A Thinking Reed

  • Ward on God’s action in the world

    I’ve been reading side-by-side Arthur Peacocke’s Theology for a Scientific Age and Keith Ward’s Divine Action. While they construct similar positions, they have some important differences. Peacocke, for instance, argues that God acts on the universe in a “top-down” fashion that sets the parameters of what happens in the world, even while at the same…

  • Friday metal — the inimitable Axl

    I was skeptical of Guns ‘n’ Roses’ ballyhooed Chinese Democracy when it (finally) came out, but the album has grown on me considerably. Say what you will about Axl, you can’t deny his ambition to create a big, sprawling, bombastic, self-indulgent, at times over-produced, rock opera. Flawed though it may be, there are some excellent…

  • Faith and economics

    A conservative evangelical questions his uncritical embrace of laissez-faire economics. When you think about it, the marriage between evangelicalism and free market capitalism is downright odd, and, as far as I can tell, largely confined to the U.S. (British evangelicals, for instance, seem quite a bit more left-wing on economics than their American counterparts). I’m…

  • “God is not beyond”

    This meditation by Christian Wiman at the Christian Century is worth your time. Though, Wiman, being a poet, writes in a way that’s somewhat opaque to my flat-footed mind. Still, your mileage may vary.

  • In defense of pleasure

    I liked this article at Slate making what should be an obvious point: whatever health benefits it may be shown to have, it’s OK to drink wine because it tastes good and makes you feel good! The “medicalization” of food and drink, where everything is touted for its (real or imagined) health benefits, has gone…

  • Putting the public back in public goods?

    Michael Lind, who I always find worth reading, argues that Obama’s liberalism is timid, compared not only to FDR and LBJ, but to Eisenhower and Nixon. Why? Because those guys were in office before the neoliberal dogma took hold which demands that even public goods should be provided by the private sector. Instead of this…

  • What could Jesus have been wrong about?

    One Christian anti-evolution argument that I came across recently goes something like this: evolution can’t be true because Jesus believed in a historical Adam and Eve, a historical fall, etc., and this is incompatible with evolution. Clearly this is an argument aimed only at convincing other Christians. What’s interesting here is the implicit view of…

  • Johnny Rotten shills for butter

    Exactly what it sounds like (via Jesse Walker).

  • Our future: skyscraper farms?

    Paul Roberts (author of The End of Oil, The End of Food–you get the idea) writes that creating a sustainable food system will require more than “buy local” or “buy organic.” In some cases, he says, these can be misleading and oversimplifying labels for a much more complex reality. For instance, how food is produced…

  • Asking the right question

    In comments to my previous post, John corrected my understanding of Dennett’s views. It’s not, apparently, that Dennett denies that theism is logically compatible with evolution, it’s just that theism doesn’t explain or add anything to our understanding of evolution. But I’m not sure this is really a bad thing. I’m perfectly content to assume…