Category: journalism

Bari Weiss makes her CBS debut: a discussion with Erika Kirk

December 15, 2025 • 9:45 am

As I reported before, Bari Weiss, former NYT columnist and then founder of The Free Press, has become Editor-in-Chief of CBS News as the Free Press has joined Paramount, which owns CBS.  I was wary of this for one reason: how this might slant CBS News, though I never watch it anyway. The Free Press is heterodox and, most disturbingly, seems to be soft on religion. Will that infect CBS?

On Saturday night Weiss made her first appearance as a CBS news person, hosting a 45-minute “town hall meeting” with Erika Kirk, the widow of recently assassinated Charlie Kirk, head of  the conservative organization Turning Point USA (TPUSA).  I’ve put the video below.

It was not a propitious interview; in fact, it was pretty boring and repetitive. But that might have been because Erika Kirk seems to be a one-note person, devoted not only to dutifully following the principles of her husband, whom she idolized, but especially devoted to proselytizing about Jesus and God. For religion is one of the main pivots of both Kirk and TPUSA. (Kirk recently issued a book urging us all to rest on the Biblical Sabbath, called Stop, in the Name of God: Why Honoring the Sabbath Will Transform Your Life.)

The format of this town hall will probably be the one Weiss uses in her future town halls, and she promises many of them. She interviews a subject, and then select members of the audience (an audience relevant to the speaker’s beliefs) ask questions. You can see the video below.

First, let me note that Kirk is entitled to her beliefs, though I don’t think Weiss did her any favors by allowing her to proselytize ad infinitum in the interview.  Second, I do have immense sympathy for Ms. Kirk, who is left with two small children after her husband’s brutal assassination.  And the joy and glee that came out when Kirk was killed was unseemly, and surely deeply hurtful to Erika. This is not a critique of Erika Kirk, but of the show itself. And I’ll add that though I think Kirk’s murder was abhorrent and reprehensible, I still disagreed with almost all of his political stands, stands instantiated in TPUSA.

What struck me most were two things: Kirk’s evasion of any questions that were “hard”, like one asking her if she condemned Trump’s violent political rhetoric or whether words could constitute violence. Her response was almost invariably to say that the Lord (aka Jesus) will take care of everything.  For example, when she was asked whether she’d condemn Trump’s political rhetoric that was sometimes violent, she simply said that the problem was “so much deeper than just one person.” When asked to respond to Charlie’s opposition to the Civil Rights Act, she simply said that she was in favor of merit. (The Civil Rights Act was not “affirmative action” it was enacted to give blacks their Constitutional rights.)

The other issue was Kirk’s incessant proselytyzing. When asked why, she thought, God/Jesus allowed Kirk to be murdered, she said that it unleashed a big revival (I doubt it), that “the Lord is moving in ways we have no idea, and that God is going to use Charlie’s death to show the world something. Big.  God, she thinks, will use the event to allow her “to bring glory to her and his kingdom.”

The father of a murdered Jewish person asks Erika about growing antisemitism on the Right, and will she condemn individuals spreading that hate? She responds simply that we all need the Lord and Saviour (she’s referring to Jesus, but the guy asking questions was a Jew). She adds, “You cannot separate the Old Testament from the New Testament,” but I doubt she believes that. Kirk himself, though a supporter of Israel, made several remarks that seem overtly antisemitic, and TPUSA is aligned heavily with the Christian right. You do not tout Jesus to Jews.

It is God and Jesus all the way down, and Weiss did not question the foundations of Kirk’s faith, which perhaps would have been an unfair question give Erika’s emotionality.

Kirk reiterates constantly the fact that Charlie only wanted to have conversations, but that’s a bit of dissimulation, for Charlie Kirk was firm in his right-wing ideology and I doubt the conversations would ever have changed his mind. I applaud the desire to have mutual, civil, and nonviolent exchanges of views, but those conversations should be conducted in a way that each person should be able to tell us what evidence would change their minds. Charlie would never change his mind, despite the fact that he sat behind tables with signs making provocative statements and adding . . . “Change my mind.”

To her credit, Weiss and others do try to ask some hard question, like how does she intend to take up Charlie’s mission while maintaining a family. (Answer: the Lord will help her do it, and, anyway TPUSA is not a job, but her family.) When asked how she was able to trust God in the “midst of unfair and immense suffering,” Erika cites the story of Job, who was made by God to suffer for no good reason, but in the end came out okay simply because Job prayed for his friends, which made the angry God change His mind. I have never understood the point of that story, but theologians have tied themselves in knots trying to interpret it in a way that puts God in a good light.

Kirk’s views are all summed up in her answer to Weiss’s question about how she met Charlie. Erika responds that the Lord helped her to find Charlie in a job interview, and Erika asked God if Charlie was the right guy. He was, for, as Erika says, “If I remain in the jetstream of God’s will, then he will provide for you.”  And that’s pretty much her answer to every question in the town hall.

This was not a good first foray of Weiss into t.v. journalism, but surely things will improve as Weiss interviews people who don’t cling to superstition. But the goddiness of this show struck me as overbearing and unevidenced, and I hope religion is not a frequent “Town Hall Topic”.

One more note before I get to the video. Variety weighed in on the Town Hall, and not in a positive way; click to read:

The content:

During a Saturday-night town hall led by Bari Weiss, the recently named editor in chief of CBS News, most of Madison Avenue sought an off-ramp.

The program featured an in-depth interview with Erika Kirk, the CEO of the conservative advocacy organization Turning Point USA and the widow of Charlie Kirk, the group’s former leader. He was assassinated during one of the organization’s events at Utah Valley University, throwing a harsh spotlight on the political and cultural divides present in the U.S.

The event marked a new offering from CBS News. The organization does not typically host town halls or debates on trending issues or with newsmakers. And the choice of Weiss as moderator also raised eyebrows, because in most modern TV-news organizations, senior editorial executives remain off camera, rather than appearing in front of it.

