It is being reported that Texas Rep. Louie Gohmert is saying that same-sex marriage is something that has historically been introduced at the end of a civilization's history. He appeals in support of this claim to Solomon as the “most wise man” [sic] and his statement that “there is nothing new under the sun.” Solomon, of course, is a great person to appeal to in favor of traditional marriage. Not the recent American version of marriage involving one man and... Read more
From Mitchell and Webb. HT Jim Linville. Although in comically exaggerated fashion, it could serve as a nice conversation-starter on the way things get invented and their recent origin forgotten surprisingly quickly. Or about the usefulness of ritual. By Vectron’s knees, crack open a bottle of Chablis and talk about this! Read more
I was in the process of writing a response to Neil Godfrey’s latest accusation against me, when Joel Watts drew my attention to the fact that his blog Vridar has apparently been shut down by WordPress: I hope this is not the result of someone who finds the content on the blog objectionable making a frivolous complaint. While I’ve often said myself that mythicism is to history what young-earth creationism is to biology, and objected to the slanderous way scholars... Read more
I already shared the hilarious finale piece, “Remote Control.” Here are the other pieces performed by the full orchestra: Gustav Holst’s “Jupiter,” Van Morrison’s “Moondance,” Bernard Herrmann’s “Psycho,” and William Hofeldt’s “Lullaby.” Read more
I’ll share some other music from the finale concert of this year’s String Scholars Camp at Butler University on another occasion. But I want to highlight this final piece from the concert, “Remote Control” by Richard Meyer. It is a wonderful bit of musical comedy. Richard Auldon Clark is the conductor, and Karen Thickstun is in control of the bell/remote. Read more
Paul writes about being transformed through the renewing of your mind (Romans 12:2). But for some reason, many Christians seem to think that changing one’s mind is a bad thing, a sign of weakness or backsliding or whatever. Once again, what Christians are commanded to do in the Bible has become something modern Christians avoid doing and even define as antithetical to being a Christian. Rachel Held Evans has written a piece about this for CNN’s Belief Blog. Here’s how she puts... Read more
This is the answer given by John Horgan in Scientific American to science and engineering students skeptical of their relevance to them: We live in a world increasingly dominated by science. And that’s fine. I became a science writer because I think science is the most exciting, dynamic, consequentialpart of human culture, and I wanted to be a part of that. Also, I have two college-age kids, and I’d be thrilled if they pursued careers in science, engineering or medicine. I certainly... Read more
David Hayward posted this cartoon, under the title “Two Differing Views of Church”: One could do the same with the Bible, Jesus, and just about anything else. And Christians have had these discussions, and disagreed about the answers to them, as far back as we can trace. Read more
Joel Watts shared this on Facebook. I think that more qualifications need to be added below the “God said it” since this still gives the impression that we have God-authored exact words which, if we could just interpret them correctly, then we’d get the right answer. It isn’t just the presence of human interpretation in the process of reading, understanding, and applying, but that what we have to begin with are human words about the divine, and not divinely-authored words.... Read more
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