It is not clear whether the quirks of search actually shape people’s beliefs. But it’s worth remembering that posing a question to a search engine is not the same as posing a question to any other kind of source. The competition for authority online is governed by a very different set of rules than in previous Read more
Ron Hay, a retired Anglican minister, has written a book, Finding the Forgotten God, subtitled Credible faith for a secular age. He said he was conscious that New Zealand is a very secular country and often a Christian voice doesn’t get much of a hearing in the media. “People have a stereotypical picture that to have Read more
“I think it’s fair to say,” says Géza Röhrig softly, “that we haven’t learned anything from Auschwitz. The cruelty exhibited there exists today against the Kurds and elsewhere. “You have a feeling of insecurity about tomorrow. There’s a level of chaos because global powers do not agree on the most minimal consensus.” Röhrig is the Read more
Eighteen years ago, Lisa Miller, now the director of clinical psychology at Columbia University’s Teachers College, had an epiphany on a New York subway car. She had been poring over the mountains of data generated by a three-generation study of depressed women and their children and grandchildren. The biological trend was clear: Women with severe—and Read more
Some scientists have suggested that belief in the big gods of moralising religions, such as Islam and Christianity, helped people cooperate with each other and encouraged societies to grow. Psychology studies have shown people are nicer to each other when they think someone is watching, —especially if they believe that someone has the power to Read more
I was 18 or 19 when I told the local Church of Ireland minister in Dunmurry, Canon Robert C Ellis, that I was an atheist and could no longer sing in the church choir or superintend the Sunday School classes on the council housing estate in nearby Seymour Hill where I lived with my aging Read more
(RNS) In the West, the idea that religion is inherently violent is taken for granted by everyone from academics to cab drivers, says British religion scholar Karen Armstrong, the former Roman Catholic nun who wrote the best-selling “A History of God.” Her new book, “Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence,” picks at the Read more
God has been removed from the promise recited by all members of Girl Guiding New Zealand, after more than a century of being mentioned. The move, which took place in April this year, has raised barely a ripple of dissent. “A couple of people have said they liked the old one better, but there’s been Read more
The Catholic Church has to turn the image of a punitive, judgemental God head over heels, the Archbishop of Dublin says. Speaking at a Mass in Dublin on the feast of Our Lady of Mercy, Archbishop Diarmuid Martin said many in his generation grew up in a religion where this punitive image prevailed. “Mercy was Read more
Some say they were pursued by the Hound of Heaven, a Grace that would not take leave, not in the “nights”or “down the days,” the “arches of the years” or the “labyrinthine ways.” That poetry never much resonated with me. The first time I heard it I wondered, “At what rate did he travel, this hound?” Poetry is hard for literalists to Read more