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Thoreau’s Ferocious Critique of Philanthropy Does Not Make Him “Selfish”

…eeder.” Thoreau’s point was that the capitalist’s philanthropy wasn’t much better. The hypocritical cover of philanthropic enterprises remains in use today. The travel writer and novelist Paul Theroux wrote earlier this month in the New York Times about communities across the South where factories have closed as jobs went overseas, a shift that has been broadcast as part of an effort “to uplift impoverished people” around the world. But such heroi…

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Buffalo and Uvalde Both Appear to Have Involved the AR-15, the Rifle Revered by the Christian Right

…will continue to occupy a unique place in American culture. For people who use AR-15s in horrific crimes, it perhaps symbolizes ultimate power capable of taking life. For people who criticize what they deem America’s obsession with firearms, the AR-15 symbolizes everything wrong with said obsession. For many Christians, however, the AR-15 is God’s preferred firearm, best wielded by God-fearing Christians ready to enforce God’s laws on Earth. The c…

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Blaming the Listener: NPR’s Non-Apology

…information in the beginning of the piece rather than the end, would have better served our listeners because it would have given them more context to understand what they were hearing.” Schumacher-Matos puts a fine point on it by concluding: “Spiegel and Gudenkauf clearly worked hard on this story. They simply made some wrong assumptions about what most of us know about sexuality and conversion.” But they should have worked harder—the fault here…

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Are All Religious Experiences Reducible to 16 Desires?

…motivations we can associate with religion, and so you’re offering a much better, more useful set of motivations than the previous theorists of religion whom you’ve mentioned. Where I’m hesitant is that you claim you’ve found a set of psychological universals, and here’s my reason: we know that culture affects biology, that there’s a give-and-take between our psychology and our environment. Some of our fundamental desires aren’t just biological,…

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Ritual Killing v. Factory Farming, or, Are There Roosters in Heaven?

…Court ruled unanimously that the city ban violated the church’s religious freedoms. It was the same year that Congress passed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which prevents laws that place an undue burden on people’s ability to express their religion. The religious methods of slaughter such as the Jewish shechita and the Islamic dhabh remain in most countries, though that is slowly changing. The Dutch parliament recently passed a bill requ…

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A Devil’s Dozen of the Best ‘New Religion Journalism’ Books of the Decade

…th up close… [so that] The only way for us to satisfy our shock or hurt, caused by the gaping disparity between what we say about death and how it actually arrives, is to spend more time with the dying.” Bringing to bear her own experience as a hospice volunteer, and discussions about topics ranging from euthanasia to the Death Positivity Movement, The Good Death shows how the best of the New Religion Journalism understands that faith is inextrica…

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Can Atheists Simply Ignore Theology?

…, the way that we can answer whether the poor emperor’s fruits are hanging free. So how do we address this kind of question? The answer, I think, is that we have to “try on” alternative interpretations to see which offers the best fit with the whole of human experience—not merely with what we experience through our senses, but also with the broader and ultimately more important dimensions of our lived experience, including our moral and aesthetic…

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The Tyranny of Politeness

…te-sponsored wickedness and the canons of true politeness do not ban their use. When you use policy (rather than a gun) to kill innocent people, it’s called murder. When you ruin people by stripping them and their children of basic health care, that constitutes morally criminal assault. And make no mistake, when you boycott the inauguration (and promise resistance to) a presidency pre-announced as a compound of bigotry, misogyny, and the shredding…

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Can Democrats Question Amy Coney Barrett’s Faith? Yes! Should They? Well…

…t her attention to detail). In any case, given the deeply-held connections between faith and law espoused at Blackstone, and ADF’s affiliation with a laundry list of extreme right-wing Christians, there are a lot of worthwhile questions to be asked about how Blackstone and ADF may or may not reflect Barrett’s jurisprudence. The right’s response to these issues has been rather predictably to accuse anyone and everyone with any concerns about Barret…

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How Can the Former President’s Opponents Repudiate His Fascist Rhetoric Without Giving Him the Publicity He Craves?

…an ever: with multiple indictment trials looming, returning to the White House is the only surefire way to avoid jail time. In order to get there, however, he must a) lock up the nomination, and b) defuse the massive public response to the overturn of Roe v. Wade, which has propelled Democrats to victory even in deep-red states. He is betting on his Veterans Day comments being incendiary enough to achieve both aims. On one level, Trump’s comments…

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