Last night the Discovery Channel premiered “The Exorcist Files.” When initially announced, the show was touted as a partnership between Discovery and the Vatican:
“The Vatican is an extraordinarily hard place to get access to, but we explained we’re not going to try to tell people what to think,” says Discovery president and GM [...]
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No stranger to the angst arising from the meta-and-physical dichotomy of sacred/profane, the inimitable Christopher Hitchens recently evaluated similar sorts of tensions in the life of India’s hagiographic hero. Whilst reviewing Joseph Lelyveld’s new book, Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi and His Struggle with India, Hitchens pours cold pragmatic water on the man and his myths.
Despite [...]
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Despite the consistent and regular linkage between gay bashing ministers and politicians who are themselves gay, I have never given much thought to the psychology (often related to sexual abuse during childhood) underlying this linkage. Surely there is the hypocrisy, but this is description and not explanation.
Over at Slate, Christopher Hitchens has written about the [...]
Tags:Bishop Eddie Long·business of religion·Christopher Hitchens·closet homosexual·gay·gay bashing·homophobia·homosexuality·hypocrisy·LongFellows·New Birth Missionary Baptist Church·religious tax exemptions·repressed desire·same sex attraction
Provocative and thoughtful as he usually is, Hitchens opines on anti-semitism for The Atlantic:
There is, probably first and certainly foremost, religious anti-Semitism. Unlike other nations or peoples, Jews were among the witnesses to the alleged lives and preachings of Jesus and Muhammad, and turned away from men they deemed false Messiahs. It is inconceivable that [...]
Tags:anti-semitism·Christians·Christopher Hitchens·false messiahs·false prophets·Jesus·Muhammad·Muslims
In an odd article that attempts to situate Anne Rice’s very public proclamation that she is leaving the Catholic Church within the larger context of American Christianity, Los Angeles Times religion reporter William Lobdell makes two apparently contradictory claims:
American Christianity is not well, and there’s evidence to indicate that its condition is more critical [...]
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As many know, Christopher Hitchens (the cheeky British gadfly of God) has esophageal cancer. Although he announced this and took a break to undergo treatment, I noticed last week he had resumed writing some columns. Yesterday, I found this recent video interview over at The Atlantic; it is simultaneously heart-wrenching and moving.
It is heart-wrenching because [...]
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Over at HuffPo Religion, Cynthia Boaz has written an earnest piece that implores Americans to think harder about Islam and not simply demonize it. I agree with much of what she says but the unfortunate fact is that her plea will fall on few or deaf ears. Not many religious or political extremists are reading [...]
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Over at Slate, Ron Rosenbaum has penned a manifesto for the “new agnosticism,” which he sees as an alternative to credulous theism on the the one hand and strident atheism on the other. Rosenbaum’s position deserves considerable merit and has some appeal, but I am not sure I can agree with him on this definition:
Agnosticism [...]
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Over at HuffPo Religion, Dr. Rustum Roy — a geochemist — accuses the media of criminal conduct in its reporting of the non-existent war between science and religion. In the course of doing so, Roy tilts at several windmills and claims special authority for “hard” or “classical” science.
Roy begins by touting his credentials as a [...]
Tags:Christopher Hitchens·classical science·cosmology·Daniel Dennett·Darwin·experimental science·facts lab science·geochemistry·hard science·Harvey Whitehouse·Ian Stevenson·Jeanne Achterberg·Jesse Bering·Justin Barrett·Larry Dossey·Nietzsche·Pascal Boyer·placebo·positivism·Richard Dawkins·Rustum Roy·Sam Harris·Scott Atran·shamanic healing·Stephen Hawkins·Stephen Weinberg
Whether or not you like Christopher Hitchens, one thing is certain: he can turn an incisive phrase. At his best, Hitchens writes with an acerbic aplomb that can be charming; at his worst, he is downright nasty.
With the latter Hitchens in mind, I have not yet been able to bring myself to read his jeremiad, [...]
Tags:atheism·caliphate·Christopher Hitchens·consumerism·crystals·fundamentalists·Galileo·God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything·Islamic empire·jihad·Khalil Gibran·Laurens van der Post·materialism·Muslim·mysticism·mystics·New Age·Prince Charles·radical Islam·religion·science·sharia·soul·universal soul
