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Why Belief in the Primacy of Language Leads to a Misunderstanding of Richard Dawkins, Islamophobia, and Politics

…a bat?, we immediately come upon the problem of differences— —right, a bat flight simulator! But one of the things that we need to recognize is that . . . human beings experience their worlds very differently. I’m very interested in the phenomenon of disagreement. What does it mean when two people look at the same information and they come to different conclusions? To me, that is in some way indexing how deeply ingrained our affective experiential…

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Religious Resistance to Bolivian Gender Law; US Religious Right Celebrates Court OK For Romanian Marriage Initiative; Will LGBTs Be Banned from Indonesian TV?; Global LGBT Recap

…es of pro-homosexual forces in Europe and beyond.” The European arm of the American Center for Law and Justice also filed a memorandum in the case Indonesia: Will LGBT content be banned from TV? As we have been reporting, religious and political leaders have been responsible for a wave of anti-LGBT rhetoric this year. Now it looks as if LGBT content could be banned from the airwaves. The Jakarta Post’s Nurul Fitri Ramadhani reports: As the House o…

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Refusing the Monsters on Maple Street: A First-Person Commentary from the Mass Hysteria at JFK

…John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York, as I waited to board a flight back home to Oslo. I was there on Aug. 14, 2016, when, after years of the “War on Terror,” one of North America’s most important international airports seized up as panicked reports of “multiple active shooters”—later discredited as false—swept through the terminals, sending passengers, law-enforcement, and airline workers scrambling for cover and eventually onto the…

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In Case You Missed Them, the Top Pope Francis Quotes of 2016

…mistreated women, to children forced to work. –In yet another impromptu in-flight press conference, Pope Francis said in June that Christians should apologize to gay people and others the church has mistreated. Today, children are taught this at school: that everyone can choose their own sex. And why do they teach this? Because the books come from those people and institutions who give money. –In a meeting with Polish bishops on World Youth Day, F…

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Is Joel Osteen, Success Mag Cover Boy, Really “God’s Best”?

…od’s best,” Osteen misses a very important point. Perhaps on his next long flight he can pull out his Bible and take a gander at Luke 16:19-31—the story of Lazarus and the rich man. Daily, the rich man ignored poor Lazarus, but when Lazarus died he was taken to “heaven” or a place of eternal comfort. The rich man’s fate in Hades was terrible, however, as he begged Abraham to “send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue; f…

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Updated with Audio: Secular Good, Muslim Bad: Unveiling Tunisia’s Revolution

…rdes in check. I say “probably” because indeed we did: Tunisia was a close American ally in the war on terror, much as we cozy up, time and time again, to vile leaders who use the Islamist bogeyman to crack down on human rights for those human types. Too often, secular regimes in the Muslim world are not democratic. Their secularism is itself an imposition, and often a violent one. Turkey is an instructive example (trivial tidbit: Tunisia’s flag i…

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Barbara Ehrenreich’s Bright-Sided Explores the Dark Side of Positive Thinking

…ow it encourages victim-blaming, political complacency, and a culture-wide flight from realism. “The flip side of positivity is… a harsh insistence on personal responsibility: if your business fails or your job is eliminated, it must be because you didn’t try hard enough, didn’t believe firmly enough in the inevitability of your success,” writes Ehrenreich. “As the economy has brought more layoffs and financial turbulence to the middle class, the…

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As Long As There’s Fear, We Aren’t Ready for Atheism: A Conversation with Theologian and Ex-Priest Daniel Maguire

…in the morning and seeing the sun shine and the sky blue and the birds in flight and saying, ‘Thank you God,’ and you’re taking that away from me.” You write “theism promises simplicity and security and delivers neither,” but you do refer to a world that was “not yet ready for atheism.” Do you believe the world is now ready for atheism? As long as there is fear, it will never be fully ready. Fear makes you reach for a supernatural insurance polic…

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Doonesbury Cartoons Cause Controversy, But for Wrong Reasons

…d well. As Joffe points out, soon after the transvaginal-as-rape meme took flight, “Will abortion clinic staff who perform the ultrasound be seen as ‘rapists,’ as the provider I mentioned earlier worried? This is a possibility not lost on the anti-abortion website LifeNews, which recently ran the headline, ‘If Ultrasound is Rape, Arrest Planned Parenthood Staffers.’” Trudeau doesn’t get this. He told the Washington Post, of the Texas ultrasound la…

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Pastor Convicted in Lisa Miller Child Kidnapping Case

…ous-right folk hero, has repeatedly denied any role in or knowledge of her flight from the country. Erik Eckholm’s New York Times coverage of the trial included this information: The prosecutors presented evidence that others had worked with Mr. Miller to help Ms. Miller flee. Chief among those alleged to have taken part was a businessman in Virginia, Philip Zodhiates. Telephone records suggest that Mr. Zodhiates was in touch with Ms. Miller for m…

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