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Pat Robertson Flip-Flops On Climate Change Denial

By Michael Schulson

…climate change. With Robertson, Goreham had a lengthy and sympathetic chat about the fetters of scientific orthodoxy and the absurd idea that humans might be warming the climate. The 700 Club producers came through with a nifty bit on “climatism,” described as if it’s some kind of doctrine: “climatism is the belief that man-made greenhouse gases are wreaking havoc with the climate and destroying the planet.” To which Robertson added: “I understand…

It’s All In Your Head: Patricia Churchland’s Touching a Nerve

By Andrew Aghapour

…count easy to reject. Still, despite the lack of nuance when it comes to religion, Touching a Nerve is an approachable and engaging tour through the neuroscience of the self. My brain, for one, enjoyed her brain’s book about the brain….

Is It OK To Use a Cellphone in Church? Pew Surveys the New Etiquette

By Michael Schulson

…igion, custom, technology, and culture, the report offers two insights–one about religious services, and one about the difficulties of studying etiquette through surveys. It’s “Generally Not OK,” But… One part of the Pew study asked respondents to gauge the appropriateness of using cellphones in various places, including whether it is “generally okay or not okay for people to use their cellphones…at church or [a] worship service.” A full 96% of th…

Have White Evangelicals Become More Accepting of Candidates’ Personal Immorality, as New Data Suggests?

By Michael Schulson

…pport a philandering, swearing, biblically illiterate candidate who boasts about sexual assault. Certainly, Trump’s support among white evangelicals is hard to reconcile with the ethical self-presentation of a movement that uses terms like family values and moral majority to imply its uncompromising commitment to certain principles. But the assumption that white evangelicals actually were once paragons of moral rigor seems pretty questionable. I’m…

If You Liked The Martian You’ll Love These 3 Sci-Fi Shorts

By Andrew Aghapour

…oid of aliens, mysticism, and supernatural forces. Instead, The Martian is about smart people solving difficult problems. (How do you grow food on Mars? How do you send more food to Mars as soon as possible? How do you get water out of rocket fuel?) Scott highlights this pragmatic spirit with a visual gag: after Watney narrowly escapes death, he is shown contemplating a statuette of Jesus on the cross… before cutting it to pieces. The cross wasn’t…

Capricology: A Robot is Being Tortured

By Henry Jenkins

…s as he needs to be to find the truth. For me, Caprica is becoming as much about the fluid borders between games and reality as it is about the boundaries between human and machine— both are key questions for our time. One last thought: I am really intrigued by Tamara’s mark, which she leaves on the walls of New Cap City. In some ways, it is a continuation of the tattoos that we’ve discovered are so central to Tauran culture—a set of marks through…

Will the new Jurassic Park movie be an anti-GMO adventure?

By Michael Schulson

…hat they are. It’s possible to make bold things, and also to be thoughtful about the consequences—to be, in short, both the swaggering geneticist and the grizzled skeptic. Observers of certain conversations about some new technologies, including GMOs, will be forgiven for thinking that kind of balance is impossible. Between the rabid skeptics and the rabid backers, the voices that speak seriously about the benefits of a scientific advance, while a…

The Religious Roots of American Environmentalism

By Lauren Sutton

…k at newspapers and popular culture in 1900, there was a lot of excitement about what the 20th century was going to bring. There was this utopian attitude about the 20th century; they thought, “Oh by 1950 we’ll all be flying around, there will be all these miraculous new things happening.” And in 2000, it wasn’t anything like that. Nobody was looking forward to the 21st century. I think that says something about our civilization—we’ve lost our ner…

RDBook: Technology and Tradition: Carlson’s Indiscrete Image

By Nathan Schneider

…re basic than all that—built from the material of tradition and the worldliest contemporary reflection, he describes a way of thinking about being human in the mess of modernity….

RD News Round-Up—September 22, 2008

By Bill Berkowitz

…memos on fresh approaches to hot button issues; and third, a set of essays about how to begin to think about doing politics differently and more effectively.” The book, while “not intended as a manifesto, a platform or blueprint,” said Clarkson, is more like the “application of jumper cables to start a necessary conversation.” In a recent “Guest Commentary” titled “Becoming a Christian Citizen: Electoral Lessons from the Religious Right for the Re…