science and religion

ChatGPT is all the rage. It even drives some people into a rage. It does some remarkable things, it does some outrageous things, it does some absurd things. Most things it does badly, such as tell you…

Contemporary American Buddhism has a problem; thankfully, unlike Christianity, it has little to do with the politics of the nation state. Buddhism’s problem is with our state-within-the-state…

For years, in addition to writing about it numerous times for RD , I’ve included a section on psychedelics and religious experience in my Introduction to Religion course. When I first began to teach…

There are some visible signs that particular Buddhist communities in the United States are beginning to see a greater need to respond to what are often today called “challenging” or “adverse”…

Religious freedom has long been a rallying cry of the religious and political right. In recent years, it’s been used to provide a rationale for exemptions from a variety of civil right laws. But at…

Welcome to “Phoning It In,” a gameshow I made up because I am tired and busy but also like to learn about new books! I’m claiming to have made up this game, but if you’ve ever showed up for class…

During our season of political madness , it took a lot to trigger a double-take, and yet a pro-Trump, Covid-denialist pediatrician named Stella Immanuel declaring that illness was caused by the semen…

After a few years hiding in the basements of techno-enthusiasts, virtual reality is back in the limelight. Just in time for a new Matrix movie, Facebook rebranded itself as Meta and tried to take…

In a famous 1958 address commemorating the hundredth anniversary of the publication of Charles Darwin’s and Alfred Russel Wallace’s essays on evolution by natural selection, the distinguished…

In my younger, snottier days, I would have made short work of this piece by Jack Jenkins for Religion News Service: Q: Could Novavax win over some religious vaccine skeptics? A: No. This has been…