More may be on the way. During the program, Weiss told viewers that “CBS is going to have many more conversations like this in the weeks and months ahead, so stay tuned. More town halls. More debates. More talking about the things that matter.” That would suggest CBS is planning to devote more hours to the programs.

The news special aired at 8 p.m. on Saturday, one of the least-watched hours in broadcast TV. And that may have contributed to a relative dearth of top advertisers appearing to support the show. During the hour, commercial breaks were largely filled with spots from direct-response advertisers, including the dietary supplement SuperBeets; the home-repair service HomeServe.com; and CarFax, a supplier of auto ownership data. Viewers of the telecast on WCBS, CBS’ flagship station in New York, even saw a commercial for Chia Pet, the terra-cotta figure that sprouts plant life after a few weeks.

Now, after that long introduction, here’s the video. Feel free and encouraged to weigh in below.

Bill Maher’s latest “New Rules” (plus bonus video on “The War on Science” anthology)

October 23, 2025 • 9:30 am

In Bill Maher’s latest comedy/politics bit on Real Time —called“F with your algorithm—he calls out people for assuming that because he criticizes the left, he must be a right-winger. This criticism hits home for me, as I’ve been accused of the same thing.  As Maher notes, he’s been criticized for being a right-winger by people who deliberately ignore his criticisms of the right—even though he does that as well, and often.  People don’t like to call attention to things that make them uncomfortable.

One example is our joint anthology, The War on Science, which was attacked for criticizing the left’s erosion of science when in fact many of its authors are liberals. The slant of the book apparently angered some “progressives,” who argued (many without having read the book), that it should have been aimed instead at the right (which also damages science).  My response to these critics is pretty much the same as Maher’s, but this is a family-oriented site so I will simply echo what Maher says at 1:07.

As Maher says, “If you think your job is to tell people what you want to hear, you’re not a journalist—you’re a wedding D.J.”  He gives examples of his own demonization for being a right-winger when, in his piece, he had in fact he’d criticized both right and left. Much of the reportage on Maher’s so-called conservatism (he’s a classical liberal) involves deliberately distorting or truncating his views. Maher may seem a bit defensive, but he deserves to be!

(The guests appear to be Mark Cuban and Andrew Ross Sorkin.)

At the end he analogizes this journalistic tactic  to how websites and devices also type their users, developing algorithms that, as we all know, aim their ad at users who, they think, will bite. His solution? Mess with those computer algorithms by clicking on things that you don’t like or want. That has a side benefit.  You’re a liberal like most of us, start reading conservative sites: that will do you good anyway.

Apropos of Maher’s monologue, we have a new video (below) about The War on Science book, or rather about its thesis. Lawrence Krauss, author of the anthology, says this about the  100-minute video (I haven’t yet watched it):

We’re closing our campaign of interviews and discussions for the book with something special: the official broadcast video of the War on Science Panel Discussion. This was a remarkable event put on as a collaboration between The Origins Project Foundation and the Free Speech Union, their largest ever event in fact, celebrating the book’s launch.

You can now watch the full video, where I was joined by several eminent contributors including Richard Dawkins, Alice Sullivan, John Armstrong, Alan Sokal, and Amy Wax. We debated the causes of, and solutions to, the ideological and political capture we’re witnessing in mathematics, the natural sciences, theoretical physics, medicine, and even government statistics. It was a good-natured but feisty exchange of ideas across political divides, driven by a panel of speakers who care passionately about truth and reason, all chaired by FSU founder Lord Toby Young.

This discussion really captures the core of the entire project: a candid exchange about the very real problems facing science and academia, and a necessary defense of free inquiry and objective truth.

Reader Bat recommended this video in an email:

I am finding it very engaging. I have read the full book of essays and maybe that helps me appreciate the authors’ verbalizing, but in any case I find it to be surprisingly fresh and engaging.  It is nice to have both of the two mathematicians on the panel, and for two reasons: 1. It forewarns people that even math is under serious woke attack; and 2. Both guys give very nice talks of what hogwash the attacks are.

The Free Press is joining Paramount and CBS

October 6, 2025 • 9:25 am

These rumors have been floating around for a while, and now they’re verified: The Free Press has been bought by Paramount, of which CBS television is the flagship property, though apparently the website is to remain unaltered. (Remember, the kids may read the Internet but they do NOT watch CBS!)

The Free Press (“TFP”) is of course a website, founded by Bari Weiss when she found that she could not write what she wanted at the New York Times. And the site has been wildly successful, morphing into a more centrist version of the NYT, and printing things that wouldn’t appear in the MSM: works by, for example, Coleman Hughes, Uri Berliner, Abigail Shrier, Jon Haidt, and Matti Friedman. And there are more personal takes that are unique to the site, e.g., Nellie Bowles’s “TGIF” features, Shrier’s pieces on gender and the “therapization” of modern youth, and Berliner’s indictment of National Public Radio.  I’m glad to subscribe, but now, given this announcement (click on screenshot below), I’m worried that the website won’t be nearly as engaging. We are told not to worry about that.

A few excerpts from Bari’s piece (my bolding):

We’re a news organization, so I’ll get right to it: This morning, The Free Press is joining Paramount.

This move is a testament to many things: The Free Press team; the vision of Paramount’s new leaders; the luck of starting an independent media company at the right moment; and the courage of my colleagues to leave behind old worlds to build a new one.

But, above all, it’s a testament to you, our subscribers.

From day one, the promise—and the business proposition—of this publication was simple: We would marry the quality of the old world to the freedom of the new. We would seek the truth and tell it plainly. And we would treat readers like adults capable of making their own choices.

So many people told us this was no longer possible. That the premise of a media company built on trust rather than partisanship was, at best, a relic from the past—and, at worst, a fantasy that never was. That the internet killed journalism. That there simply weren’t enough Americans out there in search of media driven by honesty, independence, and integrity.

