Posts
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Were Things Really Better Then?
Passing by a front porch sale in my neighborhood this afternoon, I turned around my bike, stopped, and picked up (for a quarter) a little book called The One Hundred and One Best Songs. It is a songbook from 1922 published by The Cable Company of Chicago, “makers of the famous Cable line of pianos…
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A Fascinating Letter
I’d like to share a wonderful thing someone sent me recently, in regard to my article, “What Happens to Religion When It Is Biologized,” in Search magazine: Hello Nathan: One piece of information which I did not notice in the discussion was the fact that this multi-verse is a virtual reality which is being displayed…
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My Contribution to the Palin Mess
I’ve done it and (on my father’s suggestion, actually) put my knowledge of evolution controversies to “use” and written something for a political website about Sarah Palin. It goes a little something like this: When John McCain announced his intention to make a freshman — and female — Alaska Governor the next vice president on…
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Stout’s Folly of Secularism
I’d like to share this little bit. It’s just about the only academic paper that has almost made me cry, and I don’t even quite know why; when I heard it delivered at last year’s American Academy of Religion meeting in San Diego, most of my friends there didn’t think much of it. I guess…
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Dialogue in the Dark
It totally slipped my notice that, a couple days ago, Religion Dispatches posted my latest article, a review of Michael Novak’s No One Sees God. This one, unfortunately, may inspire more ire from the anti-atheists. But I promise, I genuinely tried to move a more sensible conversation forward on all sides. Take a look at…
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Rampage in Minneapolis
A dear friend of mine, Nicole Salazar, was peacefully filming protests at the Republican National Convention in Minneapolis when police in riot gear assaulted her, cornered her, and dragged her on the ground before arresting her and charging her with a felony. Here is the horrifying video she recorded during the assault: The next day…
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Me on 3QD
I guess I can die and go to heaven now. An article of mine, “What Happens to Religion When It Is Biologized,” was just picked up by the fabulous filter blog 3QuarksDaily. See it here!
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A Compassionate Consensus
As an alternative to the knee-jerk policy dogmas that give liberalism a bad name, an attitude of compassion was seemingly given the Democratic imprimatur the other night in Barack Obama’s stunning nomination acceptance speech. That’s the promise of America, the idea that we are responsible for ourselves, but that we also rise or fall as…
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Learning to Be Heard
The New Yorker has a remarkable piece in today’s issue by the composer John Adams, a tear-jerker for any creator trying to get somewhere. Adams follows the course of his early career as he moves from avant-garde esotericism and bad reviews to orchestral works that interested both him and audiences alike. If you’ll read the…
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History Marches On
Out of a kind of knee-jerk duty, I have always taken exception to Francis Fukuyama’s infamous “end of history” thesis—the idea that democratic capitalism is the final step of human political development and that all we are waiting for is the world to catch up (even Fukuyama has distanced himself from it). But a recent…