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  • Does Science Need Religion?

    When one is out to study religion, or to cover the religion beat, it can be awfully tempting to see religion everywhere you look as the all-satisfying explanation for everything. It’s the whole if-you-have-a-hammer-everything-looks-like-a-nail effect, right? Today at Religion Dispatches I’ve got a review of the new book by Steve Fuller, a rather audacious and…

  • Prove (or Disprove) the Existence of God!

    Sgt. Dougherty Park (map) Brooklyn, New York Saturday, July 24th, 2010 3pm-5pm The search for proof and disproof of the existence of God through history can tell us as much about the people doing the proving as about any particular deity. What do they mean by God? What counts as proof? In this class at…

  • The Memory Theater, Revisited

    Late last year, I published the sketch of an essay here called “Don’t Take Away My Memory Theater.” The feedback that came in the comments from you readers was enough to encourage me to try developing the ideas in it even more. Now, finally, a much-extended version has been published by the good people at…

  • Martyr City

    If you don’t know the name Hypatia, you should. In the grand mythology of the Enlightenment (to which, on optimistic days, I subscribe), her murder at the hands of a Christian mob marks more or less the end of Greek philosophy and the beginning of the Dark Ages. Now, for those of you who don’t…

  • The Politics of Big Questions: The John Templeton Foundation

    As I’ve worked on questions of religion and reason, both in the academy and as a journalist, the John Templeton Foundation has been around every turn. As I called, corresponded, and visited with many of the leading thinkers in the science-and-religion discussion, caution was the prevailing tone—some even joked that I should get them on…

  • Thinking through the Freedom Flotilla

    Ever since the Israeli strike on the Gaza Freedom Movement’s Freedom Flotilla on Monday, I and the rest of us at Waging Nonviolence have been exploring ways of understanding what happened. My first essay, “Nonviolence and the Gaza Freedom Movement,” simply raises some questions that we might be asking as new information about the incident…

  • Reza Aslan on the Academy

    I recently had the pleasure of a Midtown conversation over lunch with writer, scholar, and filmmaker Reza Aslan, which appears today at The Immanent Frame. In it, he shares a number of quite radical ideas, including his support for the one-state “solution” in Palestine-Israel, the un-uniqueness of Jesus, and, as well, the prospects for an…

  • The Significance of Borders

    In an attempt to tame the back-and-forth we had on Bloggingheads recently, religious and philosophical ethicist Richard Amesbury and I have a text interview today at The Immanent Frame, which covers a similarly broad range of themes: human rights, the definition of religion, and New Atheism. NS: Is there something that, above all, ties together…

  • Captive Meditation

    Prisons in the United States are a profound kind of disaster, and lately I and some friends have been doing some thinking about how the conversation can be changed, away from the self-defeating logic of “tough on crime” to something that will actually, well, be tough on crime, rather than simply tough on the bodies…

  • The Right to Truth

    What does it take to make reconciliation—even forgiveness—possible? Today at The Immanent Frame, I talk with Eduardo Gonzalez, a sociologist who directs the International Center for Transitional Justice’s program on truth and reconciliation commissions. Before that, he was involved in organizing and executing the commission in his native Peru. We discuss, among other things, the…