Atlantic: What atheism (supposedly) can’t explain

March 15, 2026 • 11:30 am

Christopher Beha‘s new book, Why I am Not an Atheist, appears to have gotten a lot of attention (including a guest essay in the NYT and a long essay in the New Yorker)—more attention than it deserves, I think—for several reasons. First, there’s a resurgence of books dissing “new atheism”, mainly because it doesn’t give us meaning, doesn’t fill the “God-shaped” hole that supposedly afflicts all of us. Second, the book makes the familiar argument that science itself (connected with atheism, it’s argued) is impotent at explaining consciousness, and the religious public loves to hear that science is stymied by such a problem (in the case of consciousness, it isn’t; the problem is just hard).  Finally, Beha has name recognition because he was editor-in-chief of Harper’s Magazine for four years.

I haven’t read the whole book, but I’ve read both of his articles above as well as other reviews, and I’m not impressed, as there’s really nothing new here. Still, I suppose that just as the arguments of atheism must be made repeatedly to enlighten each new generation, so the arguments against atheism must also be made again and again by believers. (I wonder, though, why, if New Atheism was such a dud, as many say, there are so many books going after it.)

Click below to read an archived verrsion.

I’ve written on this website two critiques of excerpts and arguments from Beha’s book  (here and here), and I just saw another negative review by Ronald Lindsay in Free Inquiry. Lindsay pretty much sums up the problems with the book in these paragraphs:

Building on his skepticism about science, Beha further argues that science cannot explain consciousness, which, for him, is a limitation that “proved fatal.” He states that science deals with material things, and because consciousness “is not material … not subject to the kind of observation that scientific materialism takes as the hallmark of knowledge,” then “[b]y the standards of the materialist world view, it simply doesn’t exist.”

Wow, that’s several misstatements in the space of a few sentences. To begin, consciousness is not a “thing.” It’s a processing of information based on inputs from indisputably material things. And there are few, if any, scientists who claim consciousness is not real. Finally, there is overwhelming evidence that the processing of information that is consciousness is dependent on the existence of and proper functioning of our material brains, which science does study with increasing understanding. No, we do not yet have a complete explanation of how consciousness arises, but that is no justification for inferring there is some immaterial, spiritual reality beyond the reach of science.

Frankly, these arguments are so poor they seem like makeweights for Beha’s real beef with atheism: it doesn’t direct him how to live. Beha’s disenchantment with atheism began when he realized atheism didn’t answer the question “How should I be?” Atheism did not tell him “what is good.” As Beha states, most atheists hold that people decide for themselves how to live.

Here is the crux of the quarrel that many theists have with atheism. They believe atheism leaves them rudderless, thrown back on their own resources in forging a life with meaning and value. By contrast, they believe that God provides them with an objective grounding, with clear direction. They no longer have to decide for themselves.

No, atheism doesn’t tell us how to live. It’s simply a claim that there is no convincing evidence for divine beings, ergo we shouldn’t accept them, much less make them the centerpiece of our lives.  If as a you want to find a way to live, you must go beyond that.  Some people like Beha find it easy to slip into an existing religion, which comes ready-made with meaning.  (But how do you know you’ve chosen the right or “true” religion?)  Others do the harder work of thinking for themselves, with many atheists accepting secular humanism as a guideline, but interpeting it in their own way.  Beha is apparently afflicted with doubt (he used to be an atheist), but has settled on Catholicism.

Parrales and the Atlantic are surprisingly appreciative of Beha’s glomming onto his youthful Catholicism. The last paragraph of the review is this:

Is it possible to understand Christianity as a bulwark against social change and still hold on to faith sincerely? I think so—Ali and Vance have elsewhere also reflected more personally on their conversions, for example. But describing one’s religion primarily as a tool to harken back to the past, or as a way to defeat your enemies, risks overlooking the humanizing power of belief. This is what makes Beha’s book so worthwhile, for showing how religion at its best offers more than a theory of cultural renewal. As his there-and-back-again story conveys, faith can foster humility, of the mind and of the heart, and a desire to see others with the love that they believe God sees in people.

Yes, religion gives us ready-made morality, comforting fictions, and, of course, a community of fellow believers. That’s about all the “meaning” it offers. As for its “humanizing” power, how does believing in fiction “humanize” you? Sure, you can cite the Golden Rule, but secularists have made the same argument. And there’s nothing in humanism that promotes misogyny, hatred of non-humanists, or the like—the ubiquitous downsides of religion.  Was Parrales thinking of all religions when he wrote that, including Islam, Hinduism, fundamentalist Christianity, and so on? Are those “humanizing” faiths?

But Parrales emphasizes in his piece that Beha’s falling in love with a woman (curiously, an atheist who remains a nonbeliever!) is what brought him back to Jesus.  We hear the usual arguments that stuff like “love” cannot be explained or understood by scientists, something that’s completely irrelevant to the evidence for gods. Perrales:

For Beha, though, falling in love was more than merely analogous to having faith; it was a catalyst. More than a decade after first reading Russell, he began seeing someone. It went poorly at first—he acted “wooden and self-conscious” and rambled about his literary ambitions while she nodded politely. (“She was not the kind of person who judged other people on what they did for a living,” Beha writes.) But once he changed course and tried to make her laugh instead, she taught him two things: that he could, and that he was “still capable” of both being happy and making another person so. Within a year, they were engaged.

