Religion Dispatches
…knesses” of evolution. The bill says: “Teachers shall be permitted to help students understand, analyze, critique, and review in an objective manner the scientific strengths and scientific weaknesses of the theory of biological and hypotheses of chemical evolution.” State Rep. Robert Wayne Cooper (R-District 155), who has been behind a series of failed attempts to pass similar legislation, introduced the bill and has been joined by ten co-sponsors…
Read More…aknesses” of evolution. The bill says: Teachers shall be permitted to help students understand, analyze, critique, and review in an objective manner the scientific strengths and scientific weaknesses of the theory of biological and hypotheses of chemical evolution. State Rep. Robert Wayne Cooper (R-District 155), who has been behind a series of failed attempts to pass similar legislation, introduced the bill and has been joined by ten co-sponsors….
Read More
…troduced by state lawmakers around the country instruct educators to teach students about “both sides” of controversial issues—most notably on evolution. The Seattle-based, pro-intelligent design Discovery Institute is behind efforts to introduce many of these bills and has proposed sample legislation for lawmakers to follow. Since the Louisiana bill was passed (making it the only state to have actually passed an academic freedom bill into law), p…
Read More
…re are more slaves today than at any time in human history. The Not For Sale Campaign, one of the driving forces behind this documentary, brings together a wide swathe of people including faith groups, students, teachers, artists, and the business community to mobilize together for this common cause. Time will tell if this grassroots movement for good can produce real results. …
Read More
…a note, the discussion about ghar wapsi should be broadened to include the international implications of conversion politics in India. If evangelical groups are spending millions a year in coercively converting Indians (including right after natural disasters like the 2004 tsunami), then we should be having a discussion about the scale of conversion and the impact it is having on the Indian social fabric. It’s a conversation Uganda and a number of…
Read More
…false one. With well over 100,000 deaths as of publication, more than the number of service members killed in World War I, America is living through an apocalyptic moment. But it’s also an apocalypse in the literal sense of an unveiling or disclosure—an unmasking. The coronavirus has unmasked how our lives are marked by a profound mutual dependence that challenges our self-understanding and political ideologies. It has unmasked a federal governme…
Read More
…ns of the brain that remain unactivated in the rest of us. There are any number of weird implications and outright contradictions in these sorts of studies. The first is this: do the authors of these studies believe that religious belief or practice has the power to effect the size of the human brain? If so, that would seem to grant an astonishing power to religion to effect real world, and very nearly miraculous changes. Or perhaps the claim i…
Read More
…basal ganglia, and other brain regions have been proposed to accomplish a number of specific functions. Imagine, for example, working intently on some task until you notice that your stomach is rumbling and that the daylight has shifted. You think back to when you last ate, gauge how long you’ve been working, and give yourself five minutes to finish up before having a light snack, so as not to ruin your dinner. An MRI scan of this thought proces…
Read More
…be live-streamed, starting Wednesday, June 15). The bishops will take up a number of issues, from the revised liturgy to assisted suicide, but their conversations are sure to be dominated by an issue that has been dogging them since the mid-1980s: sexually abusive priests and the bishops who enabled them. Ten years after Cardinal Bernard Law became the poster bishop for failed religious leadership, new revelations of episcopal misfeasance threaten…
Read More…ring who it is being directed to and where it is apparently originating. A number of Palestinians are Christians, and that Christianity is of course traced back to the time of Jesus himself. The Palestinian weekend is Friday and Sunday. In addition to being the world’s most annoying and dissatisfying weekend schedule (there should be an award for that, or maybe financial compensation), the days reflect the primary religious affiliations of Palesti…
Read More