Interfaith Encounters
The most common, the most popular framework for analyzing religion in America appears to be fear. Religion is complicated. It always amazes me when people think they can read a couple of books, check out a website or two, and then begin making strong assertions about this or that religion. Would they do that with [Read More...]
A summer of violence is winding to an end, with yet another war between Israel and Hamas, the rapid rise of ISIS and its reign of terror against every possible sectarian or religious minority, and nations from the Magrib to Southeast Asian slipping into failed state status. Two things have become clear. First that religion [Read More...]
Is Islam a Religion of Peace? Yes and No. Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, and the other religions I know of all encourage peace, both personal and social. Yet at this moment in time members of all of these religions are not peaceful. By the billions they are afflicted with inner turmoil, sleepless nights, and [Read More...]
Editors’ Note: This article is part of the Public Square 2014 Summer Series: Conversations on Religious Trends. Read other perspectives from the Patheos community here. A recent book by Timothy Keller made the New York Times Best Seller list. “The Reason for God, Belief in an Age of Skepticism.” I suppose it has value for those for whom it [Read More...]
Is agnosticism an tenable position in a religiously plural society? No. In my recent travels in Europe I fell into a conversation with a self-professed agnostic and a self-professed atheist, in which the atheist challenged the intellectual integrity of the agnostic’s position. The atheist’s argument was simple. The agnostic maintained that God’s existence was a [Read More...]
My last blog generated some interesting discussions. The interview below covers some of the issues raised in that discussion – and sheds new light on the arguments on both sides. http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/category/the-stone/ [Read more...]
Real dialogue is necessary, not over the important secondary matter of whether God exists, but over the primary question of what constitutes the basis for human knowing. Two ads in the most recent edition of Scientific American caught my eye. On page 24 is an ad called “Leaving Truth.” It promotes a book designed to [Read More...]
Each year I ask my students to write papers that have a clear thesis statement, a further clarification of the thesis in terms of definitions, a set of arguments for the thesis based on recognizable authorities, and a recognition of and answer to counter arguments. And finally a conclusion that reiterates the thesis and expresses [Read More...]
Naomi Schaefer Riley sums up what she learned about getting post-college millenials back to the church, mosque, and synagogue in the final paragraph of her latest book: Got Religion. How Churches, Mosques, and Synagogues can Bring Young People Back. Little of what she offers strikes me as new. Peruse the various blogs on Patheos and [Read More...]
Maybe it is time we just drop the word God from our vocabulary in inter-religious dialogue, or for that matter any discourse. I recently read a prescient comment in book pointing out that Europe and North America are going the way of Japan in possessing a robust spirituality without any reference to God. Being “spiritual [Read More...]
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