Religion Dispatches
…nesh D’Souza is facing prosecution in New York federal court for allegedly using straw donors to contribute in excess of federal limits to the campaign of Republican Wendy Long, who unsuccessfully challenged Senator Kristen Gillibrand for her seat in 2012. According to the New York Times, D’Souza’s lawyer is claiming that the government “targeted” D’Souza “because of his consistently caustic and highly publicized criticism” of President Obama. D’S…
Read More…is reality, whether we like it or not. For Catholic teachers to persist in using the word “matrimony” or “marriage,” when what is intended is heterosexual marriage is incorrect and easily fixed. Second, the same principles apply to the question of the “Sacrament of Holy Orders” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, Part II, Section 2, Chapter 3, Article 6). As long as we are revising, let’s fix this error as well. Since ordination in the Roman Cathol…
Read More
…this? We do allow for an opt out but I honestly have never heard of anyone using it. We have many homeschooled children in Modesto as well as several strong Christian schools. I assume any parents who feel that strongly probably don’t have their kids in our district. To your knowledge, have any students converted to another religion and abandoned their family’s religion as a result of this course? We make a very strong point to tell the kids we te…
Read More…gateway to immorality, saying “all pornography is immoral and harmful and using pornography may lead to other sins, and possibly, even crimes.” Chief among the sins that pornography can lead to, according to the bishops, is masturbation, in a warning that appears to come from a 1950s anti-masturbation PSA: While popular culture largely sees it as acceptable, masturbation is always gravely contrary to chastity and the dignity of one’s body. Like o…
Read More
…e that “the most accurate image of Jesus Christ’s real face,” put together using forensic anthropology, was making the media rounds (though it first appeared in a BBC documentary from 2001 called Son of God). This Jesus didn’t look like the pop culture renditions of the Son of God we’re used to seeing, but a “dark-skinned man with short, coarse hair and a beard.” [See image right.] Whatever the outcome of Joseph’s suit, and whatever comes from the…
Read More
…s practice and charitable works. Rubio’s ad falls squarely into this camp, using language that would be familiar to evangelicals: Our goal is eternity, the ability to live alongside our Creator for all time, to accept the free gift of salvation offered to us by Jesus Christ. The struggle on a daily basis as a Christian is to remind ourselves of this. The purpose of our life is to cooperate with God’s plan… But then things get weird. Rubio pivots f…
Read More
…his species has been enslaved and degraded for so long). There are also a number of “children’s cartoons” that are really aimed at older children and adults, meant to speak to both groups on different levels. Cartoon Network’s Adventure Time, for instance, is a children’s fantasy show in which a boy and his dog go on quests. The stories are simple enough to appeal to a younger audience, but the writers manage to throw in a good deal of mulling ov…
Read More
…ural transmission. We know that, for example, there are particular ways of using tools which are passed from grandparent to child, parent to child, that are specific to particular primate groups—or even particular crows. Some of these [unique transmitted behaviors] appear to be utilitarian. But some of them are not, like where there are specific places of beauty that particular animal groups will go to. For example, chimpanzees go into particular…
Read More
…ate and secular Jew, Bernie Sanders, who condemned Trump in particular for using this tragic event to spark Islamophobia. Tolerance is a hallmark of Western democracies. A core tenet of democratic societies is the freedom of religious and political expression, and even the most obnoxious and ridiculous views must be tolerated. Bad ideas are best conquered with good ideas rather than with repression. Yet, the anti-civil liberties orientation of Chr…
Read More
…g in the vapors that it releases can be extremely dangerous, potentially causing respiratory problems and damage to the nervous system. Given the perils of inhaling mercury vapors, it might be surprising to learn that some religious believers actually sprinkle the silver liquid metal inside their homes to ward off evil spirits. The practice puts not only current residents at risk but also future ones, as mercury can remain in fabrics and carpets f…
Read More