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| Religion | type: Thematic count: 116 |
Though some critics refuse to go near anything associated with Templeton, others are forced by its ubiquity to make compromises. Sean Carroll, for one, will work only on scientific projects funded by Templeton (such as the FQXi) that aren't solely under the foundation's banner. "It represents a serious ethical dilemma," says A.C. Grayling, a British philosopher and former columnist for New Scientist magazine; he accuses the foundation of "borrowing respectability from science for religion."
Posted: 09.03.10 | 0 | ARTICLE | GO TO LINK
A controversial exploration of the origin of religion in the neurology of the human brain. In this book the noted cognitive archaeologist David Lewis-Williams confronts a question that troubles many people in the world today: Is there a supernatural realm that intervenes in the material world of daily life and leads to the evolution of religions?
Professor Lewis-Williams first describes how science developed within the cocoon of religion and then shows how the natural functioning of the human brain creates experiences that can lead to belief in a supernatural realm, beings, and interventions. Once people have these experiences, they formulate beliefs about
them, and thus creeds are born.
Professor Lewis-Williams first describes how science developed within the cocoon of religion and then shows how the natural functioning of the human brain creates experiences that can lead to belief in a supernatural realm, beings, and interventions. Once people have these experiences, they formulate beliefs about
them, and thus creeds are born.
Posted: 08.03.10 | 0 | BOOK | GO TO LINK
In the late 1950s, three men who identified as the Son of God were forced to live together in a mental hospital. What happened?
Posted: 06.02.10 | 0 | ARTICLE | GO TO LINK
Why do we exist and what are we supposed to do about it? What started the Universe and was it a mistake? Does God exist and why does he seem so interested in our sex lives?
Posted: 05.30.10 | 1 | VIDEO | GO TO LINK
Last week an organization called Noah's Ark Ministries called a press conference in Hong Kong to announce that they had made one of the most significant archaeological discoveries in history. Yeung Wing-Cheung claims he and his research team located the remains of Noah’s Ark on Turkey's Mount Ararat.
Tags: Religion, Archeology
Posted: 05.17.10 | 0 | ARTICLE | GO TO LINK
John Lennon responds to questions about his "more popular than Jesus" remark at a L.A. press conference in August 1966.
Tags: Religion
Posted: 05.12.10 | 2 | VIDEO | GO TO LINK
But as the Vatican reels from a swirling clerical sex abuse crisis, the Holy See has turned to an unusual advocate: a tennis-loving, Saab-driving solo practitioner from Berkeley, Calif., whose obscure interest in sovereign immunity law and fluency in Italian landed him the job of the pope's U.S. lawyer.
Tags: Religion
Posted: 04.17.10 | 1 | ARTICLE | GO TO LINK
RICHARD DAWKINS, the atheist campaigner, is planning a legal ambush to have the Pope arrested during his state visit to Britain “for crimes against humanity”.
Posted: 04.13.10 | 0 | ARTICLE | GO TO LINK
The Holy Lance (also known as the Spear of Destiny, Holy Spear, Lance of Longinus, Spear of Longinus or Spear of Christ) is the name given to the lance that pierced Jesus's side as he hung on the cross in John's account of the Crucifixion.
Tags: Religion
Posted: 04.02.10 | 1 | WIKIPEDIA | GO TO LINK
Members of religious group believe London-born author has come to save the world
Posted: 03.30.10 | 2 | ARTICLE | GO TO LINK
Philip Pullman answers a question on the shocking title of his new book. Filmed at the Sheldonian Theatre, Oxford on 28 March 2010.
Tags: Religion, Phillip Pullman
Posted: 03.30.10 | 2 | VIDEO | GO TO LINK
“I wanted to make a film about a miracle,” Hausner, 37, says via phone. “I read all about the places where miracles were reported to happen, and Lourdes was the top one. I’m always looking for a location that has its own rules, a small world where you find the same mechanisms and behaviors as in the big world. Lourdes was such a system.”
Posted: 03.29.10 | 0 | ARTICLE | GO TO LINK
Orange Country Pastor Wiley Drake fired off an email to his supporters this morning, telling them that all 219 Democrats have been placed on the “imprecatory prayer list.” “We’ll remember in November and pray Psalms 109 while waiting,” he urged, before listing each offending congressman by name in “Satan’s domain in Washington D.C.”
Tags: Religion
Posted: 03.22.10 | 1 | BLOG | GO TO LINK
The correlation exists not because smart people have necessarily rejected religion, but because religion is the “default” position for most of our society.
Posted: 03.02.10 | 0 | BLOG ENTRY | GO TO LINK
British singer Elton John has stirred up a hornet’s nest and is sure to be at the receiving end of criticisms from Christian groups after he described Jesus as an intelligent gay man.
Tags: Religion
Posted: 02.20.10 | 2 | ARTICLE | GO TO LINK
He's said to be a Buddhist; I don't think that faith offers the kind of forgiveness and redemption that is offered by the Christian faith.
