Religion Dispatches
…e a bought and paid for coward without people reaching for their Bibles to search for where you might have found the scriptural basis for your self-serving gutlessness. “We just need to start acting better, and Jesus gives us the place to start,” was a gem from Pryor’s 2012 Prayer Breakfast speech. As Pryor himself has said, you don’t need to pass an IQ test to serve in the United States Senate: I don’t want to hear anymore about “people of faith”…
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…and Glory is supposed to be a turning point one reflects on in old age in search of wisdom to pass on to youngsters embarking on their own walk with the Lord. It is the implicit or explicit lesson to every Sunday school class, every Bible story, and every sermon. Everything about born-again Christianity is bent toward the goal of your being born again. The only thing missing is how to be a good person. For me to say that the words of profession o…
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…plore the secret notebooks that Darwin wrote after his voyage. In these he searches for a materialist theory of religion. I also tackle his later application of this line of thinking in the Descent of Man, where he offers an evolutionary view of the “Golden Rule” and an anthropological view of religion’s development. So was that the sum of it for Darwin—to come up with a theory of how religion works that could be reasonably integrated into his the…
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…y distilled into a deceptively simple and brilliant parable. Moby Dick, In Search of Lost Time, Ulysses, Life and Fate, The Brothers Karmazov, Bleak House, they are all books I have read and re-read. What’s your next book? I will do a book on the consequences of political paralysis, the empowerment of extremes, the way a dysfunctional society produces and empowers the extremes, but this is not yet an idea that has solidified. The ideas always…
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…Science Buddha has grown, thanks in large part to the support of Google’s Search Inside Yourself Institute; neuroscience’s discovery of what the psychologist Rick Hanson calls “neurodharma”; and the multitude of businesses who’ve adopted Amazon’s WorkingWell strategy to use yoga, meditation, and mindfulness to enhance the corporate brand and improve productivity. This, we’re assured, is the way, not only to stress-relief, but to happiness—all acc…
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…ing the era of ‘Big Science.’ Bowman relates how the federal government, research labs, industrial contractors, and universities worked together, often on military use projects, and gained a vested interest in policing the boundaries of science. The term ‘pseudoscience’ gained popularity and was applied to UFOs and aliens, belief in which became the hallmark of not only bad science but also bad religion. Bowman does well to analyze science and rel…
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…” are, easily disproved by readily available data, or even a simple Google search. While this morning’s news is devastating—and puts those transgender troops currently serving directly in harm’s way—it’s also profoundly Trumpian, in a way that we should have, by now, come to expect. Let’s take a look at the facts. The order is based on lies Trump’s tweets claim that providing medically necessary health care to transgender troops is excessively bur…
Read More…which waxes and wanes, offers less the fullness of truth than the urge to search for it. Still, when human beings made in the image and likeness of God are our best selves then – we can be confident – that “all shall be well and all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well.” Mormon Church: Teen Suicides Reportedly Jump in Wake of New Anti-Gay ‘Revelation’ Mama Dragons, a group of Mormon mothers with gay children, said it had been infor…
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…frenzy driving his campaign, nor is he the first demagogue with a huge megaphone to call for banning Muslims from the United States. Yesterday, in promoting his plan to ban Muslims, Trump cited a dubious poll conducted for the “very highly respected” Center for Security Policy in support of his proposal. While the Center for Security Policy and its president, Frank Gaffney, indeed are respected and promoted in certain circles, in 2011 Gaffney was…
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…clearly sees a way to offer some pastoral leniency for “whoever knocks in search of help and support,” while maintaining traditional church teaching. Yesterday he spoke at length of the central importance of traditional marriage and reaffirmed the “unity and indissolubility of the conjugal bond” and the “true meaning of the couple and of human sexuality in God’s plan.” Progressives also made their arguments ahead of the synod. In Catholic Women S…
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