IN WHAT CAME TO BE KNOWN as his farewell address, Muhammad is said to have told his followers: I was ordered to fight all men until they say ‘There is no god but Allah.’1 This is entirely consistent w...
Even more important, Islam holds that the universe is inherently irrational—that there is no cause and effect—because everything happens as the direct result of Allah’s will at that particular time. A...
How many victims were consumed by these ceremonies? In 1487, well before any contact with Europeans, the Aztecs inaugurated their great new Templo Mayor. The day began with four lines of victims, each...
Rachfahl noted that the Protestant Ethic thesis was contradicted by the geography of the rise of industrial capitalism. For example, Amsterdam and Antwerp developed industrial capitalism very early wh...
Liberation Theology led nowhere because it was neither a revolutionary nor a religious movement, but involved a weak, self-cancelling mixture of each.
The truth is that science arose only because the doctrine of the rational creator of a rational universe made scientific inquiry plausible. Similarly, the idea of progress was inherent in Jewish conce...
Keep in mind that democracy merely gives power to the people; it does not ensure that power will be used wisely or humanely.
Immodesty’ in dress was outlawed. A woman was jailed for arranging her hair at an ‘immoral height’.
Once the Lutheran churches were secure, Luther, like most other leaders of the Reformations, believed in freedom of conscience only for those who agreed with him.
Then they calculated the relationship between Protestantism and these measures of industrial capitalism. The results were zero: Catholic and Protestant nations did not differ!
Only One True God can provide an adequate religious basis for the moral order. Divine essences such as the Tao do not command us to love one another. The first mover does not forbid us to covet anothe...
Does not ensure that power will be used wisely or humanely.
Thus it is that the statement on the Jews issued by Vatican II in 1965 was nothing more (or less) than a forceful restatement of the traditional church teachings in language appropriate for the time....
In fact, all known societies above the very primitive level have been slave societies—even many of the Northwest American Indian tribes had slaves long before Columbus’s voyage.46 Amid this universal...
The only common feature of the three successful Reformations was their rejection of papal authority; otherwise they were quite at odds.
My explanation is that England led the way in science for the same reasons that it led the way in the Industrial Revolution31 – its substantially greater political and economic liberty had produced a...
For example, at the fall of Rome there was very extensive slavery everywhere in Europe; by the time of the Renaissance it was long gone.
Given the American example, it should always have been obvious that the sacred canopy claims are silly. In the United States, in the most fully pluralistic nation that probably has ever existed, relig...
Most assumed this was due to the fact that church services (with the exception of occasional brief homilies) were in Latin, a language that almost no one in the pews could understand. Thus, it was bel...
Property is insecure. In this one phrase the whole history of Asia is contained.
Showing 41 to 60 of 145 results