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Pox Americana: Franzen’s Tragic Vision

By Peter Laarman

…y—are both undone by the shadowy and interlocking worlds of Big Energy and American imperial overreach in the Middle East. Walter leaves his good job with the Nature Conservancy to become a DC-based environmental shill for a Houston oil and gas player (and Bush family friend) named Vincent Haven (Franzen’s use of surnames is consistently arch in a way that Dickens would appreciate). With the help of his nubile young Indian-American assistant, Walt…

Little ‘Value’ in New Harris Book

By Michael Ruse

…stinguish an artery from a drainpipe, forget it. But what about the actual business of well-being itself? Perhaps brain science can tell us why one person likes to go to a baseball game and another to the opera, but can it tell us whether we should go to the baseball game or the opera? Leave aside the convoluted, pretend issues that philosophers so love—the opera singers all have starving children at home who will suffer if you don’t go to listen…

Tea Partiers Fall Back on Religion to Deny Reality of Climate Change

By Lauri Lebo

…ncial influence on the Tea Party movement, noting support from groups like Americans for Prosperity, which was founded and largely financed by oil industry interests. However, the most fascinating aspect of the article is how, when asked to explain their denialism of climate change, Tea Partiers seem to want to drop the pseudo-science fed to them from the corporate astroturf web sites and turn to religion. Again, I noticed the same thing at the 9/…

For Buddhism, Science is Not a Killer of Religion

By Paul Wallace

…have no cosmic-scale or speculative teachings from the Buddha. He was all business. On this point, the Dalai Lama told us on Monday, “Buddha’s mission to the world was not to measure the radius of the Earth and the distance between the Earth and the Moon and the distances to the stars, but to teach the Dharma for the single purpose of relieving all sentient creatures of suffering.” Moreover, he reminded us of the Buddha’s absolute insistence that…

Reading the Qur’an: Wherefore Art Thou?

By Amina Wadud

…f revelation is in the first few chapters and these rather get down to the business of making a living practicing community. Sometimes, I even find it boring to traipse through them, and I love the Qur’an so I think maybe I could spare a new reader by suggesting that the order of the text is not as significant as the process of trying to read it through; and a better way to read it through is to get into the rhythm of it and then proceed to comple…

Why Liberal Religious Arguments Fail

By Peter Laarman

…always a threat to individual achievement and to competition: to what made American great, in other words. God surely smiled upon the old laissez faire American Way—but God cannot be pleased by our drift into Big Government and a nanny state. We need to restore America’s greatness, blah-di-blah-blah-blah. It is pure folly to imagine that conservatives, and especially religious conservatives, will be prepared to surrender their viewpoint based on…

Religious Right Dream of Privatized Public Education Gets Boost

By Julie Ingersoll

…, in which businesses would help fund on-site charter schools. The funding business would have a significant voice on the governing board and reserve half of the seats in the classrooms for children of employees. These efforts and others will be supported during the upcoming National School Choice Week (January 23-29) in which Ralph Reed, founder of the Faith and Freedom Coalition (and director of Pat Robertson’s Christian Coalition during the…

Invited by Allah

By Amina Wadud

…one has to be Muslim for at least six months to make hajj. So I go to the American embassy and secure an affidavit stating I have been practicing Islam since 1972. When I brought that to the embassy they said: you need to have a mahram, the male guardian. At the time I was divorced and my son, Muhammad was only six years old, living with his dad while I was away. My father was deceased and all the other living males in my family were not Muslim….

“Far Too Extreme For America To Accept,” Hamas “Endorsed Obama,” “Forced Abortions,” and More

By Sarah Posner

…ications. Before working for Insight, Wheeler was a correspondent for the “American Investigator,” a syndicated monthly television program that conservative activists hailed for fueling the fires of the numerous Republican investigations of the Clinton administration in the 1990s. One 2008 NRT ad against Obama, filled with outright falsehoods and smoke-and-mirrors innuendo, was pronounced “despicable and wrong” by the Cato’s Institute Jim Harper….

The Best-Laid Plans of Mice and Humans

By Amina Wadud

…just to find your hotel, for which they suggest you take one of the hotel business cards, as if they don’t have that information. If you think I could just go online with the name of the hotel—well, I tried that. Instead I get directed to this tour company and a few others, because clearly this is part of their package. I mean, I could be staying at the Makkah Hilton, you know. Fortunately, I am not, because the online search shows hotels that ar…