A Thinking Reed

  • Half-@$$ed debate blogging

    OK – I only watched the first hour; I turned it off when it became a competition about who could sound “tougher” on Iran. Things like this make me feel like a crazy Chomskyite left-winger. I have a hard time putting myself in the mindset of that mythical beast the undecided or “persuadable” voter, so…

  • Groaning of Creation: Index of posts

    Thought it might be helpful to have links to all my posts on Christopher Southgate’s book on animal theodicy, The Groaning of Creation, in one place. 1. Intro 2. The only way? 3. God so loved the world 4. There’s a wideness in God’s mercy 5. Heaven can wait 6. Priests of creation 7. The…

  • The Groaning of Creation 9: Concluding thoughts

    As a wrap-up to this series, I thought I’d offer some concluding thoughts on Christopher Southgate’s The Groaning of Creation. Just to briefly review: the problem of animal theodicy as Southgate sees it is that the evolutionary process seems to grind so many sentient creatures under its wheels and to doom so many species to…

  • HSUS for Obama-Biden

    Not that animal protection is likely to be high on the next President’s list of priorities, but, for what it’s worth, the Humane Society recently endorsed Obama-Biden. Interestingly, it seems this is the first time they’ve ever endorsed a presidential candidate (they routinely endorse congressional candidates), but were moved to this time in large part…

  • The Groaning of Creation 8: The ethics of the Ark

    Throughout this series we’ve seen two intertwining themes. First, death and suffering are necessary parts of the process–perhaps the only possible process–by which finite selves are brought into existence. Second, however, this process involves the (seemingly) permanent thwarting of many of those selves as well as the disappearance of entire ways of being (species). And…

  • The Groaning of Creation 7: The (vegetarian) restaurant at the end of the universe

    We saw in the previous post that Southgate thinks humans should play an active role in “healing” the creation by ameliorating some of the negative effects of the evolutionary process. And we’ve also seen that chief among those effects, in his view, are the problem of animal suffering and the problem of extinction. Turning to…

  • Friday metal–Death and resurrection

    I’m not really capable of being objective about Metallica. I first heard them when I was, I think, 14 and on a school trip. A friend of mine passed me a badly copied cassette of Master of Puppets, I popped it into my wakman, and my world was completely and irrevocably rocked when I heard…

  • The Groaning of Creation 6: Priests of creation

    Having offered an account of why God permits the suffering and frustated lives of so many non-human animals, Southgate turns to the question of what role humans might play in alleviating their plight. Key to his understanding once again is the notion of creation in travail, or “groaning.” Creation is good, but it’s destined to…

  • Peter J. Gomes on Colbert

    Video here. (HT: Chris) I saw him preach once at the Harvard chapel “lessons and carols” Christmas service. His preaching was much more full of Jesus than I expected a service at Harvard to be.

  • Come on in, conservatives; the water’s fine

    For whatever reason, this post, A Conservative for Obama, has been getting a lot of traffic recently. Are there still disaffected conservatives out there who haven’t drunk the McPalin kool-aid and are looking for a reason to vote Dem? Here’s a good place to start: conservative historian–and self-described “Obamacon”–Andrew Bacevich on NPR’s Fresh Air. Among…