A number of years ago I was invited to speak at a conference at Harvard University. At the conclusion of my presentation an attendee asked: “What do you people think you bring to our society?”
The reference to “you people” was to the front row of the audience, which was made up of representatives of a variety of religious traditions, all of whom were in their appropriate identifiable robes.
With an increasing number of Americans leaving religion behind, the University of Miami has received a donation in late April from a wealthy atheist to endow what it says is the nation’s first academic chair “for the study of atheism, humanism and secular ethics.”
Elizabethtown College, an unassuming dot on the intellectual landscape, has become the nation’s beta tester in the emerging field of interfaith studies.
“At its best, religious arbitration is an opportunity for two parties who have shared religious values to resolve those disputes in accordance with their religious values,” says Pepperdine University Law School professor and rabbi Michael Helfand. More →
“The usual notion is that Christianity would have a special problem dealing with intelligence out there, because it would take us away from being the center of the universe. For some people that’s very threatening, because somehow we won’t be as special as we have been,” says astronomer and former NASA historian Steven Dick. More →