Search for "cheap airline tickets orlando fl to bankok thailand phone number 1-800-299-7264"

Churches Can No Longer Hide the Truth: Daniel Dennett on the New Transparency

By Andrew Aghapour

…lly – or I would say more – awe-inspiring discoveries of science. Gods and flaming chariots are nothing, they’re cheap comic book fare, compared to what we actually have learned about stars and galaxies and the like. I think that there’s a sort of mirror image, an opposite of scientism, which has a real tin ear for the breathtaking awesomeness of science. All you have to do is listen to David Attenborough or Carl Sagan or other brilliant expositor…

Noah v. Kitschy Jesus: A Tale of Two Movies

By Jay Michaelson

…people don’t do that. And of course, Jesus can’t be tempted by sins of the flesh—even though the Bible itself suggests that he might’ve been. I don’t think it’s because Aronofsky’s Noah has a mixture of admirable and flawed elements that he raises fundamentalist suspicions. It’s because he has a mixture of any kind at all. Progressive religion values complexity and nuance; traditional religion values simplicity. Noah’s character flaws, which make…

Why The Advocate‘s Choice of Pope Francis for Person of the Year is a Mistake

By Anthea Butler

…ing a door for discussion, but not necessarily change. The group Kairos of Florence, a group of LGBT Catholics, wrote to Pope Francis in June of 2014 asking to be recognized as a “people” and not a category. In a reply to Kairos, the Pope was said to assure the group of his “blessing,” but the group has kept the reply from the Pope confidential. If a mere change in language can move The Advocate to make Pope Francis their Person of the Year over E…

SoulCycle Looks to Sell its Soul

By Michael Schulson

…mic and the spiritual, and the legalistic and the New Age, with a seamless fluency. On a page of the S-1 form that discusses “the lifelong quest for meaning, wellness, and personal growth,” we also learn that this lifelong quest has had a happy outcome, namely an “increased Adjusted EBITDA from $11.2 million in 2012 to $35.7 million in 2014, representing a CAGR of 78% and an Adjusted EBITDA Margin of 32% in 2014.” Is SoulCycle in “the business of…

Why Egypt is America’s Enemy

By Haroon Moghul

…llow Arabs, demonized and derided for years, such that their blood becomes cheap. This happens all too often with minorities; what is unique about the Arab world is the degree to which many dictatorships also oppress the majority. My point in that essay about Tunisia was that we in America and the West generally reflexively associate secularism with what is good and democratic, and conservatism (specifically, in Islam) with that which is antidemo…

Hater Pastor Loses His Wife of 42 Years, Uses the Occasion to Trash Gays

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…dy and that is morally wrong.” But, using your wife’s death to score a few cheap political points against a group of people you hate isn’t “morally wrong”? But wait, there’s more! Garlow also uses his dead wife to point out just how fake the relationships between living, loving gay and lesbian partners really are. He talks about the delight he experienced being married to his wife, something gay and lesbian people certainly couldn’t have, right?…

Despising the Holidays: When Christians Led the ‘War on Christmas’

By Ed Simon

…ed up small, grande, and venti cups with (obviously secular) images of snowflakes and reindeer, 2015’s version has replaced this festive decoration with a minimalist, crimson blood-red design. Supposedly this has enraged a portion of the Christian right, who view this decision as a rejection of Christian values. This portion of conservative Christians – exactly how many remains vague in media coverage – apparently views the crimson cups as evidenc…

A Startling Number Believe You Can Be Jewish Jesus Follower; Why It’s Not As Crazy As It Sounds

By Michael Schulson

…that number seems staggeringly high. A full third? Once you delve into the numbers, though, 34% doesn’t seem quite so high. Really, Pew has asked an excellent question—a question that reveals the full tangle of ambiguities and inconsistencies that surround the topic of Jewish identity. First, some background: when the researchers at Pew set out to conduct this survey, they quickly ran into a problem that’s been under discussion for at least two th…

Just Like January 6, One of the Most Disturbing Aspects of the Right-Wing Coup Attempt in Germany is Who Was Behind It

By Annika Brockschmidt

…tails ties to the Reichsbürger milieu. Experts attribute the stark rise in numbers to a heightened awareness and the agencies’ attempts to reduce the number of unreported cases. The conservative Minister of the interior of the previous Merkel administration, Horst Seehofer, had always refused to conduct a study of right-wing sentiments in the police and military, in spite of the warnings of social scientists who urged him to commission one. For ye…

Why are Nuns and Monks in the Streets? (Parts I & II)

By José Cabezón

…. They tear down the Chinese flag from public buildings, raise the Tibetan flag in its place, and chant Pö rang wang! (Tibetan Independence!). Many Chinese, for their part, claim to be baffled: “Why do Tibetans feel this way? Have we not modernized Tibet? Tibetans now have electricity, roads and medical care. Aren’t Tibetans more prosperous than they were fifty years ago?” Despite these material advances—which in fact are confined almost exclusive…