You proved them wrong. You demonstrated that there’s a market for honest journalism. And you’ve given us a mandate to pursue that mission from an even bigger platform.

I’ll continue to lead this incredible community alongside my tireless team, remaining CEO and editor-in-chief. But I’ll be taking on another title, too.

As of today, I am editor-in-chief of CBS News, working with new colleagues on the programs that have impacted American culture for generations—shows like 60 Minutes and Sunday Morning—and shaping how millions of Americans read, listen, watch, and, most importantly, understand the news in the 21st century.

. . . If you have been here from the start, you might have questions. Wasn’t The Free Press started precisely because the old media institutions had failed? Isn’t the whole premise of this publication that we need to build anew? Why flee The New York Times only to head back into another legacy institution?

If the illiberalism of our institutions has been the story of the last decade, we now face a different form of illiberalism emanating from our fringes. On the one hand, an America-loathing far left. On the other, a history-erasing far right. These extremes do not represent the majority of the country, but they have increasing power in our politics, our culture, and our media ecosystem.

Overlooked by all these so-called interlocutors are the enormous numbers of smart, politically mixed, pragmatic Americans. The people who believe, unapologetically, in the American project.

This is the actual mainstream. These people are the overwhelming majority of the country. And they are being ill-served.

As proud as we are of the 1.5 million subscribers who have joined under the banner of The Free Press—and we are astonished at that number—this is a country with 340 million people. We want our work to reach more of them, as quickly as possible.

This once-in-a-lifetime opportunity allows us to do that. It gives The Free Press a chance to help reshape a storied media organization—to help guide CBS News into a future that honors those great values that underpin The Free Press and the best of American journalism. And in doing so, to bring our mission to millions of people.

. . .So on a practical level, what does this news mean for your Free Press subscription? Two words: more and better.

Our subscribers will still get the daily journalism they rely on: investigative reports, features, columns, podcasts, and more. And The Free Press, which will remain independent, will be growing even faster within Paramount. We’ll be investing heavily in this community, and so many of the things we’ve long dreamed about will become possible much more quickly.

What does this mean for CBS News? It means a redoubled commitment to great journalism. It means building on a storied legacy—and bringing that historic newsroom into 2025 and beyond. Most of all, it means working tirelessly to make sure CBS News is the most trusted news organization in the world.

I’m betting that the subscription price will go up, though, with the infusion of cash from Paramount, there’s really no reason for it to rise. We’ll see. And given that TFP will be part of the Paramount venture, how can it remain independent? Will Bari Weiss still be connected with both CBS News and TFP? If so, it cannot be independent.

As far as the slant of CBS News will change, I have no idea. My regular station is NBC News, which shows signs of wokeness—but signs that aren’t pervasive enough to disturb me. How will CBS News change? I do like 60 Minutes when I watch it, and can’t think of any real bias there. How will that show change? And will we get to see Free Press writers like Shrier and Hughes on television?

So congrats to TFP, which has finally attained the ultimate power over at least one MSM venue. I can’t help but worry about a few things, but hey, that’s me.

Science editor of Sunday Times touts book “proving” God’s existence

October 5, 2025 • 10:15 am

In the face of declining belief in God in countries like the US and UK, believers are looking for any evidence that God exists.  But there’s nothing new to support the existence of the supernatural, though as science finds out more truths about the Universe, and we think of more questions about things (e.g., what is “dark matter”), religionists continue to take unanswered scientific questions as the evidence for God they so desperately need. And so a new book simply reprises the “god of the gaps” argument, a shopworn argument that has been tried–and has failed–many times before, both philosophically and scientifically. First, recent data from the US and UK on declining belief in God.

Here are figures from a 2023 Church Times article showing waning belief in the UK since 1981, though belief in life after death has held steady (belief in God is the line at the top in orange).. Click to read article:

And a similar decline from a 2022 Gallup poll showing a decline of about belief in the US of about 18% since 1950.

In both cases the trends are unmistakable, and, with a few hiccups, inexorable.  How do you keep your faith when all around you people are leaving it? You write a book decrying materialism, which of course, like all such books (as well as those recounting “visits to heaven”) become bestsellers due to the many believers desperate for “proof of God.”

This article appeared in today’s Sunday Times of London (h/t Pyers). Click headline to read, or find the article archived here.

The book that gives evidence that God “must” exist is God, the Science, the Evidence, by Michel-Yves Bolloré and Olivier Bonnassies, published by Palomar on October 14 at £22.  It’s already sold more than 400,000 copies in non-English editions (it was published four years ago in France), and U.S. publishers have ordered a print run of 110,000 for the book, which will be published here in a week.

The two authors are both believers, of course (excerpts from the Times are indented):

These authors — like Dawkins and Hawking — consider themselves men of science. Bolloré, 79, from Brittany, is a computer engineer who has founded a series of successful heavy industry, engineering and mechanical firms; Bonnassies, 59, from Paris, studied science and maths before a career as an entrepreneur in the French media industry.

Both are also men of faith. Bolloré is a lifelong Catholic. Bonnassies, who did not find his Christian faith until his twenties, said he thought before his conversion that “believers were irrational people”, adding: “God, the Resurrection, the Virgin Mary — I found it crazy.” Yet it was logic, he said, that won him around: “The surprise was there were many rational reasons to believe in God.”

And here is the book’s argument summarized by the Sunday Times. It amounts to no more than this (this is my characterization.

We do not understand how the universe began or how life began.  If everything occurs by materialistic processes, what caused the Big Bang, and how did life originate? The most “rational” solution is a creator. 

And some excerpts from the laudatory review in the Times (why are they touting superstition?):

Science and religion have never been easy bedfellows. As Thomas Jefferson put it in 1820, priests “dread the advance of science as witches do the approach of daylight”. Five centuries of scientific breakthroughs — from Galileo to Darwin to Crick and Watson — have eroded our belief in the divine.

