On Sunday Rowan Williams, Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury, was featured in a Reuters story entitled "World Anglican Leader Attacks U.S." In this very short piece, Williams is reported as responding to an Islamic magazine's inquiry regarding the moral position of the U.S regarding the war in Iraq. When asked if the U.S. has lost the moral high ground since 9/11, Williams respo...
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Freddy Age Seven interprets the great American holiday, Thanksgiving, with this image of mayhem.
At first glance, I took it for a battle between pilgrims (tall black hats, blunderbusses) and indians (feathered headdresses, tomahawks, bows and arrows). But upon closer examination, neither side is clearly chasing the other. Everybody's running to the left, firing bullets an...
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Critics, and shockingly this blog has critics, link everything I write to one of three things: young earth creationism, Republican politics, or Plato.
Actually, the last is rather fair since most things I write have something to with Plato, but not this post.
As far as I can tell it has nothing to do with religion or science.
And in this political season it has nothin...
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Give Mike Huckabee his due. This is the best campaign ad of the year so far.
Some grouchy types will complain it is not "presidential."
O.K.
Maybe.
If Mike were running for President in 1861, then I think he would be in big trouble, those Lincoln speeches were masterpieces of English . . . but wait didn't Lincoln's folk run around with wooden fence rails and blovi...
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Bottom Line: Gregg Jackson has backed away from playing the religion card against Romney. This is very good, but sadly his arguments against the governor are deeply flawed and badly sourced. It is hard to take them seriously as a result.
The Details:
Gregg Jackson, a radio host and conservative author, predicted that electing Mitt Romney, known Mormon, as president migh...
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Featured Essay
Last week I delivered a paper at the annual meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society. This post is an excerpt from a longer series I wrote some time back the content of which pertains, in part, to my recent ETS paper:
In the first two installments of this series, I have sought to establish two main themes:
(1) A worldview functions as a set of habit forming back...
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Jesus Christ is the eternal Son of God. That means he is God the Son, and that, in turn, means that he is the second person of the Trinity which consists of first the Father, second the Son, and third the Spirit. The one God has always been tri-personal, but in the fullness of time, the first person send forth the only-begotten second person (Galatians 4:4, John 3:16). That ...
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Featured Essay
Las Vegas, Virtual Reality, and Plain Old Reality
I just returned from the Godblog Conference in Las Vegas.
Las Vegas is a great place to discuss the world of virtual reality, since the Strip is a three dimensional attempt at a virtual world. Of course, what happens there does not stay there, since one brings one's soul back home from Vegas. You can still see the sky in...
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One argument often used to support torture is that killing a combatant is worse than torturing them, so why not torture them?
It does seem straightforwardly true that being dead is as bad as it gets.
However, the argument (or intuition) fails on four counts.
Argument from Soul Liberty
First, killing a combatant actually honors his free will. He has chosen to take u...
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Read Joe Carter's cry of the heart regarding conservative Christians and torture.
Carter is right.
You cannot do any good by committing acts known to be evil. While we do not live in a morally simple universe where lines are always easy to draw (What exactly is torture?), some acts are repugnant enough to demand a moral response.
Look up what happens in "water boarding...
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It's got a geometric simplicity that is mesmerizing. The repetition of circular and triangular forms creates a visual field in which every line is significant. This is a front view of a steam train coming down the tracks, or at least trying to come down the tracks. SOMETHING is in the way, and the engineer is upset.
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Bottom Line: If the old media cannot educate the viewer on Pakistan then what social function does it serve?
More:
Tonight I turned on the "news" and it was awash in the trivial.
While the major media fiddle, Pakistan is burning.
If things go badly there, then much of the good accomplished in the War could be lost.
While Pakistan burns, the "big three" report on ...
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