This month, I will be posting a new essay series that is somewhat different from the ones I have written before. Rather than a series of numbered sequels, each one following the previous in a linear fashion, this new series will be more like a branching bush, with different essays all growing out of the same central idea. That idea, as expressed by the title of this post, is "putting away childish things". In the Bible, the Apostle Paul says the following:

When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.

—1 Corinthians 13:11

I think this is excellent moral advice, though I would employ it in a different context than the one Paul undoubtedly intended. I agree completely that human beings should seek to grow up and become mature, that we should act as adults and put away the childish things of our youth. And those childish things, I would argue, include religion, which is highly childish in the sense that it is strongly focused on wish fulfillment, on perceiving the cosmos as we would like it to be rather than as it is. In this series, there will be one post from each category on the site, each one focusing on one of the "childish things" religion provides us and arguing that it should be replaced with the wiser and more mature alternatives of freethought and humanism. Links to the posts in this series can be found below.

Other posts in this series:

• No Oracles
• No Commandments
• No Heavens
• No Messiahs
• No Miracles