Religion Dispatches
…m our historical experience, and from the ‘ethos’ of self-righteousness as promoted by Prime Minister Begin. In my opinion, there is no greater threat to our survival than this ethos of self-righteousness. It renders us blind and unable to understand our situation—and it gives legitimacy to bad national leadership. Both Harkabi and Leibowitz died in 1994. Toward the ends of their lives, each spoke in prophetic terms about Israel’s political-milita…
Read More…ppropriate—whether directed toward ourselves or towards others. And so the latest episode of Doctor Who challenges us to reflect not only on the nature of reality and how to identify it, but on the question of what images we make of God (mentally more often than physically), and to recognize that the mask that constitutes our image of God usually bears a striking resemblance to ourselves. Henry Jenkins__________ When The Doctor ‘wakes up’ in the…
Read More
…n find them streaming on Netflix) — ed. Joseph Laycock_______________ This latest Doctor Who episode contains several elements for vampire aficionados. The vampire aristocrat Rosana Calvierri is apparently based on Elizabeth Bathory, the historical “blood countess” of Hungary, who would have been twenty years old in 1580 when the episode is set. Bathory was accused of murdering young women and bathing in their blood, just as Calvierri preyed on th…
Read More
…beral go together in that sense… Yes, in the sense that a liberal does not promote any particular belief. Which is not to say that a liberal doesn’t believe in anything. Liberals do believe in something, whether it’s the 19th century variety or the American left-of-center variety. But it doesn’t seek to impose a particular belief on society at large. And that’s in some ways held against it by those who want society to be overtly Christian, or kick…
Read More…mory? There’s an app for that. You can even use your iPhone to tweet the latest execution news, like the Utah Attorney General. But for others the internet is a place for anti-religious rage. Over at the Huffington Post, they have debuted a new discussion between religion and science and the American Association for the Advancement of Science continues to seek dialogue between science and religion. University of Colorado psychologist Tor D. Wag…
Read More…ceedingly difficult to say anything but ‘amen’ to the new atheists in this latest quest. On the other hand this move could backfire and spark ire among Catholics causing them to circle the wagons and dull their own criticism. It’s a fine line. The problem was caused by the inability for the Church to police itself adequately. While it’s preposterous to believe that any institution—whether it be the US financial services industry or the Catholic Ch…
Read More
…e bones of Jews cavalierly are our enemies.” The bones that generated the latest controversy were found during construction of a hospital wing in the city of Ashkelon, on the Mediterranean. Barzilai Hospital, the city’s major medial center, which serves hundreds of thousands of people, is in dire need of a new emergency room. The plan was to build an ER that is bombproof, as Ashkelon lies within the trajectory of Qassam rockets fired from Gaza. T…
Read MoreHere’s the latest provocative hip-hop video from self-described rap troubadour Baba Brinkman in which he blasts pseudo-science and irrationality. A Chaucer scholar who started out rapping the Canterbury Tales, lately he’s been branching out into the world of science and religion. In 2008, the Vancouver artist developed the utterly brilliant Rap Guide to Evolution. I met him last year while he and I were on a tour in the U.K. in celebration of the…
Read More…s.tv conversation with Peter Beinart, it’s worth noting that David Brook’s latest atrocity is also a shallow recasting of the ideas of Reinhold Niebuhr, except that meh, it’s not. If you’ve read Moral Man and Immoral Society, you’ll know that Niebuhr was indeed concerned with the tradeoffs in moving from individual to social relationships. As the book’s title implies, Niebuhr thought it was easier for individuals to be moral, because they didn’t c…
Read More
…uraged priests, very particularly, to proclaim the Gospel by employing the latest generation of audio-visual resources (images, videos, animated features, blogs, Web sites) which, alongside traditional means, can open up broad new vistas for dialogue, evangelization, and catechesis. Many commentators saw Benedict’s statement as a bold move by the Roman Catholic Church into a new era of open, interactive communication with the faithful. But the Pop…
Read More