Steveawiggins
MY BLOGS
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Sects and Violence in the Ancient World
http://sawiggins.wordpress.com/
A blog that tries to find intelligent things to say about religion and related subjects.
LATEST ARTICLES ( 4291 )
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Avenge This
Recently rewatching The Avengers I noticed a subtext that had escaped me the first couple of times I saw it. When Loki explains to his victims why he is... Read more
Posted on 27 January 2013 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY -
Moocher Man
Influenza seems to be going around. Since I spend at least three hours a day on a crowded bus I get to observe all kinds of uncouth behavior. Not that I’m alway... Read more
Posted on 26 January 2013 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY -
Stonefaced
Imagine, if you will, life on the open sea. Back in the whaling days. Days before enlightenment really took hold. Transpose that thought onto railroads. In a da... Read more
Posted on 25 January 2013 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY -
Rational Religion
God, Reason and Religion, the title of Steven M. Cahn’s book, fit uneasily together. Or so it would seem. Cahn, a philosophy professor, collected together in... Read more
Posted on 24 January 2013 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY -
Neander Valley
Because we can—but should we? This is technological ethics in a nutshell. While we are still debating what it means to be human and the majority of people in th... Read more
Posted on 23 January 2013 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY -
Twist and Shout
True crime is not really my thing. I find regular life disturbing on a frequent basis, and reading about how someone willfully harmed another only seems to... Read more
Posted on 22 January 2013 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY -
King’s Highway
Sometimes I forget the beauty of the Bible. With its constant current of misuse in our society, it is sometimes easy to forget that, like an abused child, the... Read more
Posted on 21 January 2013 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY -
Money Poppins
Easy answers seldom hold up. Generalizing is a way of dealing with the vast amounts of data people continually process. Now that many of us in the “developed”... Read more
Posted on 20 January 2013 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY -
Angels of Ages
February 12, 1809. Both Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin were born. Some days can be momentous that way. Although I’d known about this coincidental birth for... Read more
Posted on 19 January 2013 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY -
Hardsell and Gospel
When I find myself a considerable distance from my point of egress sometimes I have to take the subway to escape New York. Don’t get me wrong—I love New York,... Read more
Posted on 18 January 2013 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY -
Deep Things
Religion concerns itself with the big issues. The biggest. As a child, I remember wondering how anyone could be concerned with less than the ultimate. Read more
Posted on 17 January 2013 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY -
Witnesses All
“Only the bad man. I see. And you know these bad men by sight? You are able to look into their hearts and see this badness?” The words of Eli Lapp in one of... Read more
Posted on 16 January 2013 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY -
2014
New York City, in a public place—I dare not say where—I see this sign. A certain Orwellian chill shivers my mind as I think back to 1984. Posters everywhere; yo... Read more
Posted on 15 January 2013 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY -
The Splice of Life
Although not really scary, and although almost attainable with current technology, Dren is a curious monster. Many movies of the horror genre have explicit... Read more
Posted on 14 January 2013 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY -
Here’s the Church, Here’s the Steeple
Americans seldom seem to fuss much about religion unless they perceive that it is under threat. We’re real believers in religious liberty that way. The threat... Read more
Posted on 13 January 2013 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY -
Soul University
Cambridge, Massachusetts is a likable town. As students at Boston University my friends and I would occasionally take the red line to Harvard Square and... Read more
Posted on 12 January 2013 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY -
None Too Human
Apropos of nones, CNN’s Belief Blog ran an opinion piece about the nones earlier this week. It seems that Rep. Kyrsten Sinema came out of the closet as a none a... Read more
Posted on 11 January 2013 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY -
Leviathan’s Sibling
Formulaic to the point of plagiarism at times, 1950s science fiction movies often follow the deeply worn ruts left by countless forgettable monsters. Read more
Posted on 10 January 2013 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES -
Out with the Old
It’s become a time-honored tradition, as an old, secular year ends and a new one, brimming with potential commences, for various pundits to sum up the past... Read more
Posted on 09 January 2013 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY -
Priests, Queens, Goddesses and Fruit
“And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit... Read more
Posted on 08 January 2013 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY