By Edward Grinnan
Editor-in-Chief, Guideposts

Can an atheist be grateful? And if so, to whom?

I pose this question because at my family's Thanksgiving gatherings there is a close relative who professes to be a devout atheist (God bless him). Like many families, we go around the table and enumerate the things in our lives for which we are each grateful. When the aforementioned relative's turn comes, he is as profuse in his gratitude as any of us: He is thankful for his health, his wife and kids, his job, the food laden table, the weather, etc. My unspoken question is always, "Well, whom are you thanking?"

This isn't as silly as it sounds. My gratitude is directed to the ultimate source of all blessings--a loving and divine creator. I don't know who else to thank for all the great stuff in my life. I can take credit for some of it; luck explains a lot. But in the end, my thanksgiving is to a God who somehow--and I don't always understand how, so don't ask--makes it happen.

By Deborah Heiligman
author

This is Darwin's year. We celebrated his 200th birthday in February and this month is the 150th anniversary of publication of "The Origin of the Species". Sadly there are still misconceptions about Charles Darwin and his science, falsehoods that are spread, making people scared to teach children about him. But we most certainly should teach our children about Darwin. Here is a primer I hope will convince:

1. Charles Darwin was not an atheist. He struggled with his faith for most of his life, as do many of us. He respected faith, and people of faith. In fact, his wife Emma was deeply religious, and talked with him throughout their marriage about God.

2. You can find God in "The Origin of the Species." Darwin put God into his great book, not in the first edition, but in the second and every one thereafter. The last sentence reads, "There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one...."

By Bernard Avishai
Hebrew University

JERUSALEM -- During the first night of the J Street conference, when delegates were just getting settled, a half dozen speakers -- activists, rabbis and students -- unexpectedly poured their hearts out. The 1,500 people in the hall, the speakers insisted, were not only gathered to represent the majority of American Jews who think U.S. policy should put its weight behind bringing about a two state solution. We were gathered also to redeem "Jewish values." You heard a good deal of the phrase "Tikkun Olam," the repair of the world, that night. And I confess to cringing at times. Was social improvement a peculiarly Jewish desire? Could Tikkun Olam, a kabalistic concept turned into a leftist cliché, cancel out the fact that the Occupation is advanced by zealots of Jewish law, or that rightist, neoconservative ideas are particularly strong (so polls show) among the quarter of American Jews who attend synagogue at least once a month?

By Gregory Paul
researcher, author

One hundred and fifty years after Charles Darwin's world changing "On the Origin of the Species" was published on Nov. 24, there are signs of change in the struggle between the forces of science and creationism. In all other prosperous democracies solid majorities, up to eight in ten, accept human descent from animals. In America nearly half still think humans were created by God a few thousand years ago, and because this has been true for decades the issue seems stuck in a perpetual rut. The chronic failure to bring American opinion up to first-world standards is of great concern to the scientific community at a time when the U. S. faces increasingly intense international scientific and economic competition, including biosciences vital to medicine and hi-tech industry. It has been assumed that boosting popular support for evolution is a straight forward matter of better science education, but levels of science knowledge are not closely tied to rates of creationist opinion between first world countries. Sociological research published this year is showing that the conventional wisdom is wrong.

By Shmuel Herzfeld
Rabbi, Ohev Sholom--The National Synagogue

Below is a letter I sent on Friday, November 20 to Israel's Ambassador to the U.S., Michael Oren. The letter was in response to the arrest of a woman for wearing a prayer shawl (tallit) at the Western Wall in Jerusalem which is immediately adjacent to the Temple Mount.

The fact is that this woman was trying to observe Judaism and her practice was in accordance with traditional interpretations of Jewish law. See my reference to Maimonides below. It just wasn't in accordance with current ultra-Orthodox norms and customs. In arresting her, the Israeli government made a terrible mistake and I pray that they will change their policy in the future.

By Timothy George
founding dean, Beeson Divinity School

Orthodox, Catholic, and Evangelical leaders have come together to reaffirm fundamental truths about justice and the common good on three of the most pressing issues in our country today--the sanctity of every human life from conception to death, the strengthening of marriage as a covenant union of husband and wife, and the defense of religious liberty and the rights of conscience for all persons everywhere. These are not the only matters that require a conscientious response from followers of Jesus Christ, but they are threshold issues that touch on everything else we do including the proclamation of the Gospel, concern for the poor, nurturing of children, ministry to prisoners, care of creation, and peacemaking in a broken world. These three concerns are not new issues, but they are increasingly under assault in our society today. We know that persons of many faith traditions share these concerns with us. Thus we have issued this declaration of conscience calling on our fellow citizens, believers and non-believers alike, to join us in the defense of human life, marriage, and religious freedom.

