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Lou Engle Attempts To Backpedal On Uganda Anti-Gay Bill

By Sarah Posner

…pled stand to protect their people and their children from an unwelcome intrusion of homosexual ideology into an 83% Christian nation, an intrusion that is being pressed upon them by the UN, UNICEF, and other NGOs and Western colonialist powers.” As Throckmorton notes in a post-script to Sharlet’s post: I cannot know what the truth is but I would like Mr. Engle to speak clearly on this topic. Are Bahati and Oyet mistaken? Did they mislead Sharlet…

Which is the ‘Real’ Reality?: Doctor Who Part IV

By Henry Jenkins

…in The Matrix series, we can no longer be certain that the supposed “real world” is in any sense more real than the simulation in which Neo had once lived, the matrix. Common sense, it turns out, is not a helpful guide when it comes to such matters. This is illustrated repeatedly in the history of science as people resist new ideas which run counter to “common sense”—such as the idea that the Earth rotates, or that species change over time. In “A…

Do Atheists Borrow Religion’s Morality?

By Frank Schaeffer

…s positions have been compared to the Nazis, and his lectures have been disrupted all over the world by groups representing the handicapped. According to my friend Angela Creager (one of Singer’s colleagues and a professor of the history of science at Princeton), Singer is a kind man moved by compassion. Nevertheless, he seems not to understand how his ideas strike others; for instance, as evidenced by his protesters, people with disabilities. Sin…

“My Scientology Movie” Pokes the Hornet’s Nest

By Gordon Haber

…ion” that drove him to walk away from his wife and friends and “out into a world that is totally foreign,” where he didn’t know how to get a bank account or a job. Hawkins says that “in essence it’s a kind of suicide. You have to say my life is over and I am walking out of my life and into a totally different life. It’s that level of desperation.” But the “spirit of Scientology” is notably absent from My Scientology Movie. Certainly the viewer gai…

Is “Racist” Jesus Lawsuit Against The Met Already a Success?

By Andre E. Johnson

…sus Christ, while in the flesh, was a white man, we shall hang our gospel trumpet upon the willow and cease to preach. Turner’s issue with a white deity was not only that it constructed holiness as white, but that it also made God (Jesus) beholden to White interest. Within this racist framework, it was easy to declare that the devil and all manner of evil are Black. However, despite a lawsuit; forensic evidence from scientists; evidence from bibli…

The Sacred and the Dead: Operator, Can You Help Me?

By Maren Haynes

…rs back, The Atlantic reported on this whole social media connection conundrum, declaring loneliness a rising affliction. And earlier this year, the BBC’s Rebecca Harris cited a variety of studies that showed that such loneliness is, in fact, the product of these modern cyber or virtual societies crafted to connect us. According to Harris, “We live in nuclear family units, often living large distances away from our extended family and friends, and…

To Get Hebdo Cartoons You Must Get Laïcité

By Stephanie Frank

…arism. But nevertheless the two terms have different meanings, different histories, and different politics. Where secularism sprung from a sort of détente, laïcité began from an attack on entrenched power; where secularism has been bound up from the beginning with a protection of—even a celebration of—difference, laïcité has been bound up with an impulse to level difference; where secularism is associated with state “neutrality,” laïcité is associ…

Planetary Profiling: Dr. Who Part II

By James F. McGrath

…ing that if he told her exactly what he was doing, or always told her the truth, it wouldn’t be faith/trust. There’s a lot there to discuss. But let’s dig even deeper. In the third, fourth and fifth episodes starring Matt Smith as the Doctor, we see him confronting old enemies: the Daleks and the Weeping Angels. At one point he describes the latter as among the most malevolent forms of life in the universe. That’s problematic language. Can there b…

Steve Jobs Reincarnated as Divine Half-Yak

By Andrew Aghapour

…d Apple has been variously described as magical and religious. In 2011 the BBC went so far as to claim that Apple products evoked religious experiences in their fans. Thepyanmahamuni claims that Jobs’ good works earned him more not just earthly acclaim, but rewards in heaven, including a six-story mansion made of silver and crystals. Thepyanmahamuni’s claims merit a good chuckle, but I for one am completely on board; in a world full of David Barto…

Don’t Call it a Turkish Spring

By Haroon Moghul

…h democracy. Don’t underestimate the Turks. They contributed to one of the world’s most powerful empires ever. “But the Ottomans had become too corrupt,” a Turkish-American academic told me, right after we walked out of a mosque. “They had to die.” He had little love for Ataturk, though, whose nationalism had divided people against each other and destroyed the cosmopolitanism and generosity of the classical Muslim world. And then, in the same mon…