Is The Lord of The Rings racist? I’ve heard people suggest it before, but this is the first serious discussion I’ve found of it.

Indistinguishable From Magic — (Reposted to be rebloggable!) Any time Tolkien… |

(Reposted to be rebloggable!) Any time Tolkien has south/eastern people as antagonists, it’s because they’ve been coerced by guys like Sauron (nor are non-white people the only cultures to be…

This is a helpful way to think about the relationship between theology and faith.

Theory Ain’t Belief–Thank God! | John G. Stackhouse, Jr.

Philosopher Alvin Plantinga buries a little gem of insight in a footnote to his massive Warranted Christian Belief (Oxford, 2000) that pertains to Christmas and Easter especially: But aren’t there man…

Funny, although it misses the point of the Golden Rule.

Dilbert comic strip for 12/09/2012 from the official Dilbert comic strips archive.

The Official Dilbert Website featuring Scott Adams Dilbert strips, animation, mashups and more starring Dilbert, Dogbert, Wally, The Pointy Haired Boss, Alice, Asok, Dogbert’s New Ruling Class and mor…

The good news: hate crimes were down by 6%. The interesting news: “The majority of those incidents—46.9 percent—were racially motivated, followed by 20.8 percent motivated by sexual orientation and 19.8 percent motivated by religion. Incidents of religious bias had previously outnumbered incidents of sexual-orientation bias since at least 1995…”  Things that surprised me: how few hate crimes there are overall, how much greater anti-Jewish animus is than anti-any other religion, and how much more prevalent racial hostility is than any other category.

For the First Time, Hate Crimes Against Gays Outnumber Those Against Religion: Religious bias had outnumbered sexual-orientation bias since at least 1995.

At Christianity Today, we’re constantly tracking important developments in the church and the world. Often we use our network of reporters around the world (and for that, visit our main site). But we …

This is one of the most marvelous examples of people responding to incentives that I can think of. Surprising and yet obvious in retrospect.

Snitching markets in everything

The prisoners in Atlanta’s hulking downtown jail had a problem. They wanted to snitch for federal agents, but they didn’t know anything worth telling. Fellow prisoner Marcus Watkins, a…