Tonight’s episode of LOST (the last new episode until April 24th, when LOST will resume at 10pm) focused on the story of Michael after escaping the island. How exactly he “found rescue” we are not told, but he made it back to the U.S. eventually. He is feeling suicidal – after telling Walt what he had done, Walt didn’t want to talk to him any more. After one unsuccessful suicide attempt, he hears ghostly whispers and sees a nurse who... Read more

Many people find Easter a particularly difficult holiday during which to integrate faith and reason. Christmas doesn’t pose the same challenge – one may doubt or even deny the historicity of the infancy narratives, appreciating them as the sorts of stories ancient people were prone to tell to highlight an individual’s significance. Jesus’ birth itself is not seriously doubted, and so a historical core can still be posited. But when it comes to Easter, the question of whether the tomb... Read more

Let’s imagine a hypothetical (and admittedly implausible) scenario, in which some new information comes to light – whether through scientific investigation, or from a booming voice from a burning bush – showing that in fact the intelligent design crowd, or even the young-earth creationists, were right, and it turns out that evolution is utterly inadequate as an explanation for the development of life on this planet. The vast majority of scientists would still, in that case, have nothing to be... Read more

Today I was made aware of the Mandaean Refugee Resources Project, an organization dedicated to addressing the humanitarian plight facing the Mandaeans in our time. I hope other readers of this blog will take an interest in this issue too, if they haven’t already. Also of interest is the recent article, IRAQ: The Mandaeans: Another Casualty, by Marianne Barisonek. Read more

“So our coming of age leads us to a true recognition of our situation before God. God would have us know that we must live as men who manage our lives without him…Before God and with God we live without God” (Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison). Read more

I doubt that anyone reading this would transfer millions of dollars to someone they did not know, for any reason. Yet people must fall for these scams, since otherwise they wouldn’t keep occurring, would they? Please use your critical thinking skills. If the person sending this were really in the situation described, and was able to transfer money to you, why would they need your help? It doesn’t make sense, because it isn’t real. It is a scam, a hoax,... Read more

The renowned science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke has passed away. He was 90 years old. Tributes around the blogosphere include: 3 Quarks Daily, Biology in Science Fiction, Tobias Buckell, Targuman, Thoughts in a Haystack, IO9, Pharyngula, SF Signal, The Evilutionary Biologist, Further Thoughts, Hyper-Textual Ontology, Paul Levinson’s Infinite Regress, and The Bad Idea Blog. SF Signal also has links to works of his and video clips that are available online for free. It is also all over the news.... Read more

“Fiction…will teach me, teach me things I would never learn had I not opened myself to them in story” (Madeleine L’Engle, Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art (North Point Press, 1995) p.137). Read more

As RJS (at Scot McKnight’s Jesus Creed blog) continues his discussion of Francis Collins’ The Language of God, he brings up what is the crux of the matter for many Christians: the relationship of “Adam and Eve” to the theological appropriation of those stories in the New Testament. I had a chance over the past three Sundays to give a series of talks about Religion and Science: Past, Present and Future at Northminster Presbyterian Church here in Indianapolis. It was... Read more

I can’t imagine how anyone can fall for these phishing scams, but pretty much every day there are people who find their way to my blog through keyword searches related to them. On the one hand, I’m glad that they are at least looking for further information. On the other hand, one shouldn’t need to check. No windfalls of cash are going to suddenly be offered to you out of nowhere. Get rich quick schemes are consistently get poor quick... Read more