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Notes on an animal theodicy and soteriology
Early in my blogging career (on Verbum Ipsum, my Blogspot predecessor to ATR) I, perhaps with delusions of grandeur, wrote a five-part series called “The Atonement and the Problem of Evil” (the series is archived here: Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, Part V). My reason for writing it was a hunch that…
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Debating tactics
Only in Berkeley would you get a debate between Christopher Hitchens who thinks that all religion is evil and Chris Hedges who merely thinks that all “religious orthodoxy” is evil billed as a debate over the merits of religion. Hitchens seems to like soft targets; I’d like to see him debate a serious orthodox Christian…
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Beyond the meat (or “meat”) centered diet
This article makes a fair point that meat substitutes are not automatically healthier than actual meat, but it also seems to presuppose a fairly unimaginative version of vegetarian eating. Personally I eat very little in the way of meat substitutes. Sure I enjoy the occasional veggie burger or Quorn pattie, but I would say that…
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Links of interest
Some stuff worth reading from the past couple of days: On the new genre of “food ethics” writing. The promise of religious environmentalism. The legacy of Reagan, Thatcher, and John Paul II. Libertarianism vs. “low-tax liberalism” Ron Paul shakes up the GOP.
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Let the peaceniks have their say!
Good article at Reason on the Ron Paul-Rudy Giuliani showdown: No one knows precisely what morbid formula inspired the Sept. 11 attacks. Most likely, it was some mix of U.S. foreign policy exacerbating radical Islamists’ already deep-seeded contempt for Western values. But to suggest that we shouldn’t even consider that our actions overseas might have…
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Just War theory and the “charism of discernment”
This post from Catholic theologian William Cavanaugh revisits some of the arguments of pro-Iraq war Catholics, in particular papal biographer George Weigel (link via Eric). Weigel’s notion of a “charism of political responsibility/discernment” is muddled at best. Here’s the relevant passage from his “Moral Clarity in a Time of War”: If the just war tradition…
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Lewis on the “true myth” of Redemption
No doubt readers are getting a bit tired of this, but the Lewis letters are so bloggable. Maybe because, at least as they appear in the book, they’re almost like blog-entries themselves. In the fall of 1931 Lewis is on the verge of embracing Christianity. In September he’d had an important conversation with Hugo Dyson…
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We’re all lost
I agree entirely with the spirit of this article. The point of Lost, I’ve always thought, isn’t to “solve” the mysteries, whatever that might look like. I see it as essentially a metaphor for the human condition – we’re thrown into this world that may or may not have a larger meaning. Things are ambiguous;…
A Thinking Reed 