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What did the makers of America believe about God and religion? The subject is stirring the very rancour they wanted to avoid. Dec 17th 2011 | Washington, DC

it is precisely because science is so powerful that we need the humanities now more than ever. In your science, mathematics and engineering classes, you're given facts, answers, knowledge, truth. Your professors say, "This is how things are." They give you certainty. The humanities, at least the way I teach them, give you uncertainty, doubt and skepticism. The humanities are subversive. They undermine the claims of all authorities, whether political, religious or scientific. This skepticism is especially important when it comes to claims about humanity, about what we are, where we came from, and even what we can be and should be. Science has replaced religion as our main source of answers to these questions. Science has told us a lot about ourselves, and we're learning more every day. But the humanities remind us that we have an enormous capacity for deluding ourselves. They also tell us that every single human is unique, different than every other human, and each of us keeps changing in unpredictable ways. The societies we live in also keep changing-in part because of science and technology! So in certain important ways, humans resist the kind of explanations that science gives us.

Niece defends JFK's 1960 speech to Houston ministers as better defining 1st Amdmt's meaning & application than Sarah Palin's recent critical construction.

Evangelical protest against not dominating the public square

The conflict in Iraq and Syria is increasingly framed in communal terms. It is said that Shia-Sunni bloodletting is nothing new. Implicit in this simplistic approach is the solution: Let them fight it out among themselves. Reality is not that simple.

An anti-Obama bumper-sticker slogan which seems to urge people to pray for an end to the President's days (in office?).

Douglas Kmiec, pro-life conservative, supports Obama because he thinks he is most likely to REDUCE number of abortions = the real goal

Franklin Graham attacks Islam (& Hinduism) & asserts US is only Judeo-Christian in its roots. "Muslims do not worship the same God I do."