But now, according to a new book, a “great reversal” is under way. Science, its authors argue over 580 pages, has come full circle and “forcefully put the question of the existence of a creator God back on the table”.

Good Lord: has the argument ever been off the table? William Lane Craig has been banging the drum about it for years. But I digress; here’s more:

In a striking challenge to the academic consensus, two French authors, Michel-Yves Bolloré and Olivier Bonnassies, argue that the latest scientific theories lead to only one logical conclusion: an all-powerful deity created the universe and all life within it.

. . . .Instead, the authors have written a critique of materialism — the theory that all reality, including our origins, thoughts and consciousness, can be explained solely by physical matter and physical processes.

The materialist narrative for the beginnings of the universe and life on earth is so full of holes, he and Bonnassies argue, that every modern scientific advance increases the strength of the case that a “creator” is the only rational explanation.

The authors insist that their book is not a religious one, or one touting the advantages of faith. No, it’s a critique of one of the underpinnings of science, materialism.

The authors’ ideas have received support from unexpected quarters. The renowned physicist Robert Wilson, who was jointly awarded the Nobel prize in physics for the discovery of cosmic microwave background radiation, agreed to write the foreword to the book. “Although the general thesis … that a higher mind could be at the origin of the universe does not provide a satisfying explanation for me, I can accept its coherence,” he wrote. “If the universe had a beginning, then we cannot avoid the question of creation.”

Yes, but if God exists, how did He/She/They/It come into existence? Why terminate the regress of causes at the creator God instead of going back even further. After all, God is not simple, as Dawkins has emphasized, so how do an immaterial being of such complexity and power come about?

Here are the two main arguments described in the Times (my headings, indented matter from article).

The Universe:

For the past century, for example, scientists have known the universe is expanding. If stars and galaxies are always moving further apart, logic dictates, the universe must have started at a single point, in a state of immense density. In 1931 the Belgian theoretical physicist Georges Lemaître termed this the “primeval atom”. We now call it the Big Bang.

But if all matter originates from that single explosion, and materialism dictates there is nothing outside of matter, what caused the bang?

Evolution:

According to the theory of evolution, this incredibly sophisticated data storage system — 40,000 billion times more dense than the most advanced computer today — emerged from the primordial soup quite by chance. The authors write: “While we still do not know how that gap was bridged, or a fortiori, how to replicate such an event, we do know enough to appreciate its infinite improbability.”=

Finally, I find this bit pathetic:

Bolloré acknowledged that the book does not present proof of God’s existence. “You cannot prove it,” he said. “You have evidence for one theory — the existence of God. And you have evidence for the other one, which is the non-existence of God. The best you can do is to compare the two sides of the scale.”

But he said that many areas of science require as big a leap of faith as that demanded by faith in God. “We are all believers,” he said. “Believers in God believe, with some evidence — and believers in materialism, they believe in plenty of things which are a little bit weird.”

Perhaps surprisingly, the biggest critics of the French edition of the book have not been scientists, but priests. “Some theologians say we don’t want evidence of God because it would reduce the merit of faith,” he said. “‘We don’t want proof’, they say. ‘Because proof would mean that we don’t have faith.’”

Here we see that the authors offer only two alternatives: God or not-God, but the alternative is really materialistic processes that we do not understand but might with more work.  And faith in materialism or science is not at all the same thing as faith in religion, an argument I dispelled in Slate some years ago.

The rejection by believers of the need for evidence is what is most pathetic. Faith, some say, is based not on empirical evidence but on revelation or authority (priests, Bibles, epiphanies, etc.) alone. Yet when believers see something that looks like evidence, they glom onto it. That’s why books like this are always best-sellers, why two documented “miracles” are required for canonization of a saint, and why people flock to Lourdes to be cured.  It’s all because unexplained. cures and miracles count as evidence for God. So do books like Heaven is for Real!

And so we get “evidence” from unexplained origins—of both life and the Universe.  To the authors, both of these fit into to a combination of The Cosmological Argument (or “First Cause” argument) and the “God of the Gaps” argument.  Readers should know the problems with both of these, and if you don’t, simply look at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy or the relevant sections of Wikipedia.  Since we don’t know how the Universe came into being (i.e., what is the physics behind the Big Bang?), or how the first form of “life” originated, it’s foolish and impossible weigh ignorance against a belief in God—and not just God, but clearly the Abrahamic God— the god of both authors.

I have spent more than half my life dealing with these arguments, and will say just one more thing before I show a few of the Times readers’ comments. The existence of a creator God, especially of the Christian subspecies, should not be accepted simply because it’s hard at present for materialism to explain some things.  Instead, look to the Universe itself for positive proof of God: do we see signs of a loving, omnipotent creator God in the universe?

Carl Sagan discussed what evidence could count in favor of not just God, but the Christian God, as I do as well in Faith Versus Fact. But we don’t have any of that evidence. Why did God create so much of the Universe that is inhospitable for life? Why do little kids get cancers that kill them? Why do tsunamis and earthquakes happen that kill thousands of innocent people? These things cannot be explained rationally by positing a beneficent and omnipotent creator God.  In the absence of these explanations, and of positive evidence for God (e.g., Jesus coming back and doing real miracles documented extensively by film and newspapers, or, as Sagan noted, the stars arranging themselves to spell “I am that I am” in Hebrew), the best alternative is atheism, the view “there is no positive evidence for God.”  Thus the “god” side of the scales becomes lighter over time, continuing the trend begun when one after another “unexplainable” miracle or phenomenon was been explained by materialism. And of course physicists haven’t given up trying to understand the Big Bang, nor have biologists given up trying to understand how life originated.  Will the authors give up their thesis if one day, under early life conditions, scientists see a primitive form of life originating in the lab, or create a theory of how there could be cyclical universes or multiple Big Bangs creating multiple universes? I doubt it, for they are “men of faith”.

