Andrew Sullivan reviews Robert Wright’s account of the evolution of religion

At the Daily Dish I learned that Andrew Sullivan reviewed Robert Wright's new book, The Evolution of God, in the London Times. Here's an excerpt:

From primitive animists to the legends of the first gods, battling like irrational cloud-inhabiting humans over the cosmos, Wright tells the story of how war and trade, technology and human interaction slowly exposed humans to the gods of others. How this awareness led to the Jewish innovation of a hidden and universal God, how the cosmopolitan early Christians, in order to market their doctrines more successfully, universalised and sanitised this Jewish God in turn, and how Islam equally included a civilising universalism despite its doctrinal rigidity and founding violence.

Fundamentalism, in this reading, is a kind of repetitive neurotic interlude in the evolution of religion towards more benign and global forms.

Continue ReadingAndrew Sullivan reviews Robert Wright’s account of the evolution of religion

Banks and Republicans are blocking short-sales of homes

A middle-aged couple who bought a home in my neighborhood are in a terrible situation. They paid too much for their new house, which needed a lot of repairs, and they failed to aggressively work to sell their existing home. Therefore, they now have two houses. They continue to live in their original home while their new house (two houses away from where I live) has been vacant for three years and it is falling apart. I’m not talking about chipped paint. There are huge holes in the roof that are causing the house to rot out. Check out the garage roof too: Image by Erich Vieth[/caption] People who know a lot about rehabbing houses tell me that if this house and garage don’t get immediate attention, they will need to be completely torn down.

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More Catholic than the Pope

With many American Catholics outraged that Notre Dame university has invited Barack Obama to deliver its commencement address -- a position the Pope himself apparently finds untroubling -- one wonders if America's Catholic conservatives are more concerned about politics than about any genuine religious doctrine. Indeed, the Vatican's own official publication, L'Osservatore Romano has labeled Obama's first three months in office as "One hundred days that didn't shake the world." Meanwhile, the American anti-abortion-rights group, National Right to Life Committee, has moved to criticize the Vatican's "surprisingly positive assessment" of President Obama's approach to life issues and called on Notre Dame university to rescind the Obama invitation. According to the NRLC, Notre Dame's invitation is "an affront to all who believe in the sanctity and dignity of human life." Since Pope Benedict does not seem to consider the Obama invitation "an affront," the NRLC would apparently exclude Pope Benedict from its list of those who believe in the sanctity and dignity of human life. If extremism like that informs America's Republican party, America's conservatives should perhaps anticipate a much longer period of Democratic rule. And for good reason.

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Obama strikes all funding for abstinence-only sex education

As reported at Daily Kos:

Yesterday, President Obama struck a blow to the abstinence-only community, cutting ALL of their funding streams in his new 2010 budget. Obama made it clear that our government should no longer fund these failed programs that promote misinformation, misogyny, discrimination and, of course, juggling and cinder block wielding abstinence clowns.

Watch the videos posted at Daily Kos to get a real flavor for the opposition (Ms. Unruh), who repeatdly claims that babies are good, we need babies, and that birth control pills are attempts by the pharmaceutical companies to oppress women. She claims that using real birth control is an attempt to turn women into men.

Continue ReadingObama strikes all funding for abstinence-only sex education