The long discussion of Mr. A and Ms. B may have laid out one way to appropriate the Genesis creation/fall narrative in light of current understandings of earth history, but it has not solved all our problems or answered all our questions. Beetle asks: Ms. B never circles adequately back to Mr. A’s concern over [...]
Read moreIn response to my article on Young earth creationism and old things Walter asks: Now that we have established that YEC is a pile of baloney, could you point me to a prior post or article of yours that explains the biblical Fall as you understand it? Was there a single pair of humans that [...]
Read moreYesterday I finished leading three weeks of adult Sunday school based on the film “The God Delusion Debate”, a dialogue/debate between Richard Dawkins and John Lennox. Overall it was an engaging dialogue and Lennox made some good points. He also had what was undoubtedly the best line of the event. After the moderator quoted Dawkins [...]
Read moreThis is a repost of an article I published in 2010 at The Christian Post (with two tweaks). *** We live in a Dr. Phil world. It is a world in which deeply scarred, dysfunctional people can receive five minutes of counsel delivered with a Texas drawl, and supposedly be well on the road to [...]
Read moreWhen I grew up in a conservative evangelical (Pentecostal) church young earth creationism was the only game in town. With a blush I remember arguing the view to incredulous friends in high school and handing off a copy of It’s a Young World After All to my polite science teacher. In the early 1990s I [...]
Read moreI wasn’t bullied growing up. I had too big a personality to become a victim. (I did get beat up a few times, one time by a pack of headbangers in a city park, but that doesn’t count as bullying.) Nor was I an active bully of others. I was, in the terminology of Barbara [...]
Read moreStephen Matizen seems to think that we are only justified in attributing special status to human beings if we can identify qualities possessed by all and only human beings. This is how he put it most recently: Name a morally relevant quality possessed by all and only humans. Rationality? Not all humans have it (Terri [...]
Read moreThis quote is from Ingrid Newkirk (sans the indignant “Really?” at the end). Most people will react to it with indignation bordering on revulsion bordering on outrage. However, it may not warrant such a strong response. As I have argued elsewhere (see You’re not as Crazy as I Think, chapter 9), Newkirk’s ecumenical message is [...]
Read moreHi everyone. I’ve got about ten minutes in between meetings. Sadly, that is not enough time to address all the comments in the blog that require addressing. And it certainly isn’t time to offer the full response to Stephen Maitzen. And it definitely isn’t time to fulfill my promise to Jerry Rivard. But it is [...]
Read moreAs far as theological topics go, hell is hot these days. (By the way, I have a history with hell puns. When I was in seminary I wrote a paper for Stanley Grenz on the topic of annihilationism which I titled “Who in hell lives forever?” On the day I handed the paper in Stanley [...]
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