From Stalingrad’s Madonna.
Christmas in the kettle
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Tag Archives: religion
Human Sacrifice in Ancient Ireland
What the Norwegian shooter believes, in his own words
From
The Norway Massacre: Born of Ideology or Belief? via
From Arne Fjeldstad: Belief? Ideology? Faith?”
It is not required that you have a personal relationship with God or Jesus in order to fight for our Christian cultural heritage and the European way. In many ways, our modern societies and European secularism is a result of European Christendom and the enlightenment. It is therefore essential to understand the difference between a “Christian fundamentalist theocracy” (everything we do not want) and a secular European society based on our Christian cultural heritage (what we do want).
The European cultural heritage, our norms (moral codes and social structures included), our traditions and our modern political systems are based on Christianity – Protestantism, Catholicism, Orthodox Christianity and the legacy of the European enlightenment (reason is the primary source and legitimacy for authority).
News from the 16th Century
Is Bachmann the media’s anti-Christ?
Yesterday, California became the first state to require gay history in public school textbooks. But Im thinking states might want to consider just focusing on basic history. Yesterdays news cycle was full of stories showing some pretty striking ignorance of the events of the 16th century.
The article links to Bachmanns Former Church says Papacy is Antichrist; Will it Matter?, which is quite entertaining.
Not so old after all
The f-word
Still, there is a bit more to the meaning of ‘fundamentalist’ (in this widely current use): it isn’t simply a term of abuse. In addition to its emotive force, it does have some cognitive content, and ordinarily denotes relatively conservative theological views. That makes it more like ‘stupid sumbitch’ (or maybe ‘fascist sumbitch’?) than ‘sumbitch’ simpliciter. Continue reading
A Royal Funeral
Sleuthing around the Great Death-Pit
In Ur, royal families ordered the violent deaths of dozens of young courtiers and servants so that they might continue to serve dead kings and queens in the afterlife.
So enough complaining about the Royal Wedding. Long before there was a Kate Middleton, long before there was a Princess Diana coyly courting the cameras and a Bertie Windsor wrestling with a stammer, there were royal families whose sense of entitlement truly knew no bounds.
Exodus 2.0
His/Her Story: A landed woman
From the Elephantine archives, the first historical documentation of a Jewish woman.
The Jewish woman Mibtahiah’s archive contains 10 documents found in superb condition; they reveal surprising details concerning her life and the options available to Jewish women in this settlement.
Mibtahiah never exercised her option to divorce and seemed to have had good relationships with her father and both husbands. This independent homeowner who could afford to accept a symbolic return of a loan to her father might well be the first Jewish woman for whom we have original documentation.
The Long Divergence
IN 2002 a group of Arab scholars produced a brave report, under the auspices of the United Nations, on the Arab world’s twin deficits, in freedom and knowledge. A salutary debate ensued. Now Timur Kuran, a Turkish-American economist based at Duke University, has written an equally brave book on “how Islamic law held back the Middle East”. One can only hope that the result will be an equally salutary debate.
From Hilbert Space to Dilbert Space, and beyond 