On Saturday May 14, 2005, about 100 people arrived outside Calvary Temple, an independent pentecostal church in downtown Winnipeg, to protest against a conference being held held in the church – about 400 people were expected – led by representatives of Focus on the Family. The newspaper story wasn’t clear on it, but it was …
The title of George Weigel’s The Truth of Catholicism, Ten Controversies Explored, suggests this book will sound like a finger-wagging, lecturing apologetic in defence of Catholic orthodoxy. In fact this 2001 book, like his 2004 book “Letters to a Young Catholic” is an literate and enthusiastic presentation of orthodox Catholic teachings in an American context.
Here are links to two stories about the irony of dogma – specifically about atheist dogmas. Atheists reject religious dogmas and criticize dogmatic reasoning. However celebrity atheists, for instance the scientist and popular writer Richard Dawkins, can present themselves as dogmatic. There are two dimensions of the word dogmatic in popular usage. There is a …
The election of Pope Benedict XVI has highlighted several things about the media. The news is presented as entertainment – simple stories, visuals, staged conflict, obsessed with celebrity. What passes for informed commentary is usually an ideological rant complaining that the Pope is conservative. Everyone knows that he wrote a lot of books, few seem …
An odd find – I was looking for something different when I found this review of a book debunking the feminist/Wiccan/New Age myth that Christians burned 9 million innocent women as witches. In fact a lot of druidic and Wiccan folklore seems to have been invented or re-invented and then plugged into fluffy spirituality in …
Arts and Letters Daily linked to Michael Valpy’s long article in the Globe and Mail, Saturday April 2, 2005. It seems to be a good overview of the life of Karol Wojtyla and a balanced assessment of his papacy, touching the main issues as they appear to present-day observers. Brendan O’Neill’s article at Spiked makes …
Paul C. Vitz published Faith of the Fatherless, The Psychology of Atheism (1999) to question the projection theory of religion. He turns Freud’s version of the theory back on Freud by questioning the relationships of many leading atheist thinkers with their fathers. His book is best viewed as an articulate deconstruction of some of the …
A review of a new sociological study about the religious beliefs of American teens- “Moral Therapeutic Deism” – published at The Revealer has a good comment that shows how culture dominates religion, and how religion relates to culture. The basic point is that self-described Christian American teenagers are as materialistic and self-absorbed as their peers.
A little browsing. First, following up on my summary of Dr. Vitz’s article “Pyschology in Recovery“, the article is now on line here. I found several other articles that related to things I have been thinking and writing about. The common threads are rationalism & the Enlightenment, religion, and faith. I haven’t worked out what …
A couple of links. Kill the Buddha started as an Internet project and turned into a book. I have heard the authors interviewed on the radio. Their project sounds different from the conventional posturing of people who want to be “spiritual” without being “religious”, although that seems to be their starting point. One of the …