Monthly Archives: March 2010

In Texas, Thomas Jefferson and the Enlightenment lose to Thomas Aquinas!

Last week the Texas Freedom Network live blogged the Texas State Board of Education and bore witness to Thomas Jefferson and the Enlightenment going right down Orwell’s memory hole: 9:27 – The board is taking up remaining amendments on the high … Continue reading

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Health care reform and Barack Obama: Howard Fineman thinks Barack Obama’s stock is destined to rise big time, especially if health care reform passes

Apparently based on health care reform’s revived prospects, Howard Fineman says this: If I were a broker and Barack Obama were a stock, I’d have a one-word piece of advice today: buy. Republicans should be scared. Very scared. Democrats are … Continue reading

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Yes we can! Nancy Pelosi is bullish on health care reform’s passage

If what Greg Sargent is reporting today is true, American politics is on the verge of a seismic shift: In her most expansive case yet for health reform, Nancy Pelosi argued in a small roundtable with bloggers today that passing … Continue reading

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Would the Ante-Nicene Fathers call contemporary American Protestants Christians (followers of Jesus)?

Early Orthodox (or proto-Orthodox) Christians writing after the apostolic period but before western Christendom’s adoption of the Nicene Creed (325 CE) are sometimes called the Ante-Nicene Fathers, and there is a fascinating (and rather thick) book I’m reading that catalogues quotes from … Continue reading

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Christopher Hitchens deconstructs the Ten Commandments—and offers an alternative decalogue of his own

I much prefer Hitchens to Moses—except perhaps when Moses arrives in this form:

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Contingency vs. Conspiracy

A recent set of studies reminds us that we use telos and conspiracy theories to control our anxiety over what really seems to rule the world: contingency. This at Miller-McCune: A research team led by social psychologist Daniel Sullivan of the … Continue reading

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A clever ad worth seeing

This ad demonstrates the ways in which people at once reveal and conceal their physical traits and personas  to others online: Who are you, really?

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Karl Rove violates the sanctity of marriage—by getting a divorce!

For quite a while Karl Rove has been saying that gays violate the sanctity of marriage by seeking to get married. But Karl Rove himself has recently taken advantage of lenient no-fault divorce laws in Texas to leave his own … Continue reading

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We know that gays are out of compliance with Leviticus, but is Miss Beverly Hills out of compliance as well?

  In a thread here at Prometheus Unbound, Bob Johnson directs us to a site called “What up, God?”. The blogger at this site points us to the above photo of Miss Beverly Hills 2010 (who wants gays to get in … Continue reading

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Technological Extensions ‘R’ Us: Martin Heidegger and Marshall McLuhan Were Right!

A new study actually testing a direct speculation of Martin Heidegger’s (that we see through our technologies, and so are our technologies) seems to have confirmed it at the neurological level. I think that Marshall McLuhan, who long touted a similar … Continue reading

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Today’s question: in the Bible, why didn’t God make critical thinking important?

If God exists, and really wrote the Bible, why didn’t He set critical thinking front and center in, say, the teachings of Moses or Jesus? Why, in other words, is God’s emphasis in the Bible upon the pragmatics of faith and obedience—but … Continue reading

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Why Sherry Marquez, as a Christian, should treat Muslims in Lancaster, Ca. as her friends

Below is an excerpt from an 1842 speech made by Abraham Lincoln to the Washington Temperance Society. It’s why I think that Lancaster city councilwoman, Sherry Marquez, should make a real effort to befriend the Muslim members of her community, and … Continue reading

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A great quote on fundamentalism from Lionel Tiger and Michael McGuire’s new book, “God’s Brain” (2010)

On page 8: People are killed for what is in their heads and for the amulets worn around their necks. A mighty university press, Yale, refuses to publish images of a religious figure—the book is precisely about them [images of … Continue reading

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And a little child shall lead them

Except ye become as little children, and learn to expand your humanity and loving acceptance of others’ life choices . . .

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Ross Douthat on “Avatar” and Pantheism

I think that Ross Douthat, in reflecting on the film Avatar, writes rather eloquently of the human existential dilemma: Traditional theism has to wrestle with the problem of evil: if God is good, why does he allow suffering and death? But Nature is suffering … Continue reading

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Are there Bible passages that endorse book burning and iconoclasm?

Yep. After St Paul preached the gospel in Ephesus, and won numerous converts, the Book of Acts says, with approval, that there was a book burning (19:19-20 KJV): Many of them also which used curious arts brought their books together, … Continue reading

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Élisabeth-Louise Vigée-Le Brun (16 April 1755 – 30 March 1842): Three Self Portraits

Élisabeth-Louise Vigée-Le Brun was the most famous female painter of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. In her portraitures she shows herself to be no retiring violet, but returns the Western male gaze in a wonderfully assertive fashion. Here she … Continue reading

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Silencing atheism: I find this news report sad

A billboard put up by an atheist group is vandalized by a theist who apparently could not bear a dissenting opinion on religion within his community: Oops. It doesn’t embed. See it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1SO7K4UL7kk When you can’t even stand exposure to opinions … Continue reading

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This is what a totalitarian intellectual vision looks like

Intellectual opponents rendered invisible and silent. One God. One voice. One people. Ein volk. Ein reich. Ein fuhrer. Think about what this kind of vision means for the adult mind. The hope being expressed above is for a world mediated by fundamentalist vision in such a … Continue reading

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Do fundamentalists own the Bible?

No. No more than Republicans own the American flag. And this is something that annoys me about the post-9-11 New Atheists: they are happy to cede biblical interpretation to fundamentalists. It is as if, in Japan and China, there was … Continue reading

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