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What’s More Frightening Than Snakes on a Plane?

By Devin Kuhn-Choi

…to move? Why do employers need to impose their religious views on their non-religious or differently-religious employees? It seems to be more about getting one’s way–and making sure everyone else has to do it your way, too–than about genuine claims to religious freedom. Further, wouldn’t standing in the aisles nearly guarantee an encounter with women? Because anyone who has ever had to navigate around another person in an airplane aisle knows ther…

Penn Jillette’s Signs You May Already Be an Atheist

By Steve A. Wiggins

…rust I have in the TSA before, Jillette’s rant in “Penn’s Bacon and a Kiss Airline” was like finding a long-lost brother; another guy who feels it is criminal to be viewed naked by strangers—involuntarily—is a true freedom fighter. This is a comedian with a conscience. He may come down on the wrong side of many traditional issues (global warming and sexual mores, e.g.), but he is keenly aware that too many people suffer. Theodicy in motion. In the…

Religion and Reality TV: Is God Watching?

By Kent L. Brintnall

…éne, lighting and personnel than the time devoted to competition and behind-the-scenes interaction. The show’s officiants are distinguished by function, and arranged hierarchically. They almost always include a host, typically a celebrity with an independent aura, who oversees all and serves as mediator between judges and contestants; the judges, experts in the relevant field, who never interact with the contests outside “elimination” rounds (unti…

The Religious Implications of Nudity

By Steve A. Wiggins

…wever, walked out of that gate like a prisoner on release day. I realize now what some people are forced to experience every day. It’s a feeling that religion-fed government is, like a bad sci-fi flick, simultaneously judge, jury, and executioner….

Ultra-Orthodox Jewish Men “Stand Up” for “Religious Freedom”… On a Plane

By Kara Loewentheil

…ell). The real difference here is that if you don’t want to deal with ultra-Orthodox men interfering in your travel, you can just take another airline. If only it were as easy for female employees affected by the numerous lawsuits against the Affordable Care Act’s contraceptive coverage requirement to find a better job. *Correction: This post originally indicated that gender separation was due to concerns about women’s menstrual cycles. To read mo…

An Architect Reimagines the Synagogue as Ark, Shelter, Floating Fortress

By Kathryn Joyce

…s even there in what Friedman calls his “space digression,” a series of exo- and extra-terrestrial plans for moon tourism, outerspace recreation, and plans patented in 1981 for an Earth Photo Globe that could offer the earth-bound the same awesome vantage of their home planet that astronauts have seen. (Also, predicting Google Earth by nearly 30 years, the Earth Photo Globe plans suggested using satellite technology to zero in on viewers’ individu…

‘Have a Blessed Day’ May Not Be a Sign of Christian Nationalism, But it’s Not Innocuous Either

By Chrissy Stroop

…n there’s Never-Trump evangelical author Tim Alberta, who, piling on, quote-tweeted Jeffery: Not here for the pile-on. Just want to highlight the danger @profsamperry @ndrewwhitehead and others have spoken about—when we deploy “Christian nationalism” with such cartoonish imprecision that Americans become desensitized to a real threat. Fwiw in my experience the Venn diagram between people who wish you a blessed day and people who advocate a theocra…

Does War Make Sense? Science and Religion on the Battlefield

By Nathan Schneider

…ight. We’re now almost a decade into an Orwellian state of perpetual war-at-a-distance. Yet Bousquet writes that we are still only in the “birth pangs” of the chaoplexic paradigm. God save us from what this baby looks like when it’s born; and from the belief systems that soldiers will need to entertain in order to enact it. The root of Bousquet’s credulity regarding the chaoplexic may come from taking too seriously Clausewitz’s axiom that war equa…

Health Care Acrimony Will Only Get Worse

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…icans—and Americans overall—believe that President Obama is “racist,” “anti-American” “wants the terrorists to win” and “wants to turn over the sovereignty of the United States to a one-world government.” The “Hatriot” belief that Obama is a “domestic enemy” as set forth in the Constitution is also widely held—a sign of trouble yet to come. As the Senate takes its next step to pass the revisions to the new law, I can’t help but think that the proc…

“Reconciliation” With Indigenous People is Comforting For Many Canadians, But is a Christian Concept Up To The Task?

By Pamela Klassen and Joseph Wiebe

…ile ignoring that they (we) are treaty people—that Canadians live in nation-to-nation relations with Indigenous peoples. As treaty people, part of the responsibility of settlers is to know and tell stories that acknowledge Indigenous land is the very same territory that they also call home. That’s what a land acknowledgement is: recognizing that Indigenous sovereignty was not erased by treaties or the Indian Act. Increasingly common at the beginni…