Tomorrow I’ll be a guest at a discussion on campus about “whether others have to be wrong for us to be right.” In essence it will be about matters like convictions, Evangelicalism and pluralism. It is part of the “Big Questions” series sponsored by the Center for Faith and Vocation. I for one am a critical realist, and really find it disappointing when someone says that all views are equal. That, to my thinking, simply shows that the person who... Read more

This is circulating via e-mail and on the internet and so I thought I’d share it: If you had purchased $1,000 of AIG stock one year ago, you would have $42 left. With Lehman, you would have $6.60 left. With Fannie or Freddie, you would have less than $5 left. But if you had purchased $1,000 worth of beer one year ago, drank all of the beer, then turned in the cans for the aluminum recycling REFUND, you would have... Read more

As I begin this post, Exploring Our Matrix has been part of the Christian Century blog network (CCBlogs for short) for just under three hours. I thought I’d introduce new readers from there to my blog, and regular readers from here to that network. For those new to Christian Century and its blogs, this magazine is to the Christian mainline what Christianity Today is to Evangelicalism. Christian Century reflects the widespread approach to Christian faith that sees it as essential... Read more

If you are a Gnostic and are thinking of voting for McCain, I should remind you of an important Scripture reference. In the Gospel of Philip 80 it says: “one must not give help to those who are well off” This is the translation by Marvin Meyer in The Nag Hammadi Scriptures (HarperOne, 2007) p.182. Other translations render the saying differently, but this wouldn’t be the first time that those reading different translations drew different conclusions about how to put... Read more

Michael Halcomb of Pisteuomen has created a gem of a book with a narrow but important audience. The title is Loving the Biblical Scholar in Your Life for Dummies, and it can be downloaded for free. Biblical scholars reading this will surely want to share this with the special someone in their life. Thanks Michael! Read more

In an interview with Stephen Colbert in today’s newspaper, it mentioned that something he likes to do and hopes to begin doing again soon is teach Sunday school. Now that would be a fun class to attend! Apparently this is old news, but I wasn’t aware of it until today. I wonder if he’ll be willing to regularly offer some Sunday school clips online somewhere. There’s nothing like laughter to help people cope with thinking about tough questions and challenging... Read more

This is the first post in a series blogging my way through Keith Ward’s most recent book, The Big Questions in Science and Religion. The first chapter is entitled “How Did The Universe Begin? (Is There An Ultimate Explanation For The Universe?)” Before I even managed to post on this topic, it was drawn to my attention that the question as posed seems to slant the issue in a particular way. To be fair, Ward’s understanding of divine creation, in... Read more

The newer batch of ICC commentaries on the Bible are fantastic and are, not surprisingly, not available for free. But the earlier series, many volumes of which remain valuable in spite of being nearly a century old, can now be found on the Internet Archive. Turning to these volumes is far better than merely browsing random web pages looking for information about a passage from the Bible. So I’m posting this, in the hope that in particular students, teachers and... Read more

This post has just one aim: to drive the annoying video about “Palin’s Apocalypse” off the bottom of the screen and safely into the realm of “older posts” where visitors to this site will not be forced to hear it begin every time they visit. Those who want to find it can always find it here. Read more

“Those of us who care for the integrity of religious faith have a corresponding duty to resist religion’s power” (Tina Beattie, The New Atheists: The Twilight of Reason and the War on Religion (Maryknoll: Orbis, 2007) p.145). Read more