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Is Sam Harris Really a White Supremacist?, Part Two

By Andrew Aghapour and Michael Schulson

…friendly read, and his main argument is that we simply got Harris wrong. [Aghapour and Schulson] say [Harris] doesn’t see Muslims as individuals, but as monolithic… Not only did Harris write his latest book with someone who identifies as a Muslim, he’s actively praised Muslim reformers like Malala Yousafzai, and supported the work of moderate Muslims who want to reform the extremist views within the faith. While we’re glad to hear that some of Sa…

The Case for Treating Near-Death Experiences Like Acid Trips

By Andrew Aghapour

…helpful for thinking about near-death experiences. _______________ Andrew Aghapour: In your book you take on “supernaturalist” accounts of near-death experiences, which emphasize elements of NDE’s that should be physically impossible. Could you tell me more about supernaturalism as a genre? Benjamin Mitchell-Yellin: Supernaturalism is a position that rests on two basic claims. The first claim is that the mind is separate from the body. The second…

Where Polls and Surveys Fall Short: A Conversation with Robert Wuthnow on “Inventing American Religion”

By Andrew Aghapour

…ut religion. This interview has been edited for clarity and length. Andrew Aghapour: How did polls become a significant tool for understanding American religion, and what made them so attractive? Robert Wuthnow: Broad commercial polling began in the 1930s, when George Gallup, Sr. paid for polls by getting a couple hundred newspapers to pay for his columns. Religion was something that was of personal interest to him, but the pieces about religion w…

Material(ist) Girl: A Philosopher Argues Against the Soul

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

In his playful review here on RD, Andrew Aghapour writes that Patricia Churchland’s latest book essentially asks two questions, each of which poses a challenge to nearly all of the world’s belief systems: “Could the new sciences of the brain be so powerful that we needn’t go looking elsewhere for insights into the human condition? Does the brain encompass an individual in totality, leaving no room for a transcendent soul?” Noting that the human…

Greatest Hits of 2015: Religion Stories Our Readers Couldn’t Resist

By Ellie Faustino

…aniel Dennett in this compelling interview with RD associate editor Andrew Aghapour. Dennett discusses his book Caught in the Pulpit: Leaving Belief Behind, which documents the experiences of preachers and rabbis who have lost their faith but must closet their newfound skepticism to preserve their careers and communities. In his view, “atheist clergy are not simply tragic figures, they are harbingers of great things to come.” The “new world of uni…

Fighting Fire with Ire: 3 Lessons from Noam Chomsky’s Takedown of Sam Harris

By Andrew Aghapour

The day before Mayweather fought Pacquiao, New Atheist Sam Harris released an email sparring match he’d had with famed linguist and leftist intellectual Noam Chomsky. In his bestselling book The End of Faith, Harris had accused Chomsky of drawing a “moral equivalence” between 9/11 and the 1998 U.S. missile attack on the al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory in Sudan, which the Clinton administration had allegedly believed to be a chemical weapons facto…

What Republicans Mean When They Compare Climate Change to Religion

By Andrew Aghapour and Michael Schulson

Last week, Texas Republican Lamar Smith, chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal comparing climate change to religion. Smith argues that the “facts alone,” and not preordained ideological commitments, should inform U.S. climate policy. We need “open debate and critical thinking,” says Smith, which are fundamental to the scientific process and democratic deliberation. Smith could…

Churches Can No Longer Hide the Truth: Daniel Dennett on the New Transparency

By Andrew Aghapour

If Daniel Dennett is anything, he is a champion of the facts. The prominent philosopher of science is an advocate for hard-nosed empiricism, and as a leading New Atheist he calls for naturalistic explanations of religion. Dennett is also the co-author (along with Linda LaScola) of the recently expanded and updated Caught in the Pulpit: Leaving Faith Behind, which documents the stories of preachers and rabbis who themselves came to see…the facts….

The Invention of a Corporate Christian America

By Andrew Aghapour

According to author Kevin Kruse, the idea that America is a “Christian nation” was invented only recently, forged by an alliance between industrialists and conservative clergy who preached the connection between Christianity and capitalism. In One Nation Under God, the Princeton history professor issues a twofold corrective: first, to the popular notion that the United States has always understood itself as a Christian nation; and second, to the…

Meet the “New Age” Stephen Colbert

By Andrew Aghapour

In the kitchen of his Charleston, S.C. home, wearing a flower in his hair, life coach and entrepreneur JP Sears explains, in a recent video, that, “being gluten intolerant used to be limited only to those who are actually intolerant to gluten,” but that now anyone can try it as long as they have a “ravenous appetite for impossible standards and dogmatic feelings of victimization.” When I first watched “How to Become Gluten Intolerant,” just a day…