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“Losing My Religion? No, Says Baylor Religion Survey”

The 2006 Baylor Survey of Religion found what it termed a “surprising level” of paranormal belief and experience, although “those beliefs and experiences tended to be confined to people outside traditional religion,” the report states. The survey was funded by the John Templeton Foundation and conducted by the Gallup Organization from October to December 2005. It found […]

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“Paranormal beliefs, from prophetic dreams to Atlantis”

Evangelical Christians were the least likely of all religious groups to believe in the paranormal, and belief in the paranormal tended to decline the more one attended church. Those most likely to believe in the paranormal came from the “other” religious category – meaning not Christian and not Jewish. Read a Sept. 12, 2006, USA Today story summarizing the […]

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“What People Do and Do Not Believe in”

A Harris Poll from 2009 found that four of 10 Americans believe in ghosts. About a third believe in UFOs, 23 percent in witches and 26 percent in astrology. One in five believe they were reincarnated from another person.  71 percent of Catholics and 79 percent of Protesants believe in the Virgin Birth, compared to 61 percent of […]

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Keith David Watenpaugh

Keith David Watenpaugh is a contemporary Middle Eastern historian and Islamic studies specialist at the University of California, Davis, who can discuss human rights in the Middle East, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and Christian-Muslim relations. Watenpaugh is the author of Being Modern in the Middle East and editor of The Arab Intellectual and the Question of Modernity (2009).

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Christian van Gorder

Christian van Gorder is an associate professor of religion at Baylor University who teaches world religions. He is the author of multiple books, including Islam, Peace, and Social Justice and (as co-author) Jews and Christians Together: An Invitation to Mutual Respect.

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Jonathan Tran

Jonathan Tran is an assistant professor of religion at Baylor University in Waco, Texas. He specializes in theological ethics and can discuss the just-war tradition and the morality of celebrating bin Laden’s death.

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Rashied Omar

Rashied Omar is Research Scholar of Islamic Studies and Peacebuilding at the University of Notre Dame’s Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies. He says bin Laden defiled Islam. An expert on Islam, religion and violence, interreligious dialogue and peacebuilding, Omar trained in religious studies at the University of Cape Town and in Sudan, Pakistan and Malaysia.

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