Creation of Adam (detail), Sistine Chapel Ceiling, by Michelangelo, c. 1508–1512. Vatican City, Rome, Italy.

Creation of Adam (detail), Sistine Chapel ceiling, by Michelangelo, c. 1508–12. Vatican City, Rome, Italy. 

Religion

Volume III, Number 1 | winter 2010

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The state dictates and coerces; religion teaches and persuades. The state enacts laws; religion gives commandments. The state is armed with physical force and makes use of it if need be; the force of religion is love and benevolence.

—Moses Mendelssohn, 1783
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Lapham’sDaily

A telescopic image of the formalhault solar system. A bright dot is surrounded by a cloud of smaller red dots. An inset shows a close-up of what looks like a planet, labeled Formalhault b.

DÉjÀ Vu

Space Oddities

2020:

Exoplanet revealed to be nothing but a large cloud of dust.

1903:

Supposed irrigation canals on Mars are merely optical illusions.

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The World in Time

Peter Fritzsche

Lewis H. Lapham speaks with the author of Hitler’s First Hundred Days: When Germans Embraced the Third Reich. More