A few readers’ comments. The first one was upvoted the most:

And some more. (The readers are clearly smarter than the authors, though there are some believers in there, too.)

There are 1100 comments, so knock yourself out! As for the Sunday Times, well, they decided to present an argument for God without interviewing detractors.

NYT launches column apparently touting religion and spirituality, thin on “nonbelief”

September 15, 2025 • 10:20 am

Is there some reason that progressives are starting to embrace religion? I’ve previously mentioned a number of MSM pieces that basically tout religion: presenting it without criticizing it or saying that its evidential bases are nil. Remember when both the Free Press and the New York Times published excerpts from Believe: Why Everyone Should be Religious, Ross Douthat’s new book?  This kind of stuff is appearing more often now, and it puzzles me.  Are liberals experiencing the much-discussed “God-shaped hole in their soul”: the lacuna of meaning that supposedly appears when you give up faith? There has been an uptick in American religiosity in the last two years, but it was small and, I thought, temporary. Maybe not. But for sure the press is making a huge megillah about it.

This notice appeared in yesterday’s New York Times email newsletter, announcing that they’re going to have a regular column dealing with “modern religion and spirituality.” And although they say they’ll include “nonbelief” under that rubric, atheism and agnosticism isn’t mentioned any further. No, this will be a column about real religion.

The paper itself (click on headline) announced the column in greater detail. It will be written by Lauren Jackson, a NYT editor. She’s a nonbeliever, which is good to hear, but I’d like to know that she deals with nonbelief when she deals with belief.

Below: quotes from Ms. Jackson’s introduction to the column. (Bolding is mine. except for the “Why are we doing this?” headline.)  It is not at all clear to me what they mean by trying to speak of God in a secular fashion

In the 1940s, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a dissident German pastor, wrote hundreds of letters while facing execution inside a Nazi prison. From his small, dank cell, Bonhoeffer asked: “How do we speak in a secular fashion of God?”

The line has both inspired and inflamed theologians in the decades since. It’s also a question that animates this newsletter: The mission of Believing is to speak about the sacred, in all its forms, in a very secular space.

Why are we doing this?

Earlier this year, we published a series of articles about how people experience religion and spirituality now. In response, thousands of you told us you wanted more: You wanted us to expand our reporting on how ancient ideas are appearing in our very modern lives. You wanted a space for both believers and nonbelievers to share their stories. You wanted, above all, for us to take the subject seriously.

Well yes, religion has to be taken seriously. About 81% of Americans believe in God, and, surprisingly, the Barna site says, “According to Barna’s latest data, 66 percent of all U.S. adults say they have made a personal commitment to Jesus that is still important in their life today.” (This is scary given the lack of evidence for a Jesus person who was divine.) But these beliefs motivate much of Americans beliefs (e.g., abortion), politics (the Christianity of the Right), and morality.  So yes, understanding religion is important if you want to understand America. It’s a vital part of our sociology.

That said, it’s also important to realize that most Americans rest their religious beliefs, and the morality that grows from them, on no evidence at all.  They were either brought up to be religious, or had it hammered into them by peers and church before they learned to think for themselves. This means that much of American behavior is based on wish-thinking instead of evidence.

If you think that the clash of ideas in American life produces truth, as intended by the framers of the First Amendment, well, it hasn’t worked with religion. On one side are the vast majority of religious Americans; on the other are the 10% of Americans who are atheist or agnostic, and the approximately 20% that identify as “nones,” i.e., people who don’t necessarily reject God but aren’t affiliated with a church.

I would expect, especially because Lauren Jackson says she’s a nonbeliever, that there would be ample space given to nonbelievers and their writing. But the one mention of nonbelievers above is all we get.  We do get a bit about Jackson’s own nonbelief, but she clearly has that god-shaped hole when she explains who she is below. First, the column’s raison d’etre:

Over the past few months, I’ve heard from so many different readers — MAGA bros, wellness influencers, climate activists, professors, actors and high school students. They all had something in common: seeking a space where they could think about the sacred.

Have a look at that link: it is all readers who have a God-shaped hole and want to believe because they want to belong. And if Jackson really wants to deal with nonbelief, she’s going to have to provide a space where where Americans can “think about the nonexistence of gods.”

Even her own atheism is hedged as she writes. From the intro above:

In reporting on belief, I’ve found that the fastest way to build trust is to share where I’m coming from. So here it is: I was raised a devout Mormon, or a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, in Arkansas. I know how luminous and enchanted life can be when you really believe in something. I also know what it feels like to leave a religion, which I wrote about here and here.

Yes, she’s being rightfully honest, but there was a reason she left Mormonism.  Are we going to hear from other people who aren’t religious, too? And if you look at the two links in the preceding sentence, you see Ms. Jackson showing every evidence of a God-shaped hole. Quotes from the two pieces:

From the first article, called “Americans haven’t found a satisfying alternative to religion”:

I recognize, though, that my spiritual longing persists — and it hasn’t been sated by secularism. I want a god. I live an ocean away from that small Arkansas chapel, but I still remember the bliss of finding the sublime in the mundane. I still want it all to be true: miracles, souls, some sort of cosmic alchemy that makes sense of the chaos.

I want. . . I want. .  I want. . .   Well, I want a personal chef and a bottle of 1982 Château Pétrus, but I ain’t gonna get it.

Source.

The second link goes to an article by and about Jackson, called, “She almost went on a Mormon mission. She became a journalist instead.” This is simply an account of how she left Mormonism, and is reportage. But when she explains leaving Mormonism, she neglects one thing: She doesn’t tell us why:

I faced pressure to go on a mission, and I wrestled for years with the decision. At the same time, I won funding to attend a secular university, an opportunity I was too curious to decline. At school, I fell in love — with ideas, my classes, a boy. I found a new reality, inescapable and contradictory to everything I once knew. On that sidewalk in Rwanda, I looked at the missionaries and felt a distance between us for the first time. They were living a life I was slowly leaving.