That wasn’t the only change. He quit drinking. His depression receded. The thought of having kids, something he had previously written off as a futile act, now appealed to him. As he tells the story, atheism became untenable not primarily through an argument, but because of its inability to explain how his future wife had changed him. “My life was filled with love,” he writes, “but there was something in this love that demanded I make sense of it.”

The various forms of atheism espoused by the thinkers he’d read seemed unable to provide an explanation. The scientific bent exemplified by atheists such as Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett offered, in his view, a reductive account of his love, flattening it to “a physical sensation, a neurochemical process in the brain,” a handshake between dopamine and oxytocin. Romantic idealism—Beha’s term for the belief of atheists such as Friedrich Nietzsche that each individual must fashion meaning in a meaningless universe—could not contend with the fact that Beha hadn’t brought about his newfound sense of meaning on his own. It was external, at the mercy of someone else.

To Beha’s surprise, the Catholic faith that he thought he had left behind provided the meaning he was seeking. Inspired by medieval-Christian mysticism—a tradition that emphasizes contemplation and a “willingness to live with perplexity”—and the New Testament’s claim that God is not just loving but love itself, he started attending Mass once again.

Surprise! Beha found that Catholicism was a perfect fit, like a jigsaw puzzle with only one piece left. How convenient!  Contemplation, of course, is not the purview of just Catholicism (many humanists meditate), and of course a scientific frame of mind (or rationality itself) mandates being a diehard skeptic. There are no bigger skeptics and doubters than scientists, for it’s a professional virtue.

There’s more, but I’ll add just one more bit. Perrales describes others, notably Ayaan Hirsi Ali and J. D. Vance, of also finding solace in religion, not because of its truth claims but because it’s a remedy for a “lack of meaning”

Take the writer and activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali. In 2023, after many years as a committed atheist, she described her conversion to Christianity as being motivated by a desire to “fight off” the “formidable forces” of authoritarianism, Islam, and “woke ideology.” She made no mention of Christ, or of love. At a 2021 conference, J. D. Vance described his conversion to Catholicism by saying, “I really like that the Catholic Church was just really old. I felt like the modern world was constantly in flux. The things that you believed 10 years ago were no longer even acceptable to believe 10 years later.” The British rapper Zuby posted on X a few years ago that “the West is absolutely screwed if it loses Christianity.” (The post received nearly 2 million views and earned a reply from Elon Musk, who said, “I think you’re probably right.”)

Parrales hasn’t done his homework, for, as I recall, Hirsi Ali did admit she accepted the tenets of Christianity. At first I couldn’t find the proof, but Grok gave me the evidence:

In a live debate with Richard Dawkins at the Dissident Dialogues Festival in New York on June 3, 2024 (hosted by UnHerd), Hirsi Ali explicitly addressed her acceptance of key tenets. When Dawkins pressed her on whether she believes in the virgin birth and Resurrection, she responded affirmatively to the latter, stating, “I choose to believe that Jesus rose from the dead.”

She framed this as a deliberate choice rooted in her personal spiritual experience, including answered prayers during a time of crisis, which led her to embrace the “story of Jesus Christ” as a symbol of redemption and rebirth.

Here’s the video, so check for yourself, (start 7 minutes in). Hirsi Ali is reluctant to admit her specific beliefs, perhaps because it’s embarrassing.  I don’t get the “I choose to believe” claim. Because you “choose” to believe what you find consoling doesn’t make it true!
As I recall, the audience in this debate was firmly on Ayaan’s side, but I haven’t listened to this debate for several years.

At any rate, I was sad to see The Atlantic boosting faith, and boosting it as a medicine that can give meaning to our otherwise meaningless lives.

Readers’ wildlife photos

March 15, 2026 • 8:30 am

Mark Sturtevant has returned with some excellent arthropod photos. Mark’s caption and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge his photos by clicking on them. Note that his stacking method is time-consuming; the third picture, he says, took “weeks,” and he’s still not finished.

Here is another set of local insect pictures, all manual focus stacks from either a staged setting from where I live in eastern Michigan, or at a local park.

The first was a visitor at the porch light. This beetle is a female stag beetle (Dorcus parallelus), and I was surprised about the ID because it was barely an inch long. Males of this species have mandibles only slightly larger than those in females:

The next picture is a Longhorn Beetle, Astyleiopus variegatus:

Next is a scene of symbiotic interactions between aphids and ants, where the aphids bribe the ants into protecting them by producing sugary secretions. The ants appear to be New York Carpenter Ants (Camponotus novaeboracensis), and I don’t know why they are called that since the species has a very wide range in the U.S. They are here tending aphids of an unknown species on a thistle plant. This picture is in a way impossible since an extreme macro picture like this cannot have much depth of focus, and it is also impossible to extend focus by conventional focus stacking since ants never sit still. So I’ve been spending weeks extending the depth of this picture from bits and pieces of several pictures. I am still not done doing this, but Mark needs a break so out it goes, into the public:

Dragonflies are next. These too are quick manual focus stacks but with a telephoto lens. Probably my favorite field for photographing dragons is a two hour drive away, but it is worth it because there is a field that is swarming with many species, including species that I don’t see elsewhere.

