I do not believe in the existence of Hell, but I do believe in "Hell" in the biblical sense. My statement here -- "There's a very special room in Hell" for these hackers -- employs the term in precisely that biblical sense, conveying no more and no less than what the small handful of biblical passages mentioning "Hell" also convey. Read more
Joseph Laycock's description of "ostension" and the "corrupt play" dynamics that fueled the Slender Man stabbing seem accurate to me. I think this is an insightful way of grasping what happened with those two little girls and also a perspective that helps us to understand what went so horribly wrong with Jerad and Amanda Miller. It also helps us to understand the Satanic baby-killer fantasy that has deformed so much of American religion and politics. Read more
Some are born ignorant, some achieve ignorance, and some have ignorance thrust upon them. If achieving ignorance is your chief ambition, then study this hacktacular bit of unreason. Here is the key -- the surest path to ensuring that nothing can ever be learned, that no mistake can ever be admitted and therefore no error can ever be corrected, no wrong ever righted, no harm ever ended, no injustice ever overturned. Read more
"Conversionism" is one of the defining characteristics of white evangelicalism -- part of the famous "Bebbington quadrilateral" that attempts to define this amorphous stream of Protestant faith. But conversionism is an empty set, a cipher, a blank slate. It is meaningless unless we can first answer two unasked and unanswered questions: Conversion to what? And conversion from what? Read more
A little Wussy, plus some Monday links, including: Solar roadways, hosting your own funeral, landed gentry, seventh-century sex, rewritten rules, culinary solutions, government sarcasm detectors, and geocentrists and their heirs. Read more
"Go and learn what this means, 'I desire mercy, not sacrifice.' For I have come to call not the righteous but sinners." Read more
A few things, including: Jesus couldn't dance like Fred and Ginger; Christian Swingle; our Judeo-Christian heritage; promoted for plagiarism; "it will only stare;" coming through the fog our sons and daughters. Read more
A few things, including: Commencement commences; Molly Worthen on the incredible shrinking Southern Baptist Convention; Christianity Today and gender disparity; everybody's got a black cousin; Limax maximus porn; new study confirms an old trick; an atheist Advent hymn. Read more
A few things, including: Sunday school malpractice; Alice's hippie Jesus; an unfortunate billboard; Ararat and Olympus Mons; James Dobson's "freedom to worship;" and poor Wayne, still in handcuffs after 30 years. Read more
"Everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love." Read more
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