Given my interest in religion and science (I’m even teaching my class on the subject this semester) this quote which Menachem Mendel shared, and which apparently comes from Thomas Friedman’s book, From Beirut to Jerusalem, p.429, seemed worth sharing. I’ve only been to one of the two – like most human beings, I’ve never been off the Earth – and so I can’t compare. But with Neil Armstrong’s passing, and my recent second visit to Jerusalem, and my interest... Read more
One doesn’t have to spend much time online, whether on a blog like this one o ever more so a site like Reddit, to experience what I am talking about. There seem to be more people than ever before who treat their interactions with other people, things that might well have been conversations had this approach not been taken, as though they were interacting with enemies in a first-person shooter game, or monsters in a hack-and-slash role playing game. It... Read more
I can’t understand why the only people who have been saying that God is judging the Republican party by throwing hurricane Isaac at their convention in recent days are people who are parodying conservative Christians’ typical rhetoric. Where are the actual conservative Evangelical Protestant Christians who are willing to at least try to give an appearance of consistency? I mean seriously. Don’t most conservative Christians view Mormonism as a satanic lie, a distortion of Christianity? And given that Ayn Rand’s... Read more
I have recorded a lecture covering some of the topics I normally discuss in class about Genesis 2-3, and whether there is one creation account or two. Let me know if you find it interesting/useful, and any and all feedback is appreciated! Read more
The first part of the webisode series “Pond Life” – which will serve as the prequel to the first episode of Doctor Who this season (which will air on September 1st) – is now online. You can watch it here, on YouTube, or on the BBC web site! Read more
My friend John Weightman wrote this in a comment on Facebook: In the UK I have noticed that there appears to be a tendency for some people to want to 'roll back the state' when it involves being generous to the disadvantaged or the sick, but to want a bigger state when it comes to the military, the police or prisons. Now that seems to me to be just the opposite of what Jesus taught. Perhaps we should fund the... Read more
News from the future: At their 2025 annual meeting, a well-known young-earth creationist organization decided to finally take the step of removing Genesis 1-3 from their canon of Scripture. “It was long overdue,” said the organization’s longstanding president (who changed his name to an unprintable squiggle after discovering that his surname referred to a meat outlawed in the Bible). “We accepted Genesis 1-3 for a long time, emphasizing that it doesn’t mention evolution. But recently, it was drawn to our... Read more
This is circulating among atheists, but Baptists like myself obviously think it makes a good point too… HT Open Parachute Read more
The news just broke that the first man on the moon has passed away. Neil Armstrong, the famous astronaut, died today at the age of 82. We will all, I am sure, remember with gratitude for his role in taking humanity to a world other than our own for the first time. Read more
I’ve felt like there was some analogy or parable to be made from the recent case of a parishioner trying to do an amateur restoration of a famous painting, with this result: Perhaps the best or at least the most relevant analogy for the sorts of subjects that I deal with is this: The figure of Jesus, like anyone and anything from the past, gets lost from view as a result of the passing of time. But an expert can... Read more
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