This is a cool summary — shark vision is so good perhaps making humans look like something they dislike — a kind of snake — might lessen shark attacks: Larger optic tecta in the brains of sharks – analogous to the superior colliculus structure in human brains, which deals with behaviour in relation to visible objects — are associated with an increased reliance on vision in those creatures. “Great white sharks have quite large parts of the brain associated with their... Read more
Peggy Noonan, summarizing Bob Woodward’s evaluation of the President, criticizes the President … a strong political commentary from the right. [And, please don’t read this post and infer my own politics. I like to find incisive commentary and let it create a conversation. Anyone’s comment that questions whether this post belongs on this blog will be deleted.] Has anyone read Woodward’s book? Is it being ignored? Which gets us to Bob Woodward’s “The Price of Politics,” published last month. The... Read more
I speak, of course, only of Westerners. Ah-ha moments in Bible reading come to all of us, and perhaps you can remember one and tells us about it, but I can remember a few: when I realized the Bible’s writers and characters were ancient Jews and not modern American (Baptists), that they spoke Hebrew and Aramaic and Greek and Latin, that contemporary Jewish texts shed light constantly all over the Bible, that Paul’s letters were written before the Gospels, that... Read more
Some pastors, preachers, professors, and parishioners will announce they have “no creed but the Bible.” One of America’s Reformed church historians, Carl Trueman, now has a book challenging both the accuracy of this statement (we all have creeds and confessions he observes) and the wisdom of it — not to mention its seemingly inconsistency with the Bible itself, which both has creedal lines and teaches the importance of teaching the essence of the faith. Trueman’s book is called The Creedal Imperative.... Read more
Was Jesus a Zombie? by Jeff Cook (info at bottom). He came back to life after his death. He is chasing all human beings everywhere. Once he gets hold of people, his blood changes them and they in turn seek to change others. Could it be more clear? Jesus was a Zombie. I just started watching “The Walking Dead”. The directors routinely show the transformation of a corpse into one rising up, walking among the living, at one point calling... Read more
The word “missional” has a history: it owes its origins in Karl Barth who spoke about the action of God in this world but it was captured by the ecumenical movement to become mostly social activism in the public sector. Two theologians, probably neither “evangelical,” recaptured the term “missional” and reshaped it toward its more original sense. Those theologians were Lesslie Newbigin and David Bosch, Newbigin an English missionary theologian in India and Bosch a South African New Testament and... Read more
My desk is like a revolving door. Books land on it, I have to discern if it is a book for the blog or not, I read some and I give some away (to Northern students) and I shelve a few. But some books are not for blogging through, yet they deserve to be mentioned for those who are building libraries. So today I want to mention some fantastic new books. My former colleague and friend, along with a former... Read more
The NCAA has announced crackdown measures. I don’t know what you think, but my own belief is that “amateur” sports is a relic from the past, and I would think it would be wiser to figure out how to make these teams minor league professional sports … pay the athletes. Forget spending millions on policing programs. Own up to the reality: these are professional athletes and they are making schools gobs of money. INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — The NCAA passed a... Read more
From AP: WASHINGTON (AP) — Racial attitudes have not improved in the four years since the United States elected its first black president, an Associated Press poll finds, as a slight majority of Americans now express prejudice toward blacks whether they recognize those feelings or not. Those views could cost President Barack Obama votes as he tries for re-election, the survey found, though the effects are mitigated by some people’s more favorable views of blacks. Racial prejudice has increased slightly... Read more
From Colin Shindler: But the question remains: why do today’s European socialists identify with Islamists whose worldview is light-years removed from their own?… The old left in Europe was forged in the struggle against local fascists in the 1930s. Most of Europe experienced a brutal Nazi occupation and bore witness to the atrocities of the Holocaust. The European left strongly identified with Jewish suffering and therefore welcomed the birth of the state of Israel in 1948. Some viewed the struggle... Read more
Jesus Creed
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