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Religious Discrimination and the Violence Against Women Act

…igin, sex, gender identity (as defined in paragraph 249(c)(4) of title 18, United States Code), sexual orientation, or disability, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity funded in whole or in part with funds made available under [VAWA], and any other program or activity funded in whole or in part with funds appropriated for grants, cooperative agreements, and ot…

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Tennessee Anti-Evolution Update

…on proposed by the Seattle-based Discovery Institute, an organization that promotes intelligent design. David Fowler, head of the conservative Christian Family Action Council of Tennessee, which is affiliated with Focus on the Family, and is one of the bill’s primary lobbyists. In defending the bill’s language, he has tried to draw on comparisons to the famous Scopes monkey trial that took place 86 years ago in his state. “…[T]oday’s evolutionary…

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Lost and Found: Despite the Hope, Morality, and Meaning Inspired by Deconversion, Why is Respect Only For Those Who Find God?

…First, Douthat warns of encroaching “scientism” which, in this context, is code for failing to believe the supernatural truth claims of Christianity. Second, paradoxically, Douthat perceives a tendency among non-religious people to embrace the mystical belief systems that he himself rejects, like astrology or wellness. (So much for scientism!) Yet we don’t see any actual evidence that these trends are as widespread among the deconverted as he sugg…

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Don’t Call It “Prayer Shaming”: Our Moral Failure Exposed

…ive, suggested that these invocations of prayers and positive thoughts are code words for deliberate political inaction by elected officials. The theological commentary on this shooting is what my grandmother would describe as “too heavenly minded and no earthly good.” These conversations about prayer reflect a graver moral issue than “prayer shaming” during a time of tragedy. Since the beginning of this year, 12,223 people have been killed in gun…

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Santorum’s War on Satan… er, on Higher Education

…in a cosmic holy war. Santorum insists that Satan has “his sights on… the United States of America,” that he has been working on America’s downfall by “attacking the great institutions of America,” and that “the place where he was… most successful and first successful was in academia.” Santorum continues: [Satan] understood pride of smart people. He attacked them at their weakest. They were in fact smarter than everybody else and could come up wi…

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This is not a Religion Column: Sarah Palin, American

…ers listened to Sarah Palin’s convention address expecting heavy religious code, the scriptural allusions that have come to be standard fare in speeches by Republicans and Barack Obama. There wasn’t much—“a servant’s heart,” a prayer for her son sent off to war. But there was, for those with ears to hear it, a far more disturbing allusion: to Westbrook Pegler, a mid-century Rush Limbaugh, and then some. At the height of his popularity, he was more…

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Tinkering with Creation: Intelligent Design 2.0

…ionists’ latest strategy. His is merely relying on what Forrest calls the “code words.” But their long-term goals remain the same: To get God into science class. The full statement in the Texas standards reads: “The student is expected to analyze, review, and critique scientific explanations, including hypotheses and theories, as to their strengths and weaknesses using scientific evidence and information.” (Italics added.) McLeroy considers common…

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The Blockbuster Spirituality of John Green’s “The Fault In Our Stars”

…icrobe cells, mutated cells. We are built, too, of our parents, of genetic code and flesh and blood and bones that grow inside of flesh and blood and bones. So we come again to the parents: “There is only one thing in this world shittier than biting it from cancer when you’re sixteen, and that’s having a kid who bites it from cancer,” Hazel tells us. Green, who is now the parent of two children, told The New Yorker’s Margaret Talbot, that his own…

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CPAC Speaker Admires Geert Wilders

…ose either secretly or overtly a Taliban-like, religious, strict religious code upon all Americans, which is ridiculous.” Honor killings, forced marriages, female genital mutilation, and other abuses are “un-Islamic,” he said, adding that there is “no debate among serious Muslim scholars about that.” As far as fear-mongering that that Muslims seek to supplant the Constitution with shari’ah, Khan noted, “there is room for individual religious pract…

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What’s the Problem With a Good Placebo?

…al “symbologist” character played by Tom Hanks in Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code. Semiotics is mostly dense philosophy and linguistics with a dash of neuroscience thrown in. The deep semiotics of health is an attempt to recognize the signs and symbols of health and to take control over the largely unconscious processes that affect our minds-brains-bodies. The mash-up of these terms is necessary in light of contemporary science. Let me explain. Psyc…

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