The SCUBA-Diver-of-the-Gaps Argument

October 19, 2018 By G. Shane Morris

My favorite hobby is SCUBA diving for fossils, particularly the giant teeth of megalodon sharks. In fact, I began diving several years ago to feed this fascination, which was sparked in my childhood when I discovered a shark tooth in my parents’ driveway. I was reminded while indulging this hobby, on a fossil dive yesterday, thirty feet under the Gulf of Mexico, why design is so unmistakable, and naturalistic evolution so untenable. I dive several different locations for megalodon teeth,... Read more

Why the Kavanaugh Controversy Feels Different

October 3, 2018 By G. Shane Morris

The uproar following last week’s testimony by Christine Blasey Ford and Brett Kavanaugh before the Senate Judiciary Committee has been the most heated and divisive in recent political memory, even by the standards of post-2016 America. Something is different about the accusations of sexual assault against Kavanaugh, the Senate’s all-day public barbecue of both him and his accuser, and the rage that consumed the Internet and news cycle afterward. Political anger from both sides of the aisle seems to have... Read more

If You Don’t Want Kids, Don’t Have Sex (or Get Married)

September 24, 2018 By G. Shane Morris

(This piece was originally published at BreakPoint.) A British National Health Service commuter ad is making the rounds on social media, and it seems to have offended just about everyone, though for very different reasons. The ad depicts a ladies’ stiletto high-heel shoe and a tube of lipstick on one side, and a baby’s pacifier on the other, accompanied by the grammatically irritating caption, “Would you give up this? For this?” The small print makes it clear the NHS is... Read more

Why I Can’t Sign the Social Justice Statement: Biblicism, Individualism, and Half a Great Commission

September 14, 2018 By G. Shane Morris

There is much to say about the recent Statement on Social Justice and the Gospel, and much has been said, some of it very concisely and some of it (we love you, Alastair), at exhausting length. Evangelicals are struggling at present over whether and how fully to absorb secular and progressive thinking about “social justice,” with all its applications to race, gender, sexual orientation, and economics, as well as whether such a term is even compatible with Christianity. It’s a... Read more

The Idolatry-of-Children Fire Brigade

August 23, 2018 By G. Shane Morris

Writing at Christ and Pop Culture, Allison Barron makes the case that Christian couples who forego having children are superheroes saving the world. That’s the only thing I can conclude from her article, entitled, “We Can’t All Be Hawkeye: On Choosing Childlessness.” Hawkeye, nerds will no doubt remember, is the erstwhile Avenger from the Marvel Cinematic Universe whose sole power was being a fair shot with a bow and arrow. That doesn’t really matter now, because he’s off the roster... Read more

The Bible Doesn’t Say Jesus Walked Through Locked Doors

August 15, 2018 By G. Shane Morris

There’s a Christian truism we all grew up with that goes like this: Jesus walked through walls and locked doors after His resurrection, and this proves that His glorified body, and thus ours, will be fundamentally more like spirits or less physical than the bodies we currently have. There’s just one problem: This isn’t what Scripture actually says. And the idea that Jesus’ resurrection body behaved in some radically different way from His pre-resurrection body has become the basis of... Read more

Why Is Harry Potter More Christian Than His Creator?

August 7, 2018 By G. Shane Morris

This piece was originally published on August 3 at Speculative Faith. On Tuesday, July 31, Harry Potter turned 38. I’m not talking about the books, but about the boy wizard, who in-canon, was born in 1980. In honor of this occasion (sort of, but also because we were bored) my wife and I decided to re-watch the Warner Bros “Harry Potter” films. As I filled her in on subplots and characters from the books which the movie adaptations cut, and... Read more

Humanae Vitae’s Vital Insight for Evangelicals

July 30, 2018 By G. Shane Morris

It’s become the norm for married couples the age of my wife and I to put off children for about half a decade. When these peers find out she and I are celebrating our seventh wedding anniversary with three kids, they often respond the way fans respond to Catholic comedian Jim Gaffigan on finding out he has five children: “Well, that’s one way to live your life.” Millennial couples have traveling to do. Dogs to pamper. Degrees to finish. Children... Read more

Batman’s Passion

July 17, 2018 By G. Shane Morris

Ten years after its most famous entry hit theaters, Christopher Nolan’s “Dark Knight” movies are still some of the best superhero films ever made. Here’s why. In one online video which made the rounds a few years ago, a perceptive YouTuber combines clips from Christopher Nolan’s “Batman Begins,” “The Dark Knight” and “The Dark Knight Rises” with audio from the director’s 2006 “The Prestige.” Michael Caine (who also plays Batman’s plucky butler, Alfred), explains the three parts of a magic... Read more

Rules Without Reasons: Why the Culture Is Eating Evangelicals for Lunch

June 19, 2018 By G. Shane Morris

A conservative evangelical author was recently quoted in the Washington Post as saying that “Christ was God come to Earth, and for whatever reason He chose to come as a man.” I couldn’t help but cringe. “For whatever reason”? This seems to imply that the reason God became incarnate as a male is either a mystery we can never hope to solve, or even that the male incarnation was arbitrary. Perhaps Jesus could have accomplished His salvific work just as... Read more