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In Russia It Is Now a Crime to Insult Someone’s Religious Feelings

…sonally, I appreciate and enjoy the radically liberal American approach to free speech, including the right to blaspheme—which is of course not to say that to do so is always wise or tasteful. But, as retired history professor Anthony Edmonds of Ball State University used to quip in the classroom, a historian’s favorite hand is “the other hand.” For better or for worse, I am professionally trained as a historian. Thus, despite my respect for Ameri…

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“I Had No Intention to Write Atheistically”: Darwin, God, and the 2500-Year History of the Debate

…ne. Humans should be mature enough to develop and maintain our own ethical code informed by scientific knowledge of its consequences, he argues, rather than rely on an ancient moral code inscribed in scriptural texts of human origin composed in a different era for reasons that no longer apply. Dawkins finally brings the story to where Rev. Adam Sedgwick feared that it would end 150 years ago when he read this pre-publication copy of Origin of Spec…

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Note to David Brat: Free Markets Are Not Calvinist

…e law—neither the Torah nor the laws of the Roman Church. The Christian is free from condemnation, free to obey God joyfully, and free to make individual choices about earthly matters—even including usury (lending money at interest). So thus far it may seem that Calvin put his stamp of approval on the market free-for-all that’s so popular with bankers, business owners, financiers, and Brat voters. In her post on RD Julie Ingersoll helpfully sums u…

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Global LGBT Recap: World Vision Caves, World Congress of Families Vamps, God Weeps

…wd of thousands, which included Orthodox priests, according to Democracy & Freedom Watch. Georgia’s treaty with the EU, the Association Agreement, has become entangled in this debate, as Orthodox activists see it as promoting gay rights. The treaty, which is expected to be signed by June this year, will include criteria like guaranteeing democracy, the rule of law, human rights, respect for and protection of minorities. Basil Akhvlediani, archprie…

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No, Sunni and Shia Muslims Have Not Been Fighting Forever

…politics can be fused.” But how do we get to that point? We have seen, in Egypt, Bahrain, Yemen and Syria, that Saudi Arabia and Iran are willing to kill large numbers of civilians to defeat democracy. (The very thing, incidentally, Iran complains about—our 1953 role in the return of the monarchy to absolute power—is what Iran has been doing day in and day out in Syria for years now, and at far more brutal cost in lives lost.) But, sadly, Saudi A…

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Restoring Dignity: The Employee Free Choice Act

…abor movement is solidly progressive. It has been the biggest single force promoting universal, government-supported health care coverage, protecting Social Security from Wall Street privatizers, and advancing a green jobs/green energy future. But that’s not all. The racist, jingoist, homophobic, misogynistic movement of American labor’s worst years—the George Meany/Lane Kirkland years—is long dead and buried. Today’s labor leadership is solidly a…

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Putting the “Protest” Back in Protestant: Reclaiming the Spirit of Resistance

…rganized religion (religio = binding) in their lives. Protestantism spawns free thought and free radicals (some of them toxic) the way a prism breaks light into uncountable and unclassifiable hues. So while it is definitely not fair to count the great unchurched free radicals of the 19th and 20th centuries as official Protestants, there is no doubt at all that, unofficially, that is just what many were: not just the towering Lincoln but also such…

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Virginians may Vote in Elections, But in Counties with Militias Democracy Hangs in the Balance

…become legal in a de facto sense. But what kind of threat do militias pose today? In many ways, the threat is the same as it was in the early 1990s when the contemporary militia movement first burst onto the scene. Then, as now, militia-inspired county resolutions threatened federal and state governments by flouting their laws. The county stamp of approval also gave militias license to harass federal agents and ordinary citizens who disagreed with…

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No God but Country: The Religion of John McCain Has Something Important to Tell Us

…ortified he was to be such a religious monkey, how certain he was that The Code of Conduct was all he should need, and how it was that that man, that eight-year President, made him be so very evangelical in order to win back the very party that (once upon a time, not so long ago) made him lose a primary by calling his daughter black. But for now, we just have this man, this testifying and freewheeling man who has made his own choices (in word and…

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Are We Living in a Simulation? Bad Religion, Bad Media Combine in New Doc, ‘A Glitch in the Matrix’

…lation theory Mystwood is playing with—he is the universe, the universe is code, his code is part of the important bit, it’s all a simulation, and he’s ready to play. And, importantly, the rest of us might not matter. The language of programming in A Glitch in the Matrix is compelling and difficult. On the one hand, it is literal computer programming. On the other, intentional or not, the movie invokes the language of “deprogramming” that was comm…

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