Posted: 02.19.10 | 2 | VIDEO | GO TO LINK
Praying for President Obama’s death has become a sick cottage industry for some evangelicals on the lunatic fringe. Bumper stickers, T-shirts, and teddy bears are sold with the wholesome-sounding slogan “Pray for Obama” but tagged with the more troublesome “Psalm 109:8”—which reads “May his days be few; may another take his place of leadership” followed by “May his children be fatherless and his wife a widow.”
Tags: Religion
Posted: 02.15.10 | 0 | ARTICLE | GO TO LINK
This led to another peculiarity in Blankenhorn’s testimony: Perhaps because he did not speak in detail about his own original research, his testimony lacked the authority of the plaintiffs’ expert witnesses. Instead, his language was strangely self-referential. For example, when he described the process that brought him from opposing domestic partnerships to favoring them, he did not recount a scientific study. Instead, he described a personal “journey” and “exploration” that required him think about social discrimination. “That was the big thing I had to grapple with in my own mind – to be able to look myself in the mirror,” Blankenhorn said. He ultimately concluded that “it means a lot to me personally … that I have been able to understand this” but did not clarify what new information led him to reverse his professional opinion.
Posted: 02.04.10 | 1 | BLOG ENTRY | GO TO LINK
Needless to say, not everyone will be pleased by this argument. Those strong religionists who believe that the overweening claims of science (or scientism) must be denounced daily will not be pleased by an argument that says nothing about redemption, salvation and sin, and gives full marks to science’s achievements. (Smith, a pupil of B.F. Skinner’s, has been a sympathetic and knowledgeable student of science for many years.) And those materialist atheists who see religion as the source of many of the world’s evils and all of its ignorance will not be pleased by an argument that finds an honorable place for religious beliefs and practices.
Posted: 02.01.10 | 0 | ARTICLE | GO TO LINK
The Gospel of Eve is a currently almost entirely lost text from the New Testament apocrypha, which may be the same as the also lost Gospel of Perfection. It is not part of the canonical Bible.
Tags: Religion
Posted: 01.26.10 | 0 | WIKIPEDIA | GO TO LINK
Pentagon Supplier for Rifle Sights Says It Has 'Always' Added New Testament References
Tags: Religion
Posted: 01.18.10 | 1 | ARTICLE | GO TO LINK
In this wide-ranging assortment of 150 brief essays, well-known figures from every conceivable field demonstrate why it's a prerogative of all thoughtful people to change their mind once in a while. Technologist Ray Kurzweil says he now shares Enrico Fermi's question: if other intelligent civilizations exist, then where are they? Nassim Nicholas Taleb (The Black Swan) reveals that he has lost faith in probability as a guiding light for making decisions. Oliver Morton (Mapping Mars) confesses that he has lost his childlike faith in the value of manned space flight to distant worlds. J. Craig Venter, celebrated for his work on the human genome, has ceased to believe that nature can absorb any abuses that we subject it to, and that world governments must move quickly to prevent global disaster. Alan Alda says, So far, I've changed my mind twice about God, going from believer to atheist to agnostic. Brockman, editor of Edge.org and numerous anthologies, has pulled together a thought-provoking collection of focused and tightly argued pieces demonstrating the courage to change strongly held convictions.
Posted: 01.17.10 | 0 | BOOK | GO TO LINK
The Vatican newspaper and radio station are criticizing James Cameron's 3-D blockbuster for flirting with the idea that worship of nature can replace religion — a notion the pope has warned against. They call the movie a simplistic and sappy tale, despite its awe-inspiring special effects.
Posted: 01.12.10 | 0 | ARTICLE | GO TO LINK
Based on the Thomas Frank's best-seller, "What's the Matter with Kansas?" shows how Kansas transformed from an outpost of radicalism to a bastion of hard-core conservatism. Unforgettable characters and their stories shed new light on our nation's political divide.
Tags: Religion, Creationism
Posted: 01.08.10 | 1 | VIDEO | GO TO LINK
Camping, 88, has scrutinized the Bible for almost 70 years and says he has developed a mathematical system to interpret prophecies hidden within the Good Book. One night a few years ago, Camping, a civil engineer by trade, crunched the numbers and was stunned at what he'd found: The world will end May 21, 2011.
Tags: Religion, Catastrophe
Posted: 01.01.10 | 0 | ARTICLE | GO TO LINK
An Italian inventor has combined faith and ingenuity to create the electronic terracotta dispenser, which is now being used in the northern town of Fornaci di Briosco. It functions like an automatic soap dispenser in public lavatories - a churchgoer waves his or her hand under a sensor and the machine spurts out holy water.
Posted: 11.14.09 | 1 | ARTICLE | GO TO LINK
Liberal bias has become the single biggest distortion in modern Bible translations.
Posted: 10.13.09 | 0 | ARTICLE | GO TO LINK
In every corner of the world, there’s one question that can never be definitively answered, yet stirs up equal parts passion, curiosity, self-reflection and often wild imagination: "What is God?" Filmmaker Peter Rodger explores this profound, age-old query in the provocative non-fiction feature "Oh My God." This visual odyssey travels the globe with a revealing lens examining the idea of God through the minds and eyes of various religions and cultures, everyday people, spiritual leaders and celebrities.