The first of these is a Common Green Darner Anax junius, which is a common species but what was exciting for me was that this is a male. Females land. Females are so easy to photograph that I usually don’t even bother. But males? No. Males fly pretty much all day, and I seldom get a chance with them:

But the best reason to visit the “dragonfly field” are its Clubtail dragonflies (Family Gomphidae). The main flight season for Clubtails is June, so that is when I make a point to visit the dragonfly field where there are ten documented species from this family. I have photographed all but two from there. Clubtail dragonflies tend to be marked in yellow and black, and they have a thickened end on their abdomen. But not all species have this color scheme, and some are more ‘club-tailed’ than others. A couple things to like about them as a group are the many species, and their reliability for perching on or near the ground. This is in stark contrast to certain other dragonflies (i.e., male Green Darners!)

The first of these are some of the ‘big-club’ Clubtails, and we start with a Midland Clubtail (Gomphurus fraternus):

The next is the impressively clubbed Cobra Clubtail (Gomphurus vastus):

And here is another one, the Skillet Clubtail (Gomphurus ventricosus), which is perched on Poison Ivy. Just to make things interesting, much of the ground cover in the dragonfly field is Poison Ivy. You should not even touch this stuff:

Do you see the differences in the above three species? Me neither! But upon close comparison, there are small differences in their markings that can be discerned. Most of the time when I am out there, I don’t know what big club species I am photographing.

Not all Gomphids are like the above. Here is a Lancet Clubtail (Phanogomphus exilis), which is probably the most common Gomphid in this park:

And here is an example of a very different dragonfly in the clubtail family, the Rusty Snaketail (Ophiogomphus rupinsulensis). There is another species of snaketail in the field, but it is rare and I have yet to see it. Just another reason to make the drive every June:

Now all of the above species of dragonflies are under 2” in length, so considerably shorter than your little finger. But dragonfly field hosts the largest Clubtail in the U.S. called the Dragonhunter (Hagenius brevistylus), which is about 3.5” long — the length of your index finger.

Does that still seem small? I promise if you see one you will stop and stare. Everyone does, because in the field they look big. The Dragonhunter is not even the largest of our dragonflies but they are probably the heaviest. Dragonhunters get their common name from their habit of eating other dragonflies. Admittedly, most dragonflies do that, but Dragonhunters seem to have a reputation for it. Even though I have seen many dozens by now, they always get my undivided attention when one goes cruising by:

Bob Trivers died

March 15, 2026 • 7:42 am

. . . at least according to this post from Quillette and response from Steve Stewart-Williams. And, as I wrote this short post, his Wikipedia bio was updated to show that he died on March 12 at 83.

I knew the guy, though not well, and he was a complex individual, capable of making great advances in evolutionary theory (early in his career) but also to self-sabotage.  I have stories about him, but I can’t really recount them here.  I’ll just put up the first two paragraphs of his Wikipedia bio in lieu of an obituary. Unfortunately, it shows he was in the Epstein files (but so was I):

Robert Ludlow “Bob” Trivers  born February 19, 1943) is an American evolutionary biologist and sociobiologist. Trivers proposed the theories of reciprocal altruism (1971), parental investment (1972), facultative sex ratio determination (1973), and parent–offspring conflict (1974). He has also contributed by explaining self-deception as an adaptive evolutionary strategy (first described in 1976) and discussing intragenomic conflict.

Some of Trivers’ work was funded by Jeffrey Epstein, and Trivers later defended the convicted criminal’s reputation.[3] In 2015 he was suspended from Rutgers University after he refused to teach an assigned course.

Sunday: Hili dialogue

March 15, 2026 • 6:45 am

Welcome to a gray Sunday, with snow in the offing tomorrow for Chicago. Oy!.

It’s Sunday, March 15, 2026, the dreaded Ides of March, the day on which Julius Caesar was assassinated in 44 BC.  Here’s a painting of the aftermath, with the Wikipedia caption, “Aftermath of the attack with Caesar’s body abandoned in the foreground, La Mort de César by Jean-Léon Gérôme, c. 1859–1867”.  Click to enlarge, and be careful out there!

Jean-Léon Gérôme, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

It’s also National Egg Cream Day, a classic drink of New York Jews that contains neither eggs nor cream, National Peanut Lovers Day, and National Pears Hélène Day (poached pears with vanilla ice cream and chocolate or caramel sauce).  Here’s a bunch of those pears; the dessert sounds good but I’ve never had it:

Comrade Foot from Taastrup, Greater Copenhagen Region, Denmark, Scandinavia., CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Oh, and yesterday (3/14) was Pi Day, and there was a Google Doodle. It takes you to an AI question! Click to see where it goes (hint: it has something to do with Archimedes)

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the March 15 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*Well, the U.S. finally attacked Iran’s Kharg Island in the Persian Gulf, the off-loading point for 90% of Iran’s oil. But only military targets were struck; apparently the pipelines and such weren’t touched.

