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Free Will, Fate and FiveThirtyEight: The Theology of Election Polls

…kind of freedom in order to have another. MHS: You mean that you trade the freedom to choose for the freedom of a world that feels unconstrained by predetermined trajectories? AL: Precisely. Which, bizarrely, means that free will is actually more constrained! MHS: Well, that’s kind of the ethic behind big data, right? That, at least in aggregate, decisions that feel like free choice actually follow very clear and pre-determined patterns, and these…

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In Hamline Case, the ‘Free Expression vs. Religious Sensibilities’ Frame Obscures a Stark Reality About Higher Education

…ng of this incident. While the issue has largely been framed as a conflict between freedom of expression and the cultural sensibilities of a minority group (i.e. Muslims), non-binary thinking allows us to transcend the “culture clash” narrative. It enables us to recognize when corporations indulge in performative activism rather than address issues where the corporations’ own skin is involved in the game. In other words, hanging rainbow flags to p…

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What American Flag-Worship Looks Like to a New Citizen

…rt. After an item has been blessed in divine service – palm leaves, linens used to dress or to wipe up at the altar, a metal chalice – and has reached the end of its useful service, the preferred method of its disposal is consumption by fire. Palm leaves are often turned to ashes for use the following year on Ash Wednesday, the beginning of the Christian holy season of Lent. Chalices may be melted down and recast. We do the same for the flag: #176…

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The Rise and Fall of an American Gang: Religion as Camouflage?

…ous criminal enterprises. The Black P Stone Nation has always recognized a use for religion. Whether this use ever went beyond mere camouflage, like a clerical collar worn for the purposes of a scam, remains an open question, and it’s not a question that gets answered in this fascinating but frustrating book, a chronicle of the shifting organization that, helmed by Jeff Fort (later Prince Malik) cornered a sizeable chunk of the Chicago heroin mark…

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Patriotism and Piety—Not For Conservatives Only

…o. Like any strategist, I’m eager to learn whatever I can from my foes and use it against them. For that purpose, The Righteous Mind turns out to be useful. Haidt’s primary point is actually a good one: people on all sides of the political debate ought to listen more carefully, and try harder to understand one another. He correctly identifies a cardinal sin of so many liberals and lefties: failing to give conservatives an honest hearing. But it’s…

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Godly Game or Godless Satire? Countering Biblical Ignorance with Heretical Humor

…ing to us. Or when someone skips the middle books of the Old Testament because they’re long and boring…” Here pauses. “Granted, Numbers is like…” “I like Numbers, but anyway…” mumbles Caleb. “The real impetus for the game,” Thomas resumes, “is to get people to engage in Scripture and read stories they’ve never read before. When a concubine is cut up into twelve pieces, that imagery is really offensive. But a lot of people didn’t even know that sto…

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Of Personhood and the Pill: What’s at Stake?

…n has more embryos than can be transferred, doctors pick the two best, and freeze the remaining embryos for later use. However, the sad fact is that about half of the embryos which are cryopreserved won’t even survive the freezing and thawing process. We take healthy embryos and subject them to a process which offers no direct medical benefit to them, knowing that 50% of them will die in the process. Just imagine the parallel to healthy newborns:…

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The Perry v. Bachmann Primary at Liberty Unversity

…Pages about whether his clinic used the discredited practice. If I were a betting person, I’d bet this doesn’t have much impact on his wife’s campaign. While LGBT rights advocates and allies are right to be outraged, I doubt it would bring any new opposition to Bachmann, who is already well-known for her anti-gay views and voting record. And her supporters would likely not only support the use of ex-gay therapy, but view her husband as beleaguere…

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Another “Hot Text” For the War on Women: Rosemary’s Baby

…hinking “Reacquaint yourselves with Rosemary’s Baby, women of America, because if the right wing has their way, we’ll all be heading for housecoats and unlimited childbearing which we will allegedly turn out to love.” There’s a critical reading of the film that says that what’s really going on is that Rosemary is insane (hysterical) and she imagines everything that happens to her, that the whole satanic conspiracy stuff is pre- and postpartum depr…

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Way Beyond Atheism: God Does Not (Not) Exist

…ng their intelligence. Also, one may say that negative theology is content-free and useless because it nullifies the use of rational thought. In a sense this is a valid argument. But one can go beyond negative theology while bearing in mind its lessons. In fact, negative theology constitutes the central nervous system, if you will, of the entire Summa Theologica of Thomas Aquinas that Dawkins so happily and ignorantly mocks. In this work, Thomas e…

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