Sane and happy

“Finally, I would like to assure my many Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Jewish, and Muslim friends that I am sincerely happy that the religion which Chance has given you has contributed to your peace of mind (and often, as Western medical science now reluctantly admits, to your physical well-being). 

Perhaps it is better to be un-sane and happy, than sane and un-happy. But it is best of all to be sane and happy. Whether our descendants can achieve that goal will be the greatest challenge of the future. Indeed, it may well decide whether we have any future.”

—Arthur C. Clarke 

Colombo, Sri Lanka September 19, 1996

3001: The Final Odyssey Valediction/afterword
https://a.co/0aG1eeZZ

A Democrat Sounds the Alarm on Christian Nationalism in Congress

Representative Jared Huffman, Democrat of California, thought he was going to make himself a political pariah when he announced publicly that he did not believe in God.

Mr. Huffman, the only self-declared “humanist” in Congress, found that constituents in his mostly liberal Northern California district were unfazed.

Now Mr. Huffman has written a book in which he takes on how religion influences politics in America, in which he argues that extreme Christian nationalism, embraced and enabled by influential Republicans, is the country’s most dangerous political movement. He also accuses many of his own Democratic colleagues of being “incapable” of naming and confronting the threat.

In “No Prophets: The Fight to Save Democracy From Christian Nationalism,” which is to be published this month, Mr. Huffman, who grew up in the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, an offshoot of Mormonism, argues that the rise of Christian nationalism in American politics is openly targeting democracy, church-state separation and pluralism...

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/09/us/politics/democrat-huffman-humanist-religion-christianity.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share

Alan Lightman’s spiritual materialism

…I call myself a spiritual materialist. By “materialist,” I mean that I believe the world is made of material stuff, and nothing more, and that material obeys rules and laws. Almost all scientists have such a belief. At the same time, like many of us, I have “spiritual” experiences: feelings of connection to other human beings and to the larger cosmos, moments of communion with wild animals, the appreciation of beauty, wonder. Nature is capable of extraordinary phenomena. We human beings stand in awe of those phenomena. That’s my view of spirituality... https://open.substack.com/pub/alanlightman1/p/the-miraculous-from-the-material?r=35ogp&utm_medium=ios

The Great Agnostic: Robert Ingersoll and American Freethought by Susan Jacoby

“Ingersoll himself made no distinction between atheists and agnostics. In 1885, he was asked by an interviewer for a Philadelphia newspaper, “Don’t you think that the belief of the Agnostic is more satisfactory to the believer that that of the Atheist?” He replied succinctly, “The Agnostic is an Atheist. The Atheist is an Agnostic. The Agnostic says: ‘I do not know; but I do not believe there is any god.’ The Atheist says the same. The orthodox Christian says he knows there is a God: but we know that he does not know. The Atheist [too] cannot know that God does not exist.” 13 This critical point remains a source of both confusion and willful distortion in American discourse, in large measure because the word “atheist” has a much harsher sound to American ears than the word “agnostic.”* Indeed, the more equivocal, bland tone of the latter is arguably the main reason for its invention in the late nineteenth century, since atheism and atheist had long been considered extreme pejoratives. Ingersoll frequently pointed out that the labels “atheist” and “infidel” had generally been applied as epithets to anyone, religious or not, who refused to accept biblical stories that were scientifically impossible. That had happened to Thomas Paine, who was also called a Judas, reptile, hog, mad dog, souse, louse, and archbeast by his religiously orthodox contemporaries. Had he done nothing else, Ingersoll’s lifelong effort to restore Paine’s reputation should have earned him a permanent place in American intellectual history. The future president Theodore Roosevelt dismissed Paine in 1888 as a “filthy little atheist … that apparently esteems a bladder of dirty water as the proper weapon with which to assail Christianity.” 14 In this cultural climate, Ingersoll subtitled his standard lecture about Paine, “With His Name Left Out, The History of Liberty Cannot Be Written.” He made it one of his missions not only to remind citizens in America’s second century of Paine’s indispensible rhetorical contributions to the revolutionary cause but to link those ideals to Paine’s fierce defense of liberty of conscience and the separation of church and state.” — The Great Agnostic: Robert Ingersoll and American Freethought by Susan Jacoby

The Great Agnostic: Robert Ingersoll and American Freethought by Susan Jacoby

“Ingersoll himself made no distinction between atheists and agnostics. In 1885, he was asked by an interviewer for a Philadelphia newspaper, “Don’t you think that the belief of the Agnostic is more satisfactory to the believer that that of the Atheist?” He replied succinctly, “The Agnostic is an Atheist. The Atheist is an Agnostic. The Agnostic says: ‘I do not know; but I do not believe there is any god.’ The Atheist says the same. The orthodox Christian says he knows there is a God: but we know that he does not know. The Atheist [too] cannot know that God does not exist.” 13 This critical point remains a source of both confusion and willful distortion in American discourse, in large measure because the word “atheist” has a much harsher sound to American ears than the word “agnostic.”* Indeed, the more equivocal, bland tone of the latter is arguably the main reason for its invention in the late nineteenth century, since atheism and atheist had long been considered extreme pejoratives. Ingersoll frequently pointed out that the labels “atheist” and “infidel” had generally been applied as epithets to anyone, religious or not, who refused to accept biblical stories that were scientifically impossible. That had happened to Thomas Paine, who was also called a Judas, reptile, hog, mad dog, souse, louse, and archbeast by his religiously orthodox contemporaries. Had he done nothing else, Ingersoll’s lifelong effort to restore Paine’s reputation should have earned him a permanent place in American intellectual history. The future president Theodore Roosevelt dismissed Paine in 1888 as a “filthy little atheist … that apparently esteems a bladder of dirty water as the proper weapon with which to assail Christianity.” 14 In this cultural climate, Ingersoll subtitled his standard lecture about Paine, “With His Name Left Out, The History of Liberty Cannot Be Written.” He made it one of his missions not only to remind citizens in America’s second century of Paine’s indispensible rhetorical contributions to the revolutionary cause but to link those ideals to Paine’s fierce defense of liberty of conscience and the separation of church and state.” — The Great Agnostic: Robert Ingersoll and American Freethought by Susan Jacoby