Religion Dispatches
…e, because all the senses were quickened. This, I thought, was Rome at its best and most seductive. Perhaps it was America at its best as well. Greer went first and he recognized his role in this grand affair. He was the opening act, the warm-up band, and he handled his role with humility and self-effacing dignity. There is nothing more surprising, nor more pleasurable, than having the warm-up band make you wish them to hang around. He hung around…
Read More
…at we have to “try on” alternative interpretations to see which offers the best fit with the whole of human experience—not merely with what we experience through our senses, but also with the broader and ultimately more important dimensions of our lived experience, including our moral and aesthetic experience and our sense of the numinous. Is a naturalistic worldview, one which explains away these latter features of our lives (or at least the last…
Read More
…r Pérez, the division between different stages of pregnancy is illusory at best. “Doing this work makes me realize it’s not black and white,” Pérez says. “A lot of people at abortion clinics are actually having miscarriages… so trying to draw that distinction just doesn’t work for the way people lead their lives, and the way that abortion works. Midwifery care was always tied to abortion care. This connection is not a new thing. The current politi…
Read More
Congressman Heath Shuler is best known for a few things: his NFL career, his challenge of Nancy Pelosi for House Democratic Leadership, and his co-sponsorship of anti-abortion bills. Once lauded as a new breed of Democrat, able to win in a ‘red’ district by running to the right of the party, it now looks as though the conservative evangelical “Blue Dog” Democrat may be on his way out. If he opts to run for reelection in 2012 Shuler will face a pr…
Read More
…wn enemy, the world of quantitative reason, of risk assessment, data, the “best science,” and technological fixes? That it has mostly abandoned in embarrassment the spiritual vision of Muir? What we’ve been left with are numbers. The problem of climate change will be solved if we can reduce the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to 350 ppm. 350 ppm: that’s the holy grail of environmentalism. As a consequence of this approach, environmentalism can te…
Read More
…r. In a typical cycle, two embryos are transferred, to give the mother the best chance at getting pregnant at all without risking high-order multiples. However, this isn’t an exact science. There is no way to know in advance how many eggs will fertilize, or how many embryos will develop. If a woman has more embryos than can be transferred, doctors pick the two best, and freeze the remaining embryos for later use. However, the sad fact is that abou…
Read More
…d-times fantasies have often followed the path paved by Hal Lindsey, whose best-selling The Late Great Planet Earth in 1970 interpreted a pastiche of biblical verses as proof that the end would begin with a Soviet invasion of Israel. He claimed that the ancient prophet Ezekiel’s warning about Israel being invaded by an enemy named Gog from the North must refer to modern Russia. Even more, this northern enemy could not succeed without the help of I…
Read More…forced the notion that difficult economic times signify a lack of faith at best, and a sinful spirit at worst? So where are they now? Where are these preachers as parishioners’ mortgages continue to default and gas prices bust the average working family’s budget? Where are they as families fall into an economic tailspin due to unforeseen job losses and out of control healthcare costs? And where are they as parishioners increasingly discover that t…
Read More
…re beset at every turn by demonic forces and evil conspiracies. Despite my best intentions, some people may find these ideas offensive and feel that either their religion or their hobby has been slighted. But I think most readers will find this book interesting and thought provoking. What alternative title would you give the book? For a while my working title was “What The Moral Panic Over Role-Playing Games Says About Religion and Other Imagined…
Read More
…ask the reader of the Qur’an, over and over again, to reflect, to use her best judgment, to make her best effort, and to learn from others? If the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, was the last Prophet—and Islam certainly insists on as much—then everything he communicated has to be universal enough to be meaningful but flexible enough to reflect the nuances and characteristics of different experiences. This is one thing a lot of people don’t u…
Read More