• Oliver Sacks, the neurologist and science writer, has terminal cancer. Here, he writes a beautiful, elegiac, deeply humanist essay about confronting the prospect of death and what he intends to do with the time he has left.
• This can’t end well: In response to the increasing threat of ISIS, which is drawing Muslim extremists to its cause from all over the world, Western Christians, most with military experience, are traveling to Iraq and Syria to form an opposing Christian militant group called Dwekh Nawsha, meaning “self-sacrifice” in Aramaic.
• Why Christian entertainment is destined to be boring. Religious message fiction can’t meaningfully interrogate human values.
• The anti-choice movement’s creepy glorification of women who die in childbirth, willingly or not. For a chaser, read this exchange that highlights the amazing deceitfulness of pro-life groups talking out of both sides of their mouth on whether there should be a life-of-the-mother exception to abortion bans.
• Like many other religious sects, Jehovah’s Witnesses shelter and cover up for sex predators in their midst, ordering victims to not contact the police. Notable for a court case in which the Watchtower was sanctioned by the court because they flatly refused to turn over documents on known abusers within the organization.