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The Belly of the Beast: NYC’s Shiny New Transit Hub Is All Wrong for the 9/11 Site

…he proud twin towers of the World Trade Center proclaimed the dominance of New York City’s finance industry. But what we remember is the horrifying day all the unsuspecting people in those towers were attacked—and the number of New York’s finest who lost their lives helping people to safety. This is a city that values sticking up for one another. We don’t look back on 9/11 with fond nostalgia for our financial monoliths; we remember the pain, the…

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Fight the Tower: Protests Continue at Union Theological Seminary

…We’re a New York institution.” The question for Union to consider is which New York it commits itself to? The rapidly gentrifying New York that drives people from their West Harlem homes? The prestigious faith councils of Mayor Bill De Blasio’s New York? Or will Union stand with community organizations like Faith in New York (run by a Union graduate)? Union’s commitment to the city does not mean standing with the Manhattan elite. Students don’t co…

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The New Disciples: Report from South Carolina

…y candidacy. But since his spectacular free-fall, some of the most visible promoters of The Response have abandoned him for other candidates: Don Wildmon, the founder of the virulently anti-gay American Family Association, which bankrolled the event, endorsed Newt Gingrich just before the Iowa caucuses. Jim Garlow, the California megachurch pastor who campaigned vigorously for the anti-gay marriage Proposition 8 (who also heads Gingrich’s nonprofi…

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Ask the Dust: Unbelievers, Bunker-Dwellers, Anti-Natalists

…imits and used by the group to make me feel shameful I can’t entertain any new ideas that don’t come from the group or group leader I can’t talk to my parents (I mean more than I couldn’t talk to them before) I’ve developed new coping mechanisms to get through things in the group that make me uncomfortable a la Kimmy Schmidt’s “You can stand anything for 10 seconds. Then you just start on a new 10 seconds.” I’m considering participating in a group…

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Is God a Delusion? A Reply to Religion’s Cultured Despisers

…ship of educated people who were interested in the questions raised by the new atheists. And I wanted both theists and atheists to find the book challenging and thought-provoking. Some recent responses to the new atheists are full of rhetorical jabs and belligerent verbal attacks clearly meant to appeal to a loyal following of believers, readers who want to cheer and pump their fists as “their guy” strikes back against the opponent. People who are…

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Dominion Theology, Christian Reconstructionism, and the New Apostolic Reformation

…itten extensively about Reconstructionists and Sarah has written about the New Apostolic Reformation here and here. Moreover Sarah and Anthea Butler have just posted a terrific overview of the NAR, Pentecostalism, and dominionism in which they critique both the denialists who say that dominionism doesn’t exist, and alarmists who fail to properly contextualize dominionists’ activities. Christian Reconstructionism is the older of the two movements (…

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Meditation is Very Relaxing, Says New York Times

…this is a kind of affectation, a tactical deployment of skepticism and I’m-new-to-this innocence. I hope so. The kosher Buddhism presented in “Buddhists’ Delight” is basically relaxation. Not so relaxed that we forget about our liberal political commitments, but relaxed enough that we don’t check our Blackberries when they buzz. Interestingly, right after I read Atlas’ essay, I went to a session at the Mind and Life conference on new clinical stud…

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New York Times Columnist Peter Steinfels’ Letter To RD; With Author Response

…December I looked back over two decades of writing Beliefs columns in the New York Times. One of my abiding themes, I suggested, had been that “the great world religions are complex and multilayered; they are rich in inner tensions and ambiguities that allow beliefs and practices to evolve over time as the faith is tested by new circumstances and insights. The great religions cannot be equated with the diminished and frozen fundamentalisms that t…

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Little ‘Value’ in New Harris Book

…degree in philosophy from Stanford—has turned his attention to ethics in a new book, The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values. As the subtitle tells us, he argues that we can put moral reasoning on an objective footing. According to him, we have been quite mistaken in thinking that matters of fact and matters of value are two separate things. David Hume was wrong when he said we can never legitimately go from the way things are…

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Transgender, Scientologist, “Cult Hero”

…ous or dogmatic reason. His words were valued in the same way as, say, the New Age ‘Law of Attraction’ (formerly known as New Thought): based on their supposedly demonstrable truth, not their religious authority. The devotion of Scientologists to Hubbard may have been weird, slavish, and naïve—but it wasn’t really religious. Or was it? Scientology was intentionally designed to comfort the afflicted, just like religion does. And, just like religion…

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