Gay Pedophiles?
OK, so the Family Research Council, an avowedly Christian right political organization, is trying to make a case that homosexual men are proportionally over-represented in pedophile cases. However, they make this claim, as far as I can tell, with the assumption that if a man molests a boy, he is a homosexual, or that is a homosexual act. I don’t buy that, but do you? But purely speaking, it is a same-sex event. Hmmmm.
Christianity and Liberalism, Part II – Doctrine
In Part I of this series, I introduced this book. In this post, I summarize the author’s points in the topic of Doctrine. The author covers these topics:
- Christianity is not just a lifestyle, but a lifestyle rooted in a doctrine
- Doctrine is rooted in historical events, not just religious sentiments
- Pauline tolerance regarding motives of others, intolerance of bad doctrine
- Jesus was not just a moralizer who lived a life of example, but firmly oriented his life to a specific doctrine of salvation, and a historical act of doctrinal importance
Is Natural Family Planning = Abortion?
As a more moderate religious conservative, I take the unusual stand that a fetus is not a person from the point of conception, but rather, sometime soon after. In an interesting twist, Luc Bovens (London School of Economics and Political Science, Department of Philosophy, Logic, and Scientific Method), writing in the latest issue of the Journal of Medical Ethics, accuses that NFP actually is abortifacient.
“Left Behind” Video Game – Convert or Be Killed?
One of my favorite new anti-evangelical sites is talk2action.org. Not only does it help me keep up with what is hot in evangelicalism, it helps me see what the Christian left is fretting about, and what things the far right are doing that I might want to avoid.
In The Purpose Driven Life Takers, talk2action is trying to smear Rick Warren, author of The Purpose Driven Life, as a dominionist, and in a nice guilt-by-association move, is linking him to the upcoming Left Behind video game, in which one supposedly is "on a mission – both a religious mission and a military mission — to convert or kill Catholics, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, gays, and anyone who advocates the separation of church and state." Hmmm. It also looks like you can play the antichrist and kill dominionists. I see a dual market out there :D.
Marriage Protection Amendment
Next week, the U.S. Senate votes on the Marriage Protection Amendment, a proposed amendment to the U.S. Constitution which defines marriage as between a man and a woman. I think it is imperative that those of us who support traditional marriage support this. Focus on the Family’s Citizenlink has a good FAQ on the Amendment, and why a federal amendment is needed (basically, state judges can trump state declarations by calling them unconstitutional). Here’s the text of the amendment:
Marriage in the United States shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman. Neither this Constitution, nor the constitution of any State, shall be construed to require that marriage or the legal incidents thereof be conferred upon any union other than the union of a man and a woman.
Evolutionist Expresses Significant Disagreements with Darwinism
From a post at Uncommon Dissent:
"Darwin was wrong, and his modern-day adherents perpetuate his mistakes."
That sounds like the opening salvo of an advocate for Intelligent Design or some other religiously driven critique of the theory of evolution. But it actually summarizes the ideas of Jeffrey Schwartz, a noted anthropologist at the University of Pittsburgh and one of a growing group of critics of standard Darwinian theory.
Summer Reading List from Human Events
Human Events, the conservative rag, has published its 2006 summer reading list. I doubt I will get to Ann Coulter’s book, but Islamic Imperialism looks good. Here’s their blurb on it:
To many liberals, the upsurge of Islamic jihad around the world is a response to America’s arrogant foreign policy.
Holland Leads the Way Down the Slippery Slope of Sex
For all of those liberals who comfort themselves at night that liberalism and the pro-gay agenda certainly aren’t connected with other sexual deviancy like pedophilia, polygamy, and bestiality, here’s an article for you – Pedophiles to launch political party (in Holland).
The party said it wanted to cut the legal age for sexual relations to 12 and eventually scrap the limit altogether.
Hey, 12-year olds are sexually active – I mean, why judge their morality by telling them that sex before marriage is wrong? Just hand them some condoms and show them how to have "safe sex" with their local 30 year old.
Abstinence Fails in Uganda?
One of our faithful commenters alerted me to this recent report on how the vaunted abstinence program in Uganda has failed to curtail the spread of AIDS. After reading that article and one at the BBC, I have figure out what is going on.
Christianity and Liberalism – Part I
Christianity and Liberalism was originally published in 1922, in response to the growing theological liberalism of the early 1900′s. Not only is this book well written, it’s interesting to see the criticisms of liberalism which still hold true, as well as those that seem a bit dated or alarmist, like the attacks on "experiential psychology" in the schools (then again, maybe that’s still accurate ;). What is also interesting is how the conservatism of the past has become the liberalism of today, and vice versa – like the author’s attack on laws that demand teaching in English only.
