≡ Category: Religion | ≅ Comments
As we mentioned last week, Karen Armstrong’s new book, The Case for God, is out. And now you can read the first chapter for free. Just click on this link, and then the book viewer on the left side of the page. It will expand, and from there you can start flipping through the pages. [...]
≡ Category: Religion | ≅ Comments
In recent years, we have seen a number of books published that have made the case for atheism: Richard Dawkin’s The God Delusion, Christopher Hitchens’ God Is Not Great, Sam Harris’ Letter to a Christian Nation, and Daniel Dennett’s Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon. It was almost as if a dam had broken, [...]
≡ Category: Religion, Video - Arts & Culture | ≅ Comments
The film above takes you inside the spiritual walls of Lhasa, Tibet’s capital, which hosts the Potala Palace, “the traditional winter home of the Dalai Lama and a pilgrimage destination for thousands of Buddhists.” The video runs 9+ minutes, and it’s one of many films produced by Explore.org, a web site supported by the Annenberg Foundation that combines [...]
≡ Category: Philosophy, Religion | ≅ Comments
When the Dalai Lama paid a visit to Emory University, he offered an introductory lecture to Tibetan Buddhism. The lecture is not exactly what you’d normally get in the university classroom. The talk is not entirely linear. And he spends some time speaking in English, then speaks in his native tongue (with the help of an interpreter). [...]
≡ Category: Religion | ≅ Comments
A good find by Kottke.org…
Jared Diamond, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Guns, Germs & Steel (and Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed), offers a lecture at USC where he gets into the universal attributes of religions and their underlying adaptive value/social purpose. The talk runs about 41 minutes, followed by a long Q&A [...]
≡ Category: Religion | ≅ Comments
I didn’t think it would be possible, but it happened. I found my two least favorite intellectuals together on the same stage, and King’s College in NYC made it all possible. So, to mark the occasion, I bring you Dinesh D’Souza, the academy’s dressed up version of Ann Coulter, debating the ever surly Christopher Hitchens. [...]
≡ Category: Religion, Science | ≅ Comments
Is there “a philosophical incompatibility between religion and science. Does the empirical nature of science contradict the revelatory nature of faith? Are the gaps between them so great that the two institutions must be considered essentially antagonistic?” These were the questions raised by Jerry Coyne, a professor at the University of Chicago, in a long [...]
≡ Category: Religion, YouTube | ≅ Comments
Given that we were talking about the historical Jesus yesterday, this piece in the Utne Reader caught my eye …
What happens when you’re running a 14th century convent in Southern Spain that’s nearly broke? You could call up Jake and Elwood. Or, if you’re Mother Isabel and you run the show, you put a [...]
≡ Category: History, Religion | ≅ Comments
I mentioned this course over two years ago, back when the Open Culture had about five readers. And given that the topic is hardly out of date, I figured that it wouldn’t hurt to bring it back to the surface. The course comes out of Stanford’s Continuing Studies Program (where I help give a hand). The topic [...]
≡ Category: Comedy, Religion, Video - Politics/Society | ≅ Comments
Here we have the odd couple. The agnostic filmmaker and one of America’s most influential religious figures engaged in a lively conversation. It’s actually a rather gentlemanly exchange from the late 1960s, and it’s added to our YouTube playlist. Part 1 appears below, and you can get Part 2 here.
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≡ Category: Comedy, Religion | ≅ Comments
Stand-up comedy and Biblical creation don’t usually go together. But somehow they do for Ricky Gervais, the creator of the ever-popular television show, The Office. (Watch episodes here.) The bit runs about 10 minutes, and it’s added to our YouTube playlist.
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≡ Category: History, Religion, Video - Politics/Society | ≅ Comments
Jonathan Miller’s Brief History of Disbelief is a BBC production (2005) that offers television’s first sustained look at the hidden history of atheism. The three-part documentary takes you from unbelievers within Ancient Greece, to the re-emergence of disbelief in 15th and 16th century Europe, through to the French Enlightenment, Revolutionary America and the rise of [...]
≡ Category: Religion, Science | ≅ Comments
At least in America, Charles Darwin has become the favorite whipping boy for many fundamentalists on the right. In one neat package, you get in Darwin all things deplorable. A godless “secular humanist” who denied the sanctity of humanity, God’s providence, and the integrity of the Bible. What more could you love to hate?
Somewhere lost [...]
≡ Category: Religion | ≅ Comments
I’m no fan of Christopher Hitchens. Actually, I find him an almost entirely disagreeable figure. But I have to give him points for creativity. Interviewed last week (MP3 – iTunes – Feed), Hitchens, the author of the recent bestseller God Is Not Great, gave his spiel on atheism and offered a unique argument against God. [...]
≡ Category: Religion, Video - Politics/Society | ≅ Comments
Mitt Romney, a Mormon, looked yesterday to set aside lingering concerns about his religion in a highly publicized speech. Immediately, the speech revived memories of John F. Kennedy’s attempt, during the 1960 campaign, to ease concerns about his Catholicism. We’ve posted both speeches below. The similarities are there. But the differences are more profound. I’ll [...]
