I would hope that most readers will read the title of this entry and think first of the closing segment of the movie The Matrix. Alas, my use of the phrase here is far more mundane. Windows Vista finally crashed on me utterly and completely. I’m attempting to reinstall Windows XP and there are still a few glitches but progress is being made. It is time for someone to tell me again why I should switch to Linux. Perhaps I… Read more

There’s only one thing that needs to be said today…HAVE A MERRY CHRISTMAS!(if you are reading this in England, you have my permission to have a happy Christmas instead). Read more

I will be adding a new blog to my blogroll. It is the scarcely pronouncable Secher Nbiw, a relatively new blog by a Butler University student.I’ve long thought that there should be a religion club at Butler University named the Butlerian Jihad, but I thought there might be too many people on campus and elsewhere who haven’t read Dune and wouldn’t get the joke.Welcome to the blogosphere, Cobalt! Read more

My wife (who is not originally from the United States) watched the movie It’s a Wonderful Life all the way through for the first time over the past few days. Her reaction, once it was all over, was that the movie is about how Mary, George Bailey’s wife, repeatedly comes to his rescue when he is in a crisis.Is that the, or at least a, point of the story? It is worth asking such questions, and for allowing them to… Read more

I wonder how many people have received the exact same spam, with the exact same ‘unique’ payment code (see below). I wonder how many will fall for it, without even doing a search engine search on the subject. Presumably some people must fall for these scams, in spite of the obvious warning signs – otherwise the spammers would give up. The fact that the contact person has a Hotmail address is but one of the many things that gives away… Read more

I just finished reading Antony Flew’s book (written in collaboration with Roy Abraham Varghese) There Is a God. There was a lot of controversy about the book, including even accusations that it had been ghostwritten in a way that did not reflect Flew’s views, in essence manipulating a senile old man. Flew has gone on record, however, saying that he stands by what the book says. It is quite clear (both from the book and from other statements by Flew)… Read more

“Science is reticent too when it is a question of the great Unity of which we somehow form a part, to which we belong. The most popular name for it in our time is God, with a capital “G”. Science is, very usually, branded as being atheistic. After what we have said this is not astonishing. If its world picture does not even contain beauty, delight, sorrow, if personality is cut out of it by agreement, how should it contain… Read more

In reflecting on the recent discussion at Pharyngula, I found myself asking “What is theology?” In spite of its name, it clearly isn’t “the study of God”, as though we can put God under a microscope and examine God’s attributes. Indeed, in some uses of the term “God”, the reality so denoted includes the microscope and the one looking through it!Since the discussion I mentioned touched on anthropology and religious studies, it was natural to identify theology as the “insiders’… Read more

A few more Christmas-related blog entries, following up on my one-stop Christmas blogging link collection. It seemed better to have a follow-up entry than to extend that one indefinitely…A Novelist On The NativityChristmas Wishes from around the Anglican CommunionChristmas in the Trenches by Jim WallisBethlehem vs. Nazareth: The Claim To Fame SmackdownOh Blessed Be The Time and Oh Little Town Of Bethlehem by MetacatholicFood For Thought: The Birth Of JesusWhy The Need For A Vulnerable God?Dating Christmas (and a Christmas… Read more

“What Carl did was he reunified skepticism with wonder-and never one at the expense of the other, but always in equal parts. I think that what we all long for is something that could raise goose bumps, could make you feel something in your heart without requiring that you lie to yourself” (Ann Druyan, speaking about the legacy of Carl Sagan in an interview in Astrobiology Magazine.In another interview she says “Carl felt this way and we learned this together—… Read more