theguardian: by Giles Fraser. God is replaced by the self as the ultimate source of meaning. As traditional structures of meaning are wiped away, boredom comes to be regarded as a very personal sort of failing. And in order to avoid it, various distractions are entertained: travel, drink, drugs, the […]
Huff Post: Religion in America is in trouble, and science can help save it. Conventional wisdom suggests otherwise, saying that science is more likely to kill religion than rescue it. I’m convinced that science is the last best hope for religion in the modern world. The God Wars pit those who […]
Huff Post: Rabbi Richard A. Block. The most refined condensation of Jewish thinking about God is found in our liturgy, whose prayers address a personal God with whom we can communicate, collectively and individually. When all is said and done, there are three Jewish prayer themes: Wow! Help! and Thanks! […]
Huff Post: by Bathan Schneider. The notion of proof for or against the existence of God has come to be used for a very specific purpose in this day and age: to convince other people that someone called God either does or doesn’t exist. But actually that’s just about the […]
Huff Post: by Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg. It may not be easy or convenient, but revelation is a life-or-death proposition. Ultimately, allowing ourselves to hear God’s voice — aligning our will with God’s will — may be the only thing that can ultimately save us. We need only to be brave […]
Huff Post: by Rick Hamlin. The world is full of heartache, sorrow, disasters, anxiety, tragedies in-the-making, bad news both big and small. I believe in being informed. I’m just as happy as anyone to log on to one news site after another, but if it starts pulling me down, if […]
Huff Post: by Pat Schneider. Sometimes when things are so real they hurt, words come that T.S. Eliot called “what we know and do not know we know.” I said, “Fred, I bet God is delighted! For the first time in your life, you talked to God in your native […]
Huff Post: Martin Spinelli. Three hours later I was by Lio’s side in pediatric intensive care. The space was dark and windowless, lit mostly by the small red LEDs of medical equipment. There, surrounded by a halo of computer screens, I found my only child with a fractured skull, severe […]
Huff Post: by Eiton Press. My heart feels torn because I don’t want that which I love, which I am a part of, to experience suffering, to be destroyed, whether it be due to humankind’s unconscious behavior or otherwise. I want to live in a world that is free, that […]
Source: Huff Post, by Rob Bell. Like a mirror, God appears to be more and more a reflection of whoever it is that happens to be talking about God at the moment. I realize that when I use the word God, there’s a good chance I’m stepping on all kinds […]
Source: Huff Post, by Peter Rollins. Today the word “sacred” is employed to name a certain realm of life that can be contrasted with the secular. The idea here is that some object, area of life or geographical location can act as a “thin place,” i.e. a site where the […]
Source: onislam. An American professor is highlighting similarities between the Noble Qur’an and the Bible as a way to clear misconceptions about Islam and Muslims in the world. “One of the things right off the bat that shocks Christians and Jews very often if they haven’t read the Qur’an much […]
Source: Huff Post, by Jeffrey Small. Our individual lives are short, inconsequential in a universe that is 13.7 billion years old. We are finite. We suffer. Yet the faiths of the world also teach us that we can transcend suffering and death because we are part of something bigger than […]
Source: The Asian Age, by Ghulam Rasool Dehlvi. One of the glorious aspects of Islam is that it is an entirely pluralistic concept of faith, both culturally and religiously. It […]
Source: The Times of India, by Bruce Lawrence. HYDERABAD: Eminent scholar Bruce Lawrencesaid that the word ‘fundamentalism’ does not fit Islam and Hinduism as both religions were not fundamentalist in nature and that the verses of the Quran have been taken out of context by radical groups to further their agenda. […]
Source: KPB Stevens To my mind, religion only increases its beauty by allowing scientific words and phrases (by which I mean concepts) to change it. When I think about science, I think about it religiously. That doesn’t mean that I try to ignore its truths and make it conform to […]
Epigraph: And those who say, ‘Our Lord, grant us of our wives and children the delight of our eyes, and make us a model for the righteous. It is such as […]
Huff Post: Deepak Chopra. What feels like a muddle could actually be a path. Unbelief can lead to faith and faith to true knowledge. This holds true for many other things in life, only we don’t use religious terms for it. When you learn to ride a bike, or roller-skate, […]
theguardian: Jamie Doward and Ella Fraser-Thoms. Humanist association wins campaign to recognise many recruits are non-believers. One of the UK’s largest and most respected youth organisations will no longer compel its new members to take a religious oath. In a move that delighted the British Humanist Association (BHA), the Air […]