Search for "get cheap new york florida airline tickets phone number 1-800-299-7264"

The Cult of Kurzweil: Will Robots Save Our Souls?

By Robert M. Geraci

…ers in the Apocalyptic AI movement receive attention or accolades from the New York Times or Time the more we can expect their movement to grow. This will present a serious challenge to traditional religious communities, whose own promises of salvation may appear weak in comparison to the “scientific” soteriology offered by Kurzweil. If Moravec was right in proposing that we will upload our minds into machines, then traditional offers of heavenly…

Attacking Obama on Religion and Race? Worst Romney Strategy Ever.

By Joanna Brooks

The New York Times set a fire yesterday with its report that a GOP Super Pac developed plans to resurrect controversy over Barack Obama’s former pastor Rev. Jeremiah Wright in order to sabotage the Democratic National Convention in September and the Obama re-election campaign. A plan produced under the oversight of Republican strategist (and one-time Jon Huntsman guru) Fred Davis and funded by TD Ameritrade founder Joe Ricketts threatened to focu…

Freeman Dyson, American Heretic

By Michael J. Altman

…heretic. Nicholas Dawidoff’s profile of the brilliant physicist in the New York Times Magazine illuminates a man who has always sought to subvert scientific consensus—most recently in denying the dangers of climate change and CO2 emissions. The story’s title, “The Civil Heretic,” signals the ghost of religion hanging in the background. It is the “secular religion of environmentalism” that Dyson opposes. A religion that holds the plant itself sacre…

Premature “Gay Marriage Defeated” Post Removed from National Review

By Peter Montgomery

…nd boasting about the coalition that had defeated marriage equality in New York. Strangely enough, no news outlets were reporting the defeat of marriage equality. A few hours after NOM’s claim, CBS news reported that negotiations over the scope of the religious exemption—reportedly the sticking point for a number of Republicans in the state senate—were still moving forward. Looks like NOM’s eagerness to declare victory got a bit ahead of the facts…

Beloved Immortals: Science, Miracles and ‘Jellyfish Time’

By Beatrice Marovich

…The novelist Nathaniel Rich recently published a charming story in the New York Times about one such scientist. Japanese researcher Shin Kubota, Rich tells us, is the only scientist who maintains a captive population of the jelly called Turritopsis dohrnii, also known as the “immortal medusa” or, more simply, the “immortal jellyfish.” This species is able to—crudely speaking—reverse the aging process, returning to its earliest stage of development…

“I’m a Creationist,” Says Former Times Tech Writer, Heffernan

By Michael Schulson

…ming evidence for evolution. Science writer Carl Zimmer—who writes for The New York Times, as Heffernan did for years—engaged her in some Twitter sparring. To summarize: Heffernan was not raised a creationist. And her opinion about the world’s origins owes more to postmodernism than it does to John Whitcomb and Henry Morris. Heffernan describes learning about the Big Bang as a child, and then comparing it to the Biblical stories she knew. “I was……

Would Gandhi Disband Occupy?

By Ira Chernus

…he tried to evoke their cooperation and was happy when he got it, but he knew that he wasn’t likely to without a long, arduous program of satyagraha. Gandhi abhorred the idea of cooperating with injustice of any kind; he would rather have died. So he dedicated his life to the belief that lasting solutions to humanity’s problems come from non-cooperation with injustice. And he called us to actively obstruct the workings of unjust systems—to clog t…

Muslim Boycott of Bloomberg’s Interfaith Breakfast

By Hussein Rashid

…is hosting his annual Interfaith Breakfast on Friday, December 30, and the New York Times is reporting that Muslim leaders will be boycotting the event. I do know that the request for a boycott was initiated by Muslim leaders, but was sent to leaders from several faith communities. I was invited to the breakfast and to participate in the boycott. Based on what we know, I find the spying program deplorable and the interfaith boycott important, but…

Catholic Priests, Celibacy, and the Marriage Loophole

By Sara Ritchey

…even more married Catholic priests in America,” as Mark Oppenheimer of the New York Times reported, suggesting that “married priests raise provocative questions for the Catholic Church.” Oppenheimer asked: First, are they doing as good a job as other priests? If the church has decided that celibacy confers certain gifts on priests, does it follow that married priests are worse at serving their congregations? Second, wouldn’t celibate priests be a…

Anthony Weiner’s Achilles Penis

By Donna Schaper

Anthony Weiner has been a great congressman to New York and beyond. He can stir a crowd. He is unpopular with the moderate Democrats. He is prophetic on the matter of immigration (as well a Queens congressman might be). If only his power and passion could have turned to prophecy, instead of pettiness, we could still have the leader we need. Because he twittered his power away, we might lose this good leader. Lying is not leadership, nor is person…