Religion Dispatches
…e millions of Catholic if the church hierarchy would speak up, rather than hiding behind empty rhetoric. So before anyone judges the tone of my writings, or those who have been abused, imagine the tremendous breach of trust this really is. It is a spiritual rape, and I’d have to say, whether physically or psychologically, this unending litany of sexual abuse has violated all Catholics, whatever side they are on. I do, however, want to be fair. So…
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…I mattered. That’s why I worked so hard for so long. I gave my utmost for His highest. You know I did. I gave him everything I had to give until there was nothing left to give. The World Was Here All Along Years later, another very different epiphany in a car. My first secular relationship was with an older, handsome man of the world—he was from Europe, a place I had never even thought about very much. Before long, I was traveling to Paris and Is…
Read More…e comedian’s message, I eagerly clicked on it. I was surprised when I saw this wasn’t a clip of his latest hysterical stand up, but an essay he penned for the Wall Street Journal’s Speakeasy blog. The topic of his essay was how he came to be an atheist. The whole piece is here. While there is humor in the piece, it’s actually more of a sweet thoughtful response to all the people who ask him and other atheists why they don’t believe in God. And as…
Read More…e same way it does regarding slavery, or viewing women as property, or any number of things that our culture no longer affirms or accepts. My perspective can best be summarized in a quote from my theological hero, John Caputo: “My own view is that the outcome of a careful debate about these matters would be to show that there simply are no arguments to show that homosexual love is of itself anything else than love, and that therefore, since the es…
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…o the healthy development of children. Even if the father means to promote his children’s welfare but is seriously misguided, this just goes to show how sharp the disconnect is between what the father means to do and what he’s actually doing. No loving person would endorse this prohibition if they knew the truth. Is the traditional prohibition on homosexual intimacy like that? I think so. And the reason I think so is because, for many years now, I…
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…s ballooning trade deficit is directly related to our borrowing spree—that his main ethical and religious point still remains somewhat undeveloped. Hence this supplementary fantasia on his dolorous theme. Geoghegan frames the main ethical point this way: “The problem is not that ‘we deregulated the New Deal’ but that we deregulated a much older, even ancient, set of laws.” What he means is that, coincident with a Supreme Court case in 1978, we sta…
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…blem? Dr. Kolchak points out that Dobson was not a lone psychotic and that his victims shared his beliefs. The three apparently met through the online organization “Joy of Satan,” and Kolchak argues that murders resembled rituals described on the website. According to Dobson, the three had gone to the hotel room to perform a death ritual so that they could travel to “another galaxy.” “Joy of Satan” promotes “theistic Satanism” and is an extremely…
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…awareness to engage with these firehoses of disinformation critically. Within this contaminated information ecosystem, the role of influencers is crucial. Users form parasocial relationships with them, and in return they produce nonstop conspiracy content while making money from ads, sponsorships, and monetized posts. Of course they’re not the only ones who profit from this relationship; social media platforms also make vast sums from conspiracy…
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…m. Others were less likely to let a classmate use their cell phone. “Some philosophical analyses may conclude that a fatalistic determinism is compatible with highly ethical behavior,” the psychologist Jesse Bering comments in an article on these studies, “but the present results suggest that many laypersons do not yet appreciate that possibility.” Theologians have proposed that science still allows faith in a “God of the gaps,” who dwells within…
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…ho has written a number of pieces for RD. Gordon Haber spoke to Manseau by phone. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. Tell us about the Jefferson Bible. What is it? Why did he do it? Jefferson wanted to distill the Gospels down to core teachings of Jesus as a moral teacher. So he went through copies of the Bible and cut out with a penknife everything that had to do with Jesus’s life and teachings as opposed to the mystical and s…
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