Over at The Atlantic, Josh Kron writes about an evangelical group, the Emerging Church, which is influential in Africa and whose leading members are behind Invisible Children and Kony 2012. Kony’s creator, Jason Russell, was earlier in the good news for his viral video and later in the bad news for what appears to be [...]
Tags:Africa·Brian McLauren·Emerging Church·evangelical Christians·Gnostic·Jason Russell·Kony 2012·liberal Christianity·mysticism
Over at Guernica, Sadakat Kadri has posted the lush prologue to his new book Heaven on Earth: A Journey Through Shari’a Law from the Deserts of Ancient Arabia to the Streets of the Modern Muslim World. For those who have never given sharia much thought or have only caricatured ideas about what it is, Heaven [...]
Tags:American jurisprudence·ancestor worship·Catholic justices·Heaven on Earth·Islam·jinns·Justice Scalia·Muslim·mysticism·originalism·Sadakat Kadri·sharia·Sufi·syncretic Islam·US Supreme Court
The priest and paleontologist was present at the beginning, more or less. When the hoaxed Piltdown “fossils” were discovered in 1912 and the “Peking Man” (Homo erectus) site at Zhoukoudian was excavated in the 1940s, the French Jesuit Pierre Teilhard de Chardin was there. What he was doing has always remained something of a mystery.
While [...]
Tags:Amir Aczel·convergence·Homo erectus·mysticism·Omega Point·Peking Man·Piltdown Man·Stephen Jay Gould·Teilhard de Chardin·The Jesuit & The Skull·Zhoukoudian
Mount Merapi in Indonesia sadly claimed its spiritual “keeper” on Tuesday. As The Australian reports: “The body of Mbah Maridjan, one of Indonesia’s most admired mystics, was found yesterday morning in his house in ash-blasted Umbulharjo village, prostrated as if in prayer, according to searchers. Maridjan, 83, was entrusted with interpreting and placating Mount [...]
Tags:animism·Buddhist·Hindu·Indonesia·Islam·Islam Kejawen·Java·Javanese Islam·Kanjeng Ratu Kidul·Labuhan Ceremony·Mbah Maridjan·Mount Merapi·mysticism·sea goddess·syncretic·syncretism·Umbulharjo·volcano·volcano spirits
As I stated in The Supernatural and Stonehenge, it is “incredible that ninety percent of the area surrounding one of the most famous megalithic sites in the world has remained largely unexplored. No wonder there are so many different theories and arguments about who built Stonehenge, why it was constructed, and how [...]
Tags:barrow·barrows·categories·Druids·gobsmacked·Great Britain·henge·henges·Maev Kennedy·Marden Henge·Mardenhenge·midden·mysticism·neolithic·Neolithic religion·paganism·pagans·religious·secular·Stonehenge·supernatural·Wiltshire
Over at HuffPo Religion, Deepak Chopra opines on the non-existent “war between science and religion.” Religion is of course being investigated by scientists and examined by historians, but this does not make the interrogation a war. Religion is simply another object or category of positivist inquiry.
Chopra’s piece begins with some surprising concessions:
What is the war [...]
Tags:awareness·consciousness·cosmos·creativity·Darwin·Deepak Chopra·evolution·experiment·fact·facts·faith·Genesis·godhead·intelligence·matter·mind·mysticism·New Age·observation·origins·positivism·premises·religion·replication·science·self-regulation·theory·universe·war
In the beginning, I had some hope for the Huffington Post’s relatively new section devoted to religion. Here was a forum, I thought, where difficult questions could be asked and possible answers ventured. Not once, however, have I read a post which asks a tough question, which might include any of the following:
What is “religion”?
Why [...]
Tags:compassion·deities·demons·doctrines·ecumenical·educated·enlightened·ethics·exegesis·existential·Frank Schaeffer·fundamentalism·fuzzy·gods·hermeneutics·Huffington Post·HuffPo Religion·Jay Michaelson·liberal·literalism·love·meaning·morals·mystical·mysticism·myth·progressive·purpose·sophisticated·souls·spirits·syncretic·vague
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
