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2016-03-29T10:00:31-04:00

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Simple Living Is The Perfect Antidote To Mindless Consumerism.

Last updated on: March 29, 2016 at 10:00 am By Gerard A. Murphy

In the aftermath of 9/11, President George W. Bush urged Americans not to be intimidated by the “war on terror,” but to get back to our lives of shopping, flying and “business as usual.” The dubious wisdom of this directive aside, it seems to me that the average American consumer doesn’t need much encouragement. Take our annual “Black Friday” extravaganza. Who is fueling whose agenda? In 2014, store profits peaked around $50.9 billion –an 11 percent dip from the previous year. Last year’s profits dipped... Read more

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2017-04-10T22:00:00-04:00

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Good Friday and Why I’m Over It

Last updated on: April 10, 2017 at 10:00 pm By Gerard A. Murphy

Dethroning atonement theology for good . . Read more

2016-03-18T10:00:15-04:00

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Solo Sex: Taking “Holy Orgasm” into Our Own Hands

Last updated on: March 18, 2016 at 10:00 am By Gerard A. Murphy

As I wait kneeling in the dark, musty confessional for the priest to slide back the screen separating his side of the “sin bin” to mine, I go over one more time my list of venial and possibly “mortal” sins. It’s the liturgical season of Lent; I’m a dutiful and devout Catholic teenager: and I’m in the “sin bin” to wipe the slate clean. As I’m stumbling through my ‘list’ of offenses and come to the “harboring impure thoughts”one (a... Read more

2016-03-15T12:30:37-04:00

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

St. Patrick: Shifty Beguiler of the Native Celts

Last updated on: March 15, 2016 at 12:30 pm By Gerard A. Murphy

It’s Paddy’s Day on Thursday, March 17th. So firstly, as a native Irishman living stateside, I’d like to set the record straight: the Irish don’t eat (nor particularly like) corned beef! Traditionally we’re bacon & cabbage gobblers; but corned beefers? Sorry. That’s an immigrant Jewish practice their starving Irish neighbors adopted out of necessity. According to thekitchenproject.com, when the Irish arrived in America, they couldn’t find a bacon joint like they had in Ireland so they settled for Jewish corned... Read more

2016-03-05T13:14:33-04:00

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

5 Questions to Consider Before Uttering (or Writing) a Word.

Last updated on: March 5, 2016 at 1:14 pm By Gerard A. Murphy

“Think twice before you speak, because your words and influence will plant the seed of either success or failure in the mind of another.” ~ Napoleon Hill In a digital age of Smartphone texting and Twittering sound bytes, do we have the time to pause—even for a nanosecond—to consider the possible repercussions of what we say? Hardly. So how do we express the essential, dispense with the fluff, and ultimately leave all interlocutors in the thread unharmed and whole? Here’s what... Read more

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2016-02-23T23:00:43-04:00

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Bernie Sanders and Pope Francis Share the Same Spirit of Poverty.

Last updated on: February 23, 2016 at 11:00 pm By Gerard A. Murphy

While Donald Trump sparks with the Vatican over his proposal to build a wall along the US-Mexico border, Bernie Sanders waxes eloquently on the pope’s Spirit of Poverty in a culture of obscene wealth. In an interview with the Canadian Catholic television network Salt + Light , Sanders, a self-styled democratic socialist, said he believes Francis shares the same ideology because the pope “talks about wealth being used to serve people, not as an end in itself.” “What he has also done is... Read more

2016-05-11T16:04:40-04:00

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

How To Navigate The Lonely Pitfalls Of Youth.

Last updated on: May 11, 2016 at 4:04 pm By Gerard A. Murphy

I’m at the library working on my book. In walks a teenage friend of mine. On seeing me, she immediately pulls a book off the shelves and announces, “You need to read this.” So the following week, on her recommendation, I read Thirteen Reasons Why, by Jay Asher. I haven’t read a teenage novel since I was . . . a teenager; but the premise alone on this one hooked me: Clay Jensen returns home from school to find a strange package... Read more

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2016-02-17T06:00:24-04:00

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

From Thrillness To Stillness.

Last updated on: February 17, 2016 at 6:00 am By Gerard A. Murphy

Life for so many is a perpetual whirligig of sensory excitement and adventure; of constant motion, momentum, and mobility as one squeezes all that one can out of the world’s cornucopia of delights. While there is something to be said for St. Irenaeus of Lyon’s “The Glory of God is a human being fully alive”, I believe that the Essence of God Consciousness is to be found in silence and stillness: in a word – meditation. I took my first serious plunge into... Read more

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2016-02-09T20:51:49-04:00

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Are You Taking Your Cue From Twitter’s Lent Tracker This Year?

Last updated on: February 9, 2016 at 8:51 pm By Gerard A. Murphy

Ash Wednesday marks the beginning of the liturgical season of Lent, a penitential period of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving for Christians worldwide. Fasting also happens to be one of the Five Pillars of Islam, and is practiced faithfully by Muslims during Ramadan – a period lasting up to 354 days a year. So what’s the deal with fasting? Does it make us holier, thinner, or grumpier? Possibly all three depending on our disposition. However, I believe the key to its sanctifying virtue is, not so... Read more

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2016-02-08T06:00:06-04:00

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Google’s AI Technology Will Transform Life As We Know It.

Last updated on: February 8, 2016 at 6:00 am By Gerard A. Murphy

Google claims its new quantum computer – the D-Wave 2x system – will leave its competitors in the dust. But there may not be any competitors for a while if Google’s “Ace of Spades” newbie performs as they predict. According to Hartmut Neven, head of its Quantum Al Lab, this baby can run: “We found that for problem instances involving nearly 1,000 binary variables, quantum annealing significantly outperforms its classical counterpart, simulated annealing. It is more than 10 to the power of 8 times faster than... Read more

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