A Thinking Reed

  • 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…

  • Evolution, creation, and human uniqueness

    There’s an account making the rounds of a recent debate between atheist philosopher Daniel Dennett and Christian theist Alvin Plantinga. One of the issues that comes up is the compatibility between Christianity (or theism more generally) and evolution, a perennial topic of interest here at ATR. Dennett seems to see them as incompatible. Plantinga not…

  • A two-phase Iraq withdrawal

    That’s what it looks like anyway, based on Obama’s speech and the analysis I’ve seen. “Combat troops” will withdraw in 2010 with “residual” forces engaged in training and counter-terrorism activities (which, make no mistake, will involve at least some combat). But full withdrawal is supposed to occur by the end of 2011. Not ideal, by…

  • By (almost) any means necessary

    I thought this interview with Paul Watson of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. They’re like Greenpeace on steroids: they do everything short of harming people to stop whalers. In fact, Watson calls Greenpeace the “Avon Ladies” of environmentalism and compares their philosophy of “bearing witness” to standing idly by while someone’s attacked: They have this…

  • Veggie kids

    A conscientious omnivore on raising vegetarian kids.

  • Darwin and the deity

    Check out Kim Fabricius’s ten propositions on the subject.

  • Inching closer to voting rights

    Senate clears way for approval of D.C. voting rights bill D.C. Vote: As Constitutional As You Want It To Be If DC isn’t going to be “retrocessed” into Maryland, or made the 51st state, then I don’t really see any other solution that’s fair and reasonable. I look forward to having a representative in Congress…

  • Michael Pollan interviewed in Mother Jones

    Here. I do take issue with this, though: MJ: When you first wrote the mantra “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants,” did you have any idea what kind of reaction you’d get? MP: Well, I studied my poetry in school, and I knew there was something about the way it sounded that made it…

  • “Christian Ethics and Nonhuman Animals”

    It doesn’t break much new ground, but this essay in the online journal of Orthodox Theology Theandros nicely brings together several strands of thought about re-evaluating Christian attitudes toward animals.