” the guest speaker looked out at the auditorium on a Friday night my...
Can Capitalists be Compassionate?
I have heard numerous arguments of the form “if you really valued Christian compassion, you wouldn’t espouse capitalist principles.” Most recently, I read this article...
Good News: The Real You is Broken
The day after the 2016 presidential election, my Facebook page was predictably tempestuous. For the most part, I just stayed away, but one post on...