The best free cultural & educational media on the web
The best free cultural & educational media on the web
≡ Category: Books, Literature, Religion | ≅ 10 Comments
This past summer, Jonathan Pararajasingham, a neurosurgeon in London, created a montage of 100 renowned academics, mostly all scientists, talking about their thoughts on the existence of God. (Find it in two parts here and here.) Now’s he back with a new video, 30 Renowned Writers Speaking About God. It runs 25 minutes, and it offers as much [...]
≡ Category: Philosophy, Religion | ≅ 7 Comments
Last summer Alain de Botton, one of the better popularizers of philosophy, appeared at TEDGlobal and called for a new kind of atheism. An Atheism 2.0. This revised atheism would let atheists deny a creator and yet not forsake all the other good things religion can offer — tradition, ritual, community, insights into living a [...]
≡ Category: History, Religion | ≅ 1 Comment
With the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and the emotional whiplash that followed, the monotheistic religions of the West took a more stridently political turn. It was in this context that Jonathan Miller, the British theatre and opera director, felt compelled to create a three-part documentary tracing the history of religious skepticism and disbelief. Broadcast [...]
≡ Category: Music, Religion | ≅ Leave a Comment
Back in 1959, Tom Lehrer, the Harvard lecturer and satirist, recorded “A Christmas Carol” before a live audience at the Sanders Theater in Cambridge, Mass. The song, offering an early commentary on the commercialism of Christmas, provides the jumping off point for Christopher Hitchens’ article “Forced Merriment: The True Spirit of Christmas,” which has been [...]
≡ Category: Life, Politics, Religion | ≅ 4 Comments
18 months after being diagnosed with oesophageal cancer, the polemical writer Christopher Hitchens has died at the age of 62. His fans began to fear the worst last month when Hitchens, suddenly hospitalized with pneumonia, couldn’t attend a widely-publicized debate in London. The promoters of the event, Intelligence², quickly turned the debate into a celebration of Hitchens’ life. [...]
≡ Category: Religion | ≅ 53 Comments
Atheist Christopher Hitchens was asked earlier this year how his struggle with cancer has affected his views on the question of an afterlife. “I would say it fractionally increases my contempt for the false consolation element of religion and my dislike for the dictatorial and totalitarian part of it,” he responded. “It’s considered perfectly normal [...]
≡ Category: Animation, Religion, Science | ≅ 2 Comments
Produced at the Vancouver Film School, this split-screen animation tells the story of Earth’ s origins from a creationist and Darwinist/evolutionist point of view. To make things more interesting (spoiler: stop reading now if you want to maintain the element of surprise), the scientific story is told using religious language, whereas the Biblical version is [...]
≡ Category: Religion | ≅ 8 Comments
This summer, Jonathan Pararajasingham created 50 Renowned Academics Speaking About God and then Another 50 Renowned Academics Speaking About God. If you’re counting, that makes 100. Right alongside these twin videos came 20 Christian Academics Speaking About God, a montage featuring some respected figures (save Dinesh D’Souza) trying to square religious beliefs with their scientific work. You [...]
≡ Category: English Language, History, Religion | ≅ 1 Comment
This year marks the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible, a translation that influenced the development of the English language as much as it did the Christian faith. Right alongside many other anniversary celebrations taking place this year, Glen Scrivener, a minister in the Church of England, has started a blog about the linguistic [...]
≡ Category: Google, History, Religion | ≅ 3 Comments
Thanks to Google and the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, you can now fire up your browser and start taking a good, close look at The Dead Sea Scrolls, the ancient biblical texts found between 1947 and 1956, right on the shores of the Dead Sea. The Scrolls were originally written between the third and first centuries [...]
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