1. Tomorrow is the fifth anniversary of the best thing I ever did and of the best thing anybody ever did for me.
3. The Rowan County (N.C.) Board of Commissioners has been rebuked by a U.S. District Court on account of their unconstitutional disagreeable animadversions.
Related: Anderson County, Tenn., has decided to put a sectarian religious statement on its courthouse. A local pastor, Steve McDonald, said it didn’t matter if this privileged one religion over others because of “majority rule.” McDonald is pastor of Calvary “Baptist” Church, but apparently that refers to the brand name of the staatskirche in his part of Tennessee and not to the form of Protestantism that practices believers’ baptism. McDonald’s logic is precisely the same as that of Mohamed Morsi, but it not compatible with anything describable as “Baptist.”
4. Again, the problem is not only that social conservatives oppose scientifically accurate sex education, but that social conservatives have never had scientifically accurate sex education.
5. “It is so disrespectful of women, and what’s really stunning about it is they don’t even realize, they don’t have a clue,” said House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. She’s talking about Democratic New York City mayoral candidate Anthony Weiner and Democratic San Diego Mayor Bob Filner. And she’s right: “If they need therapy, do it in private.” TBogg adds some appropriate (but NSFW) commentary.
6. It’s got a good beat and you can dance to it. “You guys are dancin’ to truth!”
7. Richard Beck on “Being Hopeful and Dogmatic“:
I think universal reconciliation in Christ is the only view of the afterlife that gives the Christian faith moral, biblical, intellectual and theological coherence. I’m dogmatic about that, about how universal reconciliation in Christ is the only view that makes sense when you really investigate the other options. In light of that, I’d say I’m more of a polemical universalist than a dogmatic universalist. I’m polemical in that I argue — strongly — that universal reconciliation in Christ is the only view that makes Christianity morally, biblically and theologically coherent and that all the other options — e.g., eternal conscious torment, conditionalism, and annihilationism — make Christianity morally, biblically and theologically incoherent (if not monstrous). I’ll argue that deep into the night and into the next day. That’s the polemical part. But being polemical — arguing the merits of your view against the weaknesses of alternative views — isn’t the same as being dogmatic. Because at the end of the day, do I know if any of this is really true? I don’t.
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