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2012 Presidential Hopefuls: God Game is On

…ed into the “founding principles,” “Judeo-Christian” foundation, and other code, but they did more. They wept; they told stories about soldiers and family members; they evoked imagery of mountains climbed and enemies vanquished. Mitt Romney, though? Not so much. Speaking directly after Pence, who since the inaugural Values Voters Summit in 2006, has always invoked the language of the religious right base, Romney was at a disadvantage. He was borin…

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Sullivan v. Gallagher: Catholics Debate LGBT Rights At Georgetown

…ality to Nazism. There was, of course, no need to debate Catholics for Equality’s mission by mentioning Soros. The fact that NOM did speaks to an effort to deploy conservative tropes about who is or isn’t the “real” religious person, and to drop code that political adversaries betray God to support evil. But it was Gallagher who had the gall to call out Catholics for Equality in her prepared remarks. “There is still time to repent,” she said witho…

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What’s the Problem With a Good Placebo?

…al “symbologist” character played by Tom Hanks in Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code. Semiotics is mostly dense philosophy and linguistics with a dash of neuroscience thrown in. The deep semiotics of health is an attempt to recognize the signs and symbols of health and to take control over the largely unconscious processes that affect our minds-brains-bodies. The mash-up of these terms is necessary in light of contemporary science. Let me explain. Psyc…

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A Real-Life Truman Show?

…hrough the gate leading to the water, one must punch in a combination pass code. The town’s elegantly manicured gardens belie its state’s housing market collapse. But just outside of town, realtors advertise “Free Foreclosure Lists!” Sitting along a commons of lush grass, an attractive young couple casually dressed in designer sunglasses, khakis, and expensive sandals led a group of fair-haired children in prayer. The young blond woman urged the c…

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Art(ful) History in Texas

…roy successfully included in the Texas’ science standards such creationist code as “analyze and evaluate the sufficiency of scientific explanations concerning any data of sudden appearance, stasis, and the sequential nature of groups in the fossil records.” Another amendment says students will: “analyze and evaluate the scientific explanations concerning the complexity of the cell.” The wording could be used to justify the adoption of pro-intellig…

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Devil’s Bookmark: Doubting God’s Existence, but Angry Nevertheless

…mes below the dividing line stand for fictional characters. The same color code was applied to match an author to his/her fictional creation.) First, what this diagram shows is a continuum of diminishing intensity of God-hatred from left to center: from rage, to hatred, to anger, to resentment.  And, as we can see, as the intensity of hatred for the “real” God diminishes, it enters a phase where it can coexist with the diminished hatred for a God…

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Why I Am Still a Christian

…ere a book out there you wish you had written? Which one? Why? The DaVinci Code. Now, that’s a profitable reworking of Christian history. I wouldn’t have to worry about paying for my daughter’s college education. Seriously, I wish I could have written Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age. It is one of those magisterial books about history that has become part of history. Books like that happen once in a generation. Sigh. What’s your next book? It is on…

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Are Evangelical Films Destined to Leave Secular Audiences Behind?

…2 percent on Rotten Tomatoes—the studio started claiming secular bias and promoting fan reviews. Many evangelicals view cultural elites as condescending and hostile to begin with, so negative reviews met certain expectations. Even as fans of Left Behind talked about how great it was, however, the old divisions were apparent. There were those who talked about how the film is a great evangelizing opportunity. One woman reported buying more than 20…

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Dispatches from the Beltway: Beyond the Graying and Greening Religious Right

…ke just one example, James Dobson’s sprawling conglomerate has its own zip code in Colorado Springs and a larger monthly print circulation than the New York Times) and argue that it will not so easily wither on the vine. The most jaded on the left simply assert that the religious right is the truest expression of the heart of the evangelical community and is thus here to stay. If the argument that “the era of the religious right is over” depended…

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Conservative Christian Book on Obama’s Faith

…e Founders got it right: Religion now rests in a tortured place in society today, thanks largely to unfortunate and misguided rulings of the Supreme Court,” Don Byrd of Talk2Action wrote that Mansfield “called up all of the standard church-state myths and mis-directions: that the Founders intended America to be a Christian nation, that religion is being stripped from the public square, that there is no constitutional wall of separation, that preac…

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