This week in the Phoenix, Adam Reilly profiles "atheist superstar" Greg Epstein, Harvard's Humanist chaplain and the author of Good Without God: What A Million Nonreligious People Do Believe. What separates Epstein from the best-selling crop of "new atheists" -- The Atlantic's James Parker profiled the Hitchens/Dawkins/Harris crowd for us in 2007 -- is his insistence on defining atheism as a denominational entity with a spiritual, if not holy, mission: "He dreams not of decisively crushing faith," Reilly writes, "but of a future in which the godless and godly cozily co-exist, respecting each other's convictions and even making common cause on issues of mutual concern.

Common Art, a weekly faith-based open studios, provides poor and homeless folks space and materials to make art. Each week between 10 am and 2 pm on Wednesday, these artists gather at the studio space in Emmanuel Church in Boston. The time serves as a reprieve for its participants: a chance to concentrate fully on a drawing, an acrylic or perhaps a puppet construction.

IRRADIATION FIXATION
10 years ago
February 13, 1998 | Dan Kennedy reported on the controversial activist Michael Colby and his organization Food & Water’s effort to fight against the use of irradiation on the food supply.
“Irradiating food by zapping it with gamma rays, according to its advocates, eliminates all or most of the bacteria that can make people sick.