I tend to treat blogging like Olympic sprinting. Lots of activity for short bursts followed by long periods of rest. Except that it is generally reversed: lots of activity for long bursts followed by short periods of rest. We’re presently in one of those short periods of rest and here’s why: Reason 1: On Wednesday […]
Archives for March 2012
Defending the Fall without a Historical Adam
The dialogue on evolution and Genesis in which Ms. B laid out a way to ground a doctrine of the fall without a historical Adam prompted the following response from Mike: I get that interpretation changes for the different prose but don’t you walk a razors edge when you’re deciding which accounts are fictitious and […]
Cases where blind faith is the best kind
In a dialogue with Ray Ingles on the concept of faith davidstarlingm observed: “Can we just agree that “having faith” is bad when it discourages investigation of the evidence….” The “right” answer is “yes, of course!” Or so you might think. But sometimes the “right” answer isn’t right. Consider this: “Can we just agree that making […]
Accords, Elans, and Biblical Interpretation
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 […]
From Adam to Zorg: A Dialogue on Creation and Evolution
In 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 […]
God Delusions? Some reflections on Dawkins vs. Lennox
Yesterday 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 […]
How to be spiritual in five minutes (or less): A Lenten Reflection
This 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 […]
Young earth creationism and really old living things
When 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 […]
On Bullies
I 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 […]
Rosie, don’t get in the elevator: A guide to moral intuition
Stephen 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 […]
A rat is a pig is a dog is a boy. Really?
This 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 […]
Should assertions be supported with evidence?
Hi 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 […]
Hellbound? A hot new documentary
As 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 […]
Must existence be everlasting to be meaningful?
I was happy to see Stephen Maitzen commenting on my previous post. You see, Stephen and I have a bit of a history as longtime readers of this blog will know (where longtime is defined roughly as more than a year). For example, see here and here and here and here. Now Stephen has challenged […]
