Leadingchurch.com

NY Times

The Atlantic

A handful of senior girls became indignant during the course of the interview. “This is my life and my body and I can do whatever I want with it,” or, “I don’t see any problem with it. I’m proud of my body,” Lowe remembers them saying.

The Atlantic

Richardson, for his part, regrets employing the term in his 1997 Runnymede report and has outlined eight problems with using ‘Islamophobic’ as a descriptor of an anti-Islamic individual or activity. Characterizing someone as an Islamophobe, he says, implies that they are “insane or irrational,” which impedes constructive dialogue, obscures the context-specific roots of the observed hostility, and erroneously portrays anxiety about Muslims as a minority condition.

“The key phenomenon to be addressed is arguably anti-Muslim hostility, namely hostility towards an ethno-religious identity within western countries (including Russia), rather than hostility towards the tenets or practices of a worldwide religion,” Richardson writes. “The 1997 Runnymede definition of Islamophobia was ‘a shorthand way of referring to dread or hatred of Islam—and, therefore, to fear or dislike of all or most Muslims.’ In retrospect, it would have been as accurate, or arguably indeed more accurate, to say ‘a shorthand way of referring to fear or dislike of all or most Muslims—and, therefore, dread or hatred of Islam.’”

Sam Harris’ Blog

NYTimes

The weakest intellectual aspect of current atheism is its naïve enchantment with pseudo-scientific biological and psychological explanations of why people believe. There are no doubt all sorts of disreputable sources for religious belief, and the same goes for rejections of religion. But it’s just silly to say that there’s solid scientific evidence that religious belief in general has causes that undermine its claims to truth. Here I think Antony in her interview was right on target: “Theists are insulted by such conjectures (which is all they are) and I don’t blame them. It’s presumptuous to tell someone else why she believes what she believes — if you want to know, start by asking her.”

Link to the whole series is here

• The Dish including “they’re ruining sex for everyone” from Jezebel
• Douthat on Klein

Her-meneutics

http://historicalhorizons.org/tag/integration-of-faith-history/