We ourselves set forth this appeal as followers of Jesus Christ, the crucified and risen Lord, who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. We hold differing political views and follow no partisan agendas. We believe it is time for Christian believers to speak together clearly and boldly on behalf of the most vulnerable members of our society. The Manhattan Declaration represents an ecumenism of the trenches that has been going on for a number of years among many denominations and confessional traditions. While we recognize that many important differences of doctrine and discipline still divide us, we nonetheless earnestly seek that unity for which Jesus prayed when he asked that his disciples be one in their love for God, for one another, and for the world.

By Alex Kronemer
film producer

The Fort Hood tragedy has become a renewed occasion for many self-appointed spokespersons, hostile critics, experts, pseudo-experts, pundits, and politicians to assert their theories about what Muslims really think. In the past few two weeks, I've heard the Qur'an quoted more times on talk radio than in a mosque. Verses are thrown around either to argue that Islam is, as we often hear, "a religion of peace" or as Pat Robertson said a few days ago, not a religion at all, but a "political system" bent on destroying all the world's governments.

Whichever side these arguments land, they all engage in the fallacy of essentialism. That is, they all insist that something as enormous, diverse and complex as a 1,400 year old, global religion like Islam is reducible to a simple sound bite or punchy talking point that defines what all the world's Muslims think.

Like Christianity and Judaism, Islam is the intricate interplay of history and ideas, of different people, places, and cultures, always in flux, always evolving. Like them it has a scripture that was developed and compiled while under great persecution and threat. Its verse includes passionate entreaties for mercy and forgiveness, as well as descriptions of war and threats of hell. It mixes anachronistic situations in gender relationships from the ancient Near Eastern world with timeless ethical and spiritual principles.

By Mikey Weinstein
president, Military Religious Freedom Foundation

We are learning more each day about Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the man accused of senselessly and mercilessly killing 13 people, including 12 of his fellow soldiers, at Fort Hood earlier this month. It has now become reasonably clear that Hasan was in contact with radical Muslim cleric Anwar al-Aulaqi and may have incorporated aspects of Islam into his work as an Army psychiatrist. He allegedly argued in 2007 that Muslims should not be serving as American troops in conflicts with Islamic countries, because of the "risk to hurting/killing believers unjustly."

This revelatory news is terribly saddening. But what is significantly worse is the revelation that the Pentagon was incontrovertibly aware of Hasan's alleged actions of professional malfeasance and chose to do nothing. We have not heard any instance in which Hasan was meaningfully reprimanded, disciplined or told that his opprobrious actions and his communications violated military policy, military law and even the sworn oath he took to support and defend the Constitution vice his parochial fundamentalist interpretation of the Qur'an.

By Muqtedar Khan
Director of Islamic Studies, University of Delaware

On November 5, I had the privilege of testifying to the House Armed Services Sub-Committee on Oversight and Investigations. These hearings are part of the lengthy ongoing deliberations in Washington D.C. searching for a new direction in Afghanistan. The Hearing was chaired by Chairman Dr. Vic Snyder (D-Ark) and Ranking Member Rob Whitman (R-VA).

The panel was divided. Half the participants were pro-surge and advised the government to honor General Stanley McChrystal's request and send in additional U.S. troops to Afghanistan, and the other half did not believe that another surge would help. The pro-surge view was based on several assumptions that were in my opinion debatable. This view saw the possibility of Pakistan's nuclear weapons ending up in the hands of radical groups as the most pressing of U.S. national interests in the Afpak theater and they felt that this threat justified more intensive and extended U.S. presence in the region.

Nicholas Wade
journalist, author

When a human behavior is ancient and universal, it's reasonable to suspect it may be part of the mind's innate furniture, placed there by evolution because it favored survival.

Religion is found in every society in the world, so is the human mind wired up to believe in gods, and if so does this diminish the value or standing of religion?

I believe there is an instinct for religious behavior, and that we can now reconstruct how and why it evolved. But there's no compelling reason why people of faith should be offended by this concept unless, as fundamentalists, they object on principle to any proposal thrown up by the theory of evolution.

Most faiths accept evolution and if believers allow that God, through evolution, has shaped every aspect of the human body, there is surely no reason why the mind too should not have been prepared by evolution to believe in a Creator.

By Bill Press
Radio talk show host

Consider this scenario. After months of debate, the national legislature is set to cast a historic vote. But, before legislators can vote yeah or nay, the bill must first be sent to the country's Supreme Religious Council for its approval. Only after the unelected clerics give their blessing are elected politicians permitted to vote on the legislation.

Did that happen in Iran? No, it happened right here in the United States House of Representatives during last week's vote on health care reform.

A carefully-crafted piece of legislation - the result of months of debate and consideration by three different House committees - was before the House for a final vote. But, at the eleventh hour, lobbyists for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops descended on the Capitol, declared they could not accept provisions in the bill restricting federal funding of abortion, demanded that the language be changed - and dutiful Democrats did just what the bishops ordered.

In so doing, they might as well have tossed the First Amendment, and its separation of church and state, right out the window.