The Immanent Frame

Bloggingheads.tv has recently put up two “diavlogs” on issues related to religion and sexuality.

The New York Times recently published an article by Trymaine Lee detailing the hard times that the smaller, less well-known African American churches in Harlem have come upon. This includes not only financial difficulty but poor attendance (which are undoubtedly  linked). Both have to do with the utter absence of young people in not only these churches but many mainline Protestant churches across the country. But in Harlem, there are very local factors as to why these smaller churches are struggling.

The bulk of the debates on religion and science today focus on ethical issues regarding advances in medical science and technology, such as cloning and stem-cell research, while far less attention has been paid to the potentials of computing and artificial intelligence (though this very topic was the subject of early cyberneticist Norbert Wiener’s God and Golem, Inc.).

Oxford University Press, however, has just published Apocalyptic AI: Visions of Heaven in Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, and Virtual Reality, by Robert Geraci, which attempts to articulate what the author calls a “cyber-theology.”

Recently, there was a brief back and forth at Cif Belief between Michael McGhee and Stephen Clark. The former, a self-described secular humanist, is currently on the philosophy faculty at Liverpool University, where the latter, “a professing Christian,” is Professor Emeritus.

In light of the bad press that the Catholic Church has been receiving lately regarding the cover-up of sexual abuse cases, this report from KUOW, the local NPR affiliate in Seattle, that three Seattle-area Catholic women’s communities are under investigation by the Church, following complaints of “feminism” and “activism,” is a bit of a head-scratcher.

At Design Observer, William Drenttel offers up a post and slide show on religious signage in the American South. He ponders whether the usually nondescript signs in front of churches that contain a Bible verse and the name of the church and/or pastor are at all reflective of a cultural difference between New England, where he is from and currently lives, and the South in how religion is expressed.

Over at the British weekly The Observer, Peter Stanford reviews Is God Still an Englishman?, the latest from Cole Moreton.

Long known for lambasting religious groups and celebrities alike (Scientology, thus, being one of the producers’ favorite targets), South Park, the long-running animated series on Comedy Central, made some news recently, when it depicted the Prophet Muhammad during its 200th episode. The episode deliberately blurred the lines of what is understood by “representation” or “depiction” of the Prophet, a question that has been especially touchy in the wake of the Danish cartoon incident.

Max Fisher at the Atlantic Wire has compiled a set of articles and blog posts around the Web dealing with the rather complex relationship that the Obama administration currently has with U.S. Muslim groups. These range in opinion from those who believe the President is not doing enough to those who believe that Obama is somehow a friend to Islamic extremists.

Eddie Glaude’s proclamation that “The Black Church is Dead” has had a vast ripple-effect across the Web. Recently, Candice Benbow, over at Selah and Amen,  offered a lengthy assessment of Professor Glaude’s article.