Recent Blog Posts
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Follow-up: Jesus Chicken edition
I wrote before about how the conservative Christian-affiliated chicken chain Chik-Fil-A has received some very negative feedback about their contributions toward anti-gay political causes. Here’s the latest on that: Focus St. Louis and the Clayton Chamber of Commerce said today that they are canceling a planned presentation by Dan Cathy, president and COO of Chick-fil-A,…
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Religion going extinct? I doubt it.
The BBC reports on a paper recently presented at the American Physical Society meeting here in Dallas which makes claims about a decreasing level of religiosity in some parts of the world. The paper, entitled “A mathematical model of social group competition with application to the growth of religious non-affiliation,” suggests that religion will effectively be…
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Update
I submitted a version of my “Helping vs. blaming in Japan” post to State of Formation, modified to include more commentary on the psychology of seeing supernatural agency in disasters.
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Making sense of tragedy: was the earthquake a “divine punishment”?
Cross-posted from State of Formation. Over at Religion Dispatches Levi McLaughlin, a professor of religion who specializes in East Asian traditions, writes about Tokyo’s governor Shintaro Ishihara describing the tsunami that struck Japan as “divine punishment”: Ishihara, a prize-winning novelist, stage and screen actor, and a populist hero of the Japanese right, has gained notoriety for his…
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Again…tragedy + internet = outrage and nastiness.
A few days ago a UCLA student named Alexandra Wallace posted this charming racist rant about Asians in her university library: If you’re one of the few people in the country who hadn’t seen that video previously, I’m sure you’re edified to have had the privilege now. And can probably guess the response, if I…
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Helping vs. blaming in Japan
Over at Religion Dispatches Levi McLaughlin, a professor of religion who specializes in East Asian traditions, writes about Tokyo’s governor Shintaro Ishihara describing the tsunami that struck Japan as “divine punishment.” Ishihara, a prize-winning novelist, stage and screen actor, and a populist hero of the Japanese right, has gained notoriety for his willingness to court…