Kicking the Habit

 (This article was originally published in two parts on my journal at my weight-loss support site.)

I’m not even sure when it started. Up until I was nineteen or twenty, I was a “social smoker” at best, smoking only when I was drinking (which wasn’t often because I didn't have the money for it). And then my “Irish twin” sister (eleven months younger than me) was smoking; then my best friends were smoking as well.

And then, one morning, I was smoking in the kitchen when my father walked in. It wasn’t just that he was disappointed (a pack-a-day man himself, he would eventually die of complications from emphysema), it was also then that I’d realized I’d fallen into the habit without meaning to ... or wanting to.

The Transcendental Argument for the Non-Existence of God?

 In the next series of articles, I’d like to discuss several atheist arguments and their weaknesses. Of course, I have the right to interrupt the series at any time if any kind of news breaks that bears commenting on. The point of the series, though, is as much to get myself back into the regular habit of writing as it is to provide an apologetics resource. Eventually, I hope to have enough collected to form the spine of a book.

In 1996, atheist Michael Martin first proposed the Transcendental Argument for the Non-Existence of God (TANG). Since Immanuel Kant, many Christians have argued that logic, science and morality all depend for their existence not just on a God but a specifically Christian God. Not content to demonstrate the argument to be false, Martin chose to claim that the opposite is true: logic, science and morality can’t be true as long as the Christian God is held to be true.

Meanwhile, down in North Carolina, liberty was subverted

In March, the Charlotte, NC district office of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission closed the investigation of a complaint by eight faculty members against Belmont Abbey College, finding that the college’s decision to exclude contraceptives from its health plan was not discriminatory.

Then, disturbingly, the case was reopened.

Early last month, as reported in the Wall Street Journal by Patrick J. Reilly, director Ruben Daniels Jr. ruled that Belmont Abbey did in fact violate federal law. The EEOC considers that contraceptive coverage in employer-provided health plans is required by the 1978 Pregnancy Discrimination Act. Now, if Belmont Abbey doesn’t knuckle under, the EEOC will recommend court remedies.