Carl Sagan: God?

All My Bones Shake: Seeking a Progressive Path to the Prophetic Voice

Robert Jensen, a longtime activist fighting for women's rights, racial equality, and global justice, reveals with this book the emotional journey that brought him back to the church after an entire adulthood of religious indifference.


Our world is perched on the verge of chaos, he warns. As political, economic, cultural, and ecological crises peak, the decisions we make are likely to have permanent consequences for our future and for the fate of our planet. In our nation, what underlies this chaos is a spiritual unrest, a stubborn conflict that has gotten in the way of understanding and slowed theological progress to a glacial crawl.

Muslims arrested for Terror charges, entrapment?

A Virginia resident has been indicted in connection with an alleged plot to bomb several Metro stations in Washington, DC. Farooque Ahmed, a US citizen originally from Pakistan, was arrested Wednesday after a six-month undercover sting. But as with other recent cases alleging terrorist plots, questions are being raised over whether Ahmed was subjected to government entrapment. He discussed the alleged plot with agents posing as Islamic militants, and US officials say the public was never in real danger. Defendants in other cases nationwide have accused government informants and agents of devising the plots for which they were accused.

Morals Without God?

I was born in Den Bosch, the city after which Hieronymus Bosch named himself. [1] This obviously does not make me an expert on the Dutch painter, but having grown up with his statue on the market square, I have always been fond of his imagery, his symbolism, and how it relates to humanity’s place in the universe. This remains relevant today since Bosch depicts a society under a waning influence of God.

His famous triptych with naked figures frolicking around — “The Garden of Earthly Delights” — seems a tribute to paradisiacal innocence. The tableau is far too happy and relaxed to fit the interpretation of depravity and sin advanced by puritan experts. It represents humanity free from guilt and shame either before the Fall or without any Fall at all. For a primatologist, like myself, the nudity, references to sex and fertility, the plentiful birds and fruits and the moving about in groups are thoroughly familiar and hardly require a religious or moral interpretation. Bosch seems to have depicted humanity in its natural state, while reserving his moralistic outlook for the right-hand panel of the triptych in which he punishes — notthe frolickers from the middle panel — but monks, nuns, gluttons, gamblers, warriors, and drunkards.

Losing our religion

A survey by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life reveals some alarming results about religious knowledge in the US.

Say Amen!

Well, maybe not so much. This week the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life released a poll showing that Americans arguably know less about various world religions than they do about who won the disco ball on the last season of Dancing With the Stars. This shouldn’t be hugely surprising.

We’re Americans, after all, and not knowing stuff is as American as apple pie. Famed historian Richard Hofstadter wrote a Pulitzer Prize winning book in 1964 entitled Anti-Intellectualism in American Life, and it is likely this strain of our historical DNA that is responsible for such phenomena as Snooki getting a book contract and Glenn Beck having an online university.

But, before you judge too harshly, it’s important to remember that this hasn’t exactly been a banner decade in the United States. Median household income has declined by almost $1,000 over the past decade once adjusted for inflation, health care costs continue to soar as we wait years for promised health care reforms to kick in (and others never made it), and the US is embroiled in foreign entanglements in what often seems like a dizzying array of places. So you can excuse people for having other things on their mind, than say the theological underpinnings of Jainism.

Muslim Workers Face Increasing Employment Discrimination

The New York Times reports a record number of Muslim workers are complaining of employment discrimination. Federal data reports the number of complaints filed jumped 60 percent between 2005 and 2009. And the number of complaints filed in 2010 are expected to be even higher. Although Muslims make up less than two percent of the US population, they now account for about one-quarter of the religious discrimination claims filed. Mary Jo O’Neill of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission said, “There’s a level of hatred and animosity that is shocking. I’ve been doing this for 31 years, and I’ve never seen such antipathy toward Muslim workers." Last month, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission sued the meatpacking company JBS Swift on behalf of 160 Somali immigrants, saying supervisors and workers had cursed them for being Muslim; thrown blood, meat and bones at them; and interrupted their prayer breaks.

NO NO, I am a Christian! I Pray!

A findings of a recent poll showing that nearly one in five Americans believe Obama is a Muslim. In response to this a White House spokesperson said something to the effect of "no, no! Obama is not a Muslim, he is a Christian who prays every day". It saddening that the white house reflect the same racism that is being found in the study it self-- in a reactive form. The response to polls misidentifying the religious preference of the president is a fearful "oh no he is not a Muslim, he is a Chritian" or something that can be redacted to mean "oh no he's not that bad religion he is the good religion". Why is there a need to clear this misidentification up, by ensuring President Obama is not one of them (Muslim). Now, a proper address of such a poll and finding, accurate or not, would be "So what if the president was a Muslim...this is after-all the land of the free, where each man has a right to what ever god or gods he wishes". It would be nice if the backdrop of anti-Muslim sentiment, where Islam is associated so tightly to evil, bad and wrong and Christianity to the inverse.  What message does this send to the people of the united states, Christians in the world, Muslims in the US, Muslims in the world. what brand of religious of tolerance/secularization can be named in a country that defends itself with "Christianity" from being titled a "Muslim" and never address the fact that what religion the president is makes no case for judgment, of character--a funny brand of tolerance, plurality, heterogeneity and politics, but mainly sad.

So i would like to end this by clearing this up:

if the one in five people were correct and President Obama was a Muslim, this would not effect that type of person Obama is. He would still be a worthy human.  The judgment of Obama should then be made on his person. And if someone thinks you are a Muslim, say one in five people, there is no need to tell everyone they are way wrong and that your a praying Christian, a simple no is enough, no need to protect your status.

Religions don't make people.

People make People.

People are many parts.

no need to defend with chritainty, or defend youself at all.