Religion and Family Strife

Love Must Overcome

By Dawn Story Burke

[Editor’s Note: My niece wrote this compassionate essay for our Thor’s Day column a bit over ten years ago, on April 4, 2013, and its subject matter seemed pertinent to this Easter time of our current year.]

Last week, I got to emailing with an aunt, an uncle, and a cousin about going to church on Easter. Or, more specifically, about going to church without one’s spouse.

​Planning on dying? [9 Years Ago Today]

Face the question and move on

[Published originally on July 25, 2013, 9 years more timely now than it was then.]

By Moristotle

My wife and I are [were] planning to go on a big trip with a friend next year and, because I genuinely don’t think I will ever want to do it again, I remarked, “It will be our last such trip.”

Goines On: Who’s minding?

Click image for more vignettes

[An adaptation, with updated ending, of “Thor's Day: Wrong number,” July 18, 2013]

The Goineses were at their dining table when Mrs. Goines’ phone rang. She answered it. Whoever it was, she didn’t recognize them. “You have the wrong number ... That’s okay. No problem.”
    Her phone rang again within seconds. Goines waited to see what Mrs. Goines would do.
    Without speaking, she hung up.

Two ways of looking at the chicken in the egg

By Moristotle

[Originally published on Thor’s Day December 20, 2012.

    This republication is dedicated to Dr. Nortin M. Hadler and all other Scientific Americans, whether or not they are members of the Sigma Xi Scientific Research Honor Society.]

The following science story came to my attention this morning [9 years ago]:

Three Years Ago Today

Moral quandary: Omnivorous

By Moristotle

[Originally published on June 26, 2014, not one word different.]

What a plight to be of the human race –
grabbing everything, claiming every place,
    eating all kinds of animal
    (no laws yet make it criminal) –
were I pig or cow instead, I’d have no face.

Three Years Ago Today

A Christian-atheist conversation, Part 1: About animal rights

By Morris Dean 
& Kyle Garza

[Originally published on June 22, 2014, not one word different.]

Morris: In my Thor’s Day post of June 5 (“Value experience for its own sake: It’s an art”), I not only stated positively my view of the sacred art of living in a way that values life and respects one’s own and others’ experience for its own sake, but also outlined six areas in which I found the monotheistic religions Judaism, Christianity, and Islam wanting:

Thor’s Day: Delivery

Youie summer

By Morris Dean

[Originally published on July 3, 2006]

During weeks of manic inspiration in the summer of 1989, I received spiritual revelations so striking that I began to keep a journal to record them. Their significance seemed to demand that I share them with others. But a sad technical job at a large corporation felt at odds with that calling, leaving me only an hour or two out of each day at home with my wife to inscribe my insights.

Thor’s Day: Eroticism and its discontents

A response to last week’s column on pornography

By Bob Boldt

Moristotle asked me whether Kyle Garza, in his column last week, “Why Christians Aren’t Celebrating Playboy’s PG-13 Move,” left any room to distinguish pornography from erotica.

Thor’s Day: Why Christians aren’t celebrating Playboy’s PG-13 move

By Kyle  Garza

In case you didn’t already know, millions of Americans buy pornography subscriptions for their children every year, especially on Christmas or birthdays. No, they aren’t filling out the paperwork to have Playboy or Hustler delivered to their doorstep once a month in finely wrapped plastic. They are, however, buying them small handheld portals to pornography, like iPhones and iPads.

Thor’s Day: On being raised up

By Vic Midyett

I’ve always felt some separation from the words of the duo Secret Garden’s song “You Raise Me Up,” whose refrain is, in Josh Groban’s version:

Thor's Day: On certain diatribes against religion

What might motivate them?

By Morris Dean









We wonder whether Christopher Hitchens’
myriad anti-religion bitchings –
    as well as Harris’s and Dawkins’ –
    are complaints against the stalkings
of certain evangelizing Christians?

Copyright © 2015 by Morris Dean

Thor’s Day: Let’s all just, like, love and be chill

By Morris Dean

I was stunned into recognition this week by an article in the New York Times about Ellen Page [“Ellen Page Goes Off-Script,” by Sam Anderson]. The following paragraphs are what did it. The article had just described an attempted conversation between Page, who is gay, and an evangelical Christian band called the Bontrager Family Singers — a family of 12 that had come to Des Moines to perform, that night, at [Ted] Cruz’s Rally for Religious Liberty:

Thor’s Day: Pope Francis

Drawing our attention

By James Knudsen

With regard to last week’s “Fish for Friday” column, which led off with Pope Francis, I’ve always wondered whether “Fish for Friday” was a reference to the Catholic tradition of not eating meat on Fridays [it is]. Of course, by the time I arrived in the Johnson & Johnson & Johnson era, the practice had been relegated only to the forty days of Lent which would be…five Fridays? Vatican II must have made Charlie the Tuna cry.

Thor's Day: A fable about perspective

The black dot

By Anonymous

Edited by Morris Dean

[Submitted by a correspondent who could not identify the author. It’s not well written, but they say it’s the thought that counts. And Thor’s taking the day off again.]

A professor entered his classroom and asked his students to spend a few minutes preparing for a surprise exam. Surprise exams weren’t unusual, but the students nevertheless waited anxiously for this one to begin.

Thor's Day to reflect on experiencing Jesus

Thor would like to learn more

Thor was going to take the day off, thinking that if people either believe in a god or not – and that’s an end to it – then what’s a god to do but take the day off?

Thor's Day: Experiencing Jesus

Is that experiment necessary?

By Morris Dean

[Republished with corrections.]

We’re not ready yet to sign up volunteers for the experiment we proposed last week (“Experiencing Jesus: Could we do a scientific experiment?”). But I can tell anyone thinking of volunteering that we weren’t envisioning attaching you to any machines.

Thor's Day: Experiencing Jesus

Could we do a scientific experiment?

By Morris Dean

We sometimes argue over whether a person can actually experience Jesus – as opposed to imagining experiencing Jesus. Well, maybe we can design an experiment to find out [i.e., decide the question]? I'll need your help to do this. Consider this an open letter asking for your assistance.

Thor's Day: Is some kind of real world lurking out there?

An invitation to read a recent NY Times article

By Morris Dean

Ordinarily I would have included this as a “fish” for tomorrow's column. But George Johnson’s August 24 NY Times article, “The Widening World of Hand-Picked Truths,” offers so insistent a caution about competing subjectivities that I couldn’t resist devoting today’s column to it.

Thor's Day: Passing it on

What goes around comes around: A fable

By Anonymous

Edited by Morris Dean

[Submitted by a correspondent who was unable to identify the author.]

Driving down a dimly lit road one evening, a man saw an old lady stranded on the side of the road. Even in the dim light he could see she needed help. So he pulled up in front of her Mercedes and got out. His Pontiac was still sputtering when he approached her.

Thor's Day: On whose authority?

Whom do you trust?

By Morris Dean

The column on "Reflections on Galileo's middle finger" didn't mention that science too can and does become an authority for people. I myself am not a scientist and haven't done the investigations and experiments that evolutionary biologists, for example, have done. Am I no better off than a Christian, say, who puts his faith in the Bible as the "word of God"?