Posted: 10.09.09 | 3 | VIDEO | GO TO LINK
Professor Ellen van Wolde, a respected Old Testament scholar and author, claims the first sentence of Genesis "in the beginning God created the Heaven and the Earth" is not a true translation of the Hebrew.
Posted: 10.09.09 | 3 | ARTICLE | GO TO LINK
You've committed your life to Jesus. You know you're saved. But when the Rapture comes what's to become of your loving pets who are left behind? Eternal Earth-Bound Pets takes that burden off your mind.
Posted: 08.31.09 | 0 | WEB SITE | GO TO LINK
T-shirts worn by members of the Smith-Cotton High School band have been recalled by the school district because they contained images of evolution.
Posted: 08.31.09 | 0 | BLOG ENTRY | GO TO LINK
In Conversations with God: Book II, Neale Walsch and God resume their discussion and move on to larger topics than the personal issues addressed in their previous dialogue in Volume 1. For an "unedited transcript" of a conversation, Book II is remarkably well organized and articulate, as if Walsch anticipatd our "but what about" questions before we asked them. The peculiar pair discuss time, space, politics, and even kinky sex, but Conversations with God: Book II isn't here for just shock value. It is an honest look at some of the broad issues important to all of us on the planet, and a suggestion of how things might go if we are all willing to open our minds and have our own conversations with divinity.
Posted: 08.25.09 | 3 | BOOK | GO TO LINK
The official trailer for the movie, "Oh, God".
Posted: 08.25.09 | 0 | VIDEO | GO TO LINK
George Burns and John Denver starred in the 1977 Blockbuster Comedy Hit "Oh, God!". In this key scene George Burns (as God) is "grilled" by John Denver (the avergae Joe chosen to spread "The Word").
Posted: 08.25.09 | 0 | VIDEO | GO TO LINK
Oh Lord, please don't burn us.
Tags: Religion, Monty Python
Posted: 08.10.09 | 0 | VIDEO | GO TO LINK
Jesus plus nothing Undercover among America's secret theocrats - By Jeff Sharlet (Harper's Magazine)
Undercover among America's secret theocrats.
Tags: Religion, Jeff Sharlet
Posted: 08.07.09 | 0 | ARTICLE | GO TO LINK
Jeff Sharlet, author of 'The Family', on Bill Maher.
Posted: 08.07.09 | 1 | VIDEO | GO TO LINK
The relationship between religion and science has been a focus of the Demarcation problem. Statements about the world made by science and religion rely on different methodologies. Religions rely on revelation while science relies on observable, repeatable experiences.
Posted: 08.05.09 | 0 | WIKIPEDIA | GO TO LINK
"We thought even the lifelessness was something that she would come out of," the mother said. "Everything for us is about faith. It is about trusting in God. We either believe in God's word or we don't." A pediatric expert on diabetes told the jury Monday that even right before her death, doctors might have been able to save the girl's life had she been brought to a hospital.
Posted: 07.30.09 | 0 | ARTICLE | GO TO LINK
OK wait. What God really loves is meddling and poking and maybe forgiving, and also psychoanalyzing and scrutinizing and prying, gossiping and complaining and moderating, sighing and punishing and condemning, all while He shakes His big, shaggy head in your general direction at your various petty sins and misbehaviors every single day regarding pretty much every single thought you have. Did you know this about God? Of course you did.
Posted: 07.28.09 | 0 | ARTICLE | GO TO LINK
Creation Museum Creation, Evolution, Science, Dinosaurs, Family, Christian Worldview Creation Museum
The state-of-the-art 70,000 square foot museum brings the pages of the Bible to life, casting its characters and animals in dynamic form and placing them in familiar settings. Adam and Eve live in the Garden of Eden. Children play and dinosaurs roam near Eden’s Rivers. The serpent coils cunningly in the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Majestic murals, great masterpieces brimming with pulsating colors and details, provide a backdrop for many of the settings.
Tags: Religion, Creationism
Posted: 07.06.09 | 1 | ARTICLE | GO TO LINK
For a group of paleontologists, a tour of the Creation Museum seemed like a great tongue-in-cheek way to cap off a serious conference. But while there were a few laughs and some clowning for the camera, most left more offended than amused by the frightening way in which evolution -- and their life's work -- was attacked.
Posted: 07.06.09 | 2 | ARTICLE | GO TO LINK
In The Evolution of God, Robert Wright takes on fellow nonbelievers Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins, and argues that religion may be nonsense—but it helps mankind.
Posted: 07.06.09 | 1 | ARTICLE | GO TO LINK
Actually, "The Evolution of God" never grapples with the most basic religious question -- the existence of God. Instead it charts the twists and turns of how God's personality has kept changing over the centuries, and specifically, how the rough-and-tumble politics of the ancient Middle East shaped the Abrahamic religions. The book is filled with richly observed details about the Bible and the Quran, though Wright wears his learning lightly as he guides us through several thousand years of religious history.
Posted: 06.25.09 | 3 | ARTICLE | GO TO LINK
Like Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchens. What do you think of their work? I think they have naďve ideas about the importance of religion in the world. They just seem oblivious to the good that religion has done, and I guess one point in my book is how malleable religion is; it has the capacity for good, which tends to come out when people see themselves as having something to gain from peaceful interaction with other people.
