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My Business, Myself: Piercing the Corporate Veil

…ed by businesses like Annex challenge the ACA’s contraception mandate on a number of grounds. The most significant challenge invokes the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act, claiming that the insurance coverage mandate imposes a substantial burden on the free exercise of religion. Annex Medical lost its claim because the court concluded that the mandate does not impose a substantial burden on religious exercise and in the widely-publicized H…

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“Pregnancy is Not a Disease”: Birth of an Anti-Contraception Rallying Cry

…luded are contraceptive methods like IUDs and tubal ligations which have a high upfront cost but, when offered for free, may be especially effective in reducing abortions. Despite their promise for preventing unintended pregnancy and abortion, Laird criticizes the new guidelines based on his notion that: Contraception does not fall within the category of preventative health services. These drugs, devices, and procedures prevent the bringing of chi…

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Neuroscience Says Evil is “Over”: Not So Fast…

…ion or function of the brain, it must not be real. The article points to a number of ways neuropsychology has been overinterpreted and oversold. Rosenbaum addresses the fetishizing of fMRI images, the ideology that conflates causation and correlation, and the shifting semantics — evil recast as “non-empathy” by one esteemed psychologist (echoing, interestingly, the traditional Christian understanding of evil as a privation). But it’s the image of…

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In a Powerful Statement Black Presidents and Deans Say: No More Stolen Black Lives!

…ocedures and policies used by police departments that consistently lead to high incidents of police brutality against racial minorities by refusing those departments coverage. The immediate clarification by the FBI that Black Lives Matter is not a “black identity extremist” movement. American Academy of Religion/ Society of Biblical Literature: The immediate development and support of the Policing in Black and Brown Communities Initiative that wil…

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How to Make Nones and Lose Money: Study Shows Cost of Catholic Sex Abuse Scandals

…al, leaving the American church with a massive money problem and shrinking numbers of parishioners on the eve of Pope Francis’ arrival. A recent study by Nicholas Bottan and Ricardo Perez-Trugila in the Journal of Public Economics revealed that, unsurprisingly, “a scandal causes a persistent decline in the local Catholic affiliation and church attendance.” “Some Catholics join other religious denominations during the first three years after a scan…

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A Secret History of Satan

…ed and challenged by the book. For example, I am fascinated by the growing number of pop culture addicts who want to examine how their interest in fantasy, science fiction, horror, and the fantastic in general connects to theology, popular religion, and the sacred more generally. There is a real and growing audience out there for this approach as evidenced by Gary Laderman’s book Sacred Matters, Joseph Laycock’s very interesting study Vampires Tod…

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The Quixotic Task of Debunking David Barton

…futations of Barton’s bogus empiricism.  I’ve considered these questions a number of times recently in observing historians struggling to deal with the popularity of figures such as David Barton, who bowdlerize history but get the kind of attention few actual historians receive for their work.  To What Effect? These debates go back a long way. When I was in college at a Baptist denominational school in Oklahoma, the biology professor, a man about…

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American Jewish Leaders Get Gaza Wrong

…by the Al Qassam Brigades).  Yousef Munayyer provides some history of the numbers from Gaza at Open Zion: For example, in 2011, the projectiles fired by the Israeli military into Gaza have been responsible for the death of 108 Palestinians, of which 15 where women or children, and the injury of 468 Palestinians, of which 143 where women or children. The methods by which these causalities were inflicted by Israeli projectiles breaks down as follow…

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Turkish Police Move Against Activists Who Defied Pride Ban; And More in Global LGBT Recap

…her coalition partners may insist on it. In another, court cases reach the highest court and settle the question. German society seems ready to put its ambivalence toward homosexuality behind it. Witness an important symbolic law passed last year: All those old convictions under paragraph 175 were retroactively annulled, and the men prosecuted who were still alive given restitution. Serbia: Police allow Pride to go forward as legislature is poised…

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Do Atheists Belong in the Interfaith Movement?

…nt and CEO of the Center for Inquiry, an organization I have worked with a number of times (I recently accepted an invitation to join their Speakers’ Bureau) and whose “Living Without Religion” campaign I greatly admire. In his blog, Lindsay wrote that “it’s nice that some politicians are finally willing to acknowledge our existence, but are we so desperate for acceptance that we’ll allow others to condescendingly misdescribe us as adherents of a…

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