President Trump said on social media that the U.S. military had conducted a large bombing raid on Friday on Kharg Island, a key port and Iran’s oil export hub. Mr. Trump said the raid had “totally obliterated” military forces on the island, but that he had directed the Pentagon not to damage its oil infrastructure, “for reasons of decency.”

The global price of oil has surged by 40 percent since the United States and Israel began the war with Iran last month.

The strikes on Kharg Island targeted all of the military infrastructure on the island, a military official said. U.S. Air Force bombers struck missile storage sites, as well as sites that housed Iranian mines, the official said. He said the United States did not target the economic infrastructure on the island.

A senior official from Iran’s Oil Ministry said the attacks on the island were enormous and destructive, and that employees of the oil refineries reported nearly two hours of nonstop explosions and airstrikes that shook the island like an earthquake.

The senior official, who asked not to be named because he was discussing sensitive issues, said that an attack on Kharg Island’s oil and gas infrastructure would immediately halt a major part of Iran’s oil exports, with severe economic and infrastructure consequences.

Kharg Island is one of Iran’s most strategic and critical energy outposts, situated deep into the Persian Gulf’s north, about 20 miles off the mainland’s coast. About 90 percent of Iran’s oil exports go through Kharg. The island has huge oil storage facilities, and pipelines from the island are connected by sea to some of Iran’s largest oil and gas fields.

Decency my tuchas! Trump doesn’t know the meaning of the word. If he destroyed the oil infrastructure on the island, gas prices would shoot up beyond reason, perhaps to $200 a barrel.  Remember that Bret Stephens recommended that the U.S. seize the island:

What, then, should the Trump administration do? My prescription: Seize Kharg Island. Mine or blockade Iran’s remaining ports. Destroy as much Iranian military capability as possible over the next week or two, including a second Midnight Hammer operation to destroy what’s left of Iran’s nuclear capacity and know-how. And threaten the regime with further bombing if it massacres its own citizens, mounts terrorist attacks abroad or returns to nuclear work.

I don’t know if this will bring an end to the war acceptable to Trump (or America, which is much less keen on the war), but seizing Kharg Island means no more oil from Iran, and would have the same effect, though the flow could begin again soon. (But under what conditions?)

*We have a credible motive for the man who drive a firework-laden vehicle into a Detroit synagogue, and then died (via suicide) after a firefight with private guards.  The man was born in Labeanon and lost family members in that country during an airstrike last week. Bolding is mine.

The man who rammed his truck into a Michigan synagogue on Thursday killed himself during a firefight with security guards, after his vehicle became lodged in a hallway during the attack, law enforcement officials said on Friday.

The vehicle was loaded with fireworks, and the engine apparently caught fire during the gunfight, Jennifer Runyan, the special agent in charge of the F.B.I. office in Detroit, said at a news conference on Friday evening.

The attacker, identified by federal officials as Ayman Mohamad Ghazali, a 41-year-old naturalized U.S. citizen born in Lebanon, lived in Dearborn Heights, Mich., which is home to a large Muslim community about 20 minutes from the synagogue in West Bloomfield Township. Both towns are suburbs of Detroit.

Mr. Ghazali lost four relatives in an airstrike in Lebanon last week, according to a Lebanese official, who said he knew the family. A Dearborn Heights mosque held a memorial for Mr. Ghazali’s slain family members on Sunday, according to its imam, Hassan Qazwini of the Islamic Institute of America.

The attacker had “no criminal history and no registered weapons,” and had never been the subject of an F.B.I. investigation, Ms. Runyan said, refusing to speculate about his possible motives. He sat in his vehicle that was parked outside of the synagogue, Temple Israel, for about two hours before driving into the building.

He was still in the vehicle when he exchanged gunfire with at least two security officers inside, she said. “At some point during the gunfight, Ghazali suffers a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head,” she added. No one else was killed, and some 140 students and their teachers were evacuated from the building without injury.

Ms. Runyan is a blockhead.  The motivation is almost certainly hatred of Jews and Israel prompted by the death of the attacker’s family.  And note how the NYT gives almost equal sympathy for Jews and Muslims in its article:

The episode heightened fears among Jews in Michigan and across the United States. A wave of rising antisemitism in America has been exacerbated by the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran, which has extended into attacks by Israel on Lebanon in an attempt to root out the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah.

It also prompted anxiety for members of the area’s large Arab community, who braced for extra scrutiny after they learned that the attacker was from Lebanon. “This tragedy comes at a time when communities everywhere are confronting rising hate and senseless violence,” said Mayor Mo Baydoun of Dearborn Heights, where the attacker worked at a popular Mediterranean restaurant.

Listen, NYT, extra scrutiny is not the same thing as shooting people.  And so far there have been far, far more attacks on Jews than on Muslims, so yes, the FBI should be looking harder at the Muslim community than at Jews if they’re trying stave off terrorist attacks.

