EW has a short but interesting article suggesting a possible insight into LOST that those who know books by Madeleine L’Engle (in particular A Swiftly Tilting Planet, from her “Time Quintet” series that also includes A Wrinkle In Time). Even if they are wrong, it is a line of thinking about the show that is worthwhile – just as many others have been that turned out to not be pursued in the series. Read more

This is essentially a follow-up to my earlier post on this subject. Michael Zimmerman has responded to Ken Ham’s denial of his own hypocrisy. I’ve decided to just reproduce what Michael has to say on the subject, since he was there! Dear Members and Friends of The Clergy Letter Project, Wow, Ken Ham, the head of Answers in Genesis and the impetus behind the creation museum-cum-theme-park in Kentucky, has more gall than even I imagined. Either that or he is... Read more

I just got back from seeing Monsters vs. Aliens. Unfortunately it wasn’t in 3D at the theater I went to. I won’t give away any of the entertaining details, lest I spoil anyone’s enjoyment. But I will share a thought about the message of the movie: we are prone to view those who are too different from us as monsters. Yet often those who are “insiders” with respect to our community are selfish and monstrous on the inside, while those... Read more

The Uncommon Descent blog has offered an interesting attempt at responding to an analogy of evolution. The analogy in question (like all analogies except those appreciated by cdesign proponentsists, apparently) compares the “evolution” of car designs to evolution in biology. At UD, Gil Dodgen replies that this in fact undermines the argument for evolution, since in fact cars are produced by engineers, and thus each successive “species” of car is the result of design. I wonder if they’ve thought this... Read more

“It’s dead obvious that creationism isn’t science, or even bad science. It’s nonsense. But I’ve long stated it’s also bad religion, because it doesn’t just take faith, it also takes a phenomenal disregard of reality.” — Phil Plait, Bad Astronomy blog Phil also recommends this video by a Christian who does a really good job of explaining why young-earth creationism and its various permutations should be unattractive for everyone, but in particular for Christians. I second his recommendation. Read more

I was recently nominated and invited to become a fellow of The Jesus Project, and I’ve accepted. Most readers of this blog will know that I’ve actively participated in conversations and interactions with a number of other fellows on matters related to the historical figure of Jesus. So I figured I might as well make it “official”. To get a sense of what the project is about, there are a number of helpful articles by various participants. I’ll leave you... Read more

Charlie Anders at IO9 has a post on the 7 Deadly Sins of Religion in Science Fiction. It is definitely worth reading, as it insightfully identified examples of “all too easy” plot options in this vein. Carmen Andres has a reflection on the most recent episode of Lost, “He’s Our You“, which seems to avoid such tendencies, by actually giving someone an opportunity to go back in time and decide whether or not to kill a child who in the... Read more

Spencer Burke has an article “From the Third Floor of the Garage” at The Center for Progressive Christianity website. It introduces what I think is in fact an insightful term, “spiritual McCarthyism”. Of course, the term relates to an era in history that is not part of the experience of many of us, but for those who know what it means, the image is vivid. Here’s a sample: Spiritual McCarthyism…encourages people to orchestrate their lives to avoid censure and minimize... Read more

Kenneth Hynek has a fairly comprehensive treatment of the finale of Battlestar Galactica and about the series as a whole. It includes, among other things, a recollection of a discussion he and I had about the theology of the series, once upon a time. Elsewhere in the blogosphere, Progression of Faith has video interviews in which two New Testament scholars dare to go where BSG feared to tread… Read more

How can one encapsulate in a blog post the finale that brought to an end one of the most fascinating shows on television in recent years? A show that took a show from a couple of decades earlier and reinvented it rather than simply remaking it? [That in itself should have made us think twice about the sense in which “All this has happened before, and all this will happen again”]. A show that was discussed at the United Nations... Read more