I am no longer a member of the church. I ultimately chose to spend my college years becoming a journalist, not proselytizing. Still, I maintain an abiding curiosity about belief, one that has animated my reporting. I often see missionaries around the world and wonder how their work is shaping their nascent adulthoods, their hopes and desires. So I spent the last eight months reporting for The New York Times on how missionary work is evolving and influencing the church’s future.

So why did she “choose” to give up Mormonism? We don’t know.  Did she realize that its tenets were wrong, its story, involving the golden plates and a peepstone, ludicrous? We’ll never know. I hope, but don’t think, that she’ll devote substantial time to nonbelievers and why the ‘nones”—I still think a lot of them are atheists—don’t belong to any church.  And of course Europe, particularly the northern parts, are far less religious than Americans. Will she report on nonbelief there, too?

But I digress, for I’m just tired of the MSM constantly focusing on and touting beliefs that aren’t based on evidence but wish-thinking.  At any rate, you can find her first article of the new series clicking on the headline (or find it archived here). It’s about how American are turning to AI on apps to answer questions about religion, quell doubts about their faith, or to act as a sort of electronic father-confessor.

It’s not that enlightening, as it reproduces a lot of conversations people have about belief and God with the bot, and also quotes a few religious detractors who say a bot can’t do the same job as a pastor, which is true.  Here’s one conversation:

Pretty boring, eh? And the AI shows through clearly. Yet many Americans apparently find solace from this kind of algorithmic pap. But as they do it more, the bot will get better as it absorbs more and more answers, with all of them designed to dispel rather than exacerbate doubt. In fact AI therapy has recently been banned in Illinois!

Jackson’s debut is, sadly, a pretty boring article full of boring chats—not a good start to the column.  But as I read these chats, I was reminded of Carl Rogers (1902-1987)—a famous psychologist who jettisoned psychoanalysis to simply become a robot, reflecting back patients’ views and not adding much.  He was basically an AI therapist.

I put a video below of what I see as Rogers’s completely ineffective therapy. But he was famous!

The only advantage of a human acting like a bot is, as you’ll see below, their ability to look at a patient’s behavior and affect, which may give them clues to help them. Unfortunately, Rogers’s “help” was limited to stuff like “I can see that you’re nervous because you’re trembling.” To me, at least, he had little to offer. But Americans think AI has a lot to offer in lubricating their relationship with God. I think that’s unfortunate.

All in all, this is not a good start for the NYT’s new “religion” column.

And, of course, the Free Press is also mentioning God to help us in these troubled times. From their newsletter just this morning:

 

Planned Parenthood going the way of the ACLU and the SPLC?

July 21, 2025 • 8:30 am

Luana called my attention to an article on wokeness, in this case describing the ideological erosion of Planned Parenthood (henceforth “PP). Click the headline below to read the WSJ “Saturday essay”, or or find it archived free here.

Notice that the author is Pamela Paul, formerly the Sunday book-review editor and then a columnist for the NYT, whose columns over the last few years were refreshingly heterodox for  (see here and here).  In this way she could be seen as a white female John McWhorter, but, unlike McWhorter, she also wrote a lot about gender issues, and not in a way that, at least when the paper was about to let her go, did not comport with its gender activism and mania for “affirmative care.” As she wrote in her farewell column,

. . . . the reporting I’m most proud of is when I used my voice to stand up for people whose lives or work had come under attack, whether they were public figures or were dragged into the public eye because they’d dared to speak or act in ways that unjustly elicited professional or social condemnation: A popular novelist ostracized for alleged “cultural appropriation.” A physician assistant who was excoriated on social media for standing up to bullies. A Palestinian writer whose appearance at a prominent book fair was canceled. An early beneficiary of affirmative action who dared to explore its unintended consequences. Vulnerable gay teenagers who described being misled by a politicized medical establishment into dubious gender transition treatments. A public university president who was driven away by a campus besieged with political division. Social work students and faculty undermined by a school that had betrayed its own principles. A public health expert who risked opprobrium from his peers by calling out his profession on groupthink.

The Times may tolerate a bit of heterodoxy, but the columns Paul wrote that were critical of gender activism (see here for a list) were too much. Perhaps the last nail in the coffin was Paul’s “In defense of J. K. Rowling,” guaranteed to rile anyone who mouths the mantra, “A trans woman is a woman.”

At any rate, Paul seems to have found a home as a writer at large for the Wall Street Journal, and has written two pieces for them since June: the one below and the other an analysis of the Trump administration’s assault on scientific journals, which takes shots at both the Right and Left. Paul has trod an increasingly well-worn path: a good journalist let go because they’re insufficiently “progressive,” then finding a new home at a more centrist or even right-wing site (Paul is a classical liberal, and the WSJ’s news and analysis items are more or less centrist).

But I digress. Her new WSJ piece is how the once-estimable organization Planned Parenthood, the reproductive and sexual health care organization whose antecedent was founded by Margaret Sanger in 1916, is going to ground.  Perhaps it was predictable that, given its ambit, PP would buy into gender activism, just like the ACLU did or how the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) devolved into ferreting out “hate speech” by people like Ayaan Hirsi Ali. (The SPLC was also plagued by financial mismanagement.)

I’ll give a few quotes from Paul’s piece; they’re indented below:

Excerpts:

To American feminists, the Planned Parenthood brand symbolizes liberation and empowerment. To Medicaid recipients and rural women, it means access to affordable contraceptives, testing and treatment for sexually transmitted infections, and cancer screenings. To conservatives and opponents of abortion, it means the devaluation of human life and dissolution of the family.