*This trial was the first of its kind: in Texas there were convictions for most of the nine Americans accused of terrorism for shooting a police officer at an ICE facility last July 4. (Article is archived here.)

A jury delivered a mixed verdict Friday afternoon in connection with the shooting of a police officer at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility last summer, convicting most of the nine members of an alleged “antifa cell” for supporting terrorists and one of the group for attempted murder. The landmark verdict was seen as a win in the Trump administration’s efforts to crack down on left-wing protesters that it has branded as an organized network of “domestic terrorists.”

“These verdicts make clear that those who choose violence over lawful expression will face the full force of the American justice system,”said ICE Director Todd M. Lyons.“Those who target federal officers with intimidation, ambush tactics or political violence will be investigated, prosecuted and held accountable.”

Attorneys for the defendants cast the verdicts as defeats for free speech.

“I feel like the U.S. lost here with this verdict and what it means for future defendants,” said Christopher Weinbel, an assistant federal public defender. He added that he was especially dismayed by the verdict as a U.S. Army veteran who deployed six times. “I feel like it turned its back on justice with this.”

. . .The charges stemmed from what the defendants’ attorneys called a “noise demonstration” July 4 outside Prairieland Immigration and Customs Enforcement Detention Center in nearby Alvarado, Texas, that left a police officer shot and wounded.

The nine defendants, indicted by a grand jury collectively last fall, include alleged ringleader Benjamin Song, a former Marine reservist; Savanna Batten; Zachary Evetts; Autumn Hill; Meagan Morris; Maricela Rueda; and a couple, Elizabeth and Ines Soto. The accused included a middle school teacher, a college student, a mechanical engineer and a UPS worker.

They faced a combination of charges, including attempted murder, rioting, providing support to terrorists, conspiracy to use and carry explosives and conspiracy to corruptly conceal documents. One of the nine, Daniel Sanchez-Estrada, was not at the scene and was accused of later trying to hide a box of “anti-government propaganda.”

Eight of the defendants (except Sanchez-Estrada) were convicted of providing support for terrorists, riot and explosives charges (fireworks). Only Song was convicted of attempted murder for shooting the officer. Sanchez-Estrada was convicted of concealing documents and conspiracy to conceal documents (his wife, Rueda, was also convicted of the conspiracy charge). Hill, Evetts, Morris and Rueda were acquitted of attempted murder and discharging a firearm charges.

. . . All pleaded not guilty and did not testify at the two-week trial. Most faced potential life sentences. Sentencing has been scheduled for June 18. Prosecutors said Song now faces 20 years to life in prison; Batten, Evetts, Hill, Morris, Rueda, Elizabeth and Ines Soto each face 10 to 60 years; Sanchez Estrada faces up to 40 years in prison.

This was an antifa-like attack, if not by an antifa organization itself. In fact, one of the items the jury asked to see during its two-day deliberation was Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook.  And no, it isn’t freedom of speech if there was a conspiracy that led to immediate violence during the protest.

*Quillette has an interview with Dr. Schmeul Bar, a former Israeli intelligence officer who prognosticates about Iran’s future (article archived here).  A bit of the long exchange:

Q: People are trying to figure out the potential scenarios at hand. Trump is determined to avoid a long war of attrition, while Netanyahu might insist on continuing until all stated goals are met. Is the primary aim of both parties to destroy Iran’s nuclear capabilities?

SB: First, Iran could develop a destructive capability against Israel even without nuclear weapons. Israel will not accept this. So Israel had to take advantage of Iran’s weakness to eliminate Iran’s conventional capabilities. Second, the Iranian economy is in hyperinflation, people in big cities like Tehran, Isfahan, and Mashhad have about two or three hours of water a day. When you buy bread, the shop can’t buy a new loaf because the price of tomorrow’s bread has already gone up by twenty percent. There simply isn’t the money so the stores are empty.

So what are Iranians going to do if they don’t go out on to the streets to protest the state of the economy? They are saying, “Look at what you’ve done to us, you are throwing your money into Hamas and nuclear missiles instead of feeding us.” You have a deteriorating economy caught in a downward spiral, and a situation where Israel has a vested interest in getting rid of your missiles. And the June 2025 war showed that Israel knows a thing or two about what’s going on in Iran, and how to take out its senior figures.

As for Trump, it is probably best to avoid newspaper-like analysis that asks what he is doing today or tomorrow. Trump is saying, “Iran is weak and the Iranian people want to get rid of the regime, so all I have to do is push.” Let’s not forget that the regime has been chanting “Death to America!” for 47 years, and that it has murdered Americans. So from Trump’s point of view, he is taking revenge for all that and getting rid of a regime that the Democrats before him failed to remove. The way he sees it is: “In the end, I will have destroyed the most anti-American regime and made the Arab countries beholden to me as a result.” That is a win-win for Trump.

. . . Q: What does the future hold for Iran?

