Religion Dispatches
…next man. Nice. But I hope you noticed I said man to men, and I don’t ever use the word unless explicitly male. I never use that word for human being, person, or humanity as whole. That gives people too much license whether to include women as persons or human beings, so I just don’t do it. But here it is intentional. Well, I think about the idea of hajj as a visit before the king. Men, who are basically used to certain predominance in society, if…
Read More
…ic feminist initiatives. Catholics, including President Joe Biden, need to use the word ‘abortion.’ It is primarily a medical procedure, not an ethical or political dilemma. Try to say it along with ‘transplant’ and ‘tracheotomy’ to get used to the fact that, like those medical procedures, it is necessary and helpful in terms of human health, not for everyone, but for those in need. Reluctance to use the term ‘abortion’ is a signal of how successf…
Read More
…ncerts also did nothing to endear him to the Christian faithful, yet Dio’s use of the horns came from his grandmother’s use of the hand symbol to ward off the evil eye (corna). I have to wonder if Dio’s grandmother ever saw him use it in a concert. Without Dio, and other “satanic” metal groups, right wing Christianity would have had a hard time remembering what to do with the devil. Dio made it cool to question religion, to embrace the darker side…
Read More
…notion of what actually exists “out there,” and we document how the brain uses its perceptions to build useful models of the world, other people, morality, and God. Did you have a specific audience in mind when writing? We wrote this book for everyone who has an interest in religious, spiritual, and secular beliefs. We talk about the neural activity in the brains of believers and disbelievers, and we show the benefits of contemplation for eve…
Read More…abies,” as Bray put it. He was careful to say that he did not advocate the use of violence, but morally approved of it in some instances. He was “pro-choice,” as he put it, regarding its use. Bray found support for his position in actions undertaken during the Nazi regime in Europe. His moral exemplar in this regard was the German theologian and Lutheran pastor, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who abruptly terminated his privileged research position at Union…
Read More
…aving this terrible sin of slavery at its beginning, then getting a little better with Jim Crow and a little better with civil rights. It’s too easy to say, “No, things aren’t perfect, but we’ve come a long way.” We cannot dismantle what we have not named. The truth is that black people in North Carolina had more political power in 1868 than they did in 1968. We had more political power after the Voting Rights Act in 1965 than we do today after Sh…
Read More
…o-ascetic utopia, where parking lots become parks and power plants become museums because we all use solar cells and drink Soylent and have our clothes shipped to us (efficiently) by drone. But who will exist on the fringes? Rhinehart’s vision would have us invert the “haves” and the “have-nots,” letting the rich live lightly by offloading the messy business of consuming and owning to the poor. The solution to our problems isn’t to wildly deregula…
Read More
…’t really different from other advocacy groups in this respect. I wouldn’t use the words “tricky” or “manipulative,” because those words imply that there’s a certain moral ineptness inherent in chaos rhetoric. What I’d claim, rather, is what I said earlier: most of us tolerate chaos rhetoric quite well when it’s being used by a group that we like. In other words, various methods of persuasion (in this case, chaos rhetoric) are called “tricky” or “…
Read More
…the legitimate transition of power on those lines—and it hasn’t softened. Between Jericho Marches and the repeated use of medieval and explicitly Christian calls to violence, America is already there. Once you decide that violence is the appropriate solution to maintain theocratic dominance, the guns you’ve made holy and stockpiled become a threat. This is radicalization. And for every “lone wolf” narrative that gets word-vomited out every time t…
Read More
…bor, Miller must, if the charge is true, not really be a Christian. Or, to use another example, the Westboro Baptist Church must not really be Christians because true Christians would never protest at funerals. It’s an effective strategy, insofar as it appears to protect the integrity of mainstream religious belief against what appear as more extreme elements. Indeed, sometimes it’s appropriate and necessary to do so. But it can also be lazy and d…
Read More