But to many young people encountering Planned Parenthood today, the organization, founded in 1916 as a grassroots movement to provide family planning to poor women, means something else entirely. When a 3- to 5-year-old asks, “Is that a boy or a girl?” Planned Parenthood, currently the country’s leading provider of sex education, suggests replying, “Only an individual can define their gender identity. Gender identity is separate from what body parts a person has.” (Planned Parenthood is also now the country’s second largest provider of cross-sex hormones for transgender treatments.)

On Instagram, where young people are most likely to seek information, Planned Parenthood offers decidedly liberationist advice, including graphic descriptions of sexual techniques. Posts celebrate Pansexual Pride Day and declare that “virginity is a social construct.” In keeping with the organization’s racial justice agenda, which includes support for #DefundthePolice, its TikTok account displays a video of a Black woman seemingly fleeing and then laughing, with the tag, “Running from the police, but then they say, suspect is an abortion-rights baddie.”

As Paul reports, these stands haven’t sat well with the Trump administration:

In March, Trump withheld Title X grants, which fund contraceptive, reproductive and sexual health services for poor people, from at least nine Planned Parenthood affiliates while the administration investigates their compliance with its policies on D.E.I. In June, the Supreme Court ruled that patients do not have the right to sue states for denying state Medicaid funding to Planned Parenthood clinics, making it easier for more states to withdraw funding. And earlier this month, Congress passed Trump’s megabill, which effectively ends federal Medicaid funding for Planned Parenthood for the next year.

Of course I deplore the withholding of support for reproductive health services for the poor; this is part of the bullying that this Administration is known for. On the other hand, PP has taken on political stances that seem unnecessary given its classical mission:

. . . . The trouble stems from [PP’s] dual and often dueling roles as both a national advocacy organization and a local healthcare provider, one inherently political and the other necessarily nonpartisan. While its roughly 600 clinics offer patient care, the national organization operates as an advocacy group, raising money to support positions that place it firmly on the progressive left in America’s culture wars.

Well, one of these positions I do support: the advocacy of a pro-choice stand to abortion. That’s perhaps one reason the Administration is going after PP. I see the pro-choice stand as something important to the welfare of women, particularly poor ones. But other stands have little to do with at least the original mission of PP.

In the years since Wen was forced out, a different kind of mission creep set in, with the organization tethering itself to causes like democracy reform (including support for expanding the Supreme Court and ending the filibuster in the Senate) and gun control—actions that have alienated some donors, according to former employees. These moves reflect the political motivations of its workforce, increasingly populated by what some employees refer to as social justice warriors—young people who come to the organization for its progressive values more than for its provision of healthcare.

A self-described “champion for social and racial justice,” [PP President and CEO Alexis] McGill Johnson  shares this vision. In a 2021 op-ed, she accused Planned Parenthood of focusing too much on “women’s health” and “privileging whiteness.” As she wrote, “What we don’t want to be, as an organization, is a Karen. You know Karen: She escalates small confrontations because of her own racial anxiety. She calls the manager. She calls the police. She stands with other white parents to maintain school segregation.”

Planned Parenthood wants to be the head of the anti-Trump resistance in all its forms, according to one former senior executive at the national office. The question, she said, is who are they alienating in the process?

Now Paul describes other problems with PP, like poorly-run clinics, a decrease in donations, and so on, but the organization is not helping itself by buying into gender activism, at least under this Administration:

Today, Planned Parenthood no longer positions itself as the leading healthcare provider for women and has largely stopped referring to women on its website and in policy statements. The only mention of “women” among its promotional items are T-shirts emblazoned with “Stand with Black Women.” In testimony before Congress, Dr. Bhavik Kumar, then a Planned Parenthood medical director and now chief medical officer at the Greater Ohio affiliate, said that “men can have pregnancies, especially transmen.”

Especially transmen? What other “men” can get pregnant? But let’s proceed:

The organization’s pervasive language around “pregnant people” is intended to be inclusive of transgender people, a cause that the organization connects to abortion rights under the umbrella of “bodily autonomy.” As Planned Parenthood put it on Threads, “trans and nonbinary people are essential to the movement for sexual and reproductive health and rights—the fight for trans rights is our fight.”

Not everyone agrees this is the best approach for a movement founded to empower women. “I don’t understand the national office’s thinking in not allowing anyone to talk about women’s health anymore,” said [former PP President Pamela] Maraldo. “These really, really left-wing ideological postures are to me just as off-putting as they are on the right when they’re counter to basic Americans’ common sense.”

Banning the word “woman” is guaranteed to alienate not just the Right, but the sensible moiety of the Left. As is this:

Planned Parenthood has also rapidly expanded its services into one of the most contested and politicized areas of healthcare, gender transitions. Its national office does not reveal numbers on these services, instead grouping them into an “other services” category in its annual report. In 2019, that category included 17,791 cases. It rose to 77,858 in 2023. With trans-identified minors, Planned Parenthood follows an “informed consent” model, which, according to its patient guidelines, enables patients to get a same-day prescription for cross-sex hormones after a 30-minute in-person or remote consultation with a staff member. No professional diagnosis is required.

Cross-sex hormones given after just 30 minutes of consultation? How old are these “minors”? Is there a lower age limit? It’s not clear from the data, but surely 12 to 17 is too young:

According to an analysis of insurance claim information by the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank, at least 40,000 patients went to Planned Parenthood for gender medicine in 2023. About 40% of them were 18- to 22-year-olds. Between 2017 and 2023, it also treated 12,000 kids aged 12 to 17 for gender dysphoria. (These figures do not include patients who paid out of pocket, patients at VA facilities or those covered by Kaiser.)

Don’t get me wrong: this progressivism may not be the main reason why PP is going under—its advocacy of the right to choose abortions may be pivotal, and Paul also reports about the waning of donations and hamhandedness in clinics (I’ve been to one, and it was excellent). And, at the end, she notes that the erosion of PP has inimical social effects, particularly in truncating reproductive and sexual care for the poor.  I just wonder why PP has to buy into the affirmative-care model for adolescents and to curtail its use of the word “woman.” It’s not necessary for the organization’s goals, and alienates the powers that be. In the end, PP’s progressivism, which it refuses to abandon, may be its death blow.

