Asides

Wow. What hor­ri­ble news.

Got news? Egypt­ian Copts tor­tured for some strange rea­sonGot news? Egypt­ian Copts tor­tured for some strange rea­son

tmatt | Got news?, Islam, Mid­dle East, Ortho­doxy, Pol­i­tics, Reli­gion, World, World Reli­gions, Wor­ship

This was a very inter­est­ing read. “Unfor­tu­nate­ly, a few years lat­er my mar­riage ended—a pain known too eas­i­ly by too many. At this point, the divorce allowed me to explore my homo­sex­u­al­i­ty for the first time in my life. At first, I felt lib­er­at­ed. I dat­ed some great guys, and was in a cou­ple of long-term rela­tion­ships. Over sev­er­al years, intel­lec­tu­al hon­esty led me to some unex­pect­ed con­clu­sions: (1) Cre­at­ing a fam­i­ly with anoth­er man is not com­plete­ly equal to cre­at­ing a fam­i­ly with a woman, and (2) deny­ing chil­dren par­ents of both gen­ders at home is an objec­tive evil. Kids need and yearn for both.”

I’m Gay and I Oppose Same-Sex Mar­riage

While reli­gion and tra­di­tion have led many to their posi­tions on same-sex mar­riage, it’s also pos­si­ble to oppose same-sex mar­riage based on rea­son and expe­ri­ence.

How quick­ly aca­d­e­mics turn on their fel­lows when they betray the pre­vail­ing ortho­doxy. Thomas Nagel has the audac­i­ty to hold views such as this: “If the mate­ri­al­ist, neo-Dar­win­ian ortho­doxy con­tra­dicts com­mon sense, then this is a mark against the ortho­doxy, not against com­mon sense. When a chain of rea­son­ing leads us to deny the obvi­ous, we should dou­ble-check the chain of rea­son­ing before we give up on the obvi­ous.”  This, of course, gen­er­at­ed huge push­back. “In a daz­zling six-part tour de force rebut­ting Nagel’s crit­ics, the philoso­pher Edward Fes­er pro­vid­ed a good anal­o­gy to describe the basic mate­ri­al­ist error—the attempt to stretch mate­ri­al­ism from a work­ing assump­tion into a com­pre­hen­sive expla­na­tion of the world. Fes­er sug­gests a par­o­dy of mate­ri­al­ist rea­son­ing: “1. Met­al detec­tors have had far greater suc­cess in find­ing coins and oth­er metal­lic objects in more places than any oth­er method has. 2. There­fore we have good rea­son to think that met­al detec­tors can reveal to us every­thing that can be revealed” about metal­lic objects. But of course a met­al detec­tor only detects the metal­lic con­tent of an object; it tells us noth­ing about its col­or, size, weight, or shape. In the same way, Fes­er writes, the meth­ods of “mech­a­nis­tic sci­ence are as suc­cess­ful as they are in pre­dict­ing and con­trol­ling nat­ur­al phe­nom­e­na pre­cise­ly because they focus on only those aspects of nature sus­cep­ti­ble to pre­dic­tion and con­trol.” Mean­while, they ignore every­thing else. But this is a fatal weak­ness for a the­o­ry that aspires to be a com­pre­hen­sive pic­ture of the world.”

Inter­est­ing through­out. 

The Heretic

Last fall, a few days before Hal­loween and about a month after the pub­li­ca­tion of Mind and Cos­mos, the con­tro­ver­sial new book by the philoso­pher Thomas Nagel, sev­er­al of the world’s lead­ing philosoph…

This is so much fun­nier to me than it has any right to be. Wow.

i.imgur.com/9TVKXY3.jpg

Very encour­ag­ing.

For­get About Evo­lu­tion and Inerran­cy (for a Minute)

“What about evo­lu­tion?” This was her ques­tion. It was a ques­tion that before this day I was pre­pared to answer. I had read Ken Ham, been through the Mor­ris train­ing, and watched all of the Hov­ind v.…..

In case you did­n’t know, Passover is com­ing up. Check out this clever video.

I tru­ly, tru­ly feel bad about laugh­ing at the Jesus Hye­na. And yet I am still laugh­ing.

Chrisendom: The­o­log­i­cal vocab­u­lary of the day: “to jesus” (verb)

The­o­log­i­cal vocab­u­lary of the day: “to jesus” (verb). jesus­ing. Now let’s gerund this baby, and lop off the “ing” as well. And we get: IMG_2427 · down­load. Antonym: jesushye­na · IMG_1622. post­ed by Ch…

Dr. Bill New­some, recent­ly tapped to co-chair the BRAIN ini­tia­tive, is a fol­low­er of Jesus. I’ve had him preach in my Chi Alpha min­istry before. You can see him being inter­viewed about the BRAIN ini­tia­tive at http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/04/newsome/ and see him talk­ing about his faith at http://stanmed.stanford.edu/2006summer/newsome.html

Of two minds — Stan­ford Med­i­cine Mag­a­zine — Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty School of Med­i­cine

By WILLIAM NEWSOME. When I dis­cuss reli­gion with my fel­low sci­en­tists — which is not often — I find that many per­ceive reli­gious faith as a unique­ly irra­tional aspect of human life andthere­fore high­ly…

Choco De Jesus, one of the pas­tors from my denom­i­na­tion (the Assem­blies of God), is fea­tured on the cov­er of TIME mag­a­zine. Con­grat­u­la­tions, Pas­tor Choco! http://georgeowood.com/pastor-choco-graces-cover-of-time-magazine/ 

Pas­tor Choco in TIME Mag­a­zine

A big con­grat­u­la­tions is in order today to our AG broth­er, Pas­tor Choco. His image graces the mul­ti-fold cov­er of TIME mag­a­zine today as a leader of the His­pan­ic Evan­gel­i­cal Com­mu­ni­ty. Sev­er­al AG p.…..