A Thinking Reed

  • “A severely conservative moral stance”

    James Rachels on vegetarianism: Vegetarianism is often regarded as an eccentric moral view, and it is assumed that a vegetarian must subscribe to principles at odds with common sense. But if this reasoning is sound, the opposite is true: the rule against causing unnecessary pain is the least eccentric of all moral principles, and that…

  • The cosmic prodigal son

    I’ve been reading a book called Created from Animals: the Moral Implications of Darwinism by the late philosopher James Rachels. The thesis is that Darwinism does have far-reaching implications for morality, even if not the ones commonly thought. This is in contrast to those, like Stephen Jay Gould, who tried to erect an insuperable wall…

  • Yes, Virginia, the pope believes in global warming

    Apparently some right-wing Catholics have interpreted the fact that the words “global warming” or “climate change” do not appear in Benedict XVI’s recent encyclical to mean that the pope is a global warming skeptic of some sort. Neil Ormerod, a Catholic theologian in Australia, attempts to set the record straight.

  • Friday Metal: Nobel Prize edition

  • Prayer for a squirrel

    Christopher has a terrific piece up at Episcopal Cafe on how prayer can and does connect us with our fellow creatures: …to bless God for the life of just one animal, who has been a friend and companion, begins to have us think anew about our fellow creatures, about creation, about ourselves, about God. Such…

  • Economies of scale

    How does iTunes justify charging 99 cents for Napalm Death’s “You Suffer,” which, I believe, holds the Guinness world record for shortest song ever recorded (4 seconds!)? Of course, you can get the entire album–28 songs–for $5.99. (In this video the song ends at 0:03.)

  • She Who Is wrap-up

    I’m not going to offer a blow-by-blow account of the rest of Elizabeth Johnson’s She Who Is, mostly because I don’t think I could do justice to the many nuances and illuminating insights it contains. It’s definitely changed how I think about these issues. Also, it’s a highly readable book for academic theology, and anyone…

  • Many names

    After discussing the role of experience–specifically women’s experience of affirming themselves as fully human and valued by God, equally created in the divine image–Elizabeth Johnson turns to the Bible and classical theology as sources for feminist theological discourse. It’s no secret that the Bible was written by men in patriarchal cultures and reflects the presuppositions…

  • The need for cranks

    I meant to flag this interesting article from the New Republic last week: “The Usefulness of Cranks: Nature as a standpoint for social criticism.” It’s about, among other things, the tensions between forms of environmentalism that value nature for its own sake and the progressivist and humanist assumptions of liberalism. Mainstream environmentalism (as represented by…

  • Feminist conversion as a source of theological speech

    In part II of She Who Is, Elizabeth Johnson discusses the sources she’s going to use for her project of theological reconstruction, or as she puts it: “resources for emancipatory speech about God” (p. 61). These are women’s interpreted experience, the Bible, and classical theology. It’s hard not to be reminded of Hooker’s “three-legged stool”…