“The kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these,” Jesus said of little children. But computer hackers might give the kids some competition, according to Antonio Spadaro, an Italian Jesuit priest. In an article published earlier this year in La Civilta Cattolica, a fortnightly magazine backed by the Vatican, entitled “Hacker ethics and Christian vision”, Read more
9/11 strengthened fundamentalism in every global faith – and in atheism too. But it has also led to backlashes against these doctrines wherever they have appeared. In Islam there have been positive developments. The attacks were repeatedly and clearly condemned by Muslim leaders all over the world. After Pope Benedict XVI’s controversial Regensburg speech, the Read more
Economics is not a business science, although it has applications to business. Rather, it is part of the liberal arts and is a science of human action. Economics studies the actions that most people take in response to circumstances in their lives, but especially those actions that are visible to us. This is why economists Read more
Is the use of the word the phrase, “I am spiritual but not religious” an attempt to get “the warm cozy feeling” of religious life without making the intellectual commitment to what is the central question: Does God exist?” Adam Frank suggests the those who struggle to integrate their science with their theology reformulate the question. Not Read more
Theologian Elizabeth Johnson was recently critiqued by the US bishops. As the keynote speaker at assembly of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious in 2008 she spoke of the universal need to extend and accept forgiveness. A lesson she must now put into practice herself. In the course of her address she quoted Bernard Haring: “At this time the church is Read more
We should in humility and joyfulness acknowledge that the supernatural and divine reality we all worship in some form or other transcends all our particular categories of thought and imagining, and that because the divine — however named, however apprehended or conceived — is infinite and we are forever finite, we shall never comprehend the Read more
It’s depressing to see Stephen Hawking, one of the most brilliant minds in his field, trying to speak as an expert on things he sadly seems to know rather less about than many averagely intelligent Christians. Of course there are people who think of “heaven” as a kind of pie-in-the-sky dream of an afterlife to Read more
Christopher Lane considers the case of a man who has lost his faith, but continues to practice his religion. ‘I continue to believe that religion brings the potential for a great many good things” says the man. “I could probably continue going through the motions, except that I believe in morality and honesty, and I Read more
The study of philosophy and theology are a waste of time according to one of the world’s greatest living scientists, Stephen Hawking. ‘Most of it is based on a complete disregard of observational evidence and modern science.’ Nuance and a Hawking sentence are, by necessity, strangers, says Adam Clarke Eastes in his critique of what Read more
The U.S. bishops have been accused by a prominent U.S. theologian of not following their own guidelines in handling disputes between bishops and theologians before issuing a critique of last week of a 2007 book by Elizabeth Johnson. The bishops’ doctrine committee said that Elizabeth Johnson’s book, “Quest for the Living God: Mapping Frontiers in the Theology of God” is Read more