Religion Dispatches
…e religious right. While opponents to Prop. 8 have filled the streets of a number of cities with thousands of angry and steadfast demonstrators, religious right groups appear see the anti-same-sex marriage amendments that passed in California, Arizona, and Florida as a much-needed culture wars booster shot. With pro-gay civil rights demonstrations continue across America, pro- and anti-gay spokespersons squaring off in debates on radio and televis…
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…ist facing the bewildering array of current economic problems stick to the numbers or engage in psychological analysis? We could do worse than break down the current cast of characters based on that question and that approach. Greenspan was a number cruncher, Brooks observed, and unfortunately for him, human psychology caught up with him in the “housing bubble.” The current debate over Timothy Geithner is being conducted in similar terms. No one d…
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…f the country’s population of 1.3 billion—including the two sects of state-sanctioned Christian churches and rough estimates of those who belong to non-state-sanctioned or “underground” churches. The truth is—and the Pew researchers admit as much—it’s really difficult to accurately estimate what percentage of China’s population is Christian. Because it accounts for such a large portion of the global population, the assumptions researchers make abo…
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…s Smith’s belief in the importance of the doctrine, as well as the growing number of people initiated into the order. And though the prophet tried to stop the rumors from spreading, an increasing number of prominent figures outraged by the alleged practice were dedicated to root out the truth. Among those trying to expose the practice and its participants were Joseph’s brother, Hyrum, as well as his wife, Emma. Then, in May of 1843, in a radical r…
Read More…bisexual or “unsure” of their sexual orientation. Researchers compared the number of “unhealthy days” reported by residents of each state, using the CDC definition of “the total number of days in the past 30 that people reported that their physical and mental heath were not good,” according to the press release announcing the study’s findings. The Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System does include a question that allows participants to identi…
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…10, 15, 25 times—whatever the economist figured out was best, not the thousand-fold or ten thousand-fold difference that we have now. We have to look at the past, and especially the hunter-gatherer past, through such a tiny peephole. There are just a few hunter-gatherer societies that have managed to survive on the fringes, and not much more. Exactly. They are poor surrogates for Stone Agers, but they’re the best available. So do you feel like—if…
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…internet as a result of the inexorable working out of Moore’s Law. As the number of transistors on a chip grew exponentially, computers became smaller, and then they became “personal,” and then they fit in our pockets as a phone. “Revolution: The First 2000 Years of Computing,” at the Computer History Museum In this telling, the internet was not a unique “Columbus” event, but an evolution dependent on the shrinking size and growing capacity of co…
Read More…used to receive threats but in recent years they had grown to an enormous number. My public activities resulted in promises to hunt me down, beat me up, and kill me. Neo-Nazis, homophobes and pro-Putin agitators showered me with insults on social networks, harassed me on the phone and at events, and even complained to my place of work. On 24 August 2014, Ukrainian Independence Day, myself and some friends who were in a picket on Malaya Sadovaya s…
Read More…posing Michigan’s informed consent law. More chapter houses are opening in San Antonio and other cities around the country. The Detroit Free Press featured an interview with one Tom Raspotnik, an independent Satanist. Raspotnik described himself as a “tea party” Satanist who opposed the progressivism and atheism espoused by The Satanic Temple. He asserted that Satan is a real entity that he sacrifices goats to. Greaves has characterized Raspotnik…
Read More…on the faculty at Harvard Medical School and the University of California, San Francisco.” Oh, and she has a female spouse, Academy Award-nominated filmmaker Dee Mosbacher, M.D., Ph.D., with whom she has a 35-year long relationship. Her research showed that children raised by lesbian parents “were rated significantly higher in social, school/academic, and total competence and significantly lower in social problems, rule-breaking, aggressive, and exte…
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