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Religious Kids Are More Selfish: The Stickers Don’t Lie

By Michael Schulson

…e full-of-shit than the humanists. The fact that someone like Decety feels comfortable taking his sticker games and making public comments about the fundamental nature of morality and secularity feels slightly surreal. (It’s not just in Forbes interviews. Here’s the final line of the paper: “More generally, [our findings] call into question whether religion is vital for moral development, supporting the idea that the secularization of moral discou…

What Does Darwin Mean to You?

By Arri Eisen

…okers a tentative peace between Park Place and Boardwalk, but avoids the uncomfortable conflict that Darwin likely feared for Emma—can religion and evolution occupy the same home? I would argue that they can, and do, coexist—and even complement each other. However, as a scientist I am in the minority. Polls indicate that very small percentage of biologists believe that a deity exists, the rest falling into the community of philosophical naturalist…

2017 Around the World: Progress and Persecution For LGBT People

By Peter Montgomery

…who says her role as an activist is twofold: “one aspect of her work is to communicate with the religious community to lobby for greater acceptance of LGBT Israelis in religious life, and the other is to raise awareness among members of the public.” Her most visible campaign, titled ‘Our Faces’, targets young, in-the-closet Israelis who perceive a contradiction between religious observance and homosexuality. The campaign, launched two years ago, p…

Two Women and a Mosque: A Convert Community Grows in Panama City

By Aliyya Swaby

…ama Mosque is more inclusive of converts now than before, she doesn’t feel completely welcome in the Indian community. Her husband’s family has trouble accepting her and even tried to delay the couple’s marriage. A common perception exists of converts as less knowledgeable or authentic Muslims than those in the immigrant communities. My father struggled with this when teaching at mosques in New York. Although he had studied Arabic and Islamic fund…

Why Even Progressive Christianity Must Own Its Complicity in Anti-LGBT Violence

By Layton E. Williams

…n atheist, but the post-Orlando call for Christians to recognize their own complicity in homophobic violence has come from within the church as well. Even Pope Francis acknowledged that the church owes an apology to gay people, though he did so without suggesting any change in the Catholic Church’s stance that homosexuality is a sin. Rev. Denise Anderson, who was recently elected as one of the co-moderators of my own denomination—the Presbyterian…

Pope Denounces Gender Colonization; Indonesian Court Considers Islamist Request To Criminalize Homosexuality; Egypt’s Grand Mufti Says No One Has Right to Harm Homosexuals; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…on of grand mufti in 2013, is widely known for his moderate views, and his comments on homosexuality come in stark contrast with other religious authorities in Egypt. Imam Sheikh Ahmad Al-Tayyeb, who leads the al-Azhar mosque in Cairo, said during a local television interview in June, that “no Muslim society could ever consider sexual liberty, homosexuality to be a personal right. Muslim societies consider these to be a disease that has to be foug…

Is Army’s New “Humanist” Designation Just Semantic Hooey?

By Elizabeth Drescher

…ounseling and gathering spaces for Humanist groups. It also means that the numbers and distribution of Humanists in the military can be tracked along with those of other religious groups, potentially inviting a reshaping of the military chaplaincy, which critics complain is inappropriately weighted in favor of Christian, and specifically Evangelical Christian, denominations. A study by the Military Association of Atheist and Freethinkers (MAAF)—t…

Naked Jihad

By Kate Blanchard

…ssed to you?” or “Nudity DOES NOT liberate me and I DO NOT need saving.” A number of commenters in the group, in fact, seem to think that Femen members are the ones who are oppressed. I myself have experienced these events as something of a roller coaster ride. As someone temperamentally shy about my body, I was both horrified and impressed first by Amina’s courageous statement, and later by the Femen protesters. But I also feared for their bodil…

American Sin: Why Pope Francis’ Mercy is Not Our Mercy

By Kaya Oakes

…n is not an act but a condition, a personal and social state in which we become accustomed to living.” In this particular moment of American political ugliness being displayed in the presidential debates, that corruption seems insurmountable. What will American readers make of this message? Mercy is not something we discuss very often. Our rates of incarceration, the number of states utilizing the death penalty, our obsessive clinging to the Secon…

The Progress of Christ in Commercial America: A Review of Chris Lehmann’s The Money Cult

By Peter Laarman

…delights in surfacing little-known factoids. These include the remarkable number of commercial hucksters who were preachers or else preachers’ kids (e.g., Richard Bolles of What Color is Your Parachute? fame—a former Episcopal priest) and the equally remarkable number of notable preachers who had strong commercial instincts and/or commercial roots (ranging from 18th-century superstar evangelist George Whitefield to 19th-century revivalist giant C…