Aug
23
The Evolution of Christianity
August 23, 2007 | Leave a Comment
If, like me, you have an interest in the developmental patterns that structured the Christian religion during the first century, you are probably most familiar with those elements of the patterns that have been popularized in the mass media, elements such as the work of the Jesus Seminar, the publication of various Gnostic texts, and [...]
Aug
22
Same Old Same Old
August 22, 2007 | Leave a Comment
A new book by Philip Kitcher has been reviewed by James Kreuger for Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews. The book, Living with Darwin: Evolution, Design, and the Future of Faith, is published by Oxford University Press. The book, which I have not read, appears to be a little different from recent books by Richard Dawkins and [...]
Aug
17
The Sands of Time
August 17, 2007 | Leave a Comment
They’ve been a-blowin’ at me all day, as I sit here enjoying the beach at Lake Michigan on a beautiful, if windy, late summer afternoon. We’ve been hanging out here all week, somewhere in the vicinity of Holland, Michigan, but tomorrow we head on home. The kids will be back in school in a week, [...]
Aug
16
Comfortable With the Size of My Muskens
August 16, 2007 | Leave a Comment
According to a story at the Washington Post, there really is a bishop in the Netherlands named Tiny Muskens. This is the same bishop who advocated the use of condoms to prevent the spread of AIDS. Now he’s going around saying that everyone ought to refer to God as “Allah”. I suppose if I lived [...]
Aug
15
Aristotle Vindicated Again
August 15, 2007 | Leave a Comment
The latest issue of Nature (08/16/2007) has an interesting cover headline: “Form Finds Function” introduces an article by Johannes Hermann called “Structure-based activity prediction for an enzyme of unknown function” that argues, in effect, that the function of a certain enzyme can be predicted on the basis of its underlying structure. This is an interesting [...]
Aug
14
The Human Families
August 14, 2007 | Leave a Comment
The most recent archaeological evidence (published last week in Nature, 08/09/2007) suggests more trouble on the horizon for Biblical “literalists”, the pinheads who think that it’s not enough for the Bible to be “true”, it has to be “literally, word for word, jot and tittle true”, otherwise it’s all just a pack of lies. According [...]
Aug
8
The Evolution of Affluence
August 8, 2007 | Leave a Comment
Cultural evolution can be a controversial topic. When one thinks about evolution it is natural to think about variation and change in the rather straightforward anatomical traits that one can visually assess or the more complex and discrete traits found at the level of the genome. But behaviors, beliefs, attitudes, and the like are no [...]
Aug
7
Sungenis Gets (Real) Religion?
August 7, 2007 | Leave a Comment
According to a post at Pertinacious Papist, Robert Sungenis has removed some of the anti-semitic materials from his CAI website. I suppose that’s good news of some kind, though it is interesting that it took brute force rather than intellectual dialogue to get him to see the error of his ways, if indeed he does [...]
Aug
5
Dark Material Indeed
August 5, 2007 | Leave a Comment
Brandon Watson of Siris posted a nice essay on Friday about the Rowling and Pullman books. His comments on both were interesting and enlightening, and they got me to thinking. I confess that I have not been as swept away by these sets of books as others have, though I did read them, and in [...]
Aug
4
Principles vs. Practices
August 4, 2007 | Leave a Comment
Being the sucker for popular culture that I am, I’ve been playing around with Facebook. Lisa has been very scornful of me for this, pointing out that Facebook is the playground of high school kids and their middle aged predators, not a savory place for an ordinary guy like me. Add to this the fact [...]
