A Thinking Reed

  • Iran: It’s not about you, America

    I fully endorse this meme.

  • The health care “debate”

    I don’t have a strong specific policy preference as far as health care reform goes, but I was out eating with some friends this weekend and was provided, courtesy of the CNN playing on the TV at the restaurant, with a telling example of how the health care debate is being carried on. (Usually I…

  • Problems of omnipotence, omniscience, and temporality

    In his book Pascal’s Fire, Keith Ward writes: …ultimate mind is the actual basis of all possible states. It is the only being that must be actual, if anything at all is possible. It is thus uniquely self-existent, not deriving its existence from any other being. Its nature is necessarily what it is–there are no…

  • Think of the children!

    United Egg Producers, a trade association for the egg industry, has begun churning out “kid-friendly” propaganda aimed at free-range egg producers: Who knew stuff like this was simply intended to keep the poor things dry and warm? Story here (via).

  • Unfair but amusing

    “…when Theodore Roosevelt, to his lasting discredit, referred to Thomas Paine, without having read him, as ‘a filthy little atheist,’ he was slandering someone whose belief in the traditional doctrines of the existence of a Supreme Power and the immortality of the Soul was much more unqualified than the belief of two thinkers who have…

  • Friday metal retro-80’s goth-pop

    Brooklyn’s Blacklist plays an infectious brand of goth-influenced, post-punk pop (more Cure or Sisters of Mercy than Evanescence, thankfully):

  • “Critical Animal” on Pollan

    A couple of posts providing some interesting criticisms of Michael Pollan’s views on meat eating, here and here. Pollan’s obviously doing more than nearly anyone to draw attention to the problems with our system of food production, including factory farming. And yet, he seems to have a soft spot for silly atavistic arguments against vegetarianism.

  • Is theistic evolution incoherent?

    At the First Things blog, Joe Carter has a post challenging the coherence of “theistic evolution.” This view, held by people like Kenneth Miller, accepts the orthodox Darwinist position that the evolution of human beings did not require any special intervention by God (contra both old-school creationists and Intelligent Design proponents). Further, according to an…

  • Clergy and theological/liturgical experimentation

    Derek has a good post on those he calls spiritual adventurers/seekers in the Episcopal Church, in the context of debates about messing around with the liturgy. As Derek points out, the liturgy (including, I’d emphasize, the creeds) provides guard rails for the life of the church. A priest or pastor who ignores these for the…

  • TAC expands its blog-presence

    The American Conservative has added two blogs to its already-stellar lineup: Daniel McCarthy’s “Tory Anarchist” and “PostRight.” That latter features a stable of young(ish) writers who “take a jaundiced view of the conventional left-right spectrum.” Talk of going “beyond left and right” is often just code for a vacuous and muddled “moderation” or “centrism,” but…