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Category: Religion

Pro-social religions didn’t kick-start complex social systems

Pro-social religions didn’t kick-start complex social systems

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Scientific American reports: About 12,000 years ago human societies went big; tribes and villages grew into vast cities, kingdoms and empires within just a few millennia. For such large and complex societies to take root, people needed to maintain social cohesion and cooperation, even among complete strangers. What enabled this, many researchers have argued, was religion. Such a religion, the idea goes, would work particularly well if it established standards of morality and behavior—and enforced them with the threat of…

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Australians are asking how did we get here? Well, Islamophobia is practically enshrined as public policy

Australians are asking how did we get here? Well, Islamophobia is practically enshrined as public policy

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Jason Wilson writes: In the period of the country’s enthusiastic participation in the War on Terror, Islam and Muslims have frequently been treated as public enemies, and hate speech against them has inexorably been normalised. Australian racism did not of course begin in 2001. The country was settled by means of a genocidal frontier war, and commenced its independent existence with the exclusion of non-white migrants. White nationalism was practically Australia’s founding doctrine. But a succession of events in the…

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What science can tell us about how other creatures experience the world

What science can tell us about how other creatures experience the world

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Ross Andersen writes: Amid the human crush of Old Delhi, on the edge of a medieval bazaar, a red structure with cages on its roof rises three stories above the labyrinth of neon-lit stalls and narrow alleyways, its top floor emblazoned with two words: birds hospital. On a hot day last spring, I removed my shoes at the hospital’s entrance and walked up to the second-floor lobby, where a clerk in his late 20s was processing patients. An older woman…

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Young evangelicals speak out

Young evangelicals speak out

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Alexandria Beightol (one of six young evangelicals featured in the New York Times) writes: I was pulled out of Smith College in 2015 when I told my parents that I was rethinking the legitimacy of anti-gay theology. I thought, “God is going to have to forgive me. I am not going to die in this culture war.” I was Republican like them. Before, I supported whatever my church told me about candidates and issues. I never questioned or read outside…

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Muslim groups raise thousands for Pittsburgh synagogue shooting victims

Muslim groups raise thousands for Pittsburgh synagogue shooting victims

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The New York Times reports: Two Muslim organizations have raised more than $130,000 to help victims and their families following the shooting massacre at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh on Saturday. The online fund-raiser was part of a broad outpouring of assistance in response to the anti-Semitic attack, which killed 11 people and left six others injured, including blood drives, vigils and a separate crowdfunding campaign that has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars. Tarek El-Messidi, a Chicago-based…

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Pittsburgh synagogue shooting is a moment of reckoning for American Jews

Pittsburgh synagogue shooting is a moment of reckoning for American Jews

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Jay Michaelson writes: After the 9/11 attacks, Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres said that countries now had to choose between fighting terror and abetting it, that there was no neutral ground. In his metaphor, you were either sitting in the smoking section, or the no-smoking section. In the wake of the worst attack on Jews in American history, all of us, but especially American Jews like me, face a similar decision. We either support Donald Trump and the movement of…

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Why the Tree of Life shooter was fixated on the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society

Why the Tree of Life shooter was fixated on the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society

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Masha Gessen writes: A couple of hours before opening fire in a Pittsburgh synagogue, Robert Bowers, the suspected gunman, posted on the social network Gab, “HIAS likes to bring invaders in that kill our people. I can’t sit by and watch my people get slaughtered. Screw your optics, I’m going in.” HIAS is the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, and Bowers had posted about it at least once before. Two and a half weeks earlier, he had linked to a HIAS…

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George Washington’s letter to the Jewish congregation of Newport, Rhode Island

George Washington’s letter to the Jewish congregation of Newport, Rhode Island

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On August 18,1790, during his second year in office as America’s first president, George Washington wrote: If we have wisdom to make the best use of the advantages with which we are now favored, we cannot fail, under the just administration of a good Government, to become a great and a happy people. The Citizens of the United States of America have a right to applaud themselves for having given to mankind examples of an enlarged and liberal policy: a…

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What’s a Muslim to do about Hajj?

What’s a Muslim to do about Hajj?

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Aymann Ismail writes: As excruciating details have leaked over the past two weeks about the killing and reported dismemberment of journalist Jamal Khashoggi by Saudi government agents, the most high-profile public backlash has come in the form of defections from a glittery upcoming conference, the Future Investment Initiative, planned by Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Jamie Dimon, the chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, along with dozens of other politics, business, and media figures, have pulled…

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Pat Robertson cares more about money than murder

Pat Robertson cares more about money than murder

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Vox reports: A major evangelical leader has spoken in defense of US-Saudi relations after the apparent killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in a Saudi consulate, saying that America has more important things — like arms deals — to focus on. Pat Robertson, founder of the Christian Broadcasting Network, appeared on its flagship television show The 700 Club on Monday to caution Americans against allowing the United States’ relationship with Saudi Arabia to deteriorate over Khashoggi’s death. “For those who are…

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Evangelical leaders are frustrated at GOP caution on Kavanaugh allegation

Evangelical leaders are frustrated at GOP caution on Kavanaugh allegation

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The New York Times reports: Worried their chance to cement a conservative majority on the Supreme Court could slip away, a growing number of evangelical and anti-abortion leaders are expressing frustration that Senate Republicans and the White House are not protecting Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh more forcefully from a sexual assault allegation and warning that conservative voters may stay home in November if his nomination falls apart. Several of these leaders, including ones with close ties to the White House…

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#MeToo in the monastery: A Chinese abbot’s fall stirs questions on Buddhism’s path

#MeToo in the monastery: A Chinese abbot’s fall stirs questions on Buddhism’s path

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The New York Times reports: Over the past two decades, religion in China has boomed, and no faith has benefited more than Buddhism. The number of temples has tripled, monks and abbots have become well-known public figures, and China has used the faith to build ties around the world, sending out nuns and monks on good-will missions. The person most closely associated with this revival is the Venerable Xuecheng, a charismatic monk who was fast-tracked for success. He became abbot…

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China has placed hundreds of thousands of Muslims in cultural extermination camps

China has placed hundreds of thousands of Muslims in cultural extermination camps

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The New York Times reports: On the edge of a desert in far western China, an imposing building sits behind a fence topped with barbed wire. Large red characters on the facade urge people to learn Chinese, study law and acquire job skills. Guards make clear that visitors are not welcome. Inside, hundreds of ethnic Uighur Muslims spend their days in a high-pressure indoctrination program, where they are forced to listen to lectures, sing hymns praising the Chinese Communist Party…

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Conservative media move to front line of battle to undermine Pope Francis

Conservative media move to front line of battle to undermine Pope Francis

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Reuters reports: Last March, Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano dined on the outskirts of Rome at the home of a conservative Italian Catholic journalist. Over pasta, fish and white wine, the prelate poured out his concern for the future of the Roman Catholic Church. It was the start of about five months of contacts and collaboration between Vigano and several conservative journalists and media outlets that would lead to one of the greatest crises for the Church in modern times. In…

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Catholics call for mass resignation of U.S. bishops

Catholics call for mass resignation of U.S. bishops

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Following the release of the Pennsylvania grand jury report on the sexual abuse of over 1,000 children by 301 priests, and following a similar scandal earlier this year in Chile that led to its Catholic bishops’ collective resignation, a statement by Catholic theologians, educators, parishioners, and lay leaders says: After years of suppressed truth, the unreserved decisiveness of the Chilean bishops’ resignations communicated to the faithful a message that Catholics in the United States have yet to hear, with an…

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