How the Ouija board got its sinister reputation
Joseph P. Laycock By now, most have vague notions of the Ouija board horror narrative, in which demonic spirits communicate with – even possess – kids…The Ouija board, however, didn’t always have this sinister reputation.
To Let Live and Make Die: Human Ethics and Moral Machines
Sylvester Johnson In this new, present age of intelligent machines, religious studies experts especially will be faced with a paradigm shift. They have approached problems of ethics and morality by assuming that moral communities are exclusively constituted by communities of biological humans.
Ethiopia’s Heroic Marathoners from Rome to Rio
Arthur Remillard Heroes, then, ask uncomfortable questions because they have little concern for the world as it is.
“New Muslim Cool” as Teaching Tool
Kelly J. Baker In one song, they rap, “We don’t care about the Patriot Act,” and in another, they state, “bin Laden didn’t blow up the projects–it was you.”
Bonnaroo Spirituality and Collective Effervescence
Scott Muir Bonnaroovians overwhelmingly endorse the notion that the festival is a sacred collective experience.
Yee-haw! Guns and Civil Religion in Texas
William B. Parsons Which brings us to guns. There are many, many reasons why campus carry is a bad idea.
Political Realignment in Terror-Times
Louis A. Ruprecht, Jr. Assassination as a form of politics is a terrifying and recurrent aspect of American life.
Fashionable Intolerance
Kelly Baker A couple of months ago, I started watching the first season of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt on Netflix. In the premiere episode, Kimmy and the three other “mole ladies” are rescued by a SWAT team from an underground bunker.
From Sophia to Silicon: The Materiality of Information
Sylvester Johnson In my last post, I discussed Bina48, an intelligent machine engineered as part of the LifeNaut project. LifeNaut engineers have uploaded into Bina48 the memories, speech samples, and other cognitive patterns of an actual human, Bina Aspen Rothblatt.
Accelerating the Contradictions with the Coen Brothers
Mark Hulsether “Would that it were so simple.”