This essay originally appeared in Prejudices. The incoherence of contemporary secular humanism is usually ascribed to its free thought origins. Not so. Contemporary humanism is a mess because it doesn’t know what it believes–perhaps not even what the “it” stands for. Humanism … Continue reading
Listening to a Catholic News Agency report yesterday, mainly to see if anything really exciting is going on in Holy Mother Church, I found myself agreeing (in spite of myself) with one of the presenters. In essence, he was … Continue reading
“Wisdom crieth aloud in the street; she uttereth her voice in the highways” Proverbs 1,22 Recent events have made me remember that one of the reasons I dropped out of law school was that lawyers seemed just like businessmen to … Continue reading
A recent article in the sometimes epically wrong Guardian suggests that ”rising atheism in America” has the religious right on the defensive. There are two things wrong with this picture. First, the religious right is always on the defensive because they want … Continue reading
I’m moved to write this short piece by two disconnected and discordant events: one an advertisement, the other a death. First the ad. I occasionally receive promotional stuff from the Center for Inquiry in Buffalo, New York. The Center … Continue reading
After three years as the Blog-Meister at New Oxonian, I have decided to make this personal. The new blog is modestly titled R. Joseph Hoffmann. The totally unnecessary subtitle, “A Writing Tablet” is just an opinion about what blogs are. They … Continue reading
