“Religion” on The Daily Caller

Two scientists have issued a challenge to their colleagues to focus more research on religion, according to ABC News. Religion plays such a large role in billions of people’s’ lives worldwide, so why not use science to help advance the understanding of religion? (more)

Daily Caller readers reacted intensely to last week’s story that Republican lobbyist and quirky socialite Edwina Rogers would be representing the Secular Coalition for America. Many seemed befuddled. How could the conservative lobbyist represent such a leftist group? The Secular Coalition, after all, overwhelmingly supports liberal and government-centered policies, such as requiring religious organizations to provide contraception, through insurance, to their employees. (more)

People who browse religious websites are more likely to have their computers infected with a virus than those who visit pornographic websites, according to Symantec’s annual “Internet Security Threat Report.” The firm found that websites with religious or ideological themes had triple the average number of threats than those featuring adult content. “It is interesting to note that websites hosting adult/pornographic content are not in the top five, but ranked tenth,” Symantec said. “We hypothesize that this is because pornographic website owners already make money from the Internet and, as a result, have a vested interest in keeping their sites malware-free; it’s not good for repeat business.” The report was based on information gathered from more than 200 countries through the Symantec Global Intelligence Network. Symantec blocked a total of 5.5 billion attacks last year, an 81% increase from 2010. (more)

On March 30, an MSNBC news anchor accused the National Organization for Marriage (NOM) of “race-baiting” for (among other charges) writing in a 2009 in-house document, “We … need to … interrupt the attempt to equate gay with black, and sexual orientation with race; we need to make traditional sexual morality intellectually respectable again in elite culture.” (more)

Much of the bad rap that religion gets nowadays can be traced to a single source. From a contemporary perspective, many faiths seem to consider the physical body more as part of the problem than as part of the solution. Jokes about Muslim clothes, Christian chastity belts and holes in Jewish sheets speak to a basic concern that the body itself — not just its appetites or desires — is viewed by religion almost as an enemy. Some Christians, aware of the difficulty, have tried to combat it with something approaching a threesome-with-Jesus campaign. One’s abstinent years are presented as the divine cover charge for a lifetime of awesome God-approved sex with one’s husband or wife. (more)

During the eight years I served in the Congress, including several years during which President Bill Clinton resided at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, I always enjoyed attending the National Prayer Breakfast, held around this time each year. The breakfasts were massive events with thousands of attendees, including most members of Congress, the Washington diplomatic corps, religious leaders from all faiths and all countries and the president and vice president of the United States. (more)

Here’s a headline Jay Leno would rather forget. (more)

File-sharing over the Internet was recognized by the Swedish government as an official religion on Thursday, even while the act of file-sharing remains illegal in the country. (more)

Let’s start with the premise that lawmakers are the only people in America who aren’t convinced we have too many laws. (more)

Conservatives come in all shapes, sizes and colors. We come from every education and income level. We come from every sexual orientation and every faith. With that in mind, let me introduce myself. My name is Becky. I am a conservative and a Wiccan. (more)

President Barack Obama’s Department of Justice will ask the Supreme Court this week to eliminate a long-standing legal precedent that protects religious organizations from government regulations. (more)

Be an atheist or agnostic at your own peril. (more)

For Americans, the anniversary of 9/11 brings forth different emotions. We think back on that day, recalling the trauma of that attack on our nation, reliving those feelings of helplessness, anxiety and fear. (more)

It looks like the lack of sound religion reporting is going to be a real liability this campaign season. Recent weeks have shown that writers on the left are almost wholly ignorant of religion, and writers on the right are unwilling to dismantle the toxic confusion of God and politics lest they suppress the all-important faith vote. (more)

Twenty-five presidential elections ago, a New York Times reporter wondered aloud whether a major nominating convention was a political event or “an assemblage of religious enthusiasts.” This was a fair assessment, as the delegates sang “Onward, Christian Soldiers” and “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” and closed the convention by singing “The Doxology.” (more)

I recently picked up a copy of J Street chief Jeremy Ben-Ami’s new book “A New Voice for Israel.” I flipped directly to the index in order to see what Ben-Ami had to say about my clients, Pastor John Hagee and Christians United for Israel (CUFI).  I was shocked. (more)

As a Latin Mass fan and former Catholic schoolgirl (St. Jude’s, Rockville, MD), I was an unlikely attendee at “The Response,” Texas Governor Rick Perry’s Houston prayer event. But I’m glad I went; it gave me some insights into Rick Perry’s Texas. (more)

Freedom of religion has gone to a new extreme, as Austrian authorities have decided wearing a pasta strainer on one’s head in a driver’s license photo is a state-protected form of religious expression, according to the BBC. (more)

Many of the Continental Army volunteers who were listening to the sermon in Newbury, Massachusetts’s Old South Church couldn’t help but focus on the pulpit itself. It was September 1775, and the church had recently gained fame because the bell in its clock tower was cast by Paul Revere, who had just months before made a name for himself on horseback. But some of the citizen-soldiers listening to Chaplain Samuel Spring’s challenge that day knew that they were also in the presence of another important bit of history — something they saw as very relevant to the emerging War of Independence. (more)

I saw a clip the other day of Bill Maher casually referring to Republicans as “a**holes.” That’s hardly news, and is in fact typical of the discourse-poisoning invective that caused Maher to be widely blamed by the mainstream media for the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords. (Or maybe they didn’t blame him; I forget.) But when I pondered what causes Maher to be so contemptuously dismissive of a plurality of his fellow Americans, an unlikely suspect emerged: Maher’s religious beliefs. (more)