Search for "Best Deals 1800-299-7264 "

“The Camp Is a Ceremony”: A Report From Standing Rock

By Marion Grau

…les, are banned. Rather, the camp is a ceremony, a call to bring forth the best in each of us, and to act accordingly. We are encouraged to live our entire lives as ceremony by one of the elders, in a mode that reminds me of the sacramental life—all of life and all of creation as a sacrament. And that means moderation in our participation of the dynamics that enable the Black Snake of Hopi prophecy. From what I could gather the Black Snake is both…

Everything You Think You Know About the Dark Ages is Wrong

By Nancy Marie Brown

…Gerbert questioned authority. He experimented. To learn which of two rules best calculated the area of an equilateral triangle, he cut out square inches of parchment and measured the triangle with them. To learn why organ pipes do not behave acoustically like strings, he built models and devised an equation. (A modern physicist who checked his result calls it ingenious, if labor-intensive.) Gerbert made sighting tubes to observe the stars and con…

Our Last “Genius” Stephen Hawking is Gone… Cause for Worry Or Inspiration?

By Ed Simon

…that if the idea of genius evolved to preserve wonder, that we must do our best to develop new constructions and new ideas to best encapsulate wonder in whatever era we are heading into. Perhaps even more importantly, it’s to expand how we envision genius, and to see and recognize it where we find it. For example, the astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson is a welcome figure, not just for his deft explanations of complex phenomena, but because as an…

God and the Gay Christian: An Interview with Matthew Vines

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…e want to be loving, faithful to scripture and they are trying to do their best, so I can respect that and value where they’re coming from. When I was coming out to my dad a few years ago, as I recount in the book, he held strongly non-affirming beliefs. He did not instantly change his mind. It was a slow process. He was a good, decent, caring intelligent man before he changed his beliefs and he still is. I think that he’s now more able to faithfu…

Introducing the Dr. Who Media Club

By James F. McGrath

…ares. There’s something strange afoot on Starship UK—a strangeness perhaps best illustrated by its “voting booths,” which show the ship’s citizens a video and then gives them two options—to protest what they have seen, or to forget the video’s contents, having their memories selectively erased. The voting booth won’t show the Doctor the video—it can tell he’s not human, and thus not entitled to vote—but he chooses the “protest” button, sight unsee…

How To Win $20,000 From Sam Harris

By Rob Shryock

…work. 2) Follow Harris’s instructions There’s no need to wonder about the best way to critique Harris’s work: you can just follow the very clear instructions he gives. Harris’s explanations of the critiques he wants to see are a tad oblique, but he generally invites two methods of attack: a) Disprove the idea that morality is that which makes everyone the most happy. Luckily, Joesph Bingham has already done this for you. In the University of Chi…

Originalism Needn’t Always Result in Abortion Bans — Just Ask al-Qaʿida?

By Nathan French

…rt to consider state-level bans of abortion—or laws on fetal personhood—as best interpreted, from an originalist perspective, as matters of ensoulment or quickening. This, they may argue, would make the private decision on abortion best understood as a question of a constitutional right to religious free exercise. Such debates, held before, are already emerging again. And, when they do, it’s far better to learn from the voices—including Muslim voi…

How Not To Defend Atheism

By Vlad Chituc

…don’t knows” or “others,” that gets to about 20% and 40%, respectively, at best. These are not small discrepancies, and based on these falsely inflated statistics, Silverman makes startlingly inaccurate claims, like that there are 80 million atheists in the U.S., a full 26% of the country. The most charitable number I could find was from Gallup, putting the number of Americans in 2014 who say they don’t believe in God at 11%. To make things frustr…

The Revolujah! Will Be Performed: Reverend Billy’s Reality Joke

By Nathan Schneider

…on of performance and preaching. How would you characterize it? KL: At his best, Reverend Billy is the love child of Billy Graham and Allen Ginsberg. I think he, like many American activists, is invested in a sort of self-promoting iconoclasm in order to bring about greater equality. Like many American preachers, he invents a new consensus in his speech in order to develop the broadest base. And, like many in the avant-garde, he suggests his perso…

“We Blew it” on Climate Change, But May Survive Anyway: An RD Discussion with the First Transhumanist Candidate

By Andrew Aghapour

…ve in front of you. And I just don’t believe in truth. I think we have the best attempt to reach these truths, and we can make the best decisions as we have all this information in front of us, but the scientific method would always say: you’re going to have to re-prove it. I think that humility is the cornerstone of an advancing species. It’s the ability to say “I don’t know, but I’m going [to] move forward carefully with reason.” I agree with yo…