Strange immigration bedfellows
Take a look at the votes on an amendment to cap the number of guest worker permits at 650,000 per year.
Human Evolution’s Sketchy Record
I am putting together a table of the human fossils – what actual fossils there are (like a tooth here, a jawbone there), the evolutionary stance on the fossil, and the creationist response, and in some cases, the evolutionary counter-response.
This exercise is interesting because it shows (me) how much conjecture is involved, and how little actual evidence there is. I have to admit, this is merely an exercise in collecting discussions that already exist on the web, but collating it and putting it into one piece makes analysis a little easier, and makes the patterns more obvious.
The Da Vinci Code’s ignorance of … everything
Okay, I will stop beating a dead, or at least dying, horse. While the movie racked in over $77 million the first weekend, the film critics, or as I like to call them – our evil right-wing Christian pawns – panned the movie as dreadful.
This lets us know why Sony kept the movie away from film critics as long as possible – they wanted to get at least one good weekend out of it before the bad reviews broke the Code momentum.
Still I can’t help but to throw one last swift kick to the gut of the story’s inherent ignorance of vast amounts of knowledge. So here is a brief round-up of the myriad of mistakes in The Da Vinci Code.
Who are you to judge?
Update: Joe Carter at EO has posted a response to Challies’ article below, and I have inserted the 9th comment ————————————-
Tim Challies has a nice article, and a good reference post discussing the principles around judgment vs. reproof and rebuke. Very timely, seeing our discussions here. Have fun reading The Obligation to Assume, and even better, The Ultimate Human Judgment.
On Judging Yourself
Paul acknowledged this when he wrote, in 2 Corinthians 13:5, "Examine yourselves, to see whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves. Or do you not realize this about yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you?-unless indeed you fail to meet the test!" Paul knew that some who professed to be believers were not and thus he encourages each of them to continually test their hearts. One terrifying aspect of the final judgment is that there will be many going to hell who sincerely felt they were believers….
Christian Intellectual — Jaroslav Pelikan Dead at 82
From Albert Mohler’s Blog – I have never heard of this guy, but I will have to look into him. He has published prolifically, including such titles as Interpreting the Bible and the Constitution, The Idea of the University : A Reexamination, The Reformation of the Bible/The Bible of the Reformation, Whose Bible Is It? A History of the Scriptures Through the Ages, plus a couple of series, including Sacred Writings (which he edited, covering all the major faiths), and The Christian Tradition (looks like 5 volumes). Anyway, I love his quote below about tradition:
Jaroslav Pelikan, one of the Christian tradition’s greatest historians of doctrine, died Saturday, May 13, 2006, of lung cancer. Pelikan had served for many years as Sterling Professor of History at Yale University — holding the university’s most prestigious professorial title. He was also a prolific author, writing more than thirty books, ranging from classical studies to considerations of Bach and Faust….
[In] his great work The Christian Tradition, he warned that tradition must be distinguished from traditionalism: "Tradition is the living faith of the dead; traditionalism is the dead faith of the living."
The coming conflict between same-sex marriage and religious liberty
The Weekly Standard has just published an interesting piece on how governmental approval of same-sex marriage would probably be accompanied by a crackdown on organizations that oppose it if it became law. Religious liberty advocates are worried about this. Marc Stern, general counsel for the center-left American Jewish Congress, was on Albert Mohler’s show this week and said this:
I’m not necessarily opposed to same-sex marriage, I am opposed to using the change in the law to eliminate any religious opposition to that concept.
Is The Da Vinci Code a threat?
Yes, it is all Da Vinci Code all the time. My blog (partially) – my topics. Just kidding (partially).
I thought I had sufficiently answered the questions of Christians motives in responding to DVC in my two previous posts on the topic, but apparently not. So I hope this will clear up any lingering misconceptions.
The Atheist’s Caricature of Faith
Macht, one of my favorite intellectual Christian philosopher bloggers, has a really nice article which discusses three definitions of faith, and how your view of faith affects how you view the integration of science, religion, and faith. His second definition of faith is the typical caricature that atheists hold to:
faith #2 – Believing something without any evidence or reason or in spite of evidence or reason. This is what a lot of atheists seem to think that this is what is meant when somebody says they have faith in God.
