Note, too, that all this talk about making man the objective sounds quite like the supposed heresy of rational humanism. If you took away the theological context of Santorum’s screed, you would have a program for secular politics: Since we are here to serve man, then we should start getting busy with projects of political salvation, like universal health care, environmental protection, the alleviation of poverty, and so on.

Albert "Jack" Stanley told a federal court on Thursday his decision to bribe Nigerian officials in order to win enormous construction contracts was fueled by "ambition, ego and alcohol."

To some extent the so-called conflict seems bogus. A benevolent reading of Blake’s proverb [What is now proved was once, only imagined" from The Marriage of Heaven and Hell] might reduce it to common sense, or to a maxim that any scientist might follow in applying for a grant to test an idea. No idea, no funding; no imagined Higgs boson, no CERN. In this respect the hypothetical construct that drives attempts to prove or disprove it is not the opposite of science but its prime mover. Imagination and proof couple together as tightly as mind and body, or as Blake’s visions and the books that he makes with his hands. Great scientists are visionaries, too.

A moderated panel discussion with leading journalists and broadcasters on issues and trends around they way in which religious identities and communities are represented and reported in the media. The panel will explore the challenges and barriers within the current media landscape that further division and fuel prejudices. They will also identify ways in which the media can be used as a tool to advance understanding and coexistence. The discussion will offer opportunities, methods and resources that enable social activists, religious communicators and aspiring journalism students to be a part of the solution of addressing these challenges. The audience is targeted at a mix of religious communicators, social activists, scholars and NYU journalism students. The event is envisioned to be delivered in partnership with NYU Center for Media and Religion, Odyssey Networks and Religion Communicators Council.

Of course, mixed feelings are at the heart of ethical discourse and moral practice in all human societies. If life were simple, we wouldn't have to think about morality very much—but life isn't simple. What is striking in the case of China is that this “ordinary” moral ambivalence has played itself out against the backdrop of massive social experimentation. What if we try to wipe out our traditional cultural values and practices more or less overnight (as happened during the Cultural Revolution)? What if we restrict families to having one child (as happened with the family planning policy)? What if we take our rural youth and move them, en masse, to the cities (as is happening with the current wave of rural-to-urban migration)?

As anthropologists and others have shown, these experiments have generated an abundance of unintended consequences.

These comments are, on the whole, atrocious and disturbing, for two reasons. First, there seems to be absolutely no interest or concern on the part of most NYTimes readers to comprehend Muslim attitudes toward the Qur'an. As a professor of Islamic Studies, I begin every class on the Qur'an by emphasizing that it should not be understood as a mere 'book'--it is both more and less. Less because Muslims don't read the Qur'an cover-to-cover like a novel; more because it is, along with the exemplary conduct of the Prophet Muhammad, the authoritative source of wisdom about the universe and humanity's place within it for Muslims. Qur'anic passages suffuse Muslim life and worship. The performance of salat, the five daily prayers, is an embodiment of the Qur'an, and Qur'anic verses saturate daily speech and life in most Muslim contexts. Muslims who cannot fully comprehend the linguistic meaning of the text due to illiteracy in Arabic respect the Qur'an no less because of this fact. Is it any surprise that some devout Afghani Muslims take umbrage to the disrespectful actions of their military occupiers? Of course, dismissal of religious attitudes is a secular privilege that we all share, but this brings me to my second objection to the bulk of the comments here: Even if you choose to denigrate the actions of some Afghani Muslims, do not make the vicious mistake of all prejudice and bigotry, the substitution of the actions of a few (the protesters) for the whole.

When a culture attempts to suppress the dimension of ultimate mystery, and to close the doors to transcendent truth, it inevitably becomes impoverished and falls prey… to reductionist and totalitarian readings of the human person and the nature of society.

...You would think, in an empty nation like Kazakhstan, there would be groups encouraging peo­ple to have more children, but ex­actly the opposite is the case. Fam­ily Health International and USAID distribute contraceptives by the ton, the Population Council writes long reports supporting the continued availability of abortion for any rea­son or no reason at all, and, of course, the lethal alphabet soup of the United Nations coordinates ev­erything — UNAIDS, CEDAW, UNDESA, UNDP, UNIFEM, and the omnipresent UNFPA. Nobody could explain why all of these population control groups are necessary in a nation that has an average of only 15 people per square mile.

So it is with great respect and admiration that I celebrate the life of Robert Anton Wilson during this memorial week by remembering that he was the great believing skeptic, someone for whom the collection and curating of all that is weird was his life's work, who reminded us always to question everything, while recognizing that we should never stop exploring. I sure wish RAW was alive today, especially at a time when there is something like a real Occult Revival going on, from the psychedelic explorers who see 2012 as a great trans formative event, to the huge increase in the membership of organization like the O.T.O. and Freemasonry, and by extension a whole load of conspiracy theories. RAW warned against any idea, group, or person that claims knowledge of the "Real" Universe, echoing Umberto Eco who wrote in Foucault's Pendulum we should be mindful of turning metaphysics in mechanics.

Ibrahim [Samira Ibrahim, Egyptian woman who successfully sued the army for "subjecting her to a 'virginity test'"] may not be aware that the humiliating virginity test she was subjected to last March in the Hykestep military prison was not the first of its kind in Egypt’s modern history. In 1832, a “School of Midwives” was established in the Azbakeya district to teach a select number of girls the basics of medical science. Graduates of that school were appointed as paramedics in police stations to do what we now call "forensic" work. In addition to identifying causes of deaths, they also conducted virginity tests on girls whose male relatives had brought them to the police stations to ascertain their virginity. Police records of hundreds of such tests are kept in the Egyptian National Archives. They contain menial statements such as "found not a virgin,” “her hymen has been removed completely” and “she has been used before."

Like all holy figures whose earthly existence separates them from the broad mass of humanity, a saint is a story, and Joan of Arc’s is like no other. The self-proclaimed agent of God’s will, she wasn’t immortalized so much as she entered the collective imagination as a living myth. Centuries after death, she has been embraced by Christians, feminists, French nationalists, Mexican revolutionaries and even hairdressers. (Her crude cut inspired the bob flappers wore as a symbol of independence from patriarchal strictures.) Her voices have been diagnosed retroactively as symptoms of schizophrenia, epilepsy, even tuberculosis. It seems Joan of Arc will never be laid to rest. Is this because stories we understand are stories we forget?

I have been separated from the church for a long time, and the fulcrum of that split has always been my understanding of the sermon on the mount as the nexus of Catholic theology.  I saw, from the vantage point of growing up in the church, a terrible paradox;  on the one hand I learned a wonderful liturgy of social justice based on moral strength rooted in the lessons in the Beatitudes.  It was my understanding that by putting those concerns at the core of our lives we will shine a light, as Catholics, for the rest of the world to see, and in the process make the world a better place, as we, individually embrace the very essence of God.  But time and time again the church failed to overtly embrace the very thing that made it Catholic.