I look forward to more articles like this from Paul, who, I think need no longer be afraid of writing what she think lest she alienate her paper.

Pamela Paul leaves the NYT

April 3, 2025 • 9:15 am

Several months ago I reported, based on articles from sources like New York Magazine, that Pamala Paul, heterodox New York Times columnist, was leaving the paper’s op-ed section, and the paper altogether. I was upset to hear that, for although she didn’t toe the paper’s “progressive” line, her columns were thoughtful and liberal.  Here’s the New York Magazine article (click headline to read):

The article was a bit ambiguous, as it implied that Paul’s ideas, which ran contrary to the NYT’s progressive op-ed aura, were the cause of her getting the pink slip. But the NYT also denied that. From the piece above:

Paul is admired by some of her colleagues for her willingness to buck liberal-left conventional wisdom. She has written a defense of J.K. Rowling and scrutinized the MeToo movement for overreach, while a recent column criticized the American Historical Society’s vote to condemn the ongoing “scholasticide” in Gaza. But others have said she does little more than produce rage bait, with what one Times staffer referred to as “intellectually lazy” positions. “It is a rarity inside the Times for someone to manage to make enemies on every desk they touch; Pamela is indeed a rarity,” one newsroom employee said. “She should have spent time making allies if she was going to be as divisive a figure as she was internally. But she didn’t put the time in there, or at least did not have the interest.”

I’m told, however, that Opinion’s decision to part ways with her is not because of her ideological positions. [Opinion editor Kathleen] Kingsbury said, “We don’t discuss personnel matters, but any insinuation I make staffing or editorial decisions based solely on political viewpoints is false.”

It’s really offensive to ask a heterodox columnist to suck up to her colleagues so they wouldn’t criticize her pieces. But that’s how the NYT rolls, and it’s the reason why Bari Weiss, among others, also left the paper. And note the weasel word “solely” in Kingsbury’s quote above.

For nine years (2013-2022), Paul was editor of the paper’s Book Review section, and then three years ago she moved to op-ed. I saw immediately that her columns were bucking the paper’s own ideology, and I believe I predicted (or at least worried) that she’d be fired for heterodoxy.  Nevertheless, I discussed her pieces often (she was liberal and thoughtful but not “progressive”), and, when I heard her head was on the chopping block, I compiled a list of the columns that were likely to have irritated the top op-ed editors. Here’s a bunch of screenshots:

Despite the announcements by other venues, up to now Paul hasn’t said a word about her leaving, and her columns still appeared in the paper—though less often. Today, though, she verified the rumors by writing her farewell column, which you can read by clicking the headline below or seeing it archived here.  And it’s clear from what she writes that she parted ways with the paper over her ideology and determination to tell the truth as she saw it. The NYT doesn’t like the truth if it doesn’t comport with “progressivism”.

A few quotes from Paul’s piece (indented). They lead me to believe that yes, she’s leaving because of what she wrote about and said.

This is my final column for The Times.

In the memo I wrote three years ago when applying for this job after 11 years at The Times Book Review, I vowed “to write to Times readers rather than to Twitter or to Slack.” I knew my positions, fundamentally liberal but often at odds with what had become illiberal progressive dogma, would ruffle feathers. But as I explained, “I want to write about that vast center/liberal space and to address what people really think and believe but are often too afraid to say.”

. . . I wasn’t looking to be loved or even liked. I had friends and family for that. I wanted to write what I believed to be the truth, based on facts and guided by fairness, but never driven by fear.

She lists some topics that, I’m guessing, the NYT probably wasn’t keen on:

But the reporting I’m most proud of is when I used my voice to stand up for people whose lives or work had come under attack, whether they were public figures or were dragged into the public eye because they’d dared to speak or act in ways that unjustly elicited professional or social condemnation: A popular novelist ostracized for alleged “cultural appropriation.” A physician assistant who was excoriated on social media for standing up to bullies. A Palestinian writer whose appearance at a prominent book fair was canceled. An early beneficiary of affirmative action who dared to explore its unintended consequences. Vulnerable gay teenagers who described being misled by a politicized medical establishment into dubious gender transition treatments. A public university president who was driven away by a campus besieged with political division. Social work students and faculty undermined by a school that had betrayed its own principles. A public health expert who risked opprobrium from his peers by calling out his profession on groupthink.

And it seems to me that much of her piece is simply a disguised lecture to the paper, letting them know that, as Jack Nicholson said, “You can’t handle the truth!”

Several years ago, The Times ran a campaign with the tagline “The truth is hard.” The way I’ve interpreted this is that the truth may be hard for some people to hear, but the truth should never be hard for journalists to tell. In our efforts to shed light on difficult subjects or to question conventional wisdom, we should never refrain from speaking what we believe to be the truth. Not because we think others can’t handle it and certainly not because we cannot handle it ourselves.

Readers are smarter and more thoughtful than the news media sometimes gives them credit for. They don’t need our protection. When journalists hold back, readers can sense they aren’t getting the full story. This sows doubt and skepticism at a time when readers desperately need news they can trust.

At the end, she thanks the readers for their feedback, both good and bad, and expresses hope that her pieces led people to examine their own views.  Here’s the sad last paragraph:

Though I am leaving The Times, I will not be leaving behind these principles in my work as a journalist. Readers depend on our telling the truth more than ever.

This is a brave woman, for she surely realized that her columns and their topics wouldn’t go down well with her editors. Nevertheless, she persisted. I wish her Ceiling-Cat-speed and hope she continues to publish her views at some other widely-read venue. Thanks, Ms. Paul, for your contributions.