Religion Dispatches
…chool boards “to create and foster an environment” in public schools that “promotes critical thinking skills, logical analysis, and open and objective discussion of scientific theories being studied including, but not limited to, evolution, the origins of life, global warming, and human cloning.” In addition to state-approved textbooks, teachers “may use supplemental textbooks and other instructional materials to help students understand, analyze,…
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…al rule of law than the government does. [They] lay out a social and moral code that governs human interaction, and supplies a context for suffering and poverty, constructing a group identity through which followers can hope to secure their worldly needs, and find some certainty about the hereafter.” It follows that in such places, religion may be the only guiding principle, the only social, moral, even legal code to abide by. Somalia, for example…
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…with breaking away from what I was anchored in, and trying to find my own code. But it was a code that was birthed from parents who were strong believers in a higher set of ways of living your life. And that’s what they bequeathed to me. So precious. Do you think that some people are just better at religion than others? Christopher Isherwood talks about the idea of the “religious genius.” Do you think that’s possible? Why not? It makes sense. I t…
Read More…mad said, is charity. But Gaffney et al. portray shari’ah as a fixed legal code that a fifth column of “adherents” seek to implement in place of the Constitution (somehow, they don’t explain how one Muslim in Congress or the less than one percent of the U.S. adult population that is Muslim would accomplish this). Gaffney told the audience for his talk, which was directed at Congressional staffers: [I]n fact we are looking at a mortal threat to the…
Read More…ed faith.) Still, West is correct. Discovery Institute folks had long been promoting critical analysis – when they weren’t busy also promoting intelligent design. As is their modus operandi, they switch between intelligent design and coded phrases like “teach the controversy” when it serves their purposes. For an example of their promotion of intelligent design in public school science class, see their 1999 booklet Intelligent Design in Public Sch…
Read More…atican, and the World Evangelical Alliance have worked together to issue a code for how Christians ought to evangelize. No word on how this code effects the use of Chick Tracts. A village in the Philippines celebrates its patron saint, John the Baptist, with a Mud People Festival. Reminds me of my weekend at Bonnaroo 2004. The Pope tweeted—from an iPad, no less. It’s all part of the Vatican’s new multimedia news portal, news.va. Biblical criticism…
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…s a pair) has produced new attention in LDS communities to how those dress code boundaries are enforced and who bears the brunt of the enforcement. Beginning in November, the BYU-Idaho testing center (responsible for administering academic examinations for many classes, especially large General Education courses) started interpreting and enforcing the school’s dress and grooming standards as a ban on “skinny jeans.” A flyer was posted by universit…
Read More…d-down and unflinching personhood bill yet: the bill would amend the legal code to treat fetuses as persons at all stages of biological development. So what happened? Well, there was opposition, of course. People got nervous about the things that generally make a lot of people nervous about giving legal rights to fertilized eggs. What about in vitro fertilization? What about ectopic pregnancies? What about the liability of medical providers? The b…
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…munity but was concerned with the increasing number of television programs promoting or starring members of the LGBT community, such as the popular transgender actor and comedian Dorce Gamalama. Erlinda said the commission was concerned that many young boys were starting to cross dress or adopt feminine characteristics because they had been “brainwashed” by these television programs. “The KPAI has stated clearly we reject any LGBT campaigns or pro…
Read More…f Family Watch International, and Scott Lively, who has traveled the globe promoting anti-gay policies. RD Contributor Jay Michaelson has published a Daily Beast commentary on Rick Warren’s work in Africa, which he says “may well reflect the sense among Christian conservatives that America has already been lost, but Africa may yet be saved. Here, the culture war has been won by Satan; there, it may still be won by God.” Churches, schools, and fait…
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