age of reason

At what age is it appropriate to hold children accountable for their "sins"? When does God start keeping score and marking against your name?

Julia Sweeney found out her family's church's position on the question-- Happy birthday, little girl!-- on her seventh birthday. I'm not sure the church was quite on top of the best available brain science.

Edward Moore Kennedy

I wasn't planning to spend the morning viewing Ted Kennedy's funeral mass, but it was irresistible, emotional, consoling, and right. Couldn't tear myself away from the TV, notwithstanding a competing aversion to the whole florid medieval display of Holy Mass, which to me reeks of ancient, primitive superstition and fear.

Yet it's easy to understand how someone raised in that faith tradition would derive the greatest solace and strength from the ritual enactments of Mother Church, and would find life's harsh transitions made bearable in them.

And yet again... how do honest believers reconcile themselves to the undeniable challenges of intellectual conscience? How do they square the beautiful and confident aesthetic of tradition and ritual and faith with the (at least) equally compelling recognition that even the fullest life any of us is privileged to enjoy on earth is fragile and fleeting and without evidence of a sequel?

But how do honest unbelievers reconcile themselves to the fragility and transience of life in the absence of such majestic tradition and ritual and faith?

More good questions for "Atheism and Spirituality," I can't wait.

Glasses

Another nice Catholic girl sees the light. Did she put the glasses on? Or take them off?

mind-blowing

"Support for NPR comes from the estate of Richard Leroy Walters, whose life was enriched by NPR, and whose bequest seeks to encourage others to discover public radio."

I'd been curious about Richard Leroy Walters too. Turns out he was a homeless millionaire who divested himself of material possessions, except for a radio tuned to NPR.

That's mind-blowing enough. But then his friend and executor said:

"He was an atheist and I'm a very profound practicing Catholic, and I'd never met an atheist," Belle says. "And that just blew my mind that somebody could not believe in the Lord."

It explains a lot about our politics and culture wars, doesn't it, that an intelligent, professional American can say such a thing in public with a straight face?