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Free Will, Fate and FiveThirtyEight: The Theology of Election Polls

…kind of freedom in order to have another. MHS: You mean that you trade the freedom to choose for the freedom of a world that feels unconstrained by predetermined trajectories? AL: Precisely. Which, bizarrely, means that free will is actually more constrained! MHS: Well, that’s kind of the ethic behind big data, right? That, at least in aggregate, decisions that feel like free choice actually follow very clear and pre-determined patterns, and these…

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Blame Series Bonus: Why We Want That Dish For Free, an Uncut Interview with Bertram Malle

…tisfied customers at restaurants want to get their dish for free, or get a free glass of wine, or a free dessert, because that balances out the input-output equation. So if the customer service agent gives you something, then you feel compensated, then you’re okay, and it’s not such a cognitive puzzle, and also not such a frustration to deal with the amorphous agent of the airline as a whole. It doesn’t matter whether it’s the customer service age…

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In Hamline Case, the ‘Free Expression vs. Religious Sensibilities’ Frame Obscures a Stark Reality About Higher Education

…own skin is involved in the game. In other words, hanging rainbow flags to promote Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) is a cheap tactic if LGBTQ employees are treated poorly when it comes to pay, benefits, leave, promotion, and job security. Divide-and-rule is not a new tactic, for it’s well known in the Indian subcontinent that the British pitted one local Raja against the other based on tribe, religion, or caste—among other factors. The same…

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Pittsburgh Paradox: A City Haunted by God and Steel

…linging to the mountainside evoking the ancient dwellings on the slopes in western Jerusalem, or the seven eternal hills of Rome. In my book, I ascribe some of that charged energy to Pittsburgh’s unique “spirit of place,” the sense that its geography has not just tangible material ramifications, but a more numinous significance as well. Scholar Chiara Letizia writes about the significance of river confluences in many of the world’s faith tradition…

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Two people on a podium with a board that reads "Project 2025 kills democracy"

Project 2025: How Trump Loyalists and Right-Wing Leaders Are Paving a Fast Road to Fascism

…who “purvey” it to be classified as sex offenders.[58] It turns out that “freedom” for Project 2025 activists is only freedom to live in alignment with their religious worldview: “When the Founders spoke of ‘pursuit of Happiness,’ what they meant might be understood today as in essence ‘pursuit of Blessedness,’” the report declares, adding, “That is, an individual must be free to live as his Creator ordained—to flourish. Our Constitution grants e…

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Gun Owners of America Celebrates Defeat of Gun Control Amendments

…of bright ideas like we don’t want guns around children, so let’s have gun-free school zones. Do you know where most of the mass murders have occurred in the United States? In gun-free zones. There’s an exception or two but typically it’s where the bad guy has reason to think he’ll have a monopoly of force. It has to be one of the most stupid laws on the books, and yet we’ve had so much inertia because we don’t want guns around children especially…

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Is Christianity Simply About God Entering the Uterus of a Jewish Virgin?

…m Richard Dawkins encouraging the recipient of the mailing to subscribe to Free Inquiry: Dear Friend, If you live in America, the chances are good that your next door neighbours believe the following: the Inventor of the laws of physics and Programmer of the DNA code decided to enter the uterus of a Jewish virgin, got himself born, then deliberately had himself tortured and executed because he couldn’t think of a better way to forgive the theft of…

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Texas Textbook Massacre

…s be able to “examine the reasons the Founding Fathers protected religious freedom in America by barring government from promoting or disfavoring any particular religion over all others,” was rejected by religious conservatives. 3. The Enlightenment Ends Here: Board members voted to remove Thomas Jefferson from a world history standard about the influence of Enlightenment thinkers on political revolutions from the 1700s to today. Instead, they rep…

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To: Discovery Institute;
Re: Creationist Tactics Pre-Dating the Exposure of ID as a Fraud

…ed faith.) Still, West is correct. Discovery Institute folks had long been promoting critical analysis – when they weren’t busy also promoting intelligent design. As is their modus operandi, they switch between intelligent design and coded phrases like “teach the controversy” when it serves their purposes. For an example of their promotion of intelligent design in public school science class, see their 1999 booklet Intelligent Design in Public Sch…

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Sacred Texting: When Religious Writ Gets Wired

…ncorporation of the Gnostic worldview into the novel. Fans of The Da Vinci Code don’t need to go out and purchase Robinson’s translation, they can simply read the Gnostic texts online at the Gnosis Archive. Or, if they’re interested in other early contenders for New Testament inclusion—the Gospel of Peter, for example—they can scan through the Early Christian Writings online database. The sticky problem for Christians, as with Muslims, is authorit…

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