Religion Dispatches
…chool boards “to create and foster an environment” in public schools that “promotes critical thinking skills, logical analysis, and open and objective discussion of scientific theories being studied including, but not limited to, evolution, the origins of life, global warming, and human cloning.” In addition to state-approved textbooks, teachers “may use supplemental textbooks and other instructional materials to help students understand, analyze,…
Read More…also promoting intelligent design. As is their modus operandi, they switch between intelligent design and coded phrases like “teach the controversy” when it serves their purposes. For an example of their promotion of intelligent design in public school science class, see their 1999 booklet Intelligent Design in Public School Science Curricula: A Legal Guidebook. Also, in the case of Dover, Discovery initially sent pro-ID DVDs, such as Signature in…
Read More…orm. But the point is it won’t be America if shari’ah is part of our legal code, if it’s allowed as a political reality to take hold in this country. In short, speaking for myself and I think for my colleagues, we’re about trying to keep America shari’ah free. Lamborn, who said he was pleased to co-host the event, called Oklahoma’s passage of a shari’ah ban last year “just the opening round in the growing struggle between shari’ah law and the Amer…
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…with breaking away from what I was anchored in, and trying to find my own code. But it was a code that was birthed from parents who were strong believers in a higher set of ways of living your life. And that’s what they bequeathed to me. So precious. Do you think that some people are just better at religion than others? Christopher Isherwood talks about the idea of the “religious genius.” Do you think that’s possible? Why not? It makes sense. I t…
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…the case of Christianity, evangelicalism and Pentecostalism. Griswold hops between the megachurches on the outskirts of teeming Lagos, to the underground headquarters of Jemaah Islamiyah in a wealthy Jakarta suburb. Here, there, and in between, Griswold finds support for an argument that she makes at the outset: Christianity and Islam are both “in the midst of decades-long revolutions—reawakenings—based on effervescent forms of worship.” Perhaps t…
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…politics is almost irresistible.” Indeed, he succumbs, dividing the world between good liberals and “tacky” conservatives, the distinguished and the sophomoric. When confronted by evidence that these categories are not so hard and fast as his inner social scientist would like, he falls back on a rhetoric that constructs a reasonable middle by dismissing all to its left and its right as paranoid. For Randy, the center always holds. But the center…
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…s. I am not quite sure about the “film noir” feel of Caprica. It’s a cross between a 1930s pre-code movie and Metropolis. The cops, the smoking, the old-fashioned cars; I thought Caprica was supposed to be technologically savvy, not a cross between the future and the past. What does this say about its inhabitants—and the show’s creator? I agree with Diane, this week seems to be a placeholder for something to come, but in the process, I did not lea…
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…orhood, one Hasidic man who wouldn’t give his name said that blaming dress code for the removal of the bikes lane “is just bullshit.” He is disappointed with how his people have been portrayed in news reports about this issue and insists that safety was a genuine concern. That’s what nearly everybody walking up and down Hasidic Bedford in daytime says as well. When asked directly about it, they concede that they believe many cyclists to be inappro…
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…ne. Humans should be mature enough to develop and maintain our own ethical code informed by scientific knowledge of its consequences, he argues, rather than rely on an ancient moral code inscribed in scriptural texts of human origin composed in a different era for reasons that no longer apply. Dawkins finally brings the story to where Rev. Adam Sedgwick feared that it would end 150 years ago when he read this pre-publication copy of Origin of Spec…
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…particularly irks Texas Freedom Network’s Dan Quinn. “This is not a debate between left and right,” Quinn said. “This is a debate between radicalism and the mainstream.” “What they’ve done is the same thing they did with the science experts,” Quinn added. “They’ve packed the panel with ideologues whose politics they agree with. It’s three ideologues and three mainstream academics. But they’ve moved the debate so far to the right that they make it…
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