Category: Religion
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Islam, creationism, and anti-modernism
The other day I was listening to NPR and they were discussing at length the upheavals in the Arab world. Offhand I noted how the discussants would occasionally shift between “the Arab world” and “the Muslim world,” and naturally…
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The New York Times flubs basic facts about Islam
Since 9/11, and even earlier back to the Iranian Revolution, Western journalists have served as oracles for the mass public, decrypting the ethnographic confusions of the Islamic world. There are many subtle shadings which no doubt can’t make int…
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Culture differences matter (even within Islam)
I’ve been keeping track of events in the Arab world only from a distance. There’s been a lot of excitement on twitter and Facebook. Since I’m not an unalloyed enthusiast for democracy I’ve not joined in in the exultation. But I&…
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God’s Continent: Christianity, Islam, and Europe’s Religious Crisis
Link to review: God’s Contintent, Christianity, Islam and Europe’s Religious Crisis.
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God’s Continent: Christianity, Islam, and Europe’s Religious Crisis
Link to review: God’s Contintent, Christianity, Islam and Europe’s Religious Crisis.
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The Tenth Parallel: Dispatches from the Fault Line Between Christianity and Islam
Link to review: In the lands of the living God
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The Tenth Parallel: Dispatches from the Fault Line Between Christianity and Islam
Link to review: In the lands of the living God
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Marketplace of the Gods: How Economics Explains Religion
Link to review: The dismal gods
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Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth?: Demography and Politics in the Twenty-First Century
Link to review: The wheel of history turns to the gods.
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Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth?: Demography and Politics in the Twenty-First Century
Link to review: The wheel of history turns to the gods.
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The inevitable rise of Amish machines
About 20 years ago I lived for a year in a rural area where Amish were a common feature of country roads and farmers’ markets. My parents, being Muslims, would sometimes buy chickens from the local Amish and slaughter them according to halal. We had a relationship with a particular family. They were nice people,…
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The second aftershock & the rise of irreligion
The book American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us has been getting a lot of press, as it should. It’s pretty rich in data, and finally puts a spotlight on one of the most underreported trends between 1990-2010, the massive surge in irreligion. Because of the power of the Religious Right many Americans perceive…
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How America is a little like Pakistan
Recently a “hot story” in the barbaric nation that is Pakistan is that a politician did not know how to recite a prayer properly. An important back story here is that Muslims generally pray in Arabic, but most Muslims are not Arabic language speakers (and in any case, colloquial Arabic is very different from “Classical…
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Asian Buddhists are not atheists
In response to my two posts below on atheism statistics, people in the comments and around the web (e.g., Facebook) have pointed out that Buddhism is necessarily/can be atheistic, and that Buddhism, is not/not necessarily a religion, and therefore that explains the statistics. Some of these people are lazy/stupid judging by the way the argument…
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Sex differences in global atheism, part N
Whenever I blog religion and atheism I brace for a bunch of uninformed comments. Everyone has an opinion, but few seem genuinely interested in digging for data, or reading about the history of religion, and the empirical realities of the phenomenon. If you are an exception to this trend, you’re awesome, and more power to…
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Most atheists are not white & other non-fairy tales
Xunzi Over at Comment is Free Belief (where I am an occasional contributor) there is an interesting post up, The accidental exclusion of non-white atheists. Actually, I disagree with the thrust of the post pretty strongly. But here’s the important section: Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, PZ Myers, James Randi … if you’re a…
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Religious people have more children because they’re more traditional
Tom Rees has a fascinating post up, Why religious Austrians have more children: On average, the more religious you are, the more kids you’ll have. It’s a widespread phenomenon, seen across pretty much all of the modern world. The problem is, no-one really knows why this happens. It could be something about religious beliefs. Maybe…