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“The first gulp from the glass of natural sciences will turn you into an atheist, but at the bottom of the glass God is waiting for you.” Werner Heisenberg, a 1932 Nobel laureate and father of quantum mechanics, was by all accounts one of the most brilliant minds of the twentieth century. Raised a Lutheran, …
Continuing from where I left off in Part 1 of this post: Growing up, I don’t think I was subject to the same forces as those born and raised in the U.S. My upbringing instilled in me a very third-person point-of-view character compared to what around me looked like people living their lives as first …
I am what is called a third culture kid of sorts, who are by wikipedia’s definition, people raised in a culture other than their parents’ or the culture of their country or nationality, and also living in a different environment during a significant part of their childhood development years. Specifically in my case, I’ve always …
I took English 177 this semester, which is a course that explores the global genre of narco-narratives—in the context of literature, film, and television—and studies the different social, racial, and cultural constructions of illegality and violence that emerge around it. To my surprise, religion has deeply emerged in narco-culture and thus has various social implications, …
I have a friend who I’ve known since the 1st Grade. We both completed our K-12 education at a Catholic school system where we learned everyday mathematics, sciences, and language arts in addition to Catholic theology. In the past, we completed class projects together, listened to similar music genres, watched (more like mocked and critiqued) …
The Eurasian Steppe is a belt of flat grasslands extending thousands of miles from Northern China to Central Europe. It is one of the most consequential pieces of geography in history and for thousands of years it served as a pasture and battlefield for many different nomadic empires. Being a highway between East and West …
One of my aims for this fellowship was to formalize a definition of religion that explains why I was drawn here initially, and why I followed through with it.. Every week I discuss traditions that are not my own, and many of which will never be my own. Every week I deliberately choose to come …
Over Winter break I had the privilege of traveling to Israel for 10 days with Jewish students from Wisconsin and Maryland on a trip known as Taglit [תגלית]. Growing up, my family’s vacations consisted of driving 10 hours to Connecticut to see my grandma for a couple of days, so this experience was ever more …
Looking back at its history, China is a country that was once filled with various religions since its beginning, and there has been a complex and ever-changing relationship between the Chinese state and these religions stretching back thousands of years. For example, Shamanic religions were among the earliest recorded religious traditions in China, dating back …
Long ago, gods had homes. They had favorite foods and origin stories that were unique to their locality, and did not exist beyond their birthplaces. The onset of migration, imperialism, and other events shifted this reality. Today, the ever-aggressive forces behind globalization have somewhat immortalized religions, but blurred the lines between religion and culture. Diasporic …