Category Archives: Spirituality, religion and rituals
Just where do the laws of gravity and physics come from? Paul Davies on Taking Science on Faith science has its own faith-based belief system. All science proceeds on the assumption that nature is ordered in a rational and intelligible way. You couldn’t be a scientist if you thought the universe was a meaningless jumble [...]
The nature and power of music is grand, awesome and ultimately a mystery. Dr. Oliver Sacks writes about people with “musical misalignments” that affect their professional and daily lives, like the composer of atonal music who has with “corny” and “tonal” musical hallucinations playing over and over in his brain, what the Germans call earworm. [...]
“At some point in the nineteen-sixties, Hell disappeared. No one could say for certain when this happened. First it was there, then it wasn’t.” The Catholic Novel is Alive and Well in England by Marian Crowe explores Catholic novels in First Things. Why Catholic Novels? They provide an experience somewhat akin to reading those weighty [...]
The most watched movie in history is the Jesus film, having been seen by more than 2 billion people and translated into more than 760 languages and dialects. By July 1, 2007, it’s been seen by 5 billion people. With that success, it’s not a surprise that talking bibles and cellphone [...]
What is the appeal of Christianity to Muslims? It is impossible to understand global politics in the developing world these days without understanding the role and force of religion. Why Muslims Follow Jesus. The results of a recent survey of converts from Islam. In fact, and perhaps counterintuitively, the number of new Christians each year [...]
A stirring depiction of Christianity by Charles Chaput, the archbishop of Denver who delivered a talk on Renewing the Church, Converting the World. To be a Christian is to believe in history. – Christianity, thus, means believing definite things about history and about our own respective places in history. We don’t just profess belief in [...]
I’ve read somewhere that spirituality is most like music. Some are immediately swept away by the music of Bach and Beethoven. Many must cultivate an ear for classical music. Others, tone deaf will never get it. Now via Maggie’s Farm comes a sermon from a pastor who says that people believe more than they [...]
When anthropologists look at religion, in particular Rene Girard, they see the sacred as a human universal. Girard has reminded us of truths that we would rather forget—in particular the truth that religion is not primarily about God but about the sacred, and that the experience of the sacred can be suppressed, ignored and even [...]
From Camille Paglia’s lecture on Religion and the Arts in America I would argue that the route to a renaissance of the American fine arts lies through religion. Let me make my premises clear: I am a professed atheist and a pro-choice libertarian Democrat. — When a society becomes all-consumed in the provincial minutiae of [...]
Tony Snow found unexpected blessings in cancer. Those who have been stricken enjoy the special privilege of being able to fight with their might, main, and faith to live—fully, richly, exuberantly—no matter how their days may be numbered — The mere thought of death somehow makes every blessing vivid, every happiness more luminous and intense.
