This is the 17th in the series 'Religion and Science: A Beautiful Friendship.'

The Many Faces of Rankism

Rankism is a collective name for the various ways power can be abused in the context of a rank difference. It's a name broad enough to cover a wide range of rank-based...

It may be an exaggeration to say that as Chinese-American relations go, so goes the world, but it's probably not far from the mark. I'm not only thinking of China's and America's common interest in avoiding war on the Korean peninsula, but looking ahead to a time when, if the...

[This is the 16th in the series Religion and Science: A Beautiful Friendship.]

What People Want - Dignity

What people really want in relationships is dignity, not domination. While it's not hard to understand why people who have suffered oppression might fantasize taking a...

This is the 15th in the series Religion and Science: A Beautiful Friendship.

Somebodies and Nobodies

Bullying has always bothered me. Not just being bullied, though that too, of course. I mean the phenomenon of bullying, in all its forms. I think bullying troubles...

This is the 14th in the series Religion and Science: A Beautiful Friendship.

Those who argue that religion should be counted out are overlooking the role that religious leaders played in overcoming segregation in America, repealing apartheid in South Africa, and ending the communist...

This is the 13th in the series 'Religion and Science: A Beautiful Friendship.'

When religion has committed itself to a particular science model, it has often been left behind as the public embraced a new model. That's the position in which the Catholic Church...

This is the 12th in the series "Religion and Science: A Beautiful Friendship."

"Live your life as if there are no miracles and everything is a miracle." -- Albert Einstein

The Miraculous

The allure of mystery points directly to the nature of reality as...

This is the 11th in the series 'Religion and Science: A Beautiful Friendship.'

In the aftermath of movement politics, California was teeming with seekers after truth. More than a few political activists had replaced their concerns about social justice with a quest for personal...

[This is the 10th in the series Religion and Science: A Beautiful Friendship.]

The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science.

- Albert Einstein

While it's true that science aims to explain and, in that...

This is the ninth in the series 'Religion and Science: A Beautiful Friendship.'

Not infrequently we sense our own mistakes at about the same time others do. Why is it so difficult to acknowledge errors publicly? It's because we fear that admitting to imperfection will expose us to indignity, if...

This is the eighth in the series 'Religion and Science: A Beautiful Friendship.'

"The public ... demands certainties ... But there are no certainties." --H. L. Mencken

When we hear the word fundamentalist, images of fanatical proselytizers, religious extremists and suicide bombers leap to...

This is the seventh in the series 'Religion and Science: A Beautiful Friendship.'

Proverbial Models

In this seventh part of the series, we take a look at some religious proverbs that have become woven into the fabric of civilization: the golden rule, "an eye for an eye, a tooth...

This is the 6th in the series 'Religion and Science: A Beautiful Friendship.'

"The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible."
--Albert Einstein

With the idea of God, early humans were imagining someone or something who knows, who understands,...

This is the fifth in the series 'Religion and Science: A Beautiful Friendship.'

"Know you what it is to be a child? ... it is to believe in belief..."
--Francis Thompson, 19th century British poet

We don't forget our first ah-ha experience any more than we forget our first...

[This is the 4th in the series Religion and Science: A Beautiful Friendship]

Man is a creature who makes pictures of himself,
and then comes to resemble the picture.
- Iris Murdock

The title of Mark Twain's What Is Man? poses a question that humans have pondered for millennia. Our...

"It is not instruction but provocation that I can receive from another." --Ralph Waldo Emerson

In Sunday School, I had noticed, everyone had noticed, that the commandments, precepts and rules that were taught there were often disregarded, not only by scoundrels...

This is the 2nd in the series "Religion and Science: A Beautiful Friendship."

My parents were not church-goers, but they thought their children should be exposed to the religious perspective. So, until we graduated from eighth grade, they made my brothers and me...

Reason to Hope: A New Deal for Religion and Science

"[The 21st] century will be defined by a debate that will run through the remainder of its decades: religion versus science. Religion will lose." --John McLaughlin, TV talk show host

Former priest John McLaughlin is hardly alone in his pessimism...

Relationships take many forms but they're all vulnerable to the same poison -- rankism.

Relationships can be interpersonal (between friends or strangers; partners or relatives). They can be intergroup (between religions, sects, races, classes, males and females, straights and gays, Republicans and Democrats. And they can be...

From Washington, D.C., to San Francisco, Calif., a thirst for dignity is driving protest and heralding social transformation. In every major city and countless small towns, people are refusing to let their voices -- ninety-nine percent of the nation's voices -- be drowned out by the whispers of the most...