While Standing On One Foot
Via Joe Carter, a series of one-sentence summaries of the Bible from various “scholars and pastors.” None of them take a path similar to Rabbi Hillel’s famous line — “What is hateful to you,...
Category: Religion
Fear and Failures of Interpretation
By Kyle Cupp In his post on Islamic terminology, Ned Resnikoff observed: Whereas Talmudic scholars disagree with one another of the interpretation of their holy text, there’s vast disagreement within Islam about what constitutes...
Proof of God, continued
If God cannot prove His omnipotence (or infinity) to human beings because they are neither omnipotent or omniscient or infinite, couldn’t God simply make all human beings into omniscient, omnipotent, and infinite beings? If...
That’s me in the corner, choosing my religion
Jamelle Bouie’s take on the recent Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life poll is the best I’ve read (the Pew servers seem to be under some strain today, so you may not make...
How to govern well
What do Singapore, the United States, Canada, Denmark, and England all have in common? At first glance, not much. One is an oligarchic city state, two are parliamentary democracies, another is a Scandinavian social...
Beck and Obama’s radically different theologies
[updated] It is perhaps a little ironic that Beck is invoking theology so often and especially in order to demonize Obama further. Ironic because conservative and evangelical Christians probably have more in common theologically...
Capra-corn and the life of our time
There’s a quote about Carl Jung that I’ve come across a couple of times and shamelessly stolen every chance I’ve had: “We live a double life whether we know it or not. We live...
Anne Rice quits Christianity
[updated] Anne Rice offers up some bizarre reasoning for quitting her faith: I quit being a Christian. I’m out. In the name of Christ, I refuse to be anti-gay. I refuse to be anti-feminist....
One last salvo on immigration
Mark’s points about the relationship between American dynamism and immigration are well-taken. Again, I’d like to stress that I’m endorsing an exceedingly mild form restrictionism – perhaps a system that expands immigration quotas for...
Banning Burqas: Yea or Nay?
I fall squarely in the “nay” camp, but here’s a nice summary of the debate over burqas in France from The Economist.
Answers in Genesis
MSNBC reports that Noah’s Ark may have been found on Turkey’s Mount Ararat. The finders, led by an evangelical group, say they are “99.9 percent” that a wooden structure found on the mountainside was...
Folk wisdom and the tyranny of the experts
[updated below] I’ve been thinking about birth a great deal lately. This is likely because birth in my family is just around the corner. Our second is due in July. In any case, all...
A brief defense of the Pope
[updated] “I read the coverage of the Pope every day in the newspapers and listen to the BBC news and as a Catholic and a journalist I feel like crying out pathetically: “This is...
In defense of sandwiches; or, Rise of the Bread Tories
“Surely, a loaf of bread is the centre of the parable of life” ~ yet more G.K. Chesterton I do love a good sandwich. Indeed, there are few things I love more than a...
Science fiction & God
This article at First Things by Robert R. Chase is a fascinating look at religious themes in science fiction. I’ve always felt that science-fiction was far less amenable to religion than fantasy, but thinking...
Fantasy and myth
Will linked us to this piece by James Bowman earlier. Bowman writes: I mention this difference between the fantastical as it existed in olden times and today, which some may think a trivial one,...
Aeschylus, “The Persians” & war and blasphemy
{Note: I wasn’t planning to post this because it’s a bit rambling and digressive. But, I realized that it sort of fits with the discussion about war and morality.} Let me start by showing...
Community, technology, & work
I think this Amanda Marcotte piece is pretty interesting. She touches on the idea of work and community and how the modern workplace has, until very recently, served to cut us off entirely from...
On noble savages and the humanity of the ‘other’
Sullivan nods approvingly at this passage from Conor on Avatar’s Na’vi: The problem with the noble savage cliche is that it is demonstrably untrue. The people who inhabited North America before the arrival of...
culture is everything (well, mostly everything)
“In short, liberals and conservatives refuse to see the areas in which they have common ground because far too often they simply cannot get past the cultural markers that prevent them from even listening...
