Search for "cheap airline tickets from great falls to kansas city phone number 1-800-299-7264"

Atheists Gather in Burbank: A Humanist’s Response

By Anthony B. Pinn

…or the Atheist Alliance International 2009 convention. The main topic? The great harm done throughout history by religion: the single most dangerous human creation. The welfare of humanity, it was argued, depends on the dismantling of religion and all of its delusions. The possibility of collaboration, of compromise, of any shared ethical commitments between theists and non-theists, was not on the table. I was at the convention to give a talk fro…

Harry Potter Gone Bad: Lev Grossman’s The Magicians

By Donna Freitas

…and Elizabeth Knox’s extraordinary fantasy duet Dreamhunter and Dreamquake number among my greatest reads. So I opened The Magicians eagerly, poised to lose myself in a story the Times called “a Harry Potter for adults,” only to realize several chapters in that the aptly-named Quentin Coldwater (a boy with a talent for spells and sorcery who is whisked away to a secret school for magic called “Brakebills College for Magical Pedagogy”) was, chapter…

Scholars Upset With ‘1619 Project’ Must Abandon Vision of ‘America the Righteous’

By Peter Laarman

…d reporting for The Atlantic. Serwer also supplies needed backstory on the number of distinguished historians whom Wilentz solicited for his letter but who declined to sign his angry screed for all the right reasons.] Sean Wilentz has a distinguished CV. He comes from a distinguished family. I still find value in Chants Democratic, the 1984 Wilentz work on the formation of working class consciousness in New York during the late 18th and early 19th…

Jennifer’s Body and Why I Like Buffy’s Body Better

By W. Scott Poole

…s into which men lose their souls (and their penises). Rather, Buffy had a number of sexual partners through the course of the series, relationships that began with bright promise and ended not because she was some insatiable vagina dentata, but for the same reason heroes often find themselves alone in their narratives: none of their prospective partners are really able live in their heroic shadow. Jennifer’s Body, I would argue, does more to evok…

Texas Board of Education Wants to Change History

By Lauri Lebo

…who just don’t think things through,” he said. “The polls have never shown great Constitutional literacy in this country, right down to knowing the rights spelled out in the First Amendment.” “So the facts be damned,” Boston said. And he added: They have a purer form of knowledge that transcends facts; they believe they are on a God-given mission to bring those facts into the public sphere. There is a power to being told that you belong to a speci…

Pledging Virginity to Dad: A New Doc Explores the World of ‘Purity Balls’

By Jessica Valenti

…at a ceremony held in the family living room. There, Kameryn is given her great-great-grandmother’s wedding ring as a purity ring and is taught about “fruitfulness.” A family friend reads from a prepared speech, telling her, “If and when God brings that Godly man into your life and opens your womb, becoming a mother will be one of the most profound and significant things you ever do.” “Biblical fruitfulness is the opposite of what today’s culture…

You Are What You Eat: New Book on Cannibalism Reimagines What It Means to Be Made of Flesh

By Michael Schulson

…cultures around the world, including 21st century America. It’s one of our great taboos. And while Schutt can be an entertaining writer, he’s not sensationalist. Instead, he demonstrates how cannibalism can get at the unstable lines we draw between custom and taboo, human and non-human, and self and other. A spirit of uncertainty is there from the start: what is cannibalism, anyway? A firm definition is surprisingly difficult to pin down. Dining o…

Christian Punk Meets American Pop; Evangelicals in the ’Burbs

By Brittany Shoot

…at have educated or cared for generations of white ethnic Catholics—it’s a city where people still designate whether a family is “Irish,” “German,” “Italian,” or “Polish.” I was the next generation who attended those schools. Have you attended Christian heavy metal shows or Christian music festivals? Was your impression that religious bands were in fact bridging the divide between secular and Christian cultures? I attended my first Christian music…

Muslims Helped Legitimize Lowes’ Decision to Pull Ads From All-American Muslim

By Hussein Rashid

…way that hurts more than it helps. BoomGen Studios is doing a lot of publicity for AAM. They approached me to review a screener and get my opinion. I shared my concern that this was too minute a slice of life, but they spoke about the limitations of the art form and had a discussion with me about expanding the vision. The company is co-founded by Reza Aslan, who has done a great deal of popular work in representing the American Muslim community w…

RDBook: Darwin and Slavery

By Arri Eisen

…rom its size and shape)? And that these ideas and those who developed them greatly influenced Darwin and the soon-to-be-born science of human race called anthropology? Darwin’s famous voyages on the Beagle through Brazil and the Galapagos, during which he formed and shaped the ideas of natural selection and adaptation that made him famous, have become part of Western myth. But how many of us knew that at many stops on the voyage, Darwin witnessed…