Terry Firma, though born and Journalism-school-educated in Europe, has lived in the U.S. for the past 20-odd years. Stateside, his feature articles have been published in the New York Times, Reason, Rolling Stone, Playboy, and Wired. Terry was the founder and Main Mischief Maker of Moral Compass, a now-dormant site that pokes fun at the delusional claim by people of faith that a belief in God equips them with superior moral standards. He was the Editor-in-Chief of two Manhattan-based magazines until he decided to give up commercial publishing for professional photography... with a lot of blogging on the side. These days, he lives in an old seaside farmhouse in Maine with his wife, three kids, and two big dogs.
The Church of Scientology has big plans involving its spiffy headquarters in Clearwater, Florida. The massive seven-story structure that occupies an entire city block is scheduled to officially open in October with a dedication ceremony at which about 10,000 people are expected to be present. A month later, it will be the site of an international gathering of Scientologists that is scheduled to draw some 8,000 Xenu believers. To accommodate the visitors, a huge tent will have to be erected — which was bad news for two fine oaks that stood in the Church’s way, close to the $80,000,000 edifice. Church authorities decided to cut down the trees, despite being under orders from the city to preserve them. [Click headline for more…] Read more
If you ever come across a passenger car with New Jersey plates that spell ATHE1ST (with a number 1 instead of the letter I), chances are that the driver is David Silverman, the president of American Atheists. Give him a friendly wave. Silverman will have earned it, because he will have prevailed in his current feud with New Jersey’s Motor Vehicle Commission. You see, the other day, the MVC’s powers-that-be decided to reject rather than rubber-stamp Silverman’s application, on the grounds that a license plate that says ATHE1ST is “offensive.” [Click headline for more…] Read more
The New York Times has a piece that goes to great lengths to describe what a serious and weighty thinker Joseph Bottum is. Bottum is a conservative Catholic whose scholarliness is such that he refers casually to “Thomas” when he means the 13th-century Christian philosopher Thomas Aquinas. You and I might find that vaguely amusing or off-putting, but the Times is smitten: His erudite writing for conservative magazines like National Review and The Weekly Standard is laced with references to church history and theology and to Christian writers like G. K. Chesterton and W. H. Auden. He fiercely opposes abortion, and for five years, until 2010, he was editor in chief of First Things, a key opinion journal for religious conservatives. It seems that the Times now applauds Bottum primarily because he has changed his views on gay marriage. Only five years ago, Bottum railed against proponents of equal rights, calling them promoters of an “amoral world,” and adding in no uncertain terms, God’s will is for marriage to be a covenant between a man and a woman. Nothing else will work. Now he’s come around. Bottum (hold the jokes) is in favor of gay marriage, he explains in a long, aimless, meandering essay in Commonweal Magazine. Here, as summarized in the Times, are the three key arguments through which Bottum came to his change of heart. [Click headline for more…] Read more
As a parent and an atheist, I got blindsided this morning. One of the most popular pieces at the Washington Post website right now is Michael Gerson’s brutally honest take on letting go of your children when they leave home. Gerson just saw his son off to college and writes movingly about how the experience hit him a lot harder than he was prepared for: I know something he doesn’t — not quite a secret, but incomprehensible to the young. He is experiencing the adjustments that come with beginnings. His life is starting for real. I have begun the long letting go. Put another way: He has a wonderful future in which my part naturally diminishes. I have no possible future that is better without him close. … The end of childhood, of course, can be the start of adult relationships between parents and children that are rewarding in their own way. I’m anxious to befriend my grown sons. But that hasn’t stopped the random, useless tears. I was cautioned by a high-powered Washington foreign policy expert that he had been emotionally debilitated for weeks after dropping off his daughter at college for the first time. But it wasn’t Gerson’s tale of loss that gobsmacked me. It was a comment. This one, by a Washington Post reader called ariel823: I am the mother of a 54 yr old who has valiantly fought cancer for 12 yrs and is now losing the fight, and the mother of a 56 yr old who has lymphoma and last year survived a stem cell transplant barely, and is weak and damaged but trying to hold his job. Also he exceeded his health insurance cap of $750,000 by a large sum. And our 3rd child has become an atheist in spite of his upbringing. Pain is pain, from wherever it originates. [Click headline for more…] Read more
