A Thinking Reed

  • Friday Metal: Faith No More, “War Pigs” (live)

    Cover of the immortal Sabbath classic:

  • Non sequitur of the day

    Theologian Paul Griffiths has an interesting post about how Christians should think about Muslims, but then ends with this: I hope, that is, that we Christians will increasingly choose to see Muslims as allies and affines against the deadening and bloody weight of late-capitalist democracy. It would be better, I think, for the Church to…

  • Free theology

    Via Per Crucem ad Lucem, the Scottish Journal of Theology has made a collection of “classic papers” available for free through the end of the year. See here. Pretty sweet for those of us who aren’t academics, but (strangely) have a taste for theology.

  • In and out

    Christopher has a post on universalism that pretty closely approximates my own view. In short: we believe salvation is through Christ, but we don’t know how far that salvation extends. We can hope–but not know–that it extends to everyone. One other point I’d add is that Christians usually presume we’re on the “inside,” and the…

  • Friday Metal: Between the Buried and Me, “Mordecai” (live)

    I saw these guys a few weeks ago with The Faceless and In Flames. Fantastic.

  • Vegetarianism without foundations

    Freddie at the group blog the League of Ordinary Gentleman probes the philosophical underpinnings of vegetarians/vegans and contends that they are insufficiently developed. I think he’s wrong in suggesting that vegetarians haven’t devled deeply into these issues: there’s quite a vast philosophical literature on the subject that has sprung up in the last 30 years,…

  • Smith: animal rights=idolatry

    Wesley Smith is shocked and appalled (surprise!) by Humane Society president Wayne Pacelle’s recent column on Michael Vick’s efforts to rehabilitate himself. First, Pacelle: In a civil society, there must be accountability for grievous actions. But there also must be an embrace of people who are willing and ready to change – even in tough…

  • Freedom’s just another word

    In a Reason symposium on libertarianism and culture, Kerry Howley argues that libertarians should be concerned not just with minimizing government coercion, but with critiquing cultural barriers to human freedom. For instance, she points out that a woman trapped in a repressively patriarchal culture, or one that merely reinforces “traditional” gender roles, is hardly capable…

  • The agri-empire strikes back

    California beef producer Harris Ranch Beef Co. put the screws to Cal Poly San Luis Obispo when they found out Michael Pollan was scheduled to speak there, with the company chairman essentially threatening to withhold financial support in a letter to the university’s president. The result? Instead of a speech by Pollan, the university put…

  • A very kinky book

    The new book Superfreakonomics (sequel to the much-ballyhooed Freakonomics) hasn’t even been published yet, and it’s already receiving massive smack-downs for its highly misleading chapter on global warming. See Joseph Romm (here, here, and here) and Paul Krugman.