Category Archives: Religion

Religion Reading List

As someone with minimal religious intuitions and nominal indoctrination it’s been a long hard slog for me to understand religion as a human phenomenon. Books have been important. Not newspapers. And not just the words of believers. I’ve expressed irritation … Continue reading

Posted in Religion | Tagged | 28 Comments

Liberal de facto apologia for Islam

In the comments to my post “The double standard” many liberals objected to my assertion that much of the Left engages in a situational criticism of religion, whereby conservative Christians bear the full front of the secular critique, where Muslims … Continue reading

Posted in Religion | Tagged , | 13 Comments

Old-Time Irreligion

The British philosopher Colin McGinn gives us that old-time irreligion in this essay “Why I Am an Atheist“. I normally can’t take very much of this well-worn atheism-vs.-agnosticism stuff, but McGinn pulls it off very well & I found myself reading … Continue reading

Posted in culture, philosophy, Religion | 5 Comments

The double standard

A few years ago Markos Moulitas wrote a book, American Taliban: How War, Sex, Sin, and Power Bind Jihadists and the Radical Right. This is in a long tradition of demonization of American Christian conservatives by the Left. All’s fair … Continue reading

Posted in data, Religion | Tagged , | 30 Comments

Against Evolution

Via the Independent: A prominent British imam has been forced to retract his claims that Islam is compatible with Darwin’s theory of evolution after receiving death threats from fundamentalists. Dr Usama Hasan, a physics lecturer at Middlesex University and a … Continue reading

Posted in Religion, Science & Faith | Tagged , , , , | 7 Comments

Lexington, Concord Fought In Vain

Andrew: The fame of C.S. Lewis’s “trilemma” argument has always been deeply baffling to me. The normal reaction of a thoughtful person (me, Martin Gardner, Richard Dawkins) on first hearing it is: Why couldn’t Jesus just have been mistaken? People … Continue reading

Posted in culture, Religion | 11 Comments

On The Run

Cross-posted over at the Corner. Writing in the Guardian Nick Cohen puts the terrible killings in Pakistan into wider context: One Pakistani journalist I spoke to described his fellow liberals as members of a persecuted minority, who now knew that … Continue reading

Posted in politics, Religion | Tagged , , | Comments Off on On The Run

An Exorcist in Trouble

Via Politics Daily: A Catholic priest who traveled the country performing exorcisms and launching fierce attacks against anyone he viewed as insufficiently tough on abortion — he once suggested Fox News host Sean Hannity was a “heretic” for saying birth … Continue reading

Posted in Religion | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

Secular and Islamist can mean very different things

A long post at Discover Blogs where I outline what I perceive to be the fallacies and misrepresentations in the media today about the Egyptian democratic revolution. In particular, I think terms like “secular” and “Islamist” are being used in … Continue reading

Posted in Religion | Tagged | 2 Comments

Secular Egyptian Muslims are like Christian Reconstructionists

At Discover I report some of the attitudes in Muslim nations in relation to particular crimes or infractions against social mores: Support for harsh punishments (affirm action)   Stone adulterers Whip & amputate hands of robbers Death penalty for apostates … Continue reading

Posted in Religion | Tagged , | 9 Comments