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Category Archives: Religion
Why Do They Oppose Gay Marriage? Part 3 In A Very Infrequently Updated And Rather Repetitive Series
From “Public Opinion, the Courts, and Same-sex Marriage: Four Lessons Learned” by Brian Powell, Natasha Yurk Quadlin and Oren Pizmony-Levy, in Social Forces (2015) volume 2 pages 3-12. (Pdf link.) Because I don’t believe God intended them to be that … Continue reading
Posted in Religion, Same-Sex Marriage
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Reza Aslan Makes a Lot of Sense Defending Islam. The CNN Anchors Sound Like Islamaphobic Bigots.
Author’s note: I’ve edited the title of this post to reflect more accurately the point I wanted to make. Reza Aslan is responding here to this rant by Bill Maher: It’s important to point out that Maher is right: Muslims who engage in … Continue reading
Posted in Religion
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Would We Be Living in a Better World if the Tyrants of the Past Had Never Existed?
When Someone is Driven to Murder, Where Does the Responsibility Lie? It’s been a very long time since someone called me a bleeding-heart liberal, a label that was never complimentary and always carried with it a connotation not simply of … Continue reading
Everyone Hates Atheists Except Jews And Atheists
Pew has polled Americans about how warmly they feel towards other religious groups. The graph to the left shows the results sorted by political party. It’s not surprising that Republicans really, really don’t like atheists. What’s more surprising is that … Continue reading
Posted in Anti-atheism, Religion
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Writing a Poem is a Confrontation with the Unknowable
It’s been a long time since I believed in a god like the biblical one I learned as a child that I was supposed to love and fear, respect and obey. I’ve written a little bit about why I stopped believing, and I’ve written out … Continue reading
Farid al-Din Attar: A Reading Journal 6
Here’s another quote from The Conference of the Birds: But think of some new pilgrim, some young boy, Whose boldness comes from mere excess of joy; He has no certain knowledge of the Way, And what seems rudeness is but … Continue reading
One of My Favorite Poems by Saadi of Shiraz
I’ve been thinking about this poem a lot lately, because what it says could easily have been labeled heresy by the authorities of Saadi’s time, which was 13th century Iran, and an accusation of heresy could, conceivably, have gotten him … Continue reading
Farid al-Din Attar: A Reading Journal 5
When I was in my twenties, a friend and I used to talk all the time about how impoverished the English vocabulary for love is, not just in the sense that we use the word love to talk about our … Continue reading
Posted in literature, Religion
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Farid al-Din Attar: A Reading Journal 4
When I was a teenager and thought I wanted to be a rabbi, I took great comfort in the fact that the god of the Jewish people did not have a body. It was, of course, confusing to me that … Continue reading
Posted in Religion
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