Posted: 06.21.09 | 2 | ARTICLE | GO TO LINK
Both the Chinese and the Tibetan exiles are bracing for an almost inevitable outcome: the emergence into the world of dueling Dalai Lamas — one chosen by the exiles, perhaps by the 14th Dalai Lama himself, and the other by Chinese officials.
Posted: 06.09.09 | 3 | ARTICLE | GO TO LINK
Schizotypal personality disorder: social withdrawal, odd perceptual experiences, a tendency towards concreteness, metamagical belief. Robert Sapolsky video lecture.
Tags: Religion, Magical Thinking
Posted: 06.09.09 | 3 | VIDEO | GO TO LINK
Why are some people more spiritual than others? Is there a God gene? Is there a God spot in the brain, a place where God communicates with us? Are we hard-wired to connect with God? Can we train ourselves to access another, spiritual realm? Is there life after death? And for that matter, is there any evidence for God at all?
Posted: 05.23.09 | 12 | WEB SITE | GO TO LINK
The percentage of Americans who identify with some form of a Christian religion has been dropping in recent decades, and now stands at 77%, according to an aggregate of Gallup Polls conducted in 2008. In 1948, when Gallup began tracking religious identification, the percentage who were Christian was 91%.
Tags: Religion
Posted: 04.13.09 | 20 | ARTICLE | GO TO LINK
The Bavarian-born Pontiff will use his Good Friday meditations to compare deliberate attempts to purge religion from public life to the mockery of Jesus Christ by the mob as he was led out to be crucified. He will say said that 'religious sentiments' were increasingly ranked among the 'unwelcome leftovers of antiquity' and held up to scorn and ridicule.
Posted: 04.10.09 | 23 | ARTICLE | GO TO LINK
This clip shows Congressman John Shimkus’s (R-Ill) introductory remarks at a House Subcommittee on Energy and Environment hearing last week.
Tags: Religion
Posted: 04.08.09 | 29 | VIDEO | GO TO LINK
The never-ending attempt to reconcile science and religion, and why it is doomed to fail.
Posted: 02.07.09 | 24 | ARTICLE | GO TO LINK
For the non-mathematician, probability is an indecipherably complex field. But Taleb makes it easy by proving all the mathematics wrong. Let me introduce you to Brooklyn-born Fat Tony and academically inclined Dr John, two of Taleb’s creations. You toss a coin 40 times and it comes up heads every time. What is the chance of it coming up heads the 41st time? Dr John gives the answer drummed into the heads of every statistic student: 50/50. Fat Tony shakes his head and says the chances are no more than 1%. “You are either full of crap,” he says, “or a pure sucker to buy that 50% business. The coin gotta be loaded.” The chances of a coin coming up heads 41 times are so small as to be effectively impossible in this universe. It is far, far more likely that somebody is cheating. Fat Tony wins. Dr John is the sucker. And the one thing that drives Taleb more than anything else is the determination not to be a sucker. Dr John is the economist or banker who thinks he can manage risk through mathematics. Fat Tony relies only on what happens in the real world.
Posted: 01.31.09 | 32 | ARTICLE | GO TO LINK
Science, ironically, is finding answers to the question of why evolution stands such a poor chance against religion. There is growing evidence that man, as a result of his brain, is wired to believe in higher powers, not just because of his fear of death.
Posted: 01.28.09 | 23 | ARTICLE | GO TO LINK
Prayer has found a home on the Web. Sites such as prayabout.com and ipraytoday.com have recently joined longstanding toll-free telephone services that allow anyone to request, for free, that strangers pray for them.
Posted: 12.21.08 | 42 | ARTICLE | GO TO LINK
At first blush atheist spirituality may sound like a contradiction in terms, but French philosopher Comte-Sponville makes a compelling argument for a profound dimension of experience that is god-free. His idea of spirituality also bears no small resemblance to Eastern spirituality, and the philosopher-author does not hesitate to cite great Eastern thinkers in this catalogue of references to great minds grappling with important questions. We can do without religion and without God, the author argues, but we can't do without fidelity and community. Comte-Sponville's humanism is deeply traditional, but the red flag atheist will undoubtedly affront religious traditionalists. That's unfortunate, because the author's style of arguing is civil and witty, unlike a lot of public discourse on this subject.
Posted: 12.09.08 | 61 | BOOK | GO TO LINK
Initially the odds that proof would be found of God's existence were 20-1, and they lengthened to 33-1 when the multi-billion pound atom smasher was shut down temporarily because of a magnetic failure.
Posted: 11.07.08 | 59 | ARTICLE | GO TO LINK
This week's Nature has a fascinating essay by anthropologist Pascal Boyer discussing the quirks of spiritual belief and how they may result from the evolution of our mind and brain.
