Category: Of Random Interest

Noted philospher Charles Taylor (who seems to be a Christian) has just been interviewed in Books and Culture on What It Means to Be Secular.

It’s pretty interesting stuff. For example

To say we live in a secular civilization is to say that God is no longer inescapable. It doesn’t mean that we live in a society from which God has been expelled. I don’t think we ever will live in such a society for very long; the Communists tried that. But the nature of this modern secular society is that it’s deeply plural. We have to accept that the ultimate grounding of the civilization we share in common is up for grabs.

and later on

There is an alternative readingnamely, that we’re moving to a society where more and more the consensus will be around an unbelieving variant of the modern social imaginary. But to me this seems to be just a dream. It’s a dream that arises among those who are deeply into an atheist or non-believing position and are convinced as a matter of faith that religion will gradually disappear and everyone will think as they do. For them, the secular world is one in which we all end up agreeing fundamentally that there’s no God, and that agreement is the basis of everything. That’s an impossible scenario, and the more they think like that, the worse it’s going to be.

Check this out on CNN: A Pornographer Hacks An Al-Quaeda Site. This is one of those bizarre little situations in which someone we thoroughly disapprove of does something we greatly approve of.

Evidently his expertise in running a smut site was immediately applicable to the challenge of hacking a paranoid and ruthless organization’s computer. Messner, using the aggressive tactics he’s employed to run his adult site, said he “hijacked” Al Neda for five days It kind of makes you wonder exactly what skills porn site operators pick up… One more good reason to avoid porn like the plague–some of these guys are ace hackers!

I found the following excerpts sad: “I bought a digital camera and convinced my wife to get naked for the Internet.” … His Porsche and its “WIVES” vanity plates memorializing his success in adult entertainment are, he believes, a testament that he and his family are living the American dream. And, in his own way, Messner said, he is fighting an American war.

In the entire CNN article there’s not a hint of appropriate moral indignation that this man is both destroying the sacredness of his own marriage and enticing men across the world to violate their marriage vows. I’m willing to bet that it didn’t even cross the journalist’s mind… *sigh* Does no one see how destructive pornography is?

I ran across a very interesting rant comparing Islam and Christianity by a blogger I’d never heard of called James Lileks (I found the link on blogdex).

At one point, Mr. Lileks identifies himself thusly I am a Deist, which means EVERYONE disagrees with me.

Translation: a lot of his underlying assumptions will differ from yours, but you should still read the piece. He puts some very important points in a very direct way.

Here’s his opening statement:
There are two ways for a religion to approach life:

A) Everything is permitted except that which is forbidden; over time, we work out the details as the situations arise.

B) Everything is forbidden except that which is permitted, and we will work out the details in advance.

After an opening like that, how can you not read the rest?

(there’s a similar diatribe at Little Green Footballs, although it’s not as reflective it does have the virtue of a very active comments section)

I added this next bit on 8/9/2002
Ever wonder what an Episcopalian terrorist would look like?

Here’s an interesting tidbit reported by The Washington Times: Thomas Jefferson did not want a wall built between church and state. There are two books by two different scholars referenced in the above article: Daniel Dreisbach’s Thomas Jefferson and The Wall of Separation Between Church and State and Separation of Church and State by Philip Hamburger.

Alan Wolfe, director of the Boisi Center for Religion and Public Life at Boston College, is impressed by the new findings but doubts they can make a difference.

“I think it is terrific scholarship, but I don’t think it can change anything,” said Mr. Wolfe, who reviewed the Hamburger book and has surveyed public opinion on politics and religion.

“The ‘wall’ idea has taken on a life of its own and is part of our custom and law,” Mr. Wolfe said. “Americans love God and hate politics, so they ask, ‘Why mix the two?’ ”

You can read some reviews from Harvard University Press here and here.

Relevant Magazine brought an unexpected article to my attention. In Why We Need Hell, TooNewsweek journalist Kenneth Woodward argues for the importance of Hell as an inducement for moral living.

This is a sidebar article to the main Why We Need Heaven, which is a discussion of the rival Jewish, Muslim, and Christian perspectives on the afterlife and the way they impact the news.

I found quote particularly amusing: (Speaking of the Koran’s promise of heavenly orgies) Georgetowns Voll doesnt think that the virgins carry much weight with the Palestinian martyrs; unlike the Iranians in the 1980s, teenagers on the West Bank do have access to sex. More seductive is that you would have a house, regular food, prosperity, he says. You would have flowing water; someone wouldnt be bombing your well. If you had lived without all that stuff for the first 15 or 20 years of your life, heaven would sound pretty good with or without 72 virgins. Hmmm… I’m guessing Voll doesn’t know any teenage boys.

And of course, Ernest Hemingway wrote that he thought of heaven as two lovely houses in town; one where I would have my wife and children and be monogamous and love them truly and well and the other where I would have my nine beautiful mistresses on nine different floors. Hmm… logical consistency wasn’t one of Hemingway’s dominant concerns.

The author buys some unfortunate interpretations of the development of the afterlife in Jewish theology, and enjoys playing with the notion that both the suicide bombers and their victims think they’re going to heaven (and that their enemies are going to hell). Overall, it’s a pretty interesting read (if not a good course in theology).

Emergesque just turned me on to a great article about evangelicals in academia.

The articles focuses on the necessity of large foundations (especially the Lilly Endowment and the Pew Charitable Trusts) to provide funding for evangelical scholars (things like research and sabbaticals cost money!)

Something I find pretty interesting: the evangelical scholars seem to be good investments: “As measured by scholarly productivity, foundations supporting evangelical scholarship have received an unusually high return on their investment. A study by the National Endowment for the Humanities found that 45 percent of their grant recipients had published books within six years of receiving their grants. By contrast, a study of scholars receiving grants from the Pew Evangelical Scholars Program found that 90 percent had finished their books within six years.”

There’s a related article from 2000 in the The Atlantic Monthly

The August 4th San Francisco Chronicle has a fascinating article on John Ashcroft called Son of a Preacher Man. The article is pretty factual, although the journalist’s dislike of Ashcroft’s value system shows through.

In case you didn’t know it, John Ashcroft (our current U.S. Attorney General) is an Assemblies of God layperson, and his father J. Robert Ashcroft was responsible for the founding of Chi Alpha.

This is sort of an offbeat post that caught my eye: dogs have rudimentary math abilities (CNN).

That’s right: Fido knows the difference between one and two. The research will be published in an upcoming issue of Animal Cognition final fantasy vii advent children divx download . For more details, check out the report on New Scientist.

Yes, that’s right. Bono (of U2) has a favorite Bible translation. It’s The Message translated (some would say paraphrased) by Eugene Peterson.

Surprised Bono reads the Bible? Don’t be. Bono professes to be a Christian (albeit an unconventional one).

Mark Galli has a neat little editorial in Christiantiy Today talking about
when imitating Christ is superficial theology, using the book What Would Jesus Eat? as an sterling example of good intentions gone loopy.

While I have to concede his basic point (what would Jesus eat?????), I think he dismisses the concept too quickly. Dallas Willard and John Ortberg (who doesn’t seem to have a website) do marvelous jobs of demonstrating how it is possible to imitate Christ in a thoughtful, productive manner. In fact, I highly recommend Dallas Willard’s book The Spirit of the Disciplines as a life-changing guide to the imitation of Christ.