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Can Expelled Teach Us a Thing or Two?

…nd, Expelled argues to bring intelligent design and, by implication, other ways of thinking into the classroom. I agree, but not in the way the movie and its proponents argue. When they push to ‘teach intelligent design (or creationism or other alternatives to science),’ they mean to do so on equal footing with science. As most any scientist will tell you, this won’t work because the idea of an Intelligence or a Creator, and most similar ideas of…

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Snake-Handlers, False Messiahs, and a Few Great Souls: 14 Who Died in 2014

…deavoring to live up to Brown’s teaching to “shrug off”their “old deathist ways”and accept immortality into their DNA. John-Roger Hinkins The “way-shower”of the Movement of Spiritual Inner Awareness (MSIA), John-Roger Hinkins died at 80. Raised Mormon, Hinkins was a high school teacher in Southern California when he discovered “soul consciousness.”He founded MSIA—pronounced “messiah”—in 1971, teaching one could achieve a totally positive state of…

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Francis Visits the Church that John Paul Broke

…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 nation’…

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Saving Teens from Obama: When Bible Study Goes Wrong

…Heather, the enthusiastic pastor whose response to all my questions was, always and only, “Jesus.” But when Heather and her husband moved away, and a new couple was assigned as pastors to our corps, I took it as an opportunity to step further away from church attendance. My kids are still in the process of sorting out their beliefs. A couple say they are atheists, a couple call themselves Christians—and sometimes they still go to church, which is…

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Google’s Benevolent Interfaith Big Tent

…aring the story, she returns home, opens Google India, and tracks down the phone number for the sweet shop her grandfather mentioned. Within seconds, she has called the store on her smart phone, and Yusuf’s grandson—who answers—has likewise opened Google to research visas for a reunion too long denied. We can understand the implications of this storyline by putting it into conversation with its longer historical context. The logic of the plot—that…

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

…mitism of ECI itself. To tug at the kishke-strings of American Jews in the way that ECI has is not only to demean and dehumanize us, but also to do violence to the memory of victims of actual antisemitism. More than anything else, I’m insulted by the ad, and offended that this organization is lying to me, my mother, and my relatives for their own political reasons—namely, defeating Barack Obama. Antisemitism is a serious, real thing. When it is us…

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Don’t Buy Alito’s Assurances: Here’s What Happens Next After Roe Falls

…issuing marriage licenses to same sex couples. These cases will work their way through the district court (where anti-Obergefell forces will probably prevail), then appealed up to the 5th Circuit (where they will almost certainly prevail), and then up to the Supreme Court, where the swing vote will be Neil Gorsuch. Given that he has signed off on Dobbs, and he’s very much a textualist and originalist, Obergefell will fall. The decision will be han…

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2023 CPAC Lived Down to Expectations, But Don’t Buy the Narrative: The GOP is Not as Divided as You Might Think

…appearances of her colleagues. Lake didn’t have to scream, and that, in a way, made her performance more threatening. Having walked on stage to deafening “Kari! Kari!” chants, she referred to herself as just a “fed-up mom who decided to walk back from her job in the fake-news media” who decided to run for governor of Arizona. Lake’s “aw shucks”-style, airbrushed to the nines and softly spoken, was more effective than Boebert’s yelling, possibly b…

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

…kepocalypse”: for the first time ever, the event sold out. Scalpers hawked tickets for hundreds of dollars over their purchase price and artists who had been working feverishly to finish their projects but had put off purchasing tickets were left out in the cold. It was a different scene in 1997 when I first came to Burning Man and only waited briefly at the entrance as a “Greeter” cast a cursory glance at my car. But the Greeters’ enthusiastic re…

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

…items within their borders (as is already the case federally with lottery tickets). A Republican-controlled Congress could then impose a nationwide ban on the mailing of abortion pills or certain contraceptives. (Republican-controlled state legislatures have already demonstrated a willingness to enact questionable legislation for nothing more than its intimidation factor.) Which brings us back to Anthony Comstock. In 1878, the Supreme Court uphel…

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