Religion Dispatches
Western experts, looking for a comprehensible narrative, mistake consistency for fact. The misconceptions are further compounded by how difficult it is to identify a potential suicide—even mental health professionals can get it wrong—and how easy it is to conflate suicide terrorists with regular terrorists, the vast majority of whom don’t strap on bombs, preferring to stay alive and fight.
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The plot of Twilight: a young woman—clumsy and plain—is deeply and unconditionally loved and protected by an all-powerful, omnipotent being whose love makes her special. For a moment, Twi-hards let themselves believe, however crazy it sounds, that they too could be irresistibly beautiful one day, loved by an ideal God-man who sees them, really sees them.
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I’m not here to kvetch about the adaptation of a landmark book into film. That is boring. And I really enjoyed On the Road the movie, which features some truly inspired casting, excellent performances all around, and a much stronger integration of the writer’s voice with the action of the film than, for example, the somewhat clunky Howl. What I am interested in is the way in which On the Road’s spiritual essence has been diluted.
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I hate to break it to you, but Noah’s Flood is not a real thing. As geologist David Montgomery wrote in his recent history, The Rocks Don’t Lie: A Geologist Investigates Noah’s Flood, the religious idea that the Flood was real has been to the actual history of geology as a science. But by now, however, science knows better. I can’t say as much for the media.
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This list, in links and headlines, just skims the surface. But it gives a sense of what to watch for in 2013.
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An RD holiday sampler of stories & viewpoints we would have liked to read in 2012.
RD talks to Mark Van Stone, author of 2012: Science and Prophecy of the Ancient Maya, who claims that the real lesson of the Maya is that they showed us how to destroy a civilization by stupidly using up their environment and by not planning for a bad year.
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The far left and the far right agree on many things: mainstream politics doesn’t matter, hidden forces control our destiny, and, in case you hadn’t noticed, the world is about to end.
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I knew something horrific had happened just from my friend Lisa’s email: “R U watching the news?” When you report on violence, when your family has been pierced by violence, people assume you are interested in violence. And you are. Very.
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We remember child martyrs in the crusades, young Holocaust victims like Anne Frank, the deaths of Emmett Till and four little girls in Birmingham, Alabama. The children of the day care center in Oklahoma City. Our enduring image from that dark day is a fireman, soaked in blood, carrying a baby on the cover of the magazines. Youth move us because they bring to the light the existential horror of no future.
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