*desperately trying to avoid typing “theoCRAZY!”* I missed this discussion at school, but have been seeing flyers for a forum on asylum law that state: HOW IMPORTANT IS YOUR FREEDOM OF RELIGION? [...] Come hear [asylum professionals] discuss asylum law and practice. In particular, they will discuss the plight of Christian converts in Iran and [...]

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This is one of my all time favorite songs. Depeche Mode (the peach, with ice cream?) wrote a haunting offer to stand in for a missing element: [wp_youtube]KW3aEimWW10[/wp_youtube] Your own, personal, Jesus. A Jesus you don’t have to share with the rest of humanity. Someone who cares A wonderful indictment against an indifferent Jesus.

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My cousin does a lot of babysitting. She recently babysat a kid who was trying to tell her about a friend’s imaginary friend, Genius, who was a reverse zombie: he died but then, instead of wanting to eat your brains, he wants us to eat his. It took my (Catholic) cousin a long time to [...]

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A vid take on MoF’s Sparks: First up, Stuart Shepard, who I’d not heard of before today but is apparently a member of Focus on the Family’s activism arm, is encouraging everyone to encourage his God to rain on Obama’s acceptance speech. Which seems to me to be incredibly petty: pray for peace? pray for [...]

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During Obama’s recent visit to the Western Wall in Jerusalem, according to tradition, he wrote a prayer on a piece of paper and left it there. However, since he is under media scrutiny right now, it was stolen by a young seminary student (who should have known better!). While I disagree completely with its theft, [...]

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I’m sorry for all the sparks recently, but I couldn’t resist this one. Enjoy!

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I did some bad things during my stint as a Mormon missionary in Japan.  I’d like to repent of one of them right now. Some of my Japanese friends confided deep, personal spiritual experiences with me.  In several cases I coopted their experiences for my own ends, and using my words, contorted them so that [...]

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I checked out this survey on a prompt from Pharyngula. I recommend that you do the same. We may indeed be giving the creator of the survey food for thought, but what I found was that it was a good, concrete way to think about my own beliefs, hang-ups, and tendencies. I think it’s a [...]

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By now, many of you will have heard that one of the Vatican’s astronomers has indicated that there might be life on other planets. Even that they might be without sin. Many of my favorite science fiction books involve the intersection of religion and space travel (Dune and Ender’s Game chief among them). But really, [...]

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(It’s that time again – guest post from Zach time.) (Image from Bloomsbury Auctions) Lots of people are talking about a newly-surfaced letter by Einstein, which seems to clarify his ambiguous views on religion with the following strongly-worded statements: The word god is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, [...]

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