Sightings Articles
White Protestant America
"Everybody’s talking about . . . ,” in this case, white Protestant America’s posture and place in politics, events, culture, and more. This summer “everybody” is, or at least quite a few people are, talking and blogging about the capitali...
July 18, 2016
Ken Ham and Bill Nye: Round Two
Young Earth Creationist Ken Ham and Bill Nye “The Science Guy” have squared off again. After having publicly debated in 2014, the two met again on July 8 at Ham’s newly-opened Ark Encounter, a $100 million Kentucky theme park built upon a literalisti...
July 14, 2016
The Democratic Secularization of a Political Religion – Another View on Brexit
When Zhou Enlai was asked about the implications of the French Revolution, he famously said: ”Too early to tell.” This is only an anecdote and “Brexit” is certainly not a historical event on the scale of the French Revolution, but without any doubt,...
July 8, 2016
A Holy and Small Great Council
Those of us who have great regard for many aspects of the Orthodox Church can this week go back to showing that regard mainly by appreciating and displaying the visual beauties of icons and art work from the Orthodox tradition. We can return to liste...
July 5, 2016
The Ethics of Brexit?
The vote by the people of Great Britain to leave the European Union (EU)—the so-called “Brexit”—had immediate, profound, and troubling results. The UK is in tatters despite the plea of politicians for everyone to “Keep Calm and Carry On.” Not only di...
June 30, 2016
Convulsive Ingatherings
The text for our mid-year, mid-decade Sightings has been with us from the beginnings of The Fundamentalism Project of the American Academy of Arts and Science...
June 27, 2016
AlphaGo's Victory Over Korean Go-Master Showcases Western vs. Neo-Confucian Values
In a historical milestone for Artificial Intelligence (AI), AlphaGo, an updated (General) AI developed by Google’s DeepMind unit, challenged Korean Go grandmaster Lee Sedol, and handily won, 4 to 1. Go is a game with a nearly infinite number of possi...
June 23, 2016
Hate is Mobile
Three week-end stories about mass murders help frame crisis issues. The first recalls the murders of nine blacks in and during church in Charleston, South Carolina, exactly one year ago by a white supremacist. (New York Times, June 16). The same pape...
June 20, 2016
After Fifty Years of Preparations, Will the Pan-Orthodox Council Be Ecumenically Relevant?
the Pan-Orthodox Council...