Religion Dispatches
…, other atheists have been calling Silverman out for falsely inflating the number of atheists for more than four years. And last year, I specifically asked Silverman if he would stop reporting the stats on “nones” as being representative of atheism, and he told me he would. Yet here we are. There’s a philosopher at the UC Riverside I admire named Eric Schwitzgebel. One of his more popular theories is his theory of jerks, which he defines as follow…
Read More…and I’ll do an event, and the level of electricity, of excitement, and the number of people who say: “I always had these questions, I always wondered about this, I always knew there was another way to understanding this…” It’s really… It blows me away. Every night, at one of these events, I just… Wow. What an amazing thing to be a part of. [WG]: Tell us, what has been your favorite comment from a reader, or, one or two of your favorite comments. […
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…re a variety of perspectives, Overbay allowed his film students to create classroom projects that did not adhere to Asbury’s public performance guidelines. All public performances at Asbury, according to these guidelines, must “promote a Christian worldview,” while cursing, taking the Lord’s name in vain, and sexual innuendo are all forbidden. The controversy stirred up by Overbay’s pedagogical approach, which he insists was not in violation of th…
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…dings with the 11 subjects (from page 1555, see below). Bussee was subject number two and Cooper was number one. Both Bussee and Cooper were rated as Kinsey 6 (exclusively homosexual) before change and a 0 (exclusively heterosexual) after change. Since there was no follow-up, this study has been used to support the proposition that gays could change to straight via religious mediation. For instance, not knowing any of this background at the time,…
Read More…ful religions defending themselves against violent Muslims. Combining the clash of civilizations thesis with historical narratives of Islam’s violence against the world’s religions, Breivik saw the globe as one giant RISK board game where everyone was trying to defend themselves from the encroaching Islamic empire. Breivik had a solution to the clash of civilizations, one that began with the violent attacks in Oslo. The full vision of his solution…
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…eir descendants. However, beginning in the 1980s, there were an increasing number of converts to Orthodoxy, many of whom (though notably and importantly not all) came as refugees from debates of gender and sexuality in their own denominations—debates they had lost. These conversions have been a major catalyst in the transformation of the political face of American Orthodox Christianity and bring at least some of the Orthodox into the fray of the c…
Read More…ore people are not trusting him. The trust issue is important. Plus, news flash: the last time I checked America was founded on Judeo-Christian principles so it’s kind of important when you see a poll that says a growing number of Americans think you might be a Muslim. The President continues to tell everyone he’s a Christian but yet the number rises. See that? Which came first, the thought he was a Muslim or the lack of trust? If he is a Muslim,…
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…ive the wrath that is to come in November. We’ll see. Ted Cruz opened door number three on Tuesday: “This man is a pathological liar,” Mr. Cruz said, ticking off Mr. Trump’s distortions, his infidelities, his penchant for conspiracy theories. “The man is utterly amoral.” As I mentioned the other day, the rejectionist route seems to be the one Baptist leaders are taking as well. Any of these options involves some risk, but door number three is a pa…
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…in the Czech Republic. The mathematicians seem far more surprised by these numbers than most religionists would be. The first and most obvious reason involves an important distinction that when you shift the language away from “God” or “religion” and turn to conceptions of “sacrality” or “the sacred,”’ whole new worlds of meaning and meaningful activity bubble to the surface. Lost in the debate is the large and growing number of thoughtful people…
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…Azerbaijan “produced a frightening wave of nationalist rhetoric” and a backlash against woman and LGBT people. An in-depth Open Democracy report from April includes some details about “traditional values” and the nationalist backlash: Hostile attitudes towards LGBT people in Armenia have become caught in a tug of war between pro-European and pro-Russian constituencies. To the dismay of Armenia’s LGBT community, gender and gay rights have become ge…
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