Religion Dispatches
…on proposed by the Seattle-based Discovery Institute, an organization that promotes intelligent design. David Fowler, head of the conservative Christian Family Action Council of Tennessee, which is affiliated with Focus on the Family, and is one of the bill’s primary lobbyists. In defending the bill’s language, he has tried to draw on comparisons to the famous Scopes monkey trial that took place 86 years ago in his state. “…[T]oday’s evolutionary…
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…can be picked off as so many inert targets in a videogame you have a cheat code for. I’m sure many Arabs and Muslims across the region watched this and thought two things: what exactly was the point of independence, if some 60 years later a country has no actual capacity to defend itself? And, given that, why is it Western powers are still rescuing Arabs or Muslims, as they see it, on their own terms? 5) Let’s not pretend that this is truly an a…
Read More…, critique and review in an objective manner the scientific strengths and scientific weaknesses of existing scientific theories covered in the course being taught.” As always, since intelligent design was ruled unconstitutional in Kitzmiller v. Dover, the introduced bills rely on such creationist code words as “teaching the controversy,” “academic freedom,” or “critical analysis.” However, in the case of Florida, the bill’s sponsoring lawmaker Rep…
Read More…agons and strenuously defending the “homosexual practice” forbidden in its code of ethics, the school is reaching out. 51 of the school’s 92 faculty members responded, seeking “forgiveness for ways we might have added to your pain.” “We’re hoping to do a better job of talking to and loving each other and holding true to our scriptural principles,” said Jane Higa, the school’s vice president for student life. That doesn’t mean the school’s policy w…
Read More…ose either secretly or overtly a Taliban-like, religious, strict religious code upon all Americans, which is ridiculous.” Honor killings, forced marriages, female genital mutilation, and other abuses are “un-Islamic,” he said, adding that there is “no debate among serious Muslim scholars about that.” As far as fear-mongering that that Muslims seek to supplant the Constitution with shari’ah, Khan noted, “there is room for individual religious pract…
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…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…
Read More…only the latest wave of an Islamic ‘tsunami’ sweeping the globe.” Oh, and look! The Brotherhood has learned its tactics from Bill Ayers and Code Pink. Don’t you love living in a fact-free world?…
Read More…l was also a good way to “house” a lot of people without running into fire code violations. I could not find any other religious events advertised. Could it be that people of other faiths simply held private devotions? Perhaps, but more likely the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, the Archdiocese of Washington, D.C., and their friends were the major sponsors of the whole weekend but just wanted it to appear more broadly based. The Poli…
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…llas Theological Seminary, and received a favorable review in Christianity Today. Venoit told me he doesn’t consider Gothard’s organization a cult, but that Gothard’s “view of authority is the core of where things go wrong.” Gothard teaches, in the first hour of the first night of his “basic” seminar that “authority is like an umbrella of protection.” If you get out of that protection, “you are in rebellion, which is like witchcraft,” and “all evi…
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…ctatorship of General Zia-ul-Haq from 1977-1988. The blasphemy laws (Penal Code 295-298) make it illegal to: “outrage religious feelings,” defile the Qur’an, or deride the Prophet, his family, the first four Caliphs, and the companions of the Prophet. What constitutes outraging or defiling behavior has varied from distribution of purportedly anti-Islamic literature to placing a calendar with passages from the Qur’an onto a work table. The blasphem…
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