Tag: religion
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A washing away of what?
How can we sit on the ritualistic and ignore the human richness that religion has to offer?
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“Unchanging”?
It may be very hard to engage with the Bible as an atheist; whether you have dropped faith entirely experientially or because you were born in an atheistic background, your reasons may vary. And I hold no qualms against either; I find that faith is a private journey that I see no reason to condemn…
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The Picture that Launched a Thousand Pitchforks
While the whole Mario Mallia thing is happening, across the ocean we have had a Pope with ailing health who traveled to the ends of the Earth to reach out to the indigenous peoples of Canada to apologize for years of colonial interference, genocide, and cultural suppression. Meantime, back home, the chaplain of the town…
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Fiction as a Scalpel for Reality
The world we live in has its own myth; myth does not mean something which is intrinsically false, but in the sense held by Roland Barthes, a means of signification that leads or takes over reality. The myth of the world can be divided into fact and fiction – the actual, what has been experienced,…
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“Love others as you love yourself (?)”
In an era that is hyper-individualistic, can we really need to “love ourselves” even more? I often think so. To that question, I ask, “…but do we know what that even means or if it is being practiced at all?” If we break it down a bit, a different story will be apparent. Are we…
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“Illum il-festa tagħna!”
Festa season and I have a…complicated relationship Don’t get me wrong; as I have stated before, I used to hate it but I have warmed up to the idea. There are many aspects of it that I have grown to appreciate; within the concept of the traditional Maltese Festa sit most of the best and…
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Opium of the People
Why would a socialist such as myself choose to be in any way religious? Did not Marx famously describe religion as the “Opium of the people”? Well…yes and no. In Context, the statement was issued by Marx from a structuralist-functionalist perspective meaning that it is like a balm for the oppressed to find meaning in…
Typical Topical 