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Devil’s Bookmark: How Not to Defend God

By Bernard Schweizer

…rfectly intelligible to theists, but it doesn’t necessarily work the other way around. While disbelief can work its way to belief, belief cannot easily work its way to disbelief. In the long run, this imbalance may prove to be fatal to belief. Of course, there is another defense of God, the humanistic defense, which can prevent the apologist’s hole from getting even deeper: God is just a human construct and reflects human flaws as well as human no…

Here Comes President Boo Boo: Trump’s Tour as Reality TV

By Spencer Dew

…ical force, in 16 and Pregnant and Here Comes Honey Boo Boo. And along the way, an understanding of the camera’s truth-telling potential, its ability to illuminate the real by means of filming people in carefully arranged, constraining circumstances, became a taken-for-granted of contemporary life. “Reality television” isn’t just a genre or an industry; it becomes shorthand for a way of seeing reality through film. “What does it mean to film reali…

Hijab: Culture, Custom, and Chaos

By Amina Wadud

…s the lesser sacrifice. I can actually say: I became Muslim because of the way I dressed. I also chose to cover my face: way back in the 70s, in the U.S. city of Philadelphia. But I was in retreat from the world as I knew it. I observed the niqab for four years before moving on to the next stage of my living faith. I am still moving, because at this age, I go out for regular errands with no scarf, after more than 35 years of covering by choice. In…

Barakah: Blessings Without Numbers

By Amina Wadud

…hat same power of divine sanction and the math. People some times think in numbers when they calculate the benefits or harm of things, vis-à-vis the divine. The idea of course is whether right or wrong it is important to exert the critical reasoning. You are blessed either way. Of course getting it right is twice as nice. The fundamental idea of rewards and punishments in Islam starts with the Qur’an. It does clarify that there will either be reco…

Has American Conservatism Abandoned the Christian Right?

By Bradley Onishi

…rint—and was born from this movement. “Don’t Say Gay bills follow, in many ways, the template of similar laws over the past century,” writes Michael Bronski at the Boston Review. “In significant ways, ‘Don’t Say Gay’ laws—and obsessions with ‘grooming’ more broadly—are old Christian fears about sin and danger given a new face, and express this by recycling medieval anti-Semitic tropes of the blood libel, simply substituting LGBTQ people for Jews a…

Material(ist) Girl: A Philosopher Argues Against the Soul

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…t extreme and tell me what I have to believe, that I can’t dress a certain way, obey my husband or I can’t have an abortion. Then I want to say, “Bugger off! You do your own thing but leave me alone!” Have you discovered that extremism is related to the brain? It almost certainly is. Extremism obviously involves the brain’s pleasure centers in some way because people love it. They feel so good when they tell that woman she can’t have an abortion…

State of the Union Stuck in that Olde-Time Semi-Niebuhrianism

By Ira Chernus

…een, and still is, so little economic oppression (none at all, some have always maintained); we bear no burden of past strife because the past has been so harmonious. Presidents have always been expected—indeed, for all practical political purposes obligated—to confess their faith in this economically-laden theology. But we might expect something different from this president, the first to publicly acknowledge a close study of and allegiance…

The Higher the Dome, The Closer to God: “Megachurches” Explores the Arid Architecture of America’s New Sanctuaries

By Anita Little

…re of these buildings communicates the theologies of these churches in any way? Theologies are really varied. There are a lot of different denominations that are represented. I’ve noticed for instance that Southern Baptist Convention churches are often very large versions of what you’d consider a classic Southern church to be, with white columns and red brick. They’re kind of blown up in this strange way. Most of them don’t look like typical churc…

Report From Paris: Who Is Naomi Klein, Religiously?

By Donna Schaper

…now the answer to that. We “let” our offspring find their own (individual) way instead of surrounding them with a great human story about creation, redemption, life and death, the other and ourselves. The Golden Rule comes to mind as an alternative story of great reciprocity – love your neighbor as you love yourself. We just decided in the last and lost generations to not require that people learn it, in community, any more. We have good excuses….

‘Hey Jesus, Do You Love Me the Same?’: Out Christian Rock Star Trey Pearson on Closeted Industry Figures, His Evolving Faith, and Brand New Video

By Chrissy Stroop

…of that went down, I thought to myself that I had seen this movie before, way too many times with people who aren’t famous but handle it the exact same way. It needs to be called out because what these churches really believe is marginalizing. These churches silence LGBTQ voices, and I will do everything I can to expose the toxicity of those beliefs and to work for them to change. What are you working on now, and what are the causes and goals you…