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Health Care: Abortion Is Not the Only Moral Issue
We suffer, this week, from a moral myopia. Thanks to the passage in Congress of a health-reform bill, abortion is in the news again, but with the same old warriors brandishing their same old spears. Kate Michelman and Frances Kissling
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Hasan was both a Fundamentalist and a Terrorist
We are giving ourselves shallow and untenable choices. Either Islam is a religion that condones violence. Or Islam is a religion of peace. Either Maj. Nidal Hasan, who opened fire at the Army base in Fort Hood, Texas, last week,
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The Fight over Abstinence at Harvard
At Harvard, it’s sounding a lot like the ’70s again. Thanks to the provocations of True Love Revolution, the university’s three-year-old pro-abstinence club, brainy women are defending their right to have sex with whomever they want, whenever and however they
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Mary Gordon’s Rethinking of the Gospels
The novelist and literary critic Mary Gordon loves the story of the prodigal son, for she is a Catholic in her bones. The story, from the Gospels, is of a father’s extravagant love for his proud and dissolute boy, a
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Calling for a Cease-Fire in Religion vs Science
Fourteen minutes into the new film Collision, my fingers started to itch for the fast-forward button. I desperately scanned the movie’s press materials: “How long can this go on?” I wondered. (Answer: 90 minutes.) The documentary, which opens this week,
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New digital Bible could hasten decline of bound Scriptures.
For an hour on Tuesday I was able to imagine a world in which the Good Book no longer existed—at least not in book form. Two men arrived in my office to show me their new product, a digital Bible
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Religious Right Gets Real on Marriage
Billy Graham had a rule. He was a powerful man, away from his wife and children more often than he was with them. Aware of the significance of his reputation and convinced of the moral value of the Gospel message,
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Fact Or Belief? Your Brain Can’t Tell
When a committed Christian says he believes in the Second Coming of Christ, he believes it the way he believes that Michael Jordan was a basketball player. When an avowed atheist says there is no such thing as God, she
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Atheist Richard Dawkins and the Creationists
In his controversial bestseller The God Delusion, evolutionary biologist and atheist Richard Dawkins attacked religious belief. He spoke with me about his new work, The Greatest Show on Earth, and his inimitable style. Excerpts: Why were you motivated to write
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Billy Graham’s Daughter Says Religious Can Be An Impediment
Anne Graham Lotz, the second of Billy and Ruth Graham’s five children, says it’s all right: as long as you have a personal relationship with Jesus, church doesn’t really matter. Neither does denomination. “Religion is an impediment to knowing God,”