As a science fiction writer, I spend a lot of time thinking about different ways reality could work. So when I recently suggested that "God embraces skepticism and critical thinking because he knows the evidence points to him," I wasn't surprised to get pushback. Someone responded: "I disagree. All the evidences point toward scientific conclusions not religious ones." I know this might be unexpected coming from someone who writes about alien worlds and future tech, but this got me thinking about an interesting contradiction in that response. Religion is a worldview that makes ultimate claims about reality, meaning, and how we should live—whether that involves God, gods, or explicitly rejects them. When someone asserts that "all evidence points only to scientific conclusions," they're making an ultimate claim about the nature of reality. There's an interesting irony here—this response might be more religious than it appears. I could be wrong about this, but true skepticism follows evidence wherever it leads, even toward God—who the Bible says expects to be found through honest inquiry. If you've already decided that's impossible, you might not be thinking as critically as you think. The Bible actually encourages testing everything against Scripture, reason and evidence. "Test everything; hold fast what is good" (1 Thessalonians 5:21). "Test the spirits to see whether they are from God" (1 John 4:1). The Bereans were praised for fact-checking Paul's teachings against Scripture (Acts 17:11). This is just one way to look at it, but there seems to be a crucial difference between approaches. Biblical skepticism invites the hardest possible scrutiny, confident truth will emerge. Secular skepticism rules out entire categories of explanation before looking. Which approach is actually more...

The year was 2014. I had the flu... not COVID of Swine, or avian. The common, everyday flu. I’m sitting in my chair, wrapped in a blanket with a 102 fever, watching YouTube. A channel launched earlier that year that unfolded World War One history in week-sized bites. I binge watched that “last summer” all the way to December. It was great. I kept watching for the next four years. I mean, I’m a fan of World War One history. I learned a lot. It led to a larger channel called Time Ghost History. Great channel. Check it out. It is now 2025. We are now 250 years from the early days of the American Revolution. The “Shot heard ‘round the world” was fired on 19 April 1775. The beginning of what would be a second global war--the French & Indian/Seven Years War was the first---was a quarter of a millennium ago. World War One rocked Western society. It set the stage for a hundred years of turmoil. World War Two-The Reckoning, the Cold War, the Space Race. All of that is because of a four year fight. But the American Revolution is a bigger deal. It launched two-hundred years of revolution in Western thinking. It birthed the first modern republic. The French Revolution was a direct consequence. The aristocrat counter-revolutionary movements of Communism and Socialism) emerged. Anarchists, who contributed to lighting off the First World War, flowed from that. Where is Time Ghost? They are focused on the Greek Civil War and events that happened after WW2. Yes, definitely an important era. But not earth shattering. Nobody is talking about the most important eight years of American History. Nobody...