Blogs I Like to Read

Yeah, I know I've got a blogroll over there on my side panel. Still, there are several blogs that I'd like to highlight, if for no other reason than I'm really impressed with their body of work. If you're one of my regular readers -- and even if you're not -- you too may decide to frequent these sites. So, here's a brief list with an excerpt or two from each:

#1 Church of the Churchless
From Reason unites, faith divides (2/22/05)

Reasonable people can spend an evening together pleasantly conversing even if their views are widely divergent. Faith-based people can’t. True believers aren’t able to interact with non-believers in a genuinely humble and open manner. The reason is simple: they aren’t genuinely humble and open. True believers believe that only they possess the truth. They aren’t interested in opening themselves up to new ideas, new facts, new ways of looking at the world, new avenues of approaching God.

From How to talk to a fundamentalist (11/27/04)

Fundamentalists, especially those of the Christian and Muslim faiths, have a bad habit of wanting to force other people to live in accord with their beliefs. Another bad habit is making dogmatic statements unsupported by objective facts, and then feeling offended when someone challenges their dogma. Bad habits like these should be discouraged, not encouraged.

#2 K Marx The Spot
From Steroid Madness (3/20/05)

Does any rational person truly believe the abuse of steroids is even in the same league as alcohol abuse? The number of lives destroyed by alcohol is a multiple of those destroyed by steroids; a multiple that is in the thousands, tens of thousands or hundred of thousands. Does it really matter that one drug requires a prescription and the other only requires the user to reach an age of maturity that varies from state to state. The Feds can investigate steroids; they can usurp a husband’s right to pull a feeding tube that has kept his wife’s heart beating for over a decade; but they don’t seem to care about the age kids can buy alcohol.

#3 Silver Rights
From Law: 'Mind control' theory could scuttle cult case (3/4/05)

It appears that the outcome of a domestic abuse situation remarkable fot its violence will turn on whether jurors grasp that an abuser can be effective without being the person who pulls the trigger. Marcus Wesson, who styled his family on that of cult leader David Koresh, is said to have convinced his adult offspring to kill the children and themselves if the government attempted to intervene. One of his older daughers, like her sister and cousins a parent to a child by Wesson, may have been the person who shot nine family members, including herself, dead last year. Wesson himself emerged from the home unharmed.

There's a lot more out there in the blogosphere. I'll try to feature more blogs and snippets in the future.