The New War Between Science and Religion

As part of my process of posting my published articles here on my blog for easier access, here is one that was published in The Chronicle of Higher Education Review on May 9, 2010. Note that this was back in 2010 so the word ‘new’ may no longer be applicable. The editors of the magazine said that this article received one of the highest readerships that they had seen.

The New War Between Science and Religion

Frauds hiding behind religion

The US government gives religious institutions all manner of tax breaks and also tends to not scrutinize their workings too closely. Crooked people have been exploiting the extra freedoms given to ostensibly religious institutions, such as so-called pastors living the high life on their tax free incomes and perks.

ProPublica exposes the workings of yet another religion-based fraud that left a lot of people, who trusted the institution would do right by them because they were Christian, in the lurch. They describe the case of Bonnie Marin who purchased insurance through a Christian health insurance company. When she developed a cancerous tumor, she thought that she would be spared the huge cost of treatment. To her shock, after a while, they stopped paying out.
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Book review: The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida (2022)

This novel by Sri Lankan author Shehan Karunatilaka won the prestigious Booker Prize for 2022. He is the second Sri Lankan to win the prize, after Michael Ondaatje. The story is set in 1990 and deals with the carnage that engulfed that country in the decades leading up to that time, with thousands of people, mostly ordinary civilians, dying in the conflicts with suicide-bomb explosions in crowded places, people disappearing, mysterious death squads operating with impunity (‘mysterious’ only in the sense that people were fearful of publicly and openly saying what everyone knew, that these were plain-clothes government forces in unmarked vehicles carrying out extrajudicial kidnappings and executions), and dead and mutilated bodies found floating in rivers, lakes, and canals. As far as I am aware, to this day no one among the senior police, military, and political figures who ordered and executed these atrocities has been held accountable for their actions.

The story begins with narrator Maali Almeida waking up in a waiting room in the afterlife where he is told that he has seven days (‘moons’) to try and figure out how and why he died before he moves on to the next realm. This book falls into the category of magic realism so we are in a world where the spirits of dead people are the main characters as they move around not sensed by the living and are able to go anywhere and listen and watch, though they cannot communicate with the living, except for a very few spirits and that too in very limited ways.
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Measuring Christian nationalism in the US

The PRRI ((Public Religion Research Institute) conducts research at the intersection of religion, culture, and public policy. Along with the Brookings Institution, it recently carried out a survey to measure the extent that Christian nationalism has taken hold in the US.

To measure Christian nationalism, the PRRI/Brookings Christian Nationalism Survey included a battery of five questions about the relationship between Christianity, American identity, and the U.S. government. Respondents were asked whether they completely agree, mostly agree, mostly disagree, or completely disagree with each of the following statements:

  • The U.S. government should declare America a Christian nation.
  • U.S. laws should be based on Christian values.
  • If the U.S. moves away from our Christian foundations, we will not have a country anymore.
  • Being Christian is an important part of being truly American.
  • God has called Christians to exercise dominion over all areas of American society.

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Small steps towards Irish unity

The question of what to do about the open land border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland has plagued the UK ever since Brexit, since Ireland remains part of the EU bloc while Northern Ireland, being part of the UK, is now out of it. Irish people on both sides are adamantly opposed to introducing a customs and border barrier that would interrupt the free flow of goods and people that they have enjoyed ever since the Good Friday peace accord that was signed in 1998 that brought an end to the long standing conflict.

The agreement acknowledged:

  • that the majority of the people of Northern Ireland wished to remain a part of the United Kingdom;
  • that a substantial section of the people of Northern Ireland, and the majority of the people of the island of Ireland, wished to bring about a united Ireland.

Both of these views were acknowledged as being legitimate. For the first time, the Irish government accepted in a binding international agreement that Northern Ireland was part of the United Kingdom. The Irish Constitution was also amended to implicitly recognise Northern Ireland as part of the United Kingdom’s sovereign territory, conditional upon the consent for a united Ireland from majorities of the people in both jurisdictions on the island. On the other hand, the language of the agreement reflects a switch in the United Kingdom’s statutory emphasis from one for the union to one for a united Ireland. The agreement thus left the issue of future sovereignty over Northern Ireland open-ended.

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The role of black conservatives

Chauncey DeVega takes the news about Trump’s deplorable ‘eulogy’ at the memorial service following the death of Lynnette Hardaway, who was the ‘Diamond’ to her sister’s ‘Silk’ as part of a duo who appeared prominently on conservative media as ardent Trump supporters, to examine the role that the current generation of what he calls ‘professional black conservatives’ play in American politics.

“Black conservative” is a specific type of character and performance in post-civil rights America (although the archetype long predates it). In the white right-wing imagination, these are black people who fulfill a fantasy role in a type of new-age race minstrel performance where they denigrate and insult the intelligence, dignity, and political agency of other black people for the pleasures of white “conservatives” and white America. These black conservatives claim that other black people are lazy, have “bad culture”, “can’t think for themselves”, are trapped on a “Democratic Party plantation.” If they “knew better,” black conservatives argue, more black people would actually be “conservatives.” Black conservatives also elevate themselves as exemplars of “hard work” and as “proof” that America is a meritocracy where anything is possible — “if you just stop worrying” about racism.

In what is perhaps their most important role, black conservatives are professional “best black friends.” They serve as mercenaries, human racism deflection shields who are deployed to tell white people some of the most grossly racist and vile things about other black people.
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Evangelicals souring on Trump

I have raised the question before about the hesitancy of the leaders of the evangelical community to rally behind Donald Trump’s candidacy this time around. Caleb Ecarma writes that while they still like him, they have real concerns about his electability, reinforced by his loss in 2020 and the poor showing of his chosen candidates in the mid-term elections in 2018 and 2022. They fear that he may lose agan, preventing them from advancing their reactionary goals.

“There’s a lot of people who share a lot of our similar thoughts but don’t want to go on record,” Bob Vander Plaats, one of America’s top evangelical thought leaders, who hesitantly backed Trump in 2016, tells me. “You can see that it’s almost a silent majority right now,” he says. Everett Piper, a Washington Times columnist and the former president of an evangelical university, published a post-midterm polemic last month arguing that Trump is “hurting…not helping” American evangelicals. “The take-home of this past week is simple: Donald Trump has to go,” Piper added. “If he’s our nominee in 2024, we will get destroyed.” Earlier this month, televangelist James Robison, who served as a spiritual adviser to Trump, likened the former president to a “little elementary schoolchild” while addressing the National Association of Christian Lawmakers. Another major evangelical leader, who requested anonymity, tells me there’s “no doubt” that if Trump wins the primary, Republicans will “get crushed in the general.”

But even as some evangelical leaders seek a divorce, Trump’s influence on the Republican Party has held strong. He’s centered many of the culture wars that evangelical voters have been harping on for decades. And, increasingly, the party’s agenda has become nearly interchangeable with the attitudes of evangelical voters.

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