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Weird Testament: The Bible Gets the R. Crumb Treatment

By Gabriel Mckee

…ater renamed the Worldwide Church of God, and now known as Grace Communion International). This Adventist offshoot was fervently pre-millennialist, and Armstrong saw in Wolverton’s grotesque style the perfect means of capturing and communicating the horrors of the tribulation. And horrific the illustrations are—with their crashing planes, erupting volcanoes, boil-stricken sufferers, and monstrous whirlwinds—Wolverton’s literalist depictions of Rev…

Atheists Gather in Burbank: A Humanist’s Response

By Anthony B. Pinn

…scended on Burbank, California earlier this month for the Atheist Alliance International 2009 convention. The main topic? The great harm done throughout history by religion: the single most dangerous human creation. The welfare of humanity, it was argued, depends on the dismantling of religion and all of its delusions. The possibility of collaboration, of compromise, of any shared ethical commitments between theists and non-theists, was not on the…

Modernity’s Fraternity: What Dan Brown Gets Right

By Samuel Biagetti

…ven to the point of fallacy. At one point Langdon is rescued by an African-American man who is a thirty-third degree Mason of the Scottish Rite and a lodge brother of Peter Solomon, which is highly unlikely. American Freemasonry, including the Scottish Rite, has always been unofficially segregated. In the 1780s, Prince Hall, a black Bostonian, was initiated by some Irish soldiers. The white lodges in Boston refused to accept him, so he formed his…

Racing Toward Armageddon: The Three Great Religions and the Plot to End the World: An Excerpt

By Michael J. Baigent

…e on the stage, a “false prophet” (16:13)—the Antichrist—who will lead his international satanic army against the forces of God. All these satanic forces will be gathered together “at the place called in Hebrew, Armageddon” (16:16). Abruptly, a white horse bearing a divine warrior will appear from heaven, a warrior described as “The Word of God” (19:13), whom many interpret to be Christ; he will lead the “armies of heaven” (19:14) in a vast and bl…

Tea Partiers and Religious Right Court at Values Voter Summit

By Sarah Posner

…though she is now affiliated with a group called the City Action Coalition International which, she says, trains pastors to be political activists. It is led by Bishop Joseph Mattera, whose son, Jason, is a well-known conservative activist and blogger who led another Values Voter workshop, “Turning the Tide in Your Generation.” Hernandez does not fit the stereotype of the Anglo, spittle-flicking, where’s-the-birth-certificate, Obama-is-Hitler type…

“I Had No Intention to Write Atheistically”: Darwin, God, and the 2500-Year History of the Debate

By Edward J. Larson

…followers, whose numbers comprised a virtual social register of the Anglo-American moneyed elite, typically embraced Darwinism as well. In his Autobiography, for example, Scottish-American industrialist Andrew Carnegie recalled the day in the 1870s that his reading of Darwin’s Descent of Man, Haeckel’s History of Creation, and various books by Spencer transformed his life. “I remember that light came as in a flood and all was clear. Not only had…

That Mercenary Feeling: What the Apparently Unlimited Use of “Contractors” Says About American Empire in Afghanistan and Iraq

By Peter Laarman

…ticularly like. He quotes Frederick Barton of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, who tracks our country’s growing reliance on civilian mercenaries. Barton observes that “no one really knows whether having a force made up mainly of contractors whose salaries were often triple or quadruple those of a corresponding soldier or Marine was cheaper or more expensive for the American taxpayer.” Excuse me? “No one really knows”?? I’m not a…

Aung San Suu Kyi: The Verdict is Unfair

By Juliane Schober

…l ended in long prison sentences for all of the accused, and has triggered international outrage. Senator John Webb negotiated Yettaw’s release last week. General Than Shwe reduced Aung Than Suu Kyi’s sentence to a year and a half under continued house arrest. His act of leniency prevents her from playing a role in national elections scheduled for next year. Aung San Suu Kyi is the daughter of Burma’s national martyr and founder of the armed force…

Feared Taliban Leader Killed, But Military Strategy is Not the Answer in Afghanistan

By Mark Juergensmeyer

…—and an increasing number of Pakistanis—are motivated to fight against the American presence because of their love of freedom. They see the US military, like the Soviet forces before them, as a foreign occupying power. The Taliban, as draconian as they may be, are seen as enemies of the enemy: us. It is the US military presence, paradoxically, that is uniting the Taliban and marshaling wide public support behind it. What all this means is that a m…

God Grows Up: Robert Wright’s Evolution of God

By Robert Wright

…flowed from Paul’s practical needs. Love was a way of holding together his international network of churches. 4) That Muhammad was a religious fanatic. As I try to show, he was a cool pragmatist, willing to compromise on theological issues in order to build a political coalition. Apparently he even flirted with polytheism at one point. Did you have a specific audience in mind when writing? Two audiences, actually. I wanted the book to be accessibl…