Posted: 10.23.08 | 37 | BLOG ENTRY | GO TO LINK
Wolpert sees human credulity all around him -- not just religious faith but all sorts of modern superstitions. His book targets astrology, psychics, homeopathy and acupuncture. Wolpert has participated in public debates with maverick scientist Rupert Sheldrake about telepathy and other paranormal experiences. He dismisses Sheldrake's theory -- that "morphic fields" can transmit thoughts through space and time -- as nonsense.
Posted: 09.20.08 | 51 | ARTICLE | GO TO LINK
Declaring that clergy have a constitutional right to endorse political candidates from their pulpits, the socially conservative Alliance Defense Fund is recruiting several dozen pastors to do just that on Sept. 28, in defiance of Internal Revenue Service rules.
Posted: 09.08.08 | 31 | ARTICLE | GO TO LINK
The story of Reverend Carlton Pearson, a renowned evangelical pastor in Tulsa, Oklahoma, who cast aside the idea of Hell, and with it everything he'd worked for over his entire life.
Posted: 09.06.08 | 61 | ARTICLE | GO TO LINK
A three-foot-tall tablet with 87 lines of Hebrew that scholars believe dates from the decades just before the birth of Jesus is causing a quiet stir in biblical and archaeological circles, especially because it may speak of a messiah who will rise from the dead after three days.
Tags: Religion
Posted: 07.05.08 | 31 | ARTICLE | GO TO LINK
With biologist Richard Dawkins leading the way, many scientists today are locked in an unending match of whack-a-mole with Christian creationists, who insist that God created heaven, earth and humanity in its present form, and with disciples of intelligent design who want to expel evolution from its scientific prominence in public schools. If you've been following the battle, you might be inclined to believe that Americans are faced with a choice between believing in God and scientific fact.
Posted: 07.01.08 | 45 | ARTICLE | GO TO LINK
The documentary RELIGULOUS follows political humorist and author Bill Maher (“Real Time With Bill Maher,” “Politically Incorrect”) as he travels around the globe interviewing people about God and religion. Known for his astute analytical skills, irreverent wit and commitment to never pulling a punch, Maher brings his characteristic honesty to an unusual spiritual journey.
Tags: Religion, Andrew Newberg
Posted: 06.08.08 | 68 | VIDEO | GO TO LINK
Humans alone practice religion because they're the only creatures to have evolved imagination. That's the argument of anthropologist Maurice Bloch of the London School of Economics. Bloch challenges the popular notion that religion evolved and spread because it promoted social bonding, as has been argued by some anthropologists. Instead, he argues that first, we had to evolve the necessary brain architecture to imagine things and beings that don't physically exist, and the possibility that people somehow live on after they've died.
Posted: 05.28.08 | 69 | BLOG ENTRY | GO TO LINK
God may work in mysterious ways, but a simple computer program may explain how religion evolved By distilling religious belief into a genetic predisposition to pass along unverifiable information, the program predicts that religion will flourish. However, religion only takes hold if non-believers help believers out – perhaps because they are impressed by their devotion.
Posted: 05.28.08 | 54 | ARTICLE | GO TO LINK
When Newberg, a professor of radiology, psychiatry, and religious studies, ponders the nature of reality, it makes fascinating, mind-bending reading. What is reality, he asks, but a combination of the subjective vividness of an experience (strengthened by the continuity and duration of that experience) and the consensus of others that it is so? Expanding on a thread picked up before in Why God Won't Go Away (2001), he and Waldman examine the Liar's Paradox, assert the likes of "Truth cannot be entirely known, for no matter how much evidence you collect, your knowledge will always be incomplete," and maintain that individual reality is exclusively guided by a combination of sensory perceptions (which are prey to any number of distorting influences) and beliefs.
Posted: 05.15.08 | 105 | BOOK | GO TO LINK
Albert Einstein regarded religions as "childish" and "primitive legends", a private letter he wrote a year before his death has revealed.
Posted: 05.15.08 | 38 | ARTICLE | GO TO LINK
Lo and behold, over the past decade, a new group of assertive atheists has done battle with defenders of faith. The two sides have argued about whether it is reasonable to conceive of a soul that survives the death of the body and about whether understanding the brain explains away or merely adds to our appreciation of the entity that created it.
Posted: 05.15.08 | 71 | ARTICLE | GO TO LINK
The interview was headlined "The extraterrestrial is my brother." Funes said that ruling out the existence of aliens would be like "putting limits" on God's creative freedom.
Tags: Religion
Posted: 05.13.08 | 34 | ARTICLE | GO TO LINK
A remarkable autodidact, Wilber's books range across entire fields of knowledge, from quantum physics to developmental psychology to the history of religion. He's steeped in the world's esoteric traditions, such as Mahayana Buddhism, Vedantic Hinduism, Sufism and Christian mysticism. Wilber also practices what he preaches, sometimes meditating for hours at a stretch. His "integral philosophy," along with the Integral Institute he's founded, hold out the promise that we can understand mystical experience without lapsing into New Age mush.
