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You Are More Than Your Brain: A Revolutionary Theory of Consciousness

…d molecules… This hypothesis is so alien to the ideas of most people alive today that it can truly be called astonishing.” Except that such a claim is hardly astonishing at all. In his First Meditation, seventeenth-century philosopher René Descartes observed that there’s no concrete way of determining what we experience is not a dream, because the objective methods we use to make such determinations (like pinching ourselves) might also be a dream….

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Healed of the Sin of Religion: At Church with Sara Miles

…ion and say: where are the ragged edges in this story? Instead, make it a parable, not a fable. A fable has a point, a single moral, but a parable is like a koan. It just opens up more and more layers of meaning. You can get lost in a parable. It can mean all kinds of things. I admired the way the book was organized. There was a suspense factor: feeding, healing, all of that made sense, but raising the dead? I kept wondering how you were going to…

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The ‘Dreher Affair’ Highlights the Right’s International Networks

…ed by televangelist Pat Robertson. The Anti-LGBTQ group Alliance Defending Freedom has set up shop outside the US as well, dubbing its coordinating international body Alliance Defending Freedom International. The Polish Ordo Iuris, a right-wing catholic organization which leads a crusade against abortion, is likewise well connected on an international level with German pundit Birgit Kelle, a regular on the anti-abortion circuit, having recently sp…

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How Far Will White Christians Go to Maintain Power? An Interview with Robert Jones

…hristian and non-white peoples they “encounter.” It declares that they are free to conquer by any means necessary and with the full blessing of God, church, and king. And of course the idea here was that the benefits of bringing “civilization” to the New World, and Christianizing it, could outweigh any of the atrocities committed along the way. So that’s colonial Christianity, and we are still dealing with the legacy of that today. We are still in…

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God’s Obituary: A Humanist Response to Mass Murder

…r in this world without cosmic aid that can protect us from us. Appeals to free will (as my comments are bound to generate) might not be a limitation God imposes on God’s self. It may simply be a weak way of saying we are in control, or what the late William R. Jones—philosopher of religion—called the “functional ultimacy” of human activity in the world.  These profound moments of tragedy slowly kill God, making it so difficult, if not useless, to…

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Persecution, Betrayal, and the Zero Sum Fight for Global Domination — Day 1 of NatCon 2024

…tfit connecting young national conservatives with Capitol Hill jobs, offer free nitro cold brew while its representatives promote their ‘energetic’ movement of far-right operatives eager to take back America, one Capitol Hill internship at a time (“The Left hates when you have fun. Have fun,” they tweeted). ‘Guerrilla’ warriors against the ‘elites’ Christopher DeMuth, Heritage Foundation fellow and Chairman of NatCon, opened the conference, declar…

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Beverly Cleary, Author of the Ramona Series, Understood Children, Shoes, School, Words, and How it Feels to be Heard, or Misunderstood

…arted the third grade . . . Grown-ups did not understand that summers were free from grades.” She also catches grown-ups speaking earnest nonsense. Virginia Lee Burton’s 1939 classic Mike Mulligan and the Steam Shovel may be about, as her teacher tells her, “digging the basement of the town hall,” but Ramona knows that her pressing question, namely, “how did Mike Mulligan go to the bathroom when he was digging the basement of the town hall?” stand…

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Is Pope Francis Yogaphobic?

…power to break the hardness of the heart and make it docile toward God and free to love. Given the frequent Catholic and evangelical yogaphobic moments in recent history, I asked myself if the Pope’s remarks were yogaphobic, but I concluded that yogaphobia did not appear to be at play in Francis’ homily. The Pope, after all, listed yoga alongside catechism classes and so did not set it apart as a practice that Catholics should avoid altogether, as…

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American Brokenness: A Lament

…ers; and to welcome them with open arms into the shared project of finding freedom, justice, and power together. That, as I always say, does not mean surrendering core principles or compromising them away. The truth, after all, is the truth. But I would love to see a sign at the next health care town hall meeting declaring WE SHARE YOUR PAIN AND WE NEED YOUR HELP. I would love to see Barney Frank or any other Congressperson say to a protester, “I…

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The Mistaken Assumption Behind Employers’ “Right” to Not Cover Contraception

…onfusion now dogs the debate over employers’ First Amendment rights to the free exercise of religion and the new insurance mandates under the Affordable Care Act, which include birth control. The argument that seems to be winning in court is that employers who oppose the use of birth control for religious reasons should not have to provide it to their workers. Only in a world in which labor has been alienated from production, however, can such an…

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