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Building Jesus out of Toast, “Pro-Life” Effigies, Apple is a Religion, and Taunting Muslims with Dogs

By Michael J. Altman

…am. Got questions? Get answers.” Meanwhile an ad from Stop Islamization of American responded, “Fatwa on your head? Is your family or community threatening you? Leaving Islam? Got questions? Get answers!” Protestors rallying against plans to build a mosque in Temecula, California brought their dogs to the rally outside the Islamic center’s current industrial park location because, as they put it, “Muslims hate dogs.” Three out of 4 Sunni schools o…

Francis Visits the Church that John Paul Broke

By Patricia Miller

…or women. Pope Francis will find a very different church. According to the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate, only one-quarter of Catholics attend mass every week (CARA has some of the best, most rigorous tracking of mass attendance; other surveys find higher percentages using more generous methodologies.) The number of priests and nuns has declined precipitously; from 58,000 to 38,000 for priests and from 125,000 to 50,000 for nuns. D…

Do Space Aliens Need Baptism? The View From Gliese 581g

By Paul Wallace

…ocks zone (not too hot, not too cold…). It turns out that we live near the center of the Sun’s Goldilocks zone, and Venus and Mars also occupy it but sit close to its inner and outer edges, respectively. (If these planets’ atmospheres had evolved differently, they too would be able to support liquid water.) The search for life on other planets has been ongoing for a long time, starting with the founding of the Search for Extraterrestrial Intellige…

Are Christians Theologically Prepared to Accept Torture?

By Sarah Sentilles

…ed. The results of the survey revealed that those who attend weekly church services are more likely than those who rarely or never attend services to say the use of torture on suspected terrorists is justifiable. Going to church increases the likelihood that people will support torture, especially if they are white evangelical Protestants. This is not good news. But is it a surprise? Almost immediately after the publication of the photographs from…

This Year in Satanism

By Joseph Laycock

…announced that he would hold a black mass in September in the city’s civic center. This was met with a surge of petitions and protests from outraged Christians. Among conservative Catholics, a narrative had formed of how Catholics bravely defeated the Satanists behind the Harvard black mass. Some protesters seemed envious of the Catholics who marched on Massachusetts Avenue and appeared to regard Adams’s black mass as a second chance for glory. AU…

New Reports Reveal Global Persecution of Nonbelievers

By Austin Dacey

…ist, atheist, and humanist organizations including the Washington DC-based Center for Inquiry and the London-based International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU). Full disclosure: I have worked with both organizations and consulted on the report, titled “Freedom of Thought 2012: A Global Report on Discrimination Against Humanists, Atheists, and the Nonreligious,” which was released on December 10, Human Rights Day. The IHEU report observes that…

Ian Buruma on the Political Excesses of Religion

By Lisa Webster

…rals do believe in something, whether it’s the 19th century variety or the American left-of-center variety. But it doesn’t seek to impose a particular belief on society at large. And that’s in some ways held against it by those who want society to be overtly Christian, or kick the Muslims out. Can you say something about the new culture wars, or kulturkampf, in Europe now—about multiculturalism versus the defenders of “enlightenment values”? The…

RD News Round-Up: October 27, 2008

By Bill Berkowitz

…communities fight poverty: The statistics are startling. According to the Center for American Progress’ Sally Steenland and Chase Nordengren, “Over 37 million Americans live below the official poverty line, constituting a population larger than the 25 smallest states combined… One in eight Americans is poor. One child in six is poor. … From 2000 to 2007, the number of children living in poverty increased by 15 percent… In 2007, the richest 20 per…

Perry’s Galileo Moment

By Sarah Posner

…‘intelligent design’ and ‘creation science.’” Josh Rosenau of the National Center for Science Education says that the same strategies are now being directed at attacking the science of climate change. For his research, Sherkat analyzed responses to 13 questions on scientific fact and reasoning from the 2006 General Social Survey, collected at the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago. The questions really are quite basic: o…

Why Has the Critique of Hypocrisy Run Out of Steam?

By Christopher Douglas

…eapon is indigenous to the Christian tradition, even to the point of being serviceable in the critique of other Christians. A famous American example was launched by Christian abolitionists against Christian slaveholders. Frederick Douglass’s Narrative of the Life of a Slave is premised on this critique of hypocrisy, his belief that you couldn’t possibly be loving your neighbor as yourself as you simultaneously bought, sold, manacled, starved, rap…