SB: The regime will start to crumble as the people within the IRGC and the army start to ask themselves, “What exactly are we doing here?” These are historic times. We’re talking about the emergence of a new world order. We don’t always realise when we are in the middle of that sort of change, but such a change is happening right now. The new world order is spearheaded by a combination of things, including the terrible condition of the Iranian economy and the huge mistake of launching the 7 October massacre. In Saudi Arabia, meanwhile, Muhammad Bin Salman is looking to forge a more Western-oriented and less religious country.

Well, this is just one man’s opinion, but a man who was in IDF intelligence for many years and has a Ph.D. in Middle Eastern History as well as a ton of other credentials. Right now, in the middle of a war whose  outcome is undertain, it’s worth listening to him, if for no other reason than to get an informed viewpoint.

*Over at The Weekly Dish, Andrew Sullivan shows us the darker (to me) side of James Talarico a devout Presbyterian who just became the Democratic nominee for the 2026 U.S. Senate election in Texas.  Sullivan’s piece is called “The Christianism of the Left,” and is subtitled: “Meet James Talarico, the next generation’s religious crusader for woke liberalism.”

 the fusion of Christianity and politics isn’t exclusively right-wing. You can invoke God to defend anything, after all. And a new left-Christianism has emerged in the 21st century that is a mirror image of the right’s. Left-Christians have come to adorn their churches with transqueer and BLM flags, treat NPR as the Holy Office, adopt language — “white supremacy,” “cis-heterosexism,” “patriarchy” — directly from critical theory, and interpret Scripture to mandate higher taxes, DEI, abortion on demand, and open borders. I find that Christianism just as toxic to faith and politics.

. . .Which brings me to James Talarico, the Christianist running for Senate in Texas. After defeating the race-baiting Jasmine Crockett, the MSM is framing him as a “moderate”. To be sure, I’d vote for Talarico in an instant if I were a Texan (restraining the mad king is vital this fall). He’s also a clear speaker, a man of real faith (Democrats need more like him), and a man rightly revolted by the indecency of Trump. He engages Trump voters, including Joe Rogan, and was one of very few Dems to call out Biden’s disastrous record on immigration. All awesome.

But he is also a defiantly woke Christianist: a man fusing the agenda of the far left with Christian theology. He was brought up in Saint Andrew’s Presbyterian Church, a woke congregation in deep-blue Austin, where the Gospel about Peter’s denial of Jesus last week was followed thus:

The preacher … spoke of her own experience living in denial, both in 12-step programs and — due to her internalized homophobia — as a lesbian in a cisgendered, patriarchal world. She then made a sudden switch to talking about Germany in the Thirties, and the parallels with modern America. She performed all the classics: Hitler, Trump, the patriarchy, Pastor Niemöller, the threat of Christian nationalism and, at the end, threw in a bit of “No Kings” for good measure.

This is not atypical in many liberal churches, where prayers for an end to “white supremacy” are routine. So it is no surprise to find that Talarico went to seminary “because I had a pretty big crisis of faith in our political system.” (My italics.) Nor is it surprising that when asked to offer an invocation as a pastor in the Texas legislature, he began:

“Holy mystery, you have so many names.” He cycled through the monikers for God in Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism before arriving at the New Testament’s declaration that God is love.

And in Talarico’s church of woke, Jesus’s teachings are identical to that of a left-wing Democrat of precisely March 2026:

Christ is the immigrant deported without due process. Christ is the senior deprived of their Social Security benefits. Christ is the protestor kidnapped in an unmarked vehicle by plain clothes officers.

It goes on, and I don’t like this Left-wing Christianism at all, for, like Right-wing Christianism uses religion to boost a political agenda. Yes, I’d vote for Talerico over his racist opponent, but he’s now being touted as a Presidential candidate, and I can’t stomach his arrant fusion of politics and Christianity. Please, dear Ceiling Cat, let Pete Buttigieg be the Democratic nominee in 2028!

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili dumps on progressives:

Hili: I see a dangerous escalation of progress.
Andrzej: In whom exactly?
Hili: In the progressives.

In Polish:

Hili: Zauważam niebezpieczną eskalację postępu.
Ja: U kogo?
Hili: U postępowców.

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From Things with Faces (look at the rock at 6 o’clock):

From Give me a Sign:

From Cats Doing Cat Stuff:

From Masih, who tells us that three of the six Iranian women soccer players/staff have withdrawn their request for asylum in Australia and will be heading home. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to understand why (this morning I see that there are now four):

From Emma Hilton; Malcolm Gladwell says that if men aren’t allowed to compete in women’s sports, then, in some bizarre act of repayment women should have to give up some other space they occupy to make things “right”. He’s also a blockhead.

From Luana; a good point:

From Colin; another science journal goes off the rails vis-à-vis biological sex:

One from my feed. Sassy!

One I retweeted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

Two posts from Dr. Cobb. First, Marco Rubio in clown shoes:

hmm

— derek guy (@dieworkwear.bsky.social) 2026-03-11T09:02:35.635Z

. . . and look at the head on this spider!

A funky Pholcid from Mexico. I had no idea that there were Cellar spiders with weird heads. Weird heads are one of my favourite features a spider can have. Modisimus sp.#Pholcidae #CellarSpider #iNaturalist

— Thomas Barbin (@thomasbarbin.bsky.social) 2026-03-09T17:17:19.570Z

If you adhere to a religion, how much of its doctrine (and factual assertions) must you accept?

