Religion Dispatches
…ty, in theory, creates the most well-being by doing what is scientifically best for the greatest number of its members. To take down this point, you just have to be able to successfully critique modernism, which basically amounts to pulling some quotes from the paper you wrote on Foucault when you were a college sophomore. 3) Embrace balance Despite the “cacophony” of criticism of The Moral Landscape, Harris claims that, “I have yet to encounter…
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…ho would buy it or if it would sell. We focused only on producing the very best work we could, a work we were proud of, a work that spoke to us and hopefully would speak to others. Are you hoping to just inform readers? Give them pleasure? Piss them off? I am hoping they will wake up to the corporate forces arrayed against them, forces that if left unchecked will doom the future of their children. You cannot, as Joe and I were, be around so much…
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…tax, just something that makes it simpler on families,” he said. “Money is best in the hands of families, and they know how best to spend it on for their children.” “Helping out the poor, that’s certainly something that the Bible tells you to do, but it doesn’t tell you to turn to the tax collectors to help the poor. It’s more to turn to yourselves to help the poor… We don’t believe it’s the role of the federal government to find an answer, a one-…
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…within seminaries of suffering, these venerable institutions represent the best of American society in general, and black human strivings in general. For instance, the organizational acumen and creative cultural genius of early black denominations disrupted the logic of white supremacy. With few resources other than a theological vision of equality and unrelenting commitment to freedom and justice, black congregations became sites of social improv…
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…use, last, not everything is under our control. Walter Brueggemann says it best: “In spite of our best planning, there is an inscrutable mystery about our experience which we cannot master or manipulate.” That includes the mystery of suffering, as Job discovered. Adherents of conspiracy theories and other kinds of foolishness often ascribe far too much power and control to the leading figures of their narratives. It’s a primitive way of thinking:…
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…eternal destiny.” Banana, Proof of God’s Existence Comfort is a man whose best-known evolutionary criticism is the banana (or “the atheist’s nightmare,” as he calls it), which he says proves God’s existence because of its intelligently-designed appearance. In an unintentionally funny video from 2006, he expounds on the brilliant design of the banana, as a most impressed Kirk Cameron looks on. That Comfort is so lacking in imagination that he can’…
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…notion. Paige’s spiritual explorations, which began last season, prompt a number of difficult, intriguing conversations between parent and child, and the parents themselves about identity, values, beliefs—what they are, what they should be, and how they can pass them on to their progeny. When Elizabeth and Philip’s KGB handler tells them that “the center” wants Paige to become one of the first “second-generation illegals,” Philip is horrified. He…
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…ctly private property in the manner of Athenian slaves; rather, they could best be described as serfs or slaves of the public: available and expected to do the public’s bloody business of conquest and pillage. Let us say it clearly and see how it feels upon the tongue: today’s “all-volunteer” military represents a contemporary form of helotry. We give the great majority of our young very little hope for a foothold in our collapsed economy; then we…
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…cal ties at work, I wanted to better understand the dynamics causing large numbers of people to adopt the interests of CWA and other Christian Right groups even when those ideas don’t necessarily have clear factual backing. I felt that a thoroughgoing treatment of how public persuasion and belief formation happens had been mostly ignored in scholarship, as most scholars simply see finite groups with finite beliefs, rather than asking critical ques…
Read More…or his efforts to pay off and arrange a lobbying job for Doug Hampton, his best friend and aide whose wife he’d had an affair with — said “there are consequences to sin.” He’s nonetheless confident that “God has forgiven me, and so has my wife.” The announcement comes as the Senate Ethics Committee ramps up its investigation, even though the Justice Department concluded its probe without pressing charges. Sin: Ensign had an affair with his best fr…
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