Hey, there’s no reason to worry about the end of the world. While some folks are preparing for or worrying about the end of the world on May 21, the Convention & Community Center in my town of Boerne, Texas, will have business as usual. Check it out. On May 21st there will be: The Concealed Handgun Sanders/Lobello Reception and The Genealogical Society of Kendall County Regular Meeting. See, nothing strange. No reason to fret about May 21st. Just be... Read more
The New York Times heading certainly got my attention: “Zombies Upstage a Routine Public Health Bulletin.” This is the Times, for goodness’ sakes, not the Onion. Here’s how the story begins: Pity poor Tom Skinner, a top spokesman for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who has been valiantly trying to interest reporters in a new study in the agency’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report trumpeting “10 Great Public Health Achievements.” Unfortunately for Mr. Skinner, over at his agency’s... Read more
Is the End near? Is Judgment Day approaching? Will it come tomorrow? Harold Camping of Family Radio answers with an enthusiastic “Yes!” In fact, he is sure that tomorrow, May 21, 2011, will be the Day of Judgment, the day when the kingdom of God begins to come in all fulness. According to Camping, we’ll know that the End has begun because the whole world will be rocked with a giant earthquake. Graves will be thrown open, with some corpses... Read more
John Tierney reports on a change of mind from the founder of the positive psychology movement. Here’s how his story begins: Is happiness overrated? Martin Seligman now thinks so, which may seem like an odd position for the founder of the positive psychology movement. As president of the American Pyschological Association in the late 1990s, he criticized his colleagues for focusing relentlessly on mental illness and other problems. He prodded them to study life’s joys, and wrote a best seller... Read more
Part 9 of series: What Was the Message of Jesus? On Monday, I began to consider the “location” of the kingdom of God. My first point was: 1. The kingdom of God is not what we call heaven. God’s reign surely encompasses what we call heaven. But when Jesus speaks of the kingdom of God, he is not talking simply about life with God after death. Indeed, the kingdom of God touches earth as well as heaven. This brings us... Read more
Your So-Called Education Sociologists Richard Arum (NYU) and Josipa Roksa (UVa) report on the discouraging findings from their study of undergraduate education. Parents, brace yourselves: We would be happy to join in the celebrations if it weren’t for our recent research, which raises doubts about the quality of undergraduate learning in the United States. Over four years, we followed the progress of several thousand students in more than two dozen diverse four-year colleges and universities. We found that large numbers... Read more
In yesterday’s post, I began to consider the “faith” of Stephen Hawking. He expressed this faith in a recent interview with the Guardian: “I have lived with the prospect of an early death for the last 49 years. I’m not afraid of death, but I’m in no hurry to die. I have so much I want to do first,” he said. “I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail. There is no heaven... Read more
Is Religion Your Financial Destiny? David Leonhardt reviews the recent findings of Pew survey. It finds a high correlation between certain relgious traditions and our financial status. Do you want to be well off? Better become a Reform Jew. Here’s a paragraph worthy of further consideration: Many factors are behind the discrepancies among religions, but one stands out. The relationship between education and income is so strong that you can almost draw a line through the points on this graph.... Read more
I am taking a slight detour from my series on the message of Jesus because of a fortuitous (providential?) coincidence. Yesterday, I asked: “Is the kingdom of God the same thing as heaven?” The answer, according to Jesus in the New Testament Gospels, is “No.” Heaven is encompassed within God’s reign, but the kingdom of God has as much to do with earth as with what we call heaven. Today, heaven is in the news. Or, perhaps it would be... Read more
According to recent articles in the New York Times, Facebook and Google have egg-covered faces. Both digital giants, it seems, have been acting in ways that contradict their own pledges and policies. Facebook, Foe of Anonymity, is Forced to Explain a Secret According to Miguel Helft, Facebook, which prides itself on openness, has been engaged in a secret campaign to discredit Google. Here’s how the article begins: For years, Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Facebook, has extolled the virtue... Read more
Mark D. Roberts
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