March 14, 2026 • 11:18 am

Here’s an issue to ponder of a cold Saturday in March.  Many people with some intellectual clout (i.e., they’re not stupid) claim to be religious, and yet when you press them to find out exactly what they believe, they clam up or equivocate.  Some Christian academics I know, for instance, will mumble and change the subject if you ask them about the nature of the God they accept, or whether Jesus revived the dead, and then was crucified and resurrected.  To me this means either that they do not believe the tenets of their religion, or that they do but are embarrassed to admit it.

And yet, as I wrote in Faith versus Fact, I am hardly aware of any religions that do not make factual claims. Here, for example is one version of the Nicene Creed from the United States conference of Catholic bishops.  I’ve have bolded every factual claim:

I believe in one God,
the Father almighty,
maker of heaven and earth,
of all things visible and invisible.

I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ,
the Only Begotten Son of God,
born of the Father before all ages.
God from God, Light from Light,
true God from true God,
begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father;
through him all things were made.
For us men and for our salvation
he came down from heaven,
and by the Holy Spirit was incarnate of the Virgin Mary,
and became man.
For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate,
he suffered death and was buried,
and rose again on the third day
in accordance with the Scriptures.
He ascended into heaven
and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
He will come again in glory
to judge the living and the dead
and his kingdom will have no end.

I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life,
who proceeds from the Father and the Son,
who with the Father and the Son is adored and glorified,
who has spoken through the prophets.

I believe in one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church.
I confess one Baptism for the forgiveness of sins
and I look forward to the resurrection of the dead
and the life of the world to come. Amen.

It’s almost all in bold. As Wikipedia notes: “On Sundays and solemnities, one of these two creeds is recited in the Roman Rite Mass after the homily. In the Byzantine Rite, the Nicene Creed is sung or recited at the Divine Liturgy, immediately preceding the Anaphora (eucharistic prayer) is also recited daily at compline.”

Likewise, Muslims accept the revelation of the Qur’an to Muhammad by an angel, Mormons believe that the angel Moroni hid the golden plates on which the book of Mormon was inscribed, and then revealed them to Joseph Smith. Hindus, in contrast, believe in many gods manifesting parts of one reality. Buddhists don’t believe in God, but do embrace things like rebirth and karma.

The point is clear, every religion depends on a set of core beliefs, and if you reject them you’re not very credible as embracing that religion. You can hardly call yourself a Christian, for example, if you don’t believe in the existence of Jesus as a divine being, and in his crucifixion, resurrection, and a form of God made human. (Remember, “extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence.”)

But now all sorts of people are publishing bestselling books about how they made their way back to religion after a period of nonbelief, why atheism is wrong because it can’t explain a fine-tuned universe, consciousness, and so on.  And yet these same people are willing to change their entire lives based on nonexistent evidence. Others say they don’t need no stinking evidence; they believe because it makes sense or resonates with them (this is why Ross Douthat is a Christian rather than a Muslim).

So here’s the question to ponder and discuss:

Can you really call yourself adherent to a given religion if you don’t accept the fundamental tenets of that religion?

Granted “fundamental tenets” is a slippery term, and people’s religious mileage varies, but when someone publicly professes that they are religious, it seems fair to ask them, “So tell me: which claims of your religion do you accept, and which do you reject?” For some reason, though, people treat religion as off limits in that way: they don’t have to answer you.

Caturday felid trifecta: Eighteen celebrities who love cats; a cat that steals bras; cat with an emotional support potato; and lagniappe

March 14, 2026 • 9:45 am

We have three items today, all with videos. First is a video compilation of 18 celebrities who are cat lovers. You’ll have heard of some of these ailurophiles, like Taylor Swift and Rickey Gervais (owner of Pickle), while others, like Martha Stewart, Roberty Downey, Jr. and Nicole Kidman, were surprises.  Sit back and enjoy the videos, which show both entitled moggies and their famous staff:

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This article about a bra-swiping cat comes from IHeartCats, and there’s a video below.

An excerpt. The cat is named Anna:

At first, no one realized a pattern was forming. Small things began to appear around the house without explanation. A plastic bag left neatly in the hallway. A random object resting near the couch. Anna would sit nearby, calm and observant, as if waiting for someone to notice. Over time, her behavior evolved into something far more specific and unforgettable.

Anna developed a habit of bringing bras from all over the house and placing them in the most unexpected locations. The middle of the living room. Right outside a bedroom door. Sometimes beside someone who was still fast asleep. Each item was carefully carried, never dragged or abandoned. To Anna, these were not stolen objects. They were gifts.

Her timing is part of the charm. Anna does not limit her deliveries to convenient hours. She prefers moments when the house is quiet and still. Early mornings. Late nights. That is when she seems most focused, padding softly across the floor with her prize, completely committed to the task at hand.

