Do Polls Show American Public Favoring Bishops’ Position on Contraceptive Coverage?
It’s more complicated than you think.
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The Good Liberal Fear of a Yoga Planet
By now, it should be clear that William Broad’s broadside against yoga (sorry about that) in the New York Times is thin on facts and thick on rhetoric. Excerpted from his forthcoming book, the article, “How Yoga Can Wreck Your Body,” is a full-on, un-fair-and-balanced…
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Catholic Priests, Celibacy, and the Marriage Loophole
The creation of the Ordinariate is about sex, and resoundingly so. It affirms, not questions or challenges, the Catholic teaching on priestly celibacy and procreative marital sexuality.
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Would Gandhi Disband Occupy?
The Times managed to find a Gandhi scholar who would argue that the greatest hero of radical resistance would endorse the critics of Occupy Wall Street.
Read MoreNew York Times Columnist Peter Steinfels’ Letter To RD; With Author Response
Mark D. Jordan’s recent RD op-ed garnered a response from Peter Steinfels, whose final New York Times column was referenced in the article. Here are both Steinfels’ letter, and Jordan’s response.
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Tea Party, Circa 1930s: A Response to Michael Kazin
While the money for the Tea Party may have originated in the conservative revival of the ’70s, when it comes to ideology and language, it stretches back much further, to FDR’s New Deal, when coalitions of businessmen and religious leaders began their fight against ‘socialism.’
Read MoreEven Tougher Questions to Ask Mormon Presidential Candidates
The Times’ Bill Keller was right, but too soft.
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Selling the Idea of a Christian Nation: David Barton’s Alternate Intellectual Universe
The issue is not Christian conservatives advocating their views in the public square. The problem, rather, is their claim (at least in places such as The Daily Show or the New York Times) that their Providentialist beliefs and readings of documents from the past represent a kind of legitimate scholarship that should have its place in the public “debate.”
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The Cult of Kurzweil: Will Robots Save Our Souls?
Scientists like roboticist Hans Moravec and inventor Ray Kurzweil advocate uploading our minds into robots or virtual reality so that we can live forever. They believe that our minds can be replicated outside of our brains if we simply copy the pattern of neuro-chemical activity taking place in our bodies. That pattern, rather than the brains in which the pattern takes shape, “is” the personality. If it can be transferred to a digital medium, it can be made immortal. Surpassingly intelligent robots—our Mind Children, according to Moravec—will populate the universe, converting physical reality into a cosmic interweb of thinking machines.
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Islam in Conflict with Democracy? A Response to Stanley Fish
A week before an election that saw Oklahoma pass Measure 755, forbidding the use of international and Shari’ah law in state courts, Literary theorist and New York Times contributor Stanley Fish penned a piece for the Times.
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