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More on the sci-fi TV show that imagines monotheists rebelling against a polytheist society, speculates about the nature of the human soul, and asks, “Can you be free if you’re not real?”

RD’s senior editor sits down with philosopher Jacob Needleman, whose autobiography What is God? describes his journey from young Ivy-educated professor and atheist, to talk about fundamentalism, atheism, separating the sacred from religion, and why listening is the first step of every ethics.

Dan Brown reimagined Christianity in The Da Vinci Code. In his new novel, America’s most influential pop philosopher takes on Freemasonry, having fun with the bizarre legends surrounding the movement, and exposing the layer of mystical thinking that underlies modern rationalism.

From Left to Right, observers were quick to equate the Mumbai attacks to 9/11. But in doing so, the Left has tied itself in conceptual knots, for only consistency in the condemnation of religious violence can make for a sustainable response to the Right’s demonization of Islam.

In a recent promotional letter, Richard Dawkins caricatured the average American’s Christian beliefs. Problem is, caricatures cease to be useful when the critic invites his audience to deride the real thing based on a lampoon.

In 2005, Rolling Stone contributing editor Janet Reitman first stepped into the New York Church of Scientology to begin research on what culminated in her 2006 article, seeking “to understand Scientology: not to judge, but simply to absorb.”

In order to restore meaning to the ideas of freedom and community, Rev. Billy exposes their current bankruptcy through a “religious” performance drawn from institutional, theatrical, and cultural realms. But make no mistake, it is real.

First of all, the phrase “war on terror” needs to be retired. As a war, it is largely imagined, and as an idea it is ill-conceived. The effect of thinking in terms of global war is to make enemies out of millions of Muslims who would otherwise have been our friends.

76-year-old never-married evangelist Bill Gothard teaches a form of wifely submission that another evangelical theologian has referred to as “the basest form of male chauvinism I have ever heard in a Christian context.” Sarah Posner had the chance to speak at length with the controversial religious leader, as well as with critics and former adherents. The picture that emerges shows the risk, and the devastation, of the abuse of spiritual authority.

A Pulitzer Prize-winning author tangles with one of the most fraught questions of the day: “The danger for science is that, if forced to choose between God or evolution, most Americans will choose God.”