Religion Dispatches
…t a tribe including many members who, from possession in a high degree the spirit of patriotism, fidelity, obedience, courage, and sympathy, were always ready to aid one another, and to sacrifice themselves for the common good, would be victorious over most other tribes; and this would be natural selection. To put it another way, Darwin questions the exclusively selfish foundations of morality. As he also wrote, “the moral sense is fundamentally i…
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At a time when increasing numbers of informed audiences in both scholarly and popular circles have begun to recognize African religious cultures and the rich contributions they have made to African diaspora civilizations, Pat Robertson has made another dubious contribution to America’s fascination with the ‘problem of Haiti.’ As Robertson narrates it, in his latest fiction-disguised-as-revelation, “something happened a long time ago in Haiti,” an…
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…ere to rank Bauer’s fundamentalist upbringing on an extremity scale of 1 to 10, I’d likely score it smack dab in the middle. Her non-denominational church was certainly evangelical, putting forth the belief that one must sublimate one’s time, talents, and resources on a ubiquitous quest to, as Saint Paul instructed, die to self. Bauer’s childhood spiritual guides did their part to fill her with rapture anxiety by screening A Thief in the Night, an…
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…et a killer who did keep up the performance, but with things like September 11th and al-Qaeda, or, persons like Osamah bin-Laden, at least I know they exist. So, it’s not magic. The prophet said, “If a man washed in a river five times a day, would there be any dirt left on him?”, and the companions said, “No our Prophet, there would be no dirt left on him.” “That,” he said, “is what happens to the soul, when one prays five times a day, no dirt is…
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…onals. This is a project at an early stage for Princeton University Press. The second is a history of atheism in the United States, with a particular emphasis on the period after the supposed “golden age of freethought” in the late nineteenth century. At this point I see the 1920s and 1930s as a watershed moment. Again, that’s quite preliminary. The third one is a reflection on the quest for perfection in American culture. I take this to have sign…
Read More…g on the soul. The title of this episode, “TS-19″ referred to “Test Subject 19,” an unfortunate victim of the zombie infliction who allows scientists to monitor his brain as he goes from human to zombie. The scientist doing the computer recording, Dr. Jenner, narrates the changes he sees as the infection progresses. He makes a distinction between “the first event,” or infection leading to death, and a “second event” or “resurrection event” that ma…
Read More…Earth” isn’t exactly “In the name of the Father, and the Son and the Holy Spirit.” It’s downright weird, isn’t it? It’s almost as bad as “Brother Sun” or “Sister Moon,” or “Brothers Wind and Air.” Really? How about “Sister Water”? C’mon. Really? Really? No no, I can top that: “Brother Fire.” Best of all: “Sister Bodily Death.” Who comes up with this crap? Oh, wait. A major Christian saint came up with that crap (Hint: He died in Assisi). As a bon…
Read More…s only in the short run, that differences can be overcome; that a national spirit does indeed bind us together in spite of differences in politics, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and religion. This power is also evident in the collective disgust we all feel in the face of upcoming protests by members of the Topeka, Kansas, Westboro Baptist Church, who are promoting a radically different interpretation of the dead victims. Seventh, there is m…
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…reminded of the daily Bible readings in my public grade school in the late 1960s and early 1970s—nearly a decade after such a practice theoretically had been ruled unconstitutional. News of that ruling apparently had not reached the teachers of my home room in small-town Oklahoma. They made sure to read just the appropriate parts, and not anything from the sacred scriptures that could force us to confront the time, place, or context from which th…
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…heir hurtful activism. Indeed, Ratzinger’s infamous “Halloween Letter” from 1986 (usually read as an anti-gay document) states: It is deplorable that homosexual persons have been and are the object of violent malice in speech or in action. Such treatment deserves condemnation from the Church’s pastors wherever it occurs. It reveals a kind of disregard for others which endangers the most fundamental principles of a healthy society. The intrinsic di…
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