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Kingdom of Priests

A pair of dueling websites, one that just went live, are engaged in an important argument over whether religious believers should continue to be fed the “opium of the people.” That’s the famous phrase Marx Karl used to deride all of religion. One kind of faith actually deserves the description, however. It’s called theistic evolution,…

A reader, Professor Joshua Berman at Israel’s Bar-Ilan University, writes to me with a brilliant insight about President Obama’s Supreme Court pick. Berman’s new book, by the way, is Created Equal: How the Bible Broke with Ancient Political Thought: Obama is correct when he says “The life of the law has not been logic, it has…

Over at Crunchy Con, Rod points us to a fascinating Christianity Today review of a new Bible version with a commentary promoting American patriotism on Biblical grounds. Rod is unimpressed by the concept behind The American Patriot’s Bible: “To the extent that this Bible’s publishers conflate serving Christ with patriotism, thereby implying that a Christian might never have…

I’m in Southern California visiting with family and noted something fascinating in the current yearly calendar published by the Reform Jewish temple where I grew up and had my bar mitzvah. The Jewish festival of Shavuot is this coming Friday and Saturday. Glancing through the calendar, I found that every Jewish and non-Jewish holiday was…

This coming Friday and Saturday, Jews around the world will recall and celebrate the giving of the Ten Commandments at Mt. Sinai. The Ten Commandments are the briefest possible distillation of the 613 Biblical commandments — or alternatively, of the Torah as a whole. Just as the Decalogue by itself gives only the very barest…

A friend responds perceptively to my dialogue with atheists, pointing out how reluctant many people are to honestly confront the unhappier consequences of their world view. Only a few atheists who wrote to me on this blog were willing to admit that atheism necessitates accepting a meaningless existence. Why the reluctance? Because everyone wants to…

Earlier this month I challenged believers in atheism to tell me how or if they find there to be meaning in life. Also, without a transcendent reality outside our own physical world that gives an objective definition to moral ideas, how can an atheist affirm the existence of any moral absolutes? Is anything truly “right”…

“Gee, I think the toughest thing about being Orthodox would be the kosher food,” my dad has occasionally said to me. He’s always enjoyed a good restaurant meal and, in truth, fine dining is not among the Orthodox community’s top priorities. But I would say the hardest thing that Jewish life asks you to give…

You’ll forgive me if I cast a somewhat jaundiced eye on Ida, evolution’s latest supposed missing link. Yet when the old girl is found gracing even the front page of Google, you know it’s a phenomenon that at least deserves a moment’s notice. Rob Crowther’s post at ENV offers the appropriate response: laughter. Don’t skip…

So far this week I have heard the following from various friends: One is having shoulder surgery but wants to stay away from pain medications. He is consulting a homeopathic practitioner instead. Another couple we know has a child with the flu. I asked my wife if it was swine flu, but she didn’t know…
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