Search for "search for airline tickets cheap phone number 1-800-299-7264"

A Meeting of Minds… and Computers: What Are the Costs of Using Technology to Merge Humans with Machines?

By Jeremy Lent

…anism to emerge. The Patterning Instinct: A Cultural History of Humanity’s Search for Meaning Jeremy Lent Prometheus Books May 2017 Last month, Facebook and Elon Musk separately announced investments in technologies that could lead humanity to this outcome. Facebook announced plans for a silent speech interface using neural signal receptors that could allow users to type words into their smartphone using only their thoughts. Billionaire Elon Musk…

Errol Morris’ Tabloid Sensationalizes Mormonism and ‘Cult’ Deprogramming

By David Mihalyfy

…at actually happened, and how closely does that hew to tabloid reports? In search of answers, Morris presents lengthy interviews with McKinney, her surviving accomplice, and two journalists who reported the scandal. Because Anderson did not agree to be interviewed, his perspective is cobbled together, in part, from an analysis of Mormonism given by ex-Mormon and current gay activist Troy Williams. Williams’ former insider status allows him to psyc…

Two Wars and No Peace in Sight: The Role of Faith-Based Pacifism

By Richard Ricketts

…s don’t fall because you hold up a sign. So I think there has to be more research into the strategic approach to peacemaking. My own research interests deal with the factors and conditions that make nonviolent struggles succeed. What is violence? The most prevalent form of violence is structural violence. Certainly, there is physical violence such as spouse or child abuse. But structural forms of violence systematically affect whole groups of peop…

Chabon, Safran-Foer, Krauss—the “New Yiddishists”—Don’t Speak Yiddish

By Benjamin Weiner

…st, as well as dramatically thin. Foer’s eponymous protagonist journeys in search of the shtetl where his ancestors came from, discovers treasures of history, and finds, too, that the non-Jewish residents are to this day so upset by the slaughter they abetted that they will kill themselves when reminded of it. Its kernel was, apparently, Foer’s failed journey to find his ancestor’s shtetl. And any Jew who has done some kicking around in Eastern Eu…

The Two Faces of New Atheism

By Konstantin Petrenko

…sial topics such as the origin of life and humanity, embryonic stem-cell research, and global climate change. Unlike most developed nations, where the theory of evolution enjoys wide support, only 4 in 10 Americans accept the scientific account of human origins, according to a recent Gallup poll. At this difficult time for science education in America—as it faces the ire of religious fundamentalists and its message gets distorted by promoters of q…

The Spirit of January 6th: The Theology of This Seldom Discussed Movement Animates the Growing Threat to U.S. Democracy

By Frederick Clarkson and André Gagné

…which the potential for violence is increased,” Chip Berlet of Political Research Associates* wrote in 2014. “What social science cannot do,” he averred, “is predict which individual upon hearing the rhetoric of clear or coded incitement will turn to violence.” Berlet’s essay was titled “Heroes Know Which Villains to Kill: How Coded Rhetoric Incites Scripted Violence.” Indeed, villain identification has been going on for a long time, and NAR leade…

Capricology: Divine Madness

By Salman Hameed

…suggests another explanation—that Zoe has been playing with the dog in her search for human contact and so he turns to her with the ball, not knowing that he risks blowing her cover. I suppose this would suggest a dog owner who can’t resist their attachments to the pet, another signifier of the sentimentalization of the relations between humans and animals. Give the dog a bone! Salman Hameed___________ Apropos of Henry’s comment about the thin l…

Barbara Ehrenreich’s ‘Wild God’ is Not Here to Help

By Angela Bonavoglia

…he divine. But that’s an unfair burden to put on any mystic—especially an avowed atheist. For me, as for many of us, the search goes on….

George Weigel’s Revisionist History Casts Vatican II as a Christian Nationalist Handbook

By Patricia Miller

…ry, but it also undercuts its revolutionary intent. And it’s a solution in search of a problem as it’s not widely disputed that the point of Vatican II was aggiornamento or the “bringing up to date” that Pope John cited. In his opening address, he plainly stated that the purpose of the Council was the “modernization of the Church after 20 centuries of life.” As James Carroll recently wrote in the New Yorker, Vatican II was “an historic reversal of…

What My Christian High School Taught Me About Being a Black Girl

By Carlyn Ferrari

…Recently, I went looking for that old photograph of myself at fourteen in search of an explanation. I wanted to find a buxom, Jessica Rabbit-like woman because I wanted his nickname for me to make sense. Instead, all I saw was a young girl. Of course, even if I’d had the body of a “grown” woman it would have been wrong for him to harass me. I know this. But I still looked for the photograph. There’s a part of me that wants to know what my teacher…