Posted: 04.30.08 | 68 | ARTICLE | GO TO LINK
"Church" is insufficient to describe the complex. There is a permanent structure called the Tent, which regularly fills with hundreds or thousands of teens and twenty-somethings for New Life's various youth gatherings. Next to the Tent stands the old sanctuary, a gray box capable of seating 1,500; this juts out into the new sanctuary, capacity 7,500, already too small. At the complex's western edge is the World Prayer Center, which looks like a great iron wedge driven into the plains. The true architectural wonder of New Life, however, is the pyramid of authority into which it orders its 11,000 members. At the base are 1,300 cell groups, whose leaders answer to section leaders, who answer to zone, who answer to district, who answer to Pastor Ted Haggard, New Life's founder.
Posted: 04.25.08 | 31 | ARTICLE | GO TO LINK
In this episode Ben Stein is taken to task over his inability to distinguish science from free speech. Stein claims that those who question evolution are discriminated against, whereas in reality this 'discrimination' is merely people getting held accountable for demonstrating their pathetic grasp of both the scientific method and scientific literature.
Posted: 04.16.08 | 56 | VIDEO | GO TO LINK
Following cultural studies, ethnography, and cultural anthropology, I believe it's important to understand the radically utopian impulses, unspoken yearnings, and unconscious desires that flicker through contemporary evangelical Christianity. Dawkins and Hitchens make short work of Christianity and all its bigoted, irrational works and ways, for which we owe them a debt of gratitude. But their analysis lacks subtlety, and their understanding of why so many are seduced by religion, especially in America, is millimeter-deep.
Posted: 04.14.08 | 50 | BLOG ENTRY | GO TO LINK
Rep. Monique Davis to atheist Rob Sherman: "It’s dangerous for our children to even know that your philosophy exists!"
Posted: 04.08.08 | 35 | ARTICLE | GO TO LINK
Russell's teapot, sometimes called the Celestial Teapot, was an analogy first coined by the philosopher Bertrand Russell (1872–1970), intended to refute the idea that the burden of proof lies upon the sceptic to disprove unfalsifiable claims of religions.
Posted: 04.08.08 | 40 | WIKIPEDIA | GO TO LINK
Join Us follows four families as they leave a controlling and abusive church in South Carolina and come to relize that they have been members of a cult. The film documents them intimately as they enter the only accredited live-in cult treatment facility in the world. At Wellspring, they learn how they were brainwashed to give up control of their lives to the Pastor and his wife, allowing their children to undergo severe abuse to make heaven.
Posted: 04.07.08 | 34 | VIDEO | GO TO LINK
Why are Kirk Cameron, a preacher, and two self-proclaimed atheists coming together in a church this weekend? Because Cameron and preacher Ray Comfort claim that they "can prove the existence of God."
Posted: 04.04.08 | 97 | ARTICLE | GO TO LINK
n 3 March 2008, in a popular TV show, Sanal Edamaruku, the president of Rationalist International, challenged India’s most “powerful” tantrik (black magician) to demonstrate his powers on him. That was the beginning of an unprecedented experiment. After all his chanting of mantra (magic words) and ceremonies of tantra failed, the tantrik decided to kill Sanal Edamaruku with the “ultimate destruction ceremony” on live TV. Sanal Edamaruku agreed and sat in the altar of the black magic ritual. India TV observed skyrocketing viewership rates.
Posted: 03.25.08 | 44 | ARTICLE | GO TO LINK
High on Mount Sinai, Moses was on psychedelic drugs when he heard God deliver the Ten Commandments, an Israeli researcher claimed in a study published this week.
Posted: 03.04.08 | 80 | ARTICLE | GO TO LINK
The scientific method makes one assumption, and one assumption only: the Universe obeys a set of rules. That’s it. There is one corollary, and that is that if the Universe follows these rules, then those rules can be deduced by observing the way Universe behaves. This follows naturally; if it obeys the rules, then the rules must be revealed by that behavior.
Posted: 02.20.08 | 49 | BLOG ENTRY | GO TO LINK
Last night the popular Rabbi Shmuley Boteach and full-throttled non-believer Christopher Hitchens debated the existence of God before a packed audience at the Y’s Kaufmann Concert Hall.
Posted: 02.01.08 | 94 | VIDEO | GO TO LINK
In “Irreligion,” Paulos intends to expose the “inherent illogic” of arguments for the existence of God. He finds these supposed proofs to be, by and large, a load of tripe.
Posted: 01.13.08 | 84 | ARTICLE | GO TO LINK
God has always been a puzzle for Scott Atran. When he was 10 years old, he scrawled a plaintive message on the wall of his bedroom in Baltimore. “God exists,” he wrote in black and orange paint, “or if he doesn’t, we’re in trouble.” Atran has been struggling with questions about religion ever since — why he himself no longer believes in God and why so many other people, everywhere in the world, apparently do.
Posted: 12.20.07 | 109 | ARTICLE | GO TO LINK
Some postmodernists speak of the “end of philosophy,” since it supposedly can no longer tell us anything about the world independent of its relation to us — about that which exists “out there” and derives, as Taylor puts it, “from a power which is beyond me.” At present, he writes, “we live in a condition” in which we suspect our own beliefs as having been influenced by sources other than the self and its reasons, with the human subject the mere effect of forces alien to our being. “We cannot help looking over our shoulder from time to time,” he writes, “looking sideways, living our faith also in a condition of doubt and uncertainty.” Has religion, then, come to end in doubts about ourselves?
