Religion Dispatches
…s not make a person wicked. Only having the power to change things for the better and using it to change them for the worse can make a person wicked. In short, I moved to the left because I gave you more credit than many of you give yourselves. Yes, I know some of you are scoundrels; what I don’t know is whether some of the activists I’ve met would be any better in your tailor-made shoes. Yet it is you who abide the slander whenever someone cl…
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…l world with adolescence hints at this as a kind of rite of passage—a time betwixt and between childhood and full adult responsibilities. Much like game worlds, it occurs within a space where actions have been stripped of real-world consequences, though from the first, we discover that Zoe has discovered ways to make what happens in this space count: she’s turned to it as a space of religious conversion and political activism. One of the recurring…
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…her than try to change God’s standards” (1-14-08). 6.) TOP TEN COMPARISONS BETWEEN RELIGION AND DENTISTRY: Between Google ads for “oral sedation” and “dental fear,” blogger Mark Wright writes thoughtfully about many things. On this list he points out, helpfully, that “Both Dentistry and Religion benefit financially from your sins” and reminds us that “In Religion there is the promise of Heaven. In Dentistry there is only Hell.” 7.) BOOKLIST’S TOP…
Read More…mockery he has now attracted, this relatively obscure congressman whom I’d bet half the pundits discussing his fate today had barely heard of before his primary win, is a National Superstar, the very embodiment of the Christian Right’s all-too-often abandoned determination to stand up to GOP pols who forever pay them lip service but rarely deliver the goods. […] And if he does win, he will enter the Senate next year not as some random wingnut dude…
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…these phenomena entail; as these become clearer, things will change, and I bet that the number of folks against these practices will decrease and over time may well even become a minority. Now, our experiment. A clone is an exact genetic copy of an organism. Take, say, the DNA from the nuclei in any cell of Mr. Ramirez (virtually all our cells have the same DNA). Stick that DNA into a new egg, fertilize the egg to start the dance of development, i…
Read More…rs and families has “transformed the cultural puzzle” in Congress and will free Obama to change social policy, including lifting the ban on gay troops, Sabato said. “While the country isn’t paying attention to social issues, he can move the ball down the field in the Democratic direction,” he said. Even the usual complaining by the religious right apparently won’t be enough to torpedo his confirmation on March 26: Opponents of Berry’s policy posit…
Read More…d the Mormon Church by uniting with Glenn Beck in the two events that were promoted as spiritual. Cameron, known also for his part on the television series Growing Pains and more recently nicknamed Banana-man (along with Ray Comfort) for the anti-evolution DVDs that became the source of tremendous internet humor, said he hadn’t actually been invited to be part of Divine Destiny. But he declined anyway: I had heard that there were plans to put me o…
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…had never met to join in her campaign of hope, of yes we can. And you can bet that when she called me from Iowa to relate her progress there was a smile in her voice and not a hint of complaint about the weather or anything else. Sarah was also unalterably opposed to the death penalty. In his eulogy, Horowitz described how Sarah, often suffering from her own considerable list of physical ailments, would nevertheless brave “bitter cold Bay Area ni…
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…virulent that hatred has become. Americans are willing to throw religious freedom and tolerance out the window, a posture all too familiar in the nation’s history and sadly contradictory to the sacred principles upon which this country was founded. Opposition to the construction of a Muslim community center in New York; the brutal attack on a Muslim cabbie; the proposed burning of Qur’ans by a small church that created a media sensation; the pass…
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…row in new ways that improve analytical ability, allowing the capacity for better math and money handling skills. Such ability would of course be selected for in centuries’-worth of banking environments. See why this gets folks edgy? A human-created environment (culture) that affects one cultural/religous group (Jews) that might drive genetic change over a relatively short period of time. Harpending, Cochran and others identify many such ‘recent’…
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