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Now That ‘Serial’ is Over: 2014’s Best Podcasts about Religion

By Andrew Aghapour

…he Runners Up. First up is the excellent podcast Radiolab, a radio program about science and culture whose Halloween episode “Haunted” tells the real-life ghost story of Dennis Conrow, who hired paranormal investigators when his dead parents seemed to be haunting their former home. This episode deftly recounts Conrow’s struggle with skepticism and belief. Second is 99% Invisible a popular podcast about design and architecture that produced two eer…

Protocols of the Elders of Mecca: Hints of Anti-Semitic Playbook in Glenn Beck’s Islamophobia

By Haroon Moghul

…nds of clicking; customers nearby.) It seems we have a copy. It IS About Islam: Exposing the Truth About ISIS, Al Qaeda, Iran, and the Caliphate Glenn Beck Threshold Editions (August 18, 2015) Haroon: Already? The website says it won’t be out until tomorrow. Strand: It could be a review copy returned to us. Would you like it on hold, so someone else doesn’t—(fails to suppress laughter)—buy it first? Haroon: Yeah, uh, sure, because it’s for…

Okay, So ‘Quantum Theology’ Might Need a Bit of Explanation

By Beatrice Marovich

…somehow be overtaken by its occult, spiritually mysterious powers. The odd science of quantum physics may drive theologians to retrieve forgotten elements from their own ancient treasure chest… or to invest resources in building new ones, with fabulous new spiritual capabilities. But quantum physics is not a secret mystical resource. What intellectually cautious work like Catherine’s shows us instead, I think, is that theology and science are enta…

Quantum Theology: Our Spooky Interconnectedness

By Beatrice Marovich

…to irreligious forms of creativity, will find some new ways to communicate about these things. But if science is left out of the mix, we will always be off in lala land. We need the incarnational practice of taking into account the most precise knowledge we can find, in the face of the mystery of our embodied existence. As a theologian, what do you think is left out of the mix if God, or the divine, isn’t entangled with other forms of knowledge? I…

In Defense of Richard Dawkins, Awe-Full Scientist

By Alana Massey

…his atheism. Not because of what he believes or disbelieves, but for his myriad contributions to unlocking mysteries of the known world and for writing so beautifully about the poetry of science that he brings out the kind of awe and wonder that prompts others to do the same. …

Ask a Muslim: No, Dear Reader, Sex-Obsession Isn’t Confined to Muslim Nations

By Haroon Moghul

…the Muslims in the world, how many have been awarded prestigious prizes in science? what about that verse in the Koran that advises readers to lie, if necessary, to protect Islam? what about dhimmitude and the Koran verses that impose taxes on non-Muslims? These are only some of the most obvious questions. No doubt there are many others. I can understand how RD might be reluctant to do a piece (? series?) dealing with these matters. But I think su…

What Republicans Mean When They Compare Climate Change to Religion

By Andrew Aghapour and Michael Schulson

…political inaction. It reduces a deeply consequential scientific consensus about global risk to the culture war rhetoric of cable news. The strategy is not new. In a much-cited 2003 speech, science fiction superstar Michael Crichton took a break from dinosaur DNA to pontificate on environmentalism as “the religion of choice for urban atheists.” Emory professor Paul Rubin (also in the Wall Street Journal) and former Australian Prime Minister John H…

RDBook: Darwin and Slavery

By Arri Eisen

…as we sail through life on the ship that Darwin built. How closely should science and scientists be linked to society and politics? During Darwin’s time, many scientists were also members of the clergy or brought their science, such as it was, directly and explicitly into the political discussions of the day. Are the scary racist results covered in Sacred Cause one reason scientists today so isolate themselves from public conversation? What are t…

Closed-Door Conference in Poland Shows How US Conservative Christian Networks Export ‘Conversion Therapy’

By Antonia Gross and Rina Nikolaeva

…d the air of the windowless conference room with their “faith-based” pseudoscience unquestioned. Here, they were offered space to spread disinformation about conversion practices disguised as therapeutic methods, and here, they were praised for it and listened to by a rapt audience prepared to spread these ideas in universities, clinics, practices, youth centers, and the psychological training they offer to the next generation. Before publication,…

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

By Ed Simon

…wledge (as Hawking was as well, of course). Even the great popularizers of science, Carl Sagan, Stephen Jay Gould, and Neil deGrasse Tyson aren’t as synonymous with genius as Hawking, for even though they were (and, in the case of Tyson, are) the public face of science, permeating the culture in a manner similar to Hawking, they occupy the realm of intelligent interpreter more than they do inspired genius. If there’s a type of translatio of genius…