Posted: 12.16.07 | 87 | ARTICLE | GO TO LINK
Today we live in a less barbaric age, but an otherwise comparable disjunction between science and religion still roils the public mind. Why does such intense and pervasive resistance to evolution continue 150 years after the publication of On The Origin of Species, and in the teeth of the overwhelming accumulated evidence favouring it? The answer is simply that the Darwinian revolution, even more than the Copernican revolution, challenges the prehistoric and still-regnant self-image of humanity. Evolution by natural selection, to be as concise as possible, has changed everything.
Posted: 12.10.07 | 79 | ARTICLE | GO TO LINK
A brightly painted sign in the state park explained that 450 million years ago these ancient creatures lived at the bottom of a warm, shallow sea during the Ordovician period. But none of these geologists believed it. As young-earth creationists, they think the earth is about 8,000 years old, give or take a few thousand years. That’s about the amount of time conventional geology says it can take to form one inch of limestone.
Posted: 11.25.07 | 105 | ARTICLE | GO TO LINK
“Most people in Hindu and Buddhist countries,” Dr. Silver says, “have a root tradition in which there is no single creator God. Instead, there may be no gods or many gods, and there is no master plan for the universe. Instead, spirits are eternal and individual virtue — karma — determines what happens to your spirit in your next life. With some exceptions, this view generally allows the acceptance of both embryo research to support life and genetically modified crops.” By contrast, in the Judeo-Christian tradition, God is the master creator who gives out new souls to each individual human being and gives humans “dominion” over soul-less plants and animals. To traditional Christians who consider an embryo to be a human being with a soul, it is wrong for scientists to use cloning to create human embryos or to destroy embryos in the course of research.
Posted: 11.21.07 | 75 | ARTICLE | GO TO LINK
This review does a great job, in my opinion, of summing up what Science knows and doesn't know. "Science proved that the Universe does NOT revolve around the Earth. Well, it has also proven that it does NOT revolve around humans either. And since scientifically, we Humans are nothing special, how can we entertain the notion that Real is ONLY whatever we can grasp? That concept is pure theology at best - if not superstitious. "
Posted: 11.13.07 | 76 | ARTICLE | GO TO LINK
Which is the better biological explanation for a belief in God — evolutionary adaptation or neurological accident? Is there something about the cognitive functioning of humans that makes us receptive to belief in a supernatural deity? And if scientists are able to explain God, what then? Is explaining religion the same thing as explaining it away? Are the nonbelievers right, and is religion at its core an empty undertaking, a misdirection, a vestigial artifact of a primitive mind? Or are the believers right, and does the fact that we have the mental capacities for discerning God suggest that it was God who put them there?
Posted: 11.09.07 | 63 | ARTICLE | GO TO LINK
The dynamics of political theology seem to dictate that when liberalizing reformers try to conform to the present, they inspire a countervailing and far more passionate longing for redemption in the messianic future. That is what happened in Weimar Germany and is happening again in contemporary Islam.
Tags: Religion, The New York Times
Posted: 11.09.07 | 56 | ARTICLE | GO TO LINK
Flew’s “conversion,” first reported in late 2004, has cast him into culture wars that he contentedly avoided his whole life. Although Flew still rejects Christianity, saying only that he now believes in “an intelligence that explains both its own existence and that of the world,” evangelicals are understandably excited. For them, Flew has become very useful, very quickly.
Posted: 11.06.07 | 92 | ARTICLE | GO TO LINK
The video is well worth watching. "To generalize, the music tailored to the Seven service is modern rock, with a modicum of wired aggressiveness. (In its sets before and after the pastor’s sermon, the band does play some adaptations of hymns, including a power-chord version of the doxology. It was arranged by the worship minister Matt Coulombe to approximate the droning, locomotive style of the secular New York rock band Secret Machines, one of his favorite groups.)"
Posted: 11.06.07 | 43 | ARTICLE | GO TO LINK
"Einstein keeps talking about God: what are we to make of that? It is extremely difficult to imagine that a scientist like Einstein should have such strong ties with a religious tradition." "Not so much Einstein as Max Planck, from some of Planck's utterances it would seem that he sees no contradiction between religion and science, indeed that he believes the two are perfectly compatible."
Posted: 10.19.07 | 54 | ARTICLE | GO TO LINK
In God’s Mechanics, Brother Guy tells the stories of those who identify with the scientific mindset—so-called “techies”—while practicing religion. A full fledged techie himself, he relates some classic philosophical reflections, his interviews with dozens of fellow techies, and his own personal take on his Catholic beliefs to provide, like a set of “worked out sample problems,” the hard data on the challenges and joys of embracing a life of faith as a techie. And he also gives a roadmap of the traps that can befall an unwary techie believer.
Posted: 10.19.07 | 98 | BOOK | GO TO LINK
God's Mechanics is a relgionist's explanation of his faith, in terms aimed at showing techies how one of their own can simultaneously believe in supernatural phenomena and practice rigorous, materialistic science.
