Religion Dispatches
…stential questions that have underwritten all the religions—and most civil codes of law—throughout human history: Who am I? What am I serving that will outlive me and carry my love and my work forward? How should I live so that when I look back on my life, whether a year or decades from now, I can honestly be glad I’ve lived the way I did? Theologians, ministers, and active congregants may say, correctly, that their religions still offer some resp…
Read More…istian, denominations. A study by the Military Association of Atheist and Freethinkers (MAAF)—the group that put Bradley in contact with the ACLU—reported that nearly 97% of military chaplains are Christian (63% Evangelical), while Christian service members make up 70% of the population. Currently no Humanist or Atheist chaplains approved for military service, though MAAF reports that there are a number of Atheist and Humanist chaplain assistants…
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…legal system of nation states today. Apostasy is only a crime in the penal codes of four or five out of the 40 Muslim-majority countries today. Dr. Luttwak claims that “another provision of Muslim law… prohibits punishment for any Muslim who kills any apostate, and effectively prohibits interference with such a killing.” This claim implies that there is something called “Muslim law,” which is either the law of the land or overrides that law in pre…
Read More…rmons and Latter-day Saints are expected to respect Mormon beliefs, Mormon codes of behavior, and Mormon missionary work as righteous, benevolent, beneficial and admirable. Simultaneously, everyone should share the mutual and tacit understanding that post-Mormon beliefs, post-Mormon codes of behavior, and post-Mormon missionary work are vulgar, divisive, harmful and shameful. If one wants to condemn “unneeded stress and pain” caused by intolerant,…
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…same Torah and commentaries, study the same Talmud, live by the same legal codes, and adhere to the same basic belief system. Yes, the haredim have a very narrow reading of these sources but it’s a safe bet that they can cite chapter and verse to support their views—often more adroitly than their modern counterparts. In his Mishneh Torah (Code of Law), Maimonides explicitly advocated the position that women should stay mostly in their homes. The k…
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…s both the notion of “self” that the salvation myth of physical perfection promotes (i.e., Descartes’ sovereign, unencumbered, self-sufficient individual), and the more-better-faster culture the ideal body/self represents and serves. What’s the most important take-home message for readers? I’d say there are three main messages I’d like readers of Shameful Bodies to take to heart: First, body shame is not a natural response to being physically impa…
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…ons (mostly punishments) and grafting them haphazardly onto existing civil codes. The result: Muslim governments have been imposing Islamic-sounding punishments without implementing the numerous strict procedural restrictions that had always severely limited those punishments. Why focus on Islamic punishments developed a thousand years ago, which were in abeyance until twentieth-century fundamentalists brought them back? Because they’re sensationa…
Read More…heir teachers boxes of doughnuts with religious messages attached to them. Romania has decided not to tax its witches and fortunetellers. One reason being that the witches and fortunetellers aren’t good at keeping receipts. Calvin College canceled a show by music group The New Pornographers because some people didn’t get the irony. The UK has banned an ice cream ad because some people might find its representation of a pregnant nun offensive. And…
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…heir creators. But, with Zoebot, we are witnessing the tension between her free mind and her not-so-free robotic exterior. It was moving to see her facial expressions when Daniel commanded Zoebot to ripoff its own arm. But how far will this obedience go? Is this setting up the stage for the grand old story of Abraham’s sacrifice—except, perhaps, the decision will now be in the hands of the offspring? One more note on Tamara’s virtual-only existenc…
Read More…ommonwealth both in terms of the ownership of the asset and in terms of the common good of widespread open access. Sometimes free isn’t really free….
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