http://debashishbanerji.com/culturalwriting/techno-capitalism-and-posthuman-destinies-iii/ This is the story of Christianity in ancient Najran, in Yemen, as found in Ibn Ishaq’s Life of the Messenger of Allah. I quote almost the entirety of it in the above essay, so I figured I would put it up in its original form, as it does not appear to be easily available online […]
Category Archives: Religion
Faymiyun, the Holy Man of Arabia.
24-Oct-12Ati I was born Catholic, and I remain so, but I do not believe I became a real Christian until four years ago, when I had what we may as well call my conversion. It happened as follows. Some young men have difficulty measuring up to their fathers. My brother and I have had something of […]
The Feast of St. Francis of Assisi.
04-Oct-12I think of Saint Francis whenever I encounter the least of the little creatures around me. Today I found two spiders in my bathtub, who could not climb the slick sides of the tub. Recently someone put up a picture on Facebook of a spider. Half the comments were “gross” and the other half were […]
From the Nutty Catholicism Department…
26-Sep-12A friend tipped me off to the story of the “monkey Jesus,” a botched fresco-restoration effort by an elderly woman in a Spanish parochial church. “The once dignified portrait now resembles a crayon sketch of a very hairy monkey in an ill-fitting tunic,” the BBC story reports. This is fine: paintings sometimes get destroyed. But […]
Amazing and weird religious drawings from a band called The Desert Fathers. Amazing.
Finally, Proof of Intelligent Design.
31-Jul-12Frequent ingestion of semen, either vaginally or orally, before pregnancy may help reduce nausea and vomiting during pregnancy – but only if the semen comes from the baby’s father. The medical research looks at this in connection with preeclampsia and more broadly in terms of the health of the pregnant woman. It always impresses me […]
The Catholic Sex Problem, Ctd.
29-Jun-12I just finished The Body and Society, Peter Brown’s stupendously excellent book on early Christian views of the body. The book is filled with interesting excerpts from the saints. Here’s one of them: “The human ideal of continence, I mean that which is set forth by the Greek philosophers, teaches one to resist passion, so […]
Christopher Page.
07-May-12It is very easy to be impressed by Christopher Page. For those with some sense of what they’re looking at, his “Reasons Not to Read the Old Testament” are astonishing. And he’s thoughtful and Christian everywhere.
It seems to be provable even in a lab.
Wealth, Christ, Romney, Mormonism, and the 47 Percent the President Shouldn’t Be Caring About.
18-Sep-12Sometimes I do think that Christianity’s preaching of poverty is a vice, which has broken people like me – that I will never be right, never be happy, never know what is is to be loved or to enjoy human life, because I have been exposed to the message of Christ. I look on Protestantism […]