Religion Dispatches
…galvanize American nonbelievers and turn atheist manifestos into national bestsellers. When President Obama acknowledged nonbelievers in his inaugural address, he recognized a group of people who had previously been invisible in American politics. Of course atheists remain a distrusted and despised minority, and it will take time for politicians to begin to acknowledge personal disbelief publicly, but for the first time, led by a group of articul…
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…om may very well determine the future of democracy in our time, just as it did in the 18th century. As historian John Ragosta told RD last year: A republic could not work if government and church officials… were trying to control what we think or prescribe what was the ‘best’ religion or which people were the ‘best’ citizens based upon their religious beliefs. If people were to make informed political choices themselves, they had to be free to thi…
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…bout thanksgiving, shared suffering, loss, pain, generosity, and love. The best religious people and the best secular people learn to ignore our chosen (or inherited) religions’ nastier teachings (be those found in the Bible or in the “science” of eugenics and white racial superiority) in order to preserve the spirit of our faiths, be it a faith in secular humanism, science, God or in all of the above. It’s the tediously consistent fundamentalists…
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…eed to the literary arm of this new social movement: The [New York] Times ‘best-seller’ list was misleading. Evangelical books were often outselling the Times’ best-sellers. But the paper did not bother to count sales in religious bookstores. The people hurt most weren’t evangelical authors (our books sold anyway); rather, the losers were Democratic Party leaders and other liberal readers of the ‘paper of record’ who were blindsided by subsequent…
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…his). Better is his subtle tracing of the biblical lines of influence on a number of important American writers, especially Melville, whose Moby Dick also counts as the single most important work of American fiction by no less a religious and cultural critic than Cornel West. Bragg’s book is an extraordinary compendium of information, less about the creation of the KJV than about its long cultural aftermath. It thus supplements the story of the cr…
Read More…iscourse” by the public. “Finding a successful resolution will require the best thinking and goodwill of all across the political spectrum, the highest levels of statesmanship, and the strongest desire to do what is best for all of God’s children,” Church leaders said. Elected officials and Latino activists have asked the Church to take a more public stance on immigration in part because the immigration debate has been most heated in western state…
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…lock himself in the closet? Because Hubbard doesn’t think he’s the world’s best actor. We all craved his approval that way, and now that he’s dead the only way you can get his it is by doing exactly what he wrote—or what Miscavige says. What made Hubbard so compelling? He was a charmer. All you wanted from him was a smile. He was magnetic. Some people have that ability to charm people to protect themselves. He would stare into your eyes whenever y…
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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…
Read More…Now he says he’s merely interested in making sure students are taught the best science standards from the best science textbooks. After the “strength and weakness” wording was rejected, McLeroy launched into an impassioned speech during the recent hearings about the fossil record. He spoke of the “sudden appearance” of life forms during the 70- to 80-million-year-period known as the Cambrian Explosion and evolutionary stasis, in which life forms…
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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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