So two things relevant to our conversation have come up recently at The Huffington Post, and I thought you might be interested, so I am linking you to them.
1) A pictorial calendar of religious holidays. This is cool because it gives you a sense of what religions, lots of different religions, look like and the holidays that they celebrate. There are big ones here (like Easter or Yom Kippur), but there are also smaller holidays that you might not know about unless you practice a particular religion or have studied it extensively. Thus, this is a good introduction. It's also a moment to think about the term "text" more broadly as Robert Adams hints at in your homework reading when he wants to expand the term "science fiction" to include the "texts" of Star Wars, a film, as well as various other television shows, musical compositions, graphic novels, and plastic art pieces. This broader definition of "text"is one that we will be using in class frequently, so here is another chance to examine multiple "texts," in the form of photographs, from multiple religions.
2) Peter Ens has a brief article once again revisiting the evolution-Evangelical conflict. We touched on this briefly when we watched The Big Bang Theory and then again when we discussed the Conflict paradigm in the relationship between religion and science. We will inevitably return to this conflict when we talk more directly about evolution. For now, here is another moment for you to enter the conversation.
Feel free to post any thoughts you might have about either.
The second article is troublesome to me; it seems to suggest that the atheistic sects have rallied together to launch an all-out attack on faith, Christianity, and God himself in some concerted effort to exterminate religion. It seems highly exaggerated, especially when the author claims that Evangelicals are in "damage control." I don't see this at all. I think atheists are still a long way from being able to genuinely challenge the existence of God on a societal scale, and as of yet, their arguments are largely focused on defending themselves and their point of view from a society that has a history (a long, 2000 year history) of doing terrible things to atheists. The article portrays religion as on the defensive. That's bogus - a Gallup poll says 91% of Americans still believe in God or a Universal spirit. So, I guess my point is that I strongly object to the article's tone.
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