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Does the Science Show that Spirituality Will Benefit Your Child?

By Michael Schulson

…ue that spirituality is important for children’s well-being and protective against depression, substance abuse, and other dangers. Miller approaches spirituality with a tactical pragmatism. The question here isn’t whether or not spiritual experience is verifiable. Instead, the questions are: does spiritual experience have verifiable benefits? And, if so, what should we do about that? That can be contentious territory, and Miller is keen to emphasi…

Put Your Money Where Your Mind Is: A For-Profit Meditation Studio Opens in New York

By Michael Schulson

…r gigs. Rinzler and Burrow’s new meditation studio, MNDFL, is just a block away from Washington Square Park, in one of New York City’s most chic areas. For the price of two entrees at Denny’s (plus a dessert), you can drop in for a 45-minute session that includes a brief introduction, a guided meditation, and a debrief Q&A with one of MNDFL’s 27 teachers. Special deals are available for your first month of visits. “In this branded form, it offers…

Richard Dawkins’ Atheist Academy of Unguided Truth

By Paul Wallace

…money. But it would not be a school for atheists. The idea horrifies him. A child should skip down an idiosyncratic intellectual path. “I am almost pathologically afraid of indoctrinating children,” he says. “It would be a ‘Think for Yourself Academy.’” Dawkins is expanding on a point made in his 2006 bestseller, The God Delusion: There is no such thing as a Christian child, only a child of Christian parents. The same, Dawkins says, goes for all…

Run Hajar Run

By Amina Wadud

…x anything, so there. So she does indeed bear a child, and they name him Isaac (or Ishaq in Arabic). Then the story gets interesting. Well, what good are Hajar and her pesky kid if the couple has their own? According to biblical versions (we don’t have these details in the Qur’an), Sarah gets jealous and harasses the old man to get rid of the both of them. And the old man—who stood up to his people, but cannot stand up to God, nor stand up to Sara…

Can Expelled Teach Us a Thing or Two?

By Arri Eisen

…or his bit part in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Expelled makes the claim that Academic Science has erected a wall around itself and the theory of evolution, and that anyone, including scientists, who dares to question evolution, who tries to scale that wall, is ostracized by the system. This, according to the movie, is an affront to freedom, a basic right upon which America was built. The movie focuses on five or six folks (all of whom are challengin…

Mitt Romney’s Prosperity Gospel

By Peter Laarman

…he better evening because of his way with a microphone and his remarkable capacity to modulate his voice (not to mention outing himself as LDS pastor and bishop). But it was Billy Graham’s endorsement, splashed into our faces via an expensive full-page Sunday New York Times ad, that triggered my flat-out recognition: the 94-year-old daddy of all televangelists is laying his bony patriarchal hands upon a fellow preacher who shares his hawk-like pro…

Swift-Boat Veterans of American Jewry Charge Anti-Semitism at Occupy Wall Street

By Jay Michaelson

…far-right organization named “Emergency Committee for Israel” has produced a cheap YouTube video showing a couple of crazy people at Occupy Wall Street shouting antisemitic slogans. For good measure, they’ve thrown in Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and Eliot Spitzer endorsing the sentiments behind the Occupy movement; ergo, the three of them must hate the Jews too. This, of course, is ridiculous. As everybody should know by now, Occupy is a leaderle…

Francis Visits the Church that John Paul Broke

By Patricia Miller

…S this week. Pope Francis will find a church that is markedly different in a number of significant ways; so different, in fact, that it calls into question whether we can still refer to the Catholic Church in the US. When JPII made his first visit US, he found a church that was in transition but largely intact. Some 40 percent of Catholics went to mass in any given week and there were nearly 60,000 Catholic priests and 135,000 nuns, with the natio…

What a Turn-of-the-Century Anti-Abortion and Contraception Crusader Reveals About GOP Efforts to Ban Abortion Pills by Mail

By Steven K. Green

…le. He often claimed he was merely performing God’s will in an ongoing war against sin. Using an 1873 federal law that he wrote (the “Comstock Act”), he used his authority to seize objectionable material and prosecute people for transmitting “obscene” items through the US mail. Comstock went after lottery subscriptions, pornography, pulp fiction magazines, and even tracts advocating religious freethought. Anthony Comstock, postal crusader. Comstoc…

Burning Down the Temple: Religion and Irony in Black Rock City

By Sarah M. Pike

…festival is simply an occasion to don outrageous costumes, dance the night away, and encounter mind-blowing art and people. But for those “Burners” who are true converts, it is a religious event on a massive scale. Casseopeia, a 28-year-old adjunct professor at a large state university told me that Burning Man is her only “religious holiday.” For true believers, mundane life pales in comparison to this annual Labor Day gathering in Nevada’s Black…