Posted: 10.19.07 | 69 | BLOG ENTRY | GO TO LINK
In this best selling book, a pastor has a terrible accident and is declared dead for 90 minutes. During that time he says he goes to heaven. As most of the (negative) reviews point out, he only focuses on the heaven part for 15 pages and the rest is about him. Reviewer quotes after the jump.
Tags: Near Death Experiences, Religion
Posted: 09.26.07 | 45 | BOOK | GO TO LINK
A review of a book about why the separation of church and state is so difficult and so unique to the West. It also talks about Hobbes' perspective of man being a frightened ignoramus which leads to religion.
Posted: 09.26.07 | 58 | ARTICLE | GO TO LINK
Do religious experiences come from God, or are they merely the random firing of neurons in the brain? Drawing on his own research with Carmelite nuns, neuroscientist Mario Beauregard shows that genuine, life-changing spiritual events can be documented. He offers compelling evidence that religious experiences have a nonmaterial origin, making a convincing case for what many in scientific fields are loath to consider—that it is God who creates our spiritual experiences, not the brain.
Tags: Consciousness, Religion
Posted: 09.19.07 | 69 | BOOK | GO TO LINK
Dawkins reviews a book about Intelligent Design. Or rather, throttles a book on ID.
Posted: 09.19.07 | 91 | ARTICLE | GO TO LINK
A classic thread about does evolution and Darwinism lead to atheism.
Posted: 09.19.07 | 52 | BLOG ENTRY | GO TO LINK
But why demand that theists provide evidence, if, whatever the circumstances, there couldn't be enough evidence. If "God did it" explanations are really verboten, then it hardly makes sense to complain that theists haven't provided evidence for their position. By definition, that's the one thing they can't do.
Tags: Philosophy, Religion
Posted: 09.19.07 | 55 | BLOG ENTRY | GO TO LINK
A Christian blog filled that intellectually defends the existence of God. The author also wrote 'C.S. Lewis Dangerous Idea'. This is the typical of the thinking: "The butler did it" is a bad explanation unless, well, the butler did it.
Tags: Philosophy, Religion
Posted: 09.19.07 | 75 | BLOG | GO TO LINK
Hasker begins by mounting a compelling critique of the dominant paradigm in philosophy of mind, showing that contemporary forms of materialism are seriously deficient in confronting crucial aspects of experience. (Hasker is a religion PhD and a Christian Intellectual.
Tags: Philosophy, Religion
Posted: 09.19.07 | 90 | BOOK | GO TO LINK
The God described in the Bible is the most powerful, most knowing, most loving, and most unchanging in his nature, but not omni-everything.
Tags: Religion
Posted: 09.19.07 | 45 | WIKIPEDIA | GO TO LINK
An amateur video showing that accurately depicts how ideas about atheism and God clash in the home. Funny but ultimately sad.
Posted: 09.18.07 | 58 | VIDEO | GO TO LINK
The lastest video from Richard Dawkins.
Posted: 08.31.07 | 57 | VIDEO | GO TO LINK
A sad exchange between Dawkins and O'Reilly. O'Reilly basically gives away the argument and instead they end up debating Hitler.
Posted: 08.27.07 | 106 | VIDEO | GO TO LINK
Someone took the time to 'help' Dawkins by slowing O'Reilly down with editing and pointing out the fundamental flaws and inconsistencies in his argument.
Posted: 08.27.07 | 119 | VIDEO | GO TO LINK
A short but well thought out article about the history and future of theology and politics and different theories about how to mix the two. There crosses over into personal philosophy particularly with quotes like, "the idea decides in one way or another, despite itself, and prefers being mistaken to believing in nothing."
Posted: 08.20.07 | 77 | ARTICLE | GO TO LINK
Why should God be so clear in the Bible and so obscure in the world?" Carl Sagan laments what he calls a "retreat from Copernicus," a loss of nerve, an emotional regression to the idea that humanity must occupy center stage.
Tags: Philosophy, Religion
Posted: 07.26.07 | 81 | BOOK | GO TO LINK
Interesting interview with Christopher Hitchens about God.
Posted: 07.13.07 | 83 | ARTICLE | GO TO LINK
A one hour show where Derren Brown comes to America and attempts to be endorsed from five different experts in alternative fields ranging from religious experience to alien abduction. As always with Brown, his (not supernatural) abilities to interact with and influence people are legendary.
Posted: 07.02.07 | 61 | VIDEO | GO TO LINK
An outstanding source recent developments and thoughts in the the various fields of evolution, consciousness and philosophy.
Posted: 07.02.07 | 55 | WEB SITE | GO TO LINK
Very well produced independent documentary that starts off talking about religion as a myth and moves into the world banking conspiracy.
Posted: 07.01.07 | 60 | VIDEO | GO TO LINK
Next Show:
Monday, May 17, 2010 at 10:30pm (PDT)
| Psychology | 184 | |
| Consciousness | 144 | |
| Philosophy | 132 | |
| Religion | 116 | |
| Lucid Dreaming | 105 | |
| Neuroscience | 103 | |
| Science | 88 | |
| Out Of Body Experiences | 74 | |
| The New York Times | 74 | |
| Technology | 66 | |