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Dear Scientists: Please Stop Bashing Free Will!

By John Horgan

…, much more than we need the concept of God. Our faith in free will has social value. It provides us with the metaphysical justification for ethics and morality. It forces us to take responsibility for ourselves rather than consign our fate to our genes or God. Free will works better than any other single criterion for gauging the vitality of a life, or a society. Choices, freely made, are what make life meaningful. When people doubt free will, th…

Why I Won’t Leave the Mormon Church Alone

By Holly Welker

…he 2008 campaign to amend the California State Constitution to ban gay marriage via Proposition 8. That, of course, is one primary reason I cannot and will not leave the church alone: it continues to exert its influence in areas that affect my life and the lives of people I love. Most of what I have written recently about the church deals with gender and sex; as long as the church has opinions that move it to action on these topics, I will have op…

Gen X, Gadgets, and God

By Elizabeth Drescher

…d an overall decline in religious affiliation, but showed religiously-affiliated Millennials as having an intensity of religious commitment as strong that of as pre-Boomer believers. Likewise, the study showed young adult believers as “fairly traditional in their religious beliefs and practices.” What is different, however, is the level of individual authority that both Gen-Xers and Millennials claim in shaping their spiritual lives within and bey…

Ricky Gervais: Why I’m an Atheist

By Lauri Lebo

…d noticed, Gervais in no way says anything disrespectful or harsh to Christians. All he does is lay out a case for his atheism, as well as tell a story about how, as a little boy, he came to lose his faith in God. I used to believe in God. The Christian one that is. I loved Jesus. He was my hero. More than pop stars. More than footballers. More than God. God was by definition omnipotent and perfect. Jesus was a man. He had to work at it. He had te…

Pope Invites his Flock to Join Facebook: Is the Digital Reformation Here?

By Elizabeth Drescher

…ems to have cribbed much of my commentary on his 2010 letter on digital social media. Whereas that letter focused on the special responsibilities of priests to engage believers and seekers in new online media outlets—a focus that I argued largely missed the distributed rather than hierarchical point of digital media practice—this year’s letter for World Communication Day spoke much more broadly to Christians about the possibilities and risks of ne…

Looking For Answers at the Oscars: A Guide to This Year’s Contenders

By S. Brent Rodriguez Plate

…something else. Even so, identity evolves not only with internet-based social media, but also through earlier forms of media. The radio was the new medium of the day, and radio broadcasts play the role in The King’s Speech that computers do in The Social Network. As in so many of this year’s films, Prince Albert/King George VI must confront his past, relatively-hidden identity to become someone other than he is: the King and public voice of one o…

Mitt, the Marriotts, and Porn

By Joanna Brooks

…7. (Back then, Romney even came in for criticism from the LDS Church-owned Deseret News, in an editorial with the unfortunate title “The nasty taint of porn.”) I don’t buy it. Anyone who understands the traction of evangelical anti-Mormon sentiment knows that most evangelical voters will never vote for Mitt Romney, especially if they have a choice in someone like Mike Huckabee. Marriott dropping porn won’t begin to make a dent in Romney’s (or ev…

Lila Rose Targets Planned Parenthood with Lies

By Sarah Morice-Brubaker

…ing hasn’t addressed scenarios in which telling the truth causes evil—the Nazis-at-the-door scenario, for example. Catholic teaching includes the doctrine of “mental reservation”: a kind of equivocation wherein someone says something which is deliberately misleading, ambiguous, confusing, or only truthful in a verrrry technical sense. Discussions of mental reservation can quickly become bogged down in technicalities, but imagine a latchkey kid say…

“God Created You”: Bishop Supports Gay Ugandans, Defies Death Threats

By Jocelyn Edwards

…he Struggle Will Go On” Senyonjo’s work on behalf of Uganda’s gays and lesbians has never been especially safe; the bishop has received death threats many times before. When his church stripped him of his pension for working with homosexuals, there was a controversy in the local papers and the threats of mob justice against him got so bad that he stayed in exile in the United States for six months. But Kato’s murder makes threats against the bisho…

Pro-Gay Marriage Mormon Keeps Faith Despite Church Pressure

By Joanna Brooks

…mes her bishop met with Melanie to discuss the video. Because she had affiliated with “Mormons for Marriage,” he questioned whether or not Melanie and her husband should be allowed to keep their temple recommends—certificates that allow the most worthy and devoted Mormons to participate in the faith’s sacred temple rites. Nor was he all that comfortable with Melanie teaching Sunday School, even though she assured him she had no interest in making…