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"From colonial times into the twentieth century, our laws and court cases ignored atheism, assuming that all good Americans were religious. Americans came to associate atheism with radical social philosophies that advocated violence--especially anarchism and communism. Avowed nonbelievers were derided, even the famous patriot Thomas Paine. Only in the twentieth century, with the passage of laws allowing for conscientious objection to war, did nonbelief...
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Many Americans have been taught a distorted, inaccurate account of our nation's founding, one that claims that the founders were deists who desired the strict separation of church and state and that the country's founding political ideas developed without reference to Christianity. In this revelatory, rigorously argued new book, Mark David Hall thoroughly debunks that modern myth and shows instead that the founders' political ideas were profoundly...
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In what we tell ourselves is an age of reason, we are behaving increasingly irrationally. An astonishing number of people subscribe to celebrity endorsed cults, Mayan armageddon prophecies, scientism, and other varieties of new age, anti-enlightenment philosophies. Millions more advance popular conspiracy theories: AIDS was created in a CIA laboratory, Princess Diana was assassinated, and the 9/11 attacks were an inside job. In The World Turned Upside...
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In their own words, the Supreme Court has become "a national theology board," "a super board of education," and amateur psychologists on a "psycho-journey." The result has been a virtual rewriting of the liberties enumerated in the Constitution. A direct victim of this judicial micromanagement has been the religious aspect of the First Amendment.
For example, the Court now interprets that Amendment under:
• a "Lemon Test" absurdly requiring...
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Ronald Numbers has recruited the leading scholars in this new history of science to puncture the myths, from Galileo's incarceration to Darwin's deathbed conversion to Einstein's belief in a personal God who "didn't play dice with the universe." The picture of science and religion at each other's throats persists in mainstream media and scholarly journals, but each chapter in Galileo Goes to Jail shows how much we have to gain by seeing beyond the...
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In recent years, members of minority religions and atheists have rightly taken advantage of Supreme Court decisions that open up government funding, institutions, and property to participate in public life alongside the Christian majority. Jay Wexler argues for the importance of this movement and travels around the country to meet some of the people on its front line.
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Religion has been a force in the conduct of politics and the formation and functions of most nation-states. Explore how different societies have defined the relationship between religion and state over time, ranging from separation of church and state to theocracy.
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"Drawing deeply on the study of European philosophy, Matthew Stewart pursues a genealogy of the philosophical ideas from which America's revolutionaries drew their inspiration, all ... researched and documented and enlivened with storytelling ... Along the way, he uncovers the true meanings of 'Nature's God,' 'self-evident,' and many other phrases crucial to our understanding of the American experiment but now widely misunderstood"--Dust jacket flap....
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"Freedom of religion is an important part of life in the United States. What does religious freedom actually entail, and why is it a controversial issue? Readers explore the answers to these questions as they learn about the history of religious freedom in the United States and how it compares to other countries. The fact-filled main text addresses this sensitive issue in an unbiased way, and full-color photographs encourage readers to appreciate...