Thinking About Religion

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Did you know that we're living in the Golden Age of scholarship about religions? You probably don't, because our media generally ignores it, focusing on religion only when it impacts politics or culture war issues. But most people in the world are and always have been religious, and scholars are del…

Dale Tuggy


    • Jan 26, 2019 LATEST EPISODE
    • infrequent NEW EPISODES
    • 1h AVG DURATION
    • 9 EPISODES


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    Latest episodes from Thinking About Religion

    S1 E9 Benjamin Sommer on God’s Bodies

    Play Episode Listen Later Jan 26, 2019 60:00


    Could a human being literally shake hands with God? If so, then God must have at least one hand – and one would think, not only a hand, but a complete humanoid body. While sophisticates have long scorned the idea that God could in any sense have a body, as Dr. Benjamin Sommer points out...

    S1 E8 Graham Oppy on Atheism and Agnosticism

    Play Episode Listen Later Dec 23, 2018 60:00


    Are you a theist, an atheist, an agnostic, or an innocent?

    S1 E7 Jonathan A. C. Brown on the Qur’an and the Hadith

    Play Episode Listen Later Nov 17, 2018 60:00


    When many of us think of a scripture, we think of the Protestant Christian Bible: a well-defined, reasonably small library of writings which can be printed in a single, thick volume. . It’s not that simple in Islam. While there is the Qur’an, there is also an enormous body of reports about Muhammad’s sayings and...

    S1 E6 Donald Lopez on A Jesuit’s Quest for the Soul of Tibet

    Play Episode Listen Later Nov 10, 2018 60:00


    In 1712 Italian Jesuit priest Ippolito Desideri set off an dangerous mission to Tibet, his goal to win souls to Roman Catholic Christianity. But his plan was not to merely preach the gospel, or to combine preaching and charitable works. He would learn Tibetan, familiarize himself with Tibetan paganism, and seek to persuade them to...

    S1 E4 Wendy Doniger on Hinduism

    Play Episode Listen Later Oct 25, 2018 60:00


    Dr. Wendy Doniger’s On Hinduism is a sort of captstone on an epic career exploring Hindu literature, religion, and history. In this conversation we discuss a number of themes from the book, including her own religious background, common misconceptions about Hinduism, the caste system, orientalism, the so-called “Hindu Trinity,” Hindu nationalism, a controversy in India...

    S1 E3 Amy-Jill Levine on The Jewish Annotated New Testament

    Play Episode Listen Later Oct 19, 2018 60:00


    Typically religious scholars will comment on the scriptures of their own religion. But sometimes, bold scholars will go where others fear to tread, commenting the scriptures of another religion. The situation is all the more sensitive when historically, one religion branched off of the other.   This episode of Thinking About Religion is a wide-ranging...

    S1 E2: Richard Weikart on Hitler’s Religion

    Play Episode Listen Later Oct 11, 2018 60:00


    The ghost of Hitler has been drafted into the culture wars – for the other team. Christian leaders have suggested that Nazism was a variety of “atheist extremism.” Atheist champion Richard Dawkins retorted that “Hitler was a Roman Catholic.“   Is either side correct? After analyzing thousands of primary sources, historian Dr. Richard Weikart has...

    S1 E1: David McMahon on Buddhist Modernism

    Play Episode Listen Later Sep 24, 2018 60:00


    Before recent times, most Buddhists, and even most Buddhist monks, did not meditate. Yet today, many consider sitting meditation to be the essence of Buddhist practice. How does the Buddhism one encounters in the religious marketplace today differ from what was taught by its ancient Indian founder? According to Dr. David McMahan, author of The...

    S1 E5 – Andrei Buckareff on Alternative Concepts of God

    Play Episode Listen Later Aug 27, 2018 60:00


    Dr. Andrei Buckareff and some of his co-authors are convinced that in recent times philosophers of religion have been too traditional, focusing too much of their attention on an understanding of God as a perfect creator of the cosmos who is distinct from that cosmos, someone who created it out of nothing. To remedy this...

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