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Can Atheists Simply Ignore Theology?

By Eric Reitan

…onclude that string theory is nonsense, since it’s incomprehensible to me. Fortunately, Myers’ more prominent follower is also a more careful thinker. Dawkins offers an interpretation of “The Courtier’s Reply” that, at least at first glance, lends it more plausibility. In the preface to the paperback edition of The God Delusion, Dawkins distinguishes between two kinds of theology: the kind which presupposes God’s existence, which I’ll call substan…

The Rise and Fall of an American Gang: Religion as Camouflage?

By Spencer Dew

…d Aki.” Similar gaps riddle the narrative. “An Illinois politician invited Fort to attend the 1969 inauguration of President Richard Nixon,” we’re told, but we’re not told who, or why. Likewise, we’re told “the El Rukns had been paid ten thousand dollars through the coffers of a black state representative to put up flyers and do other campaign work for Mayor Jane Byrne in her race for reelection against black candidate Harold Washington,” but, aga…

Alleged Fort Hood Shooter Is Muslim. So What?

By Sarah Posner

…y religious or personal beliefs and actions such as the shocking events in Fort Hood go against Islamic teachings of love and respect for life.” More than 3,000 Muslims serve in the United States military. Jumping to conclusions about Hasan’s supposed religious motivations, and worse, sowing rumors and fears of a fifth column infiltrating the military is shameful and goes against the principles of religious freedom that so many conservatives claim…

How We Got to Super: Grant Morrison’s Visionary Gnosticism

By Jeffrey J. Kripal

…morphed from an earlier one used by a Cambridge classicist named Frederic Myers: “supernormal.” The word did double work for Myers: it offered an alternative to “supernatural,” and it carried distinct evolutionary connotations. Like a wormy caterpillar witnessing the graceful wings and bright colors of a floating butterfly nearby, Myers thought that human capacities like telepathic communications and precognitive dreams were early signs of an evo…

The Key to Understanding the Federalist Society Isn’t Originalism — It’s This 800-Year Old Tradition

By Peter Schwartz

…cognate, “textualism”) peppers the Federalist Society website, with nearly 1,000 references associated with Federalist Society events, videos, and publications. What one might be more surprised to discover, however, is that a search for “natural law” and related substantive matters such as “religious freedom” outpaces “originalism” with more than 1,000 mentions. Recent law school lectures sponsored by the Federalist Society include University of…

Atheist Nazis? The Pope’s Cheap Atonement

By Susannah Heschel

…sm was in full accord with Christian principles. This was not a marginal effort; at the 1934 Oberammergau passion play, watching Jesus being hoisted on the cross, the audience saw a parable of the Third Reich, calling out: “There he is. That is our Führer, our Hitler!” Hitler became Christ, the redeemer of Germany, thanks to a reinterpretation of the Gospels: Jesus was not a Jew, but an Aryan who came to redeem them from the Jews who sought their…

Norwegian Catholic Church May Stop Civil Marriages; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…g up’ and when we had some difficult times in our family’s life, when I was 12, 13 the Church became this very important thing that wrapped around us and supported us.” She said her study of medieval English at university and figures like Julian of Norwich had fascinated her and reaffirmed her Faith. “I never felt the need break away,” she said. “In the past, when I didn’t go I found I missed it, it provides community and creates a space that is v…

Glenn Beck’s Cheap Grace

By Karyn Carlo

…e Cone’s black theology with Marxism. Here he is wildly off base and his unfortunate tendency to take everything he doesn’t like, slap it on to his chalkboard, draw lines, and call it a connection, gets the better of him. Unfortunately, he doesn’t always do his homework. Unlike many Latin American Liberationists, black theologians, including Cone, actually tend to reject Marxism as a philosophical source. It is too white, too Western and, tends to…

Believing in Johnny Cash: An Open Letter to Atheists

By Paul Wallace

…I don’t for a moment doubt the basics of evolution and thermodynamics. But Myers was not forced by the facts of nature into these beliefs he so forcefully espouses. Instead, he has done exactly what storytellers do: He has told us a story. That is to say, he has added his own stuff. The problem is that not that Myers is telling us all a story, but that he insists he is not. “Reality,” he writes, “is harsh.” His story is the story you absolutely mu…

The Circle Can Remain Unbroken, If Battered And Bloody

By Daniel Schultz

…— it’s more speech. A robust and mature political discourse, however uncomfortable, will do more to shut down pinheaded proto-fascist teabaggers than 10,000 calls for civility ever could. Like it or not, we do have differing levels of power, and we do have competing interests. The only way to hash them out, absent brute force, is to talk, sometimes passionately, even stridently. That of course is not open license for any kind of bile, venom, or p…