≡ Category: Religion, Video - Science | ≅ Comments
Earlier this week, PBS’s NOVA aired a two-hour program revisiting the controversial federal case, Kitzmiller v. Dover School District, which asked whether “intelligent design” could be taught in American schools alongside Darwin’s theory of evolution. Intelligent design essentially holds that “life is too complex to have evolved naturally and therefore must have been designed by [...]
≡ Category: Religion, Video - Politics/Society, Video - Science | ≅ Comments
When debating religion, you can take the low road (e.g., Ann Coulter’s recent flirtation with anti-semitism) or the high road. Here’s Richard Dawkins, an avowed atheist and evolutionary biologist at Oxford, having a high-minded conversation about the existence (or non-existence) of God with Alister McGrath, who is Professor of Historical Theology at Oxford University and [...]
≡ Category: Physics, Religion, Science | ≅ Comments
Speaking at a conference on science, religion and philosophy in 1941, Albert Einstein famously said that “science without religion is lame; religion without science is blind.” Einstein, a German-born Jew, considered himself religious. But what he meant by religion was not straightforward. The first episode of a two-part podcast called Einstein and the Mind of [...]
≡ Category: Religion | ≅ Comments
How has the geography of religion evolved over the centuries, and where has it sparked wars? This interactive map summarizes in a brief 90 seconds the history of Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Judaism. It shows where & when each religion originated, how the religions sometimes came into conflict, and how they spread across the [...]
≡ Category: Religion, Science | ≅ Comments
The latest podcast put out by The Chronicle of Higher Education (iTunes – Stream – Web Site) doesn’t shy away from hot-button issues. Below, we’ve pasted the summary that accompanies the podcast on The Chronicle’s web site. Read it and then give the audio some time and thought.
“University-trained archaeologists and historians are scared to take [...]
≡ Category: Current Affairs, Religion, Video - Politics/Society, Video - Science | ≅ Comments
These days, there is no shortage of public thinkers launching a vigorous defense of atheism. Most recently, Christopher Hitchens has come out with God is Not Great. And, holding true to form, he has used this book and related media campaign as an opportunity to fight out the ugly culture wars once again. All [...]
≡ Category: Books, Religion | ≅ Comments
The trouble with Judas is that if he was carrying out God’s plan, was he really evil? The point has been made everywhere from seminaries to Jesus Christ, Superstar, but it suddenly became more urgent with the rediscovery of a putative Gospel of Judas in 2004. Religious scholars Elaine Pagels and Karen King have a [...]
≡ Category: Religion | ≅ Comments
On Monday night faith and atheism got a verbal workout. Famously vitriolic columnist Christopher Hitchens (a former liberal best-known in recent years for his staunch support of the war in Iraq) faced off against Reverend Al Sharpton in a discussion moderated by Slate editor Jacob Weisberg. Hitchens is a vehement non-believer and the new author [...]
≡ Category: Religion | ≅ Comments
Whenever you put atheism’s most prominent spokesperson on Fox News, you’d expect the fur to fly. But that’s not how it turned out. The fur ended up staying on the cats when Bill O’Reilly interviewed Richard Dawkins, author of the bestselling The God Delusion, this week, as you can see above.
≡ Category: Religion | ≅ Comments
Over the past two days, NPR’s Fresh Air has devoted two programs to interrogating whether religion and
science can co-exist. On Wednesday, air time was first given to Richard Dawkins, the famed Oxford University scholar of evolution who, with his recent publication of The God Delusion, has launched a vigorous defense of atheism. As you [...]
≡ Category: Religion | ≅ Comments
Intelligence Squared (iTunes Feed Web Site), a new series of NPR broadcasts, has a rather unique
format. It brings Oxford-style debates to America, and it features leading thinkers taking different positions on hot-button issues of our day. (You can get more precise information on the format here.) There will be eight debates in total, all [...]
≡ Category: Religion | ≅ Comments
Speaking recently on Stanford’s campus, Reza Aslan, an Iranian-American scholar who has written for The New York Times, The Nation, and Slate, sketched out an interesting framework for making sense of recent trends within the Middle East, and more particularly within Islam itself (iTunes – feed N/A). His argument is essentially this: Islam is undergoing [...]
≡ Category: Philosophy, Religion | ≅ Comments
It’s not quite “Car Talk,” but it’s not terribly far away. Philosophy Talk, a weekly public radio program presented by two Stanford philosophy professors, offers a “down-to-earth and no-nonsense approach” to philosophy that’s engaging, if not entertaining. The show, which can be streamed from the web site, tends to range widely. In recent weeks, they’ve [...]
≡ Category: Religion | ≅ Comments
These days, the Enlightenment project finds itself in a tense cultural competition with religion. Go around the US and ask, "how did we come to be?" and you will get different answers. Some, appealing to science and reason, the children of the Enlightenment, will look to evolution for answers. Others, with a religious bent, will [...]
≡ Category: Books, Religion | ≅ Comments
A world renowned biologist, devoted Darwinist, and unabashed secular humanist, Harvard’s E.O. Wilson has taken an intriguing religious turn with his latest work, “The Creation: An Appeal to Save Life on Earth.” A Baptist by upbringing, Wilson offers literally a sermon addressed to America’s large and growing evangelical community. The essence of the message [...]
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