How can you easily spot religion in science clothing? According to New Scientist book review editor Amanda Gefter, look for these code words:
I've often wished that I had a short list of impressive transition fossils handy for the next time a creationist claimed to me that there were no such transition fossils. Well, here's the list I've been looking for, published by the National Geographic. The first fossil on National Geographic's list is the especially compelling find, Tiktaalik, the "fishopod."
In the shadow of all the antivax buzz lately, I'd like to recommend a process of intellectual inoculation for children. This post is based on Best Practices 5: Encourage religious literacy from The Meming of Life. It illustrates the benefit of teaching your children about religion, to protect them from its excesses. McGowan argues that parents who want their kids to follow in their secular (agnostic/atheist/ignostic/etc) footsteps should not obsessively protect them from all exposure to the churchy crowd. Rather one needs to gradually expose them to doses of gentle strains of all the relevant faith memes. If not, they will be vulnerable to the first virulent strain to come along when they begin independent thought, and have a "teen epiphany". (Excerpt)
Struggles with identity, confidence, and countless other issues are a given part of the teen years. Sometimes these struggles generate a genuine personal crisis, at which point religious peers often pose a single question: "Don't you know about Jesus?" If your child says, "No," the peer will come back incredulously with, "YOU don't know JESUS? Omigosh, Jesus is The Answer!" Boom, we have an emotional hijacking. And such hijackings don't end up in moderate Methodism. This is the moment when nonreligious teens fly all the way across the spectrum to evangelical fundamentalism.
A little knowledge about religion allows the teen to say, "Yeah, I know about Jesus"-and to know that reliable answers to personal problems are better found elsewhere.
It is best to start early. Bedtime stories should have consistency for the comfort of the child, and variety to hold the interest of the child. Maybe do a month of "how we got here" stories from various cultures. Kipling, Torah, Norse, Navajo, Hindu, and so on. Show the richness of cultures and the similarities of ideas that underlie all the world religions. But parents need to be prepared. Learn about oral traditions and the power of mythos. Read Joseph Campbell , Homer , and The Arabian Nights . Know of Gilgamesh and Beowulf and Odin , the Ring of the Nibelungen and the Bhagavad Gita , and certainly know the current local favorite, the Torah .Andrew Sullivan proposes a a new category of belief between Believer and Skeptic. Or at least I first heard the term "Christian Hipster" at the Daily Dish. What kind of people does it describe?
A "Christian Hipster" as described in this article merely describes a person who both believes in Christ anda explores the world for themselves, rather than taking their Pastor/Mother/Father/Dobson's opinion as unquestionable.
Here's a bit more from a prior post by Andrew Sullivan:Christian hipsters like music, movies, and books that are well-respected by their respective artistic communities—Christian or not. ... They tend to be fans of any number of the following authors: Flannery O’Connor, Walker Percy, Wendell Berry, Thomas Merton, John Howard Yoder, Walter Brueggemann, N.T. Wright, Brennan Manning, Eugene Peterson, Anne Lamott, C.S. Lewis, G.K. Chesterton, Henri Nouwen, Soren Kierkegaard, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Annie Dillard, Marilynne Robison, Chuck Klosterman, David Sedaris, or anything ancient and/or philosophically important.
Sounds like a modest step in the right direction. Sounds a lot like what Christians used to be before the political right wing (religious and political) redefined "Christians" as self-righteous people who refuse to consider compelling real-life evidence.Tis a pity we don't make things like this in the U.S. Neun = 9, Mal = times, Klug = smart. So Susi Neunmalklug translates into Susie Smartypants. Yeah. Ask a linguist or etymologist about the evolution of vernacular. So, imagine a religion teacher coming in to your class and explaining where we come from to kids who were raised to know better. Anyway, this video is wa-ay cute, and has English subtitles. Tip of the mustache to Pharyngula