Religion Dispatches
Though Craig is correct that his argument is “simple,” he is wrong to believe that simplicity makes it good. Indeed, the suggestion that terms and concepts are immune to redefinition is simply… false. It demands an unflattering comparison to Rick Santorum, who once stumped around the nation declaring that a “napkin is a napkin.”
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Elizabeth Smart’s remarks set off important debate about LDS sexuality doctrine and culture.
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In 2002, Catholic theologian Christine Gudorf predicted that “within a generation or two,” Catholic hierarchical teaching will change to encourage contraception in marriage and to allow some abortions.
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Many of these weather events actually are a kind of “punishment”—not in the conservative-theological sense of tit-for-tat justice meted out by an Abusive Father on High, but in the more progressive-theological sense of unforeseen consequences of reckless human actions. Climate scientists have said for years that global climate change will lead to increased severe weather events, and now they appear to be here; along with droughts and poor harvests caused by shifting climatic belts. On a planetary basis, we are reaping what we have sown for two hundred years.
Read MoreAtheists aren’t perfect, just not forgiven.
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Both the good and bad in our species come from our primate background, says primatologist Frans de Waal, author of The Age of Empathy.
Read MoreMaggie Gallagher doesn’t hate gay people, she just loves marriage.
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The University of Notre Dame had cause for its anxiety leading up to last week’s big debate between the New Atheist polemicist Sam Harris and the evangelical philosopher William Lane Craig. It’s said that all publicity is good publicity, but one needn’t strain too hard to find an exception—least of all in the history of God debates.
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Sam Harris latest, The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values, is undermined by poor scholarship, ad hominem attacks and an obsession with religion.
This week, the world will stop turning; or at least it will for the daytime soap opera “As The World Turns,” which officially ends after 53 years. But if we remember the soap opera solely as a torrid celebration of sexual transgression—or as a frivolous time-waster for bored housewives—we miss understanding something crucial about the relationship between popular culture and morality.
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