Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry is not pleased with my forthright translation of his column at The Week. That's understandable. After all, if he had wanted to be forthright, to own his words and his implications, and to make his nasty accusations directly and honestly, he would have done so himself. Read more
Wherein we first encounter the Greatest Investigative Reporter of All Time, first realize that the co-authors of these books are represented by the dual protagonists as their fantasy surrogates, and first make some weak basketball jokes. Read more
This verse seems, today, to be absurdly impenetrable -- a biblical madlib in which any other noun could be substituted for "angels" with no loss or addition of meaning as far as we're concerned. "A woman ought to have a symbol of authority on her head, because of the otters." Just as clear. Read more
It's an ambiguous statement that can be read in two opposite ways: "You will have no more mercy on sinners than I do, for I was crucified because of them." Which way do you think it should be read? Your answer will depend on what you think Jesus is like. Your answer will depend on what you believe about the character of Jesus. Read more
Writing for The Week, Gobry's "Why so many Christians won't back down on gay marriage" is a steaming pile of passive-aggressive insinuation. His preferred method of argument appears to be to avoid lying by direct assertion, opting instead to lie by passing reference to assumed "facts" that are actually unsupportable fabrications containing nasty accusations. To save time, I'll only highlight three such lies from the article. Read more
Hey, look, it's Bob Mould. Plus some quotes from neat, funny, thoughtful and/or interesting articles that have links in them that you can click on to read those articles. One of those. Read more
The author's explanation for this mass conversion seems to be that, prior to the Rapture, these thousands of diverse religions all taught something that was not real, true Christianity. The Antichrist's One World Faith also is not real, true Christianity. So converting from one form of not-RTC to another form of not-RTC, the authors assume, couldn't be that big a deal for any of these non-Christians. Read more
"You know, one of the great things about Lovecraft is that this hot mess of his psyche is just, like, right there. It's like almost like an autopsy of a really, really messed up personality as well as a story. And I actually feel like it probably teaches us a lot about those attitudes for the next time that we encounter them." Read more
I hope that's sarcasm, because if it's not, then Jonathan Merritt is pointing to the facile Bildadism of a Sunday school teacher's white-knuckled just-world fallacy -- God "allowed" the torture of a 9-year-old -- and rechristening it as an orthodox representation of the "the sovereignty of God" while further suggesting that any disagreement with that view is a rejection of a "cornerstone Christian belief" that puts one "substantially outside the evangelical fold." Whether or not it's meant ironically, that's one of the harshest criticism's I've ever read of white evangelicalism. Read more
"Religious pluralism [is] the idea that all religions are basically the same." That statement is so precisely wrong that it can provide a kind of service. It is wrong in a way -- or, rather, in several ways -- that can help us to better understand a great deal of the world around us. The misapprehending and misapprehension distilled in that single statement can give us new insight and understanding into many things. Read more
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