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Burning Man: Religious Event or Sheer Hedonism?

By Lee Gilmore

…llar annual budget is funded almost exclusively by ticket sales, and these tickets are not cheap (ranging this year, for example, from $210-$300 depending on time of purchase). This pays for the basic infrastructure as well as expenses like a hefty per-person/per-day use fee charged by the Bureau of Land Management. In addition, a significant portion of each year’s budget is set aside to fund many of the large-scale art installations various parti…

The Bible is a Good Book, But God Didn’t Write It

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…her book is published that way except encyclopedias, dictionaries, and telephone books. You don’t want to read those books, you go to them for authoritative answers and you don’t argue with the dictionary. If you’re playing Scrabble you go to the dictionary to settle the argument. We’ve encouraged people to think about the Bible as this kind of book, a source of authority, the final word, not to be debated. I think that helps people to think that…

Can Expelled Teach Us a Thing or Two?

By Arri Eisen

…es as ‘battles’ (evolution vs. creationism, science vs. religion) may sell books and tickets for both ‘sides,’ productive engagement and nuance is sacrificed. Expelled, on the positive side does show us some interviews with balanced, thoughtful scientist/religion scholars like John Polkinghorne and Alister McGrath. They discuss the value of science and religion and other ways of thinking, and how productive dialogues among them, rather than battle…

Mitt Romney’s Prosperity Gospel

By Peter Laarman

…I fervently wish that Mr. Obama would say a bit more about the problem of cheap grace. Reminding us that people who work very hard for very little are not the abusers of cheap grace, but that others in well-feathered nests who are preaching sacrifice might be in real trouble on the cheap grace front. Obama cannot and should not condemn those in the electorate who buy into Romney’s “there will be showers of blessing” message, but he probably does …

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

By Jay Michaelson

…es ECI’s leadership – knows this to be the case. Which makes ECI’s video a cheap lie — yet another in a long litany of desperate efforts by the far right to convert the largely liberal American Jewish community to neo-conservatism, hawkish policies on Israel, and the belief that “Barack Hussein Obama” is a Muslim. That said, there actually are two interesting forms of antisemitism going on here. First is the antisemitism of ECI itself. To tug at…

Everything You Think You Know About the Dark Ages is Wrong

By Nancy Marie Brown

…ative to lines of celestial longitude and latitude. He (or more likely his best student) wrote a book on the astrolabe, an instrument for telling time and making measurements by the sun or stars. You could even use it to calculate the circumference of the earth, which Gerbert and his peers knew very well was not flat like a disc but round as an apple. Much of this science Gerbert learned as a youth living on the border of Islamic Spain, then an e…

Francis Visits the Church that John Paul Broke

By Patricia Miller

…umber of marriages within the church has declined by nearly half. Only the number of Catholic funerals has held steady. And while the number of Catholics overall has remained level, that’s largely due to Hispanic migration to the US; some 40 percent of those born Catholic have left the church. But numbers don’t tell the whole story. The church Francis will encounter is fundamentally different in character from the church of John Paul in two import…

Penn Jillette’s Signs You May Already Be an Atheist

By Steve A. Wiggins

…to admit. This may be due to the definition of atheism he provides in the book’s preface: “If god (however you perceive him/her/it) told you to kill your child—would you do it? If your answer is no, in my booklet you’re an atheist.” He later qualifies this a bit, asserting that anyone who can’t answer a solid “Yes” to “Does god exist?” is an atheist. Religious specialists, however, tend to be sticklers for precise definitions. Those who don’t kno…

“Tell Me What You Believe About Ferguson, and I’ll Tell You What You Believe About God”: A Missouri Pilgrimage

By Anita Little

…e the same epiphany he had. He eschews respectability politics in favor of direct protest, hoping to afflict the comfortable and rattle the complicit. He has also increasingly embraced social media as a tool for changing perspectives, using the #JusticeForJesus hashtag to tweet modern retellings of the arrest and crucifixion of Jesus through the lens of the Black Lives Matter movement. Rev. McBride, center Ferguson has taken a fraught place in the…

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

…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…