New Atheism: Missing the Point
There are difficult and complex parts of the human experience that neither science nor even the most basic comforts can address.
On the Newsstand:Religion
A Disappointing Discussion of Pluralism
The Veritas Forum's discussion of pluralism proved disappointing at best.
Ghajar and the Middle Eastern Minority
In the high-powered, well-researched world of Middle Eastern border politics, everyone knows about the Golan Heights, the Litani River, and the Sinai Peninsula. But nobody’s ever heard of Ghajar. A bucolic riverside village of 2,000 in the Galilee’s far north, Ghajar could fit inconspicuously anywhere on the Syrian, Lebanese, or Israeli landscape. Until regional tumult during 1967’s Six-Day War between ... Read More
Of Synagogue And State
Religious plurality comes in many shapes and sizes. Take the case of Israel, often dismissed by foreign observers as simply ‘the Jewish state’. The lion’s share of international focus on Israel stems from conflict between the Jewish majority and an Arab minority. Yet outside mixed-ethnic areas like Jerusalem and the Upper Galilee, most Israelis don’t deal with Jewish-Arab problems on ... Read More
Where Miseducation Meets Tolerance
The Cambridge School Committee recently decided that, beginning in the 2011-12 school year, schools will close for one Muslim holiday each year. On the heels of two events that paint America as an increasingly Islamophobic nation, those being the controversial Ground Zero “mosque” and the lunatic antics of that pastor in Florida, the School Committee’s refreshingly tolerant decision couldn’t come ... Read More
More on the Mosque: Religious Freedom is Important, But…
One non-bigoted case against the erroneously-named “Ground Zero mosque” seems to go something like this: “Religious freedom is legitimate and important, and the promoters of the planned community center have a constitutional right to build the complex in Lower Manhattan. But still, the community center should be built somewhere else, out of sensitivity to earnestly held objections, and out of ... Read More
ADL Disappoints on “Ground Zero Mosque” Issue
The manufactured controversy over what has ludicrously come to be called the “Ground Zero Mosque” has a lot of depressing aspects. But easily the most surprising and, for me, upsetting development is that the Anti-Defamation League, the Jewish human rights organization, has sided with Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich, and the other opportunistic GOP pols who are exploiting this issue. A ... Read More
