Religion Dispatches
…urity, and this can only be angels. They justify this by the words used before this statement which refers to the Qur’an as a pre-text lawh-al mahfuz, the sacred tablet. And for this we really need to say something more about reading the Qur’an, so next time….
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…have long argued: that despite his claims to support a two-state solution, Netanyahu in reality does not. After a wartime press conference—during which Netanyahu spoke only in Hebrew—Horovitz wrote that the Israeli leader “made explicitly clear that he could never, ever, countenance a fully sovereign Palestinian state in the West Bank.” There’s evidence of some rabbinical awareness of this reality. The JCPA online survey, conducted in 2013, found…
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…he adds, “It’s the only math object that goes back to the history of clay tablets that’s still studied seriously, 4,000 years later.” Pi draws attention not just on its own, but inside equations. For instance, it’s is an essential part of Euler’s identity, eiπ+1=0, an equation which commonly tops “greatest equations ever” polls. Euler’s identity combines the two most important transcendental numbers with i, which equals the square-root of -1. Leo…
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…, but are they antisemitic? Most people remember the Pittsburgh massacre of 2018, but fewer know of the Pittsburgh Platforms of 1885. In that emblematic statement of Reform Judaism, it was argued that Jews aren’t a nation but rather carriers of a religious tradition, and that they do not seek to return to the land of Israel in the future. One could argue with this—and indeed Reform Judaism has revised that statement in numerous ways. But was Refor…
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…n as exemplar of obedience is on point. He is an emissary, a prophet who penetrates reality with a perfect understanding of the Sacred. His exemplary ability to follow divine commands marks him as a “true messenger of Allah.” While Islamic tradition focuses on the character of Noah, the Genesis Flood is entirely about God, about a new monotheistic construal of both divine judgment and the pro-human reversal of that judgment. With no comedy to spea…
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…alian CCM group The Newsboys on Pandora. Here’s the video for the Newsboys’ 2011 song “God’s Not Dead,” which takes place on the day that scientists officially decide God does not exist. (Never mind that science can’t prove the non-existence of anything.) Are you familiar with this urban legend about a Christian student butting heads with an atheist professor? Then you basically know the plot of God’s Not Dead. Scott Paeth at Against the Stream lo…
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…be a solar storm of destruction. And then there is this notion that the planets are going to align; though December 21, 2012 is winter solstice and there is nothing apocalyptically significant about that phenomenon. There are also people who believe that spacemen helped the Maya, and they back up these theories by saying the Maya couldn’t have been capable of building what they built. All they are saying is that they are incapable of imaging thems…
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…n Israel, where he was seeking asylum. It was three days before the January 2011 referendum in which the Southern Sudanese voted to secede from the North. While his friends in Tel Aviv were revving up to rally for independence, William told me it’s not an occasion to celebrate; it’s a time to pray. The referendum on Abyei’s self-determination was postponed due to a dispute over whether a nomadic tribe allied with the North is eligible to vote. The…
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…ion would be even more rightist. Israeli high school mock elections held in 2009 gave present Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, a settler and vocal advocate of the settlement movement, a clear victory as Prime Minister. Given that, whatever polls say regarding a majority of Israelis’ “willingness” to end the occupation, when they go to ballot box as a collective, they indicate otherwise. American Jews need to take seriously the real likelihood t…
Read More…er of Catholic men for whom Archbishop Lori has been supreme chaplain since 2005. Under the leadership of an influential Washington lawyer and former Reagan White House official, Carl Anderson, the knights have increasingly backed conservative causes and routinely make sizeable donations to the Holy See. Bishop Lori, of course, is the chair of the USCCB’s Ad Hoc Committee on Religious Liberty, instigator of the anti-contraception coverage battles…
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