A Thinking Reed

  • C.S. Lewis’s theology of animals

    I found this article by Andrew Linzey while searching for something yesterday. Good stuff. I reviewed Linzey’s Animal Theology here.

  • Blue-state blues

    For one thing, your vote no longer matters. Meanwhile, here in Massachusetts, I was amused to see the Republican candidate for governor go out of her way to assure the voters that her positions on abortion and stem-cell research are indistinguishable from her Democratic opponent. Massachusetts: where even the Republicans are Democrats!

  • Is our atheists learning?

    Thomas wonders why high profile atheist provocateurs like Richard Dawkins seem to know so little about the religions they criticize and frequently traffic in straw-man arguments. He also excerpts a take down of Dawkins’ latest book by agnostic Thomas Nagel.* Scientific popularizers like Dawkins often seem to think that their expertise in one field translates…

  • Damn statistics

    Speaking of war and death and other cheery topics, here’s a helpful analysis of the results of the recent Lancet study on the mortality rate in post-invasion Iraq (via Confessing Evangelical).

  • Double effect double standard

    This post by the Bull Moose blogger (via Marvin) brings to mind a point made by Robert Holmes in his excellent On War and Morality (I don’t have the book in front of me, so I may not get all the details right). Pacifists and anti-interventionists are often criticized for their unwillingness to take up…

  • Friday metal mayhem

    Read a review of the new Trivium album, Crusade in the Metro this morning. You can listen to it streaming on AOL here (don’t know how long that link will be good for). Sounds fantastic, especially if, like me, you’re a big fan of 80s thrash metal (early Metallica, Megadeth, Anthrax, etc.). And don’t tell…

  • Story of my life

    I