The Gary Null Show – 03.10.17

Prof. Susannah Heschel is the Eli Black Professor of Jewish Studies and a member of the Women’s and Gender Studies faculty at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire. She is the daughter of the renowned Jewish civil rights activist and spiritual leader Rabbi Abraham Heschel, who is well known for his marching alongside Martin Luther King during the Selma, Alabama protests. The King family regarded her father as “one of the great men of our time.” Susannah edited a collection of Rabbi Heschel’s essential teachings for the Modern Spiritual Masters Series. Her very important publication — “The Aryan Jesus: Christian Theologians and the Bible in Nazi Germany” — is the result of 20 years research into the history of anti-Semitic doctrine within the German Christian movement and Catholic Church in Nazi Germany and details how Christianity was perverted to foment a racist doctrine serving the political ambitions of the Nazi regime.

The waning influence of American political parties

Young Americans don’t care much for political parties. According to the Pew Research Center, 48 percent of millennials (ages 18-33) identify as independents. That’s almost as many as identify as Democrats (28 percent) and Republicans (18 percent) put together. Political scientists are often skeptical about the independent option in surveys. Most individuals who choose to call themselves “independents” still vote consistently with one …

Andy Tix – The New Psychology of Atheism

“Do I believe in God?” This is a question many people will ask themselves this week – even if only to themselves – as they go to church to commemorate Easter. Religious beliefs and behaviors are changing. According to the most recent Pew Research Center Religious Landscape Study(link is external), the number of Americans who aren’t affiliated with any religion has grown substantially …

Chris Hedges – The Suicide of the Liberal Church

Paul Tillich wrote that all institutions, including the church, are inherently demonic. Reinhold Niebuhr asserted that no institution could ever achieve the morality of the individual. Institutions, he warned, to extend their lives when confronted with collapse, will swiftly betray the stances that ostensibly define them. Only individual men and women have the strength to hold fast to virtue when …

Resistance Radio – Jennifer Lahl – 11.29.15

Jennifer Lahl is founder and president of The Center for Bioethics and Culture Network. Lahl couples her 25 years of experience as a pediatric critical care nurse, a hospital administrator, and a senior-level nursing manager with a deep passion to speak for those who have no voice. She is called upon to speak alongside lawmakers and members of the scientific community, even being invited to speak to members of the European Parliament in Brussels to address issues of egg trafficking. She serves on the North American Editorial Board for Ethics and Medicine. She made her writing and directing debut producing the documentary film Eggsploitation, which has been awarded Best Documentary by the California Independent Film Festival and has sold in more than 30 countries. She is also Director, Executive Producer, and Co-Writer of Anonymous Father’s Day, a documentary film exploring the stories of women and men who were created by anonymous sperm donation. Her latest film, Breeders: A Subclass of Women? on surrogacy, was released January 2014, and completes the trilogy of films exploring the ethics of third-party reproduction.

Kelly Brogan – What’s the Point of Health?

When the body comes into harmony, it’s more than just symptom relief, it’s an opportunity to come into yourself and ascend that ladder. I used to be an atheist, in fact, I used to be a self-described “belligerent atheist”.  I thought that religious dogma was the outgrowth of fear and unresolved parental issues. Certainly, much modern religion has lost touch …

Why More and More Women Are Embracing Non-Belief – Amanda Marcotte

Atheists were abuzz this week over Pew Research releasing new numbers [3] showing that the number of “nones” (people who have no religion at all) in the U.S. is soaring to record levels, making up a whopping 56 million Americans. In just the past seven years, the percentage of Americans who say they have no specific religious affiliation went from 16 percent to …

Atheists’ self-defeating superiority: Why joining forces with religion is best for non-believers

I’ve written before about the root causes of religious conflict — in a nutshell: it is not about what many people would like you to think it’s about — but I realized recently that I had still been missing part of the picture picture, because I wasn’t accounting for what happens when people get caught up in narrowly tribalistic thinking. If there’s …

It’s Time for Atheists to Stop Debating God’s Existence and Decide What to Do About It

It’s time for atheists to move past theoretical questions about the existence of God and onto more practical pursuits – like how to fight for justice. The atheist community is quickly coming up against the limits of debating whether God is real. The New Atheist movement made a splash in the early 2000s with its brash assertion that the existence …