She also appears to enjoy keeping everyone guessing. The bras are rarely the same. They do not belong to Sarah most of the time, which only adds to the confusion and laughter. Anna seems delighted by the reaction she gets, even if she pretends not to notice. Her bright eyes and relaxed posture suggest she feels proud of her work.

One night, Sarah woke suddenly in the darkness and found Anna in the middle of a delivery. The house was silent. The moment felt surreal. Anna had brought not one, but two bras. She placed them carefully, then paused as if to admire her effort. Neither item belonged to Sarah. That detail somehow made the experience even more amusing.

Anna was adopted from a shelter in 2016, and from the very beginning, she stood out. Sarah had never encountered a cat quite like her. Anna was expressive, curious, and full of tiny habits that made her feel almost human in her determination. Every quirk seemed to reveal a little more of her personality.

It is hard not to wonder what goes through Anna’s mind during these deliveries. Perhaps she feels a sense of purpose. Perhaps she believes she is contributing to the household in her own meaningful way. Her body language suggests confidence and satisfaction, as if she knows she is doing something important.

Over time, Anna’s strange routine has become a source of comfort and joy. Her gifts are a reminder of how deeply animals connect with their humans, even when their methods are unconventional. What began as a mystery has turned into a beloved part of daily life.

Appaently Anna is an outdoor cat, as some of the bras she delivers to her staff don’t belong to the female member. Also, the fact that Anna’s a girl cat keeps her from being labeled a pervert.

Here’s a two-minute video of Anna delivering bras to her staff. They are apparently “presents.”  They could prevent this by simply keeping the bras out of reach of the cat.  As for why Anna prefers bras above other objects, that will remain a mystery. Perhaps science can tackle the question.

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Speaking of weird cats, here’s Nugget, who is no longer with us, but while alive required emotional support potatoes.  He seems to like yams as well. Nugget’s story goes up to 1:13, and then unfortunately segues into the story of a nosey dg named Nola, who likes to climb trees and then, at 2:24, to another dg named Mojo who required emotional support tennis balls. The videos are from Jenn, a well-known figure on Facebook, also known as “The Good News Girl,” who is famous for “posting something positive every day.”

 

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Lagniappe: We have a 3-minute video showing the doings of Larry, the Chief Mouser to the Cabinet Office at 10 Downing Street.  Larry is a senior cat, 19 years old, and he’s been in his job since 2011, so this is his fifteenth anniversary at the Prime Minister’s residence. Here Larry addresses the recent arrest of Peter Mandelson, former UK ambassador to the US, now accused of micsonduct in office. It also shows all the attention Larry gets from those lucky enough to enter Downing Street.

As you’ll see, Larry has a dry sense of humor.

h/t: Ginger K

Crick, Cobb, London

March 14, 2026 • 8:30 am

by Greg Mayer

On my visit to England earlier this year, one of my goals was to get a copy of Crick, Matthew’s award-winning biography of Francis Crick, co-proposer of the now well-known double helix structure for DNA. Like Jerry, I prefer the dust jacket of the British edition, and thought it would be fitting to get a copy of the British edition in Britain.

I first looked in the very extensive gift shop of the British Museum. It had many biographies, on a wide range of personages, but relatively few on scientists (or science books in general)– a clerk I queried kindly explained the shop’s offerings.

It did, however, have a fine selection of cat books.

My next try was at the Natural History Museum gift shop, which had a nice book section, but not nearly as large as that at the British Museum, and no Crick.

With the days of our stay running low, my wife and I did a half-day of shopping, and headed to Foyles, which had been recommended to us.

Checking Foyles’ website, the Charing Cross Road shop had copies. The store was a revelation– I have not seen a bookstore like this in the US for many years– I could have spent a lot of time there!

But we were on a quest, so we headed straight to the “Biography” section on the ground floor, but no Crick. A clerk explained to us that if it wasn’t there among the recent biographies, there was a large biography section upstairs. Upstairs, again, no luck. A clerk there, when queried, though, said right away to check the science section, pointing us towards it, and success!

I am not quite done reading it yet, but I have learned much and heartily recommend it. Although but a small part of the story, I was intrigued by Matthew’s account of how the order of authorship was determined for the 4 papers on DNA that Watson and Crick published in 1953-1954.

There were three other items on my list of things to find in London: first, Jerry’s favorite English beer, Timothy Taylor’s Landlord– done!

We got it at the Zetland Arms, not far from the Natural History Museum in South Kensington.

Then, an Everton scarf, which we tried for at Lillywhites, a big sporting goods store off Piccadilly Circus. When my wife said “blue and white scarf” to the clerk, he smiled and said “Chelsea, of course”, but when we explained it was Everton, he said it was 50-50 at best (they had maybe half the Premier League club scarfs), and Everton was among the missing. I thought we were out of luck, but we stopped at the Museum Superstore, a tourist trap souvenir shop two doors down from the British Museum, looking for some tea tins, but my wife emerged from the back of the store with an Everton scarf— qapla’!

I had also been hoping to get a book on British amphibians and reptiles more up to date than my copy of Nick Arnold’s book. There are a few such books, but, alas, neither Foyles nor the Natural History Museum had one. 🙁