-
FROM AP: Reds 2, Pirates 1, 13 innings,
-
FROM AP: Rangers 9, Athletics 4
-
FROM AP: Brewers 3, Astros 1
If you have something to say...
Say it on the Huffington Post
If you have something to say...
Say it on the Huffington Post
The questions of God's existence or nature and the spiritual dimension of life are the most profound inquiries we can explore. It is an adventure of the heart, body, mind and soul in a maze filled with shortcuts and dead ends.
Why is religion in decline in countries where ordinary people enjoy a better standard of living? It seems that there is less fear and uncertainty in people's daily lives. Consequently there is less need for religion to help people cope with the feeling that they have little control over their lives.
Hellraisers notwithstanding, we will eventually come to see our religious and scientific lives come into balance, just as teenagers eventually grow up and learn to balance the dual influences of authority and peers, of restraint and exuberance.
I, along with a few friends, began to break free of religious belief precisely because we were naïve ones who took the teaching of the church more seriously than those in the church.
We seem to have a natural disposition to worship, perform rituals, sing and celebrate together, feeling our separateness momentarily dissolve into the experience of community. The trouble is: it depends on what we worship. Absent God and we tend to end up worshipping ourselves.
The number of Americans with no religious affiliation continues to rise. Fewer young people are going to church. And the effects of recession have placed greater burdens on religious institutions in a time of shrinking resources. Yet there are also more hopeful trends about the health and mission of houses of worship.
For humanists, the selection of the next pope is a win-win situation. Either a more humanistic modernizing force will be elected to help bring the church into the 21st century, or a conservative traditionalist will be chosen and continue the Catholic flight from faith.
Although some scholars have used the label since at least the 1960s, the ongoing discussions about Nones have popularized this new identity out of nothing. And this has significant potential to influence society.
I've decided to turn to religion. No, I don't mean I'm going to pray to God so He'll bestow a million dollar idea upon me -- I've decided to invent a religion.
Religious apologists, spiritualist gurus, and accommodating atheists have been bombarding us with assertions that science and religion have no reason not to get along. This may be politically convenient, but it's simply untrue. Science and religion are fundamentally irreconcilable.
I'd been warned if we posted our MIT Survey on Science, Religion and Origins, I'd get inundated with hate-mail from religious fundamentalists.But most of them didn't come from religious people, but from angry atheists!
We are a generation overwhelmingly dedicated to social justice. This impulse can be religiously motivated, much as it has been for me. Yet for many, it is rooted in a fundamental belief in the goodness of people.
If you are so fortunate, as indeed I am, to have a special person with whom you share life, why not BE CHRIST to him or her, if you're a Christian. Or, if you are a Buddhist, why not BE THE Buddha to the person you love?
The pope news proved that religion matters, even though increasing numbers of us claim it doesn't.
After a long night reading the complete works of Christopher Hitchens, binge drinking and googling "proof for God," Pope Benedict XVI announced his resignation yesterday, effective February 28th.
By early summer of 2012, many of us Faith and Values pundits were nervously asking an important and troubling question: Why were the Obama and Romney campaigns spending so little time and effort discussing God and religion on the campaign trail?
