Jim Downard

Louisiana mandates the display of the 10 Commandments in public schools, inviting legal challenges and controversy over church-state separation. Governor Landry's move sparks debate on religious influence in education.

Should someone ask me (a secular atheist) where I got my philosophy of life — what to value, how to behave — and how not to, I can answer simply and directly: from watching Rod Serling’s “The Twilight Zone” and Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals as I grew up.

Nonetheless, I was among the legion of screwball cocky activists (known as “Expociters”) who insisted it was possible for our dumpy decaying little burg, the peripheral civic pimple on the back ass of Washington state, to match (or even outdo) grand Seattle in having—hold your horses, fasten your seatbelts—a real live WORLD’S FAIR here.

Creationism has two main songs: “Origins or Bust” about life itself or aspects of it being impossible other than via divine creation, and “Gee Whiz” stuff marveling at the amazing (fill in the blank) but not going too far into whatever science literature there may be on them, especially their evolutionary history.

The science end of it is clear enough: our species appeared several hundred thousand years ago in Africa, one of several hominid species of that period, including our ancestral branch Homo erectus, the first of our genus to venture outside Africa.

If reincarnation were a general feature of life, stories of it would be occurring cross-culturally.

Are there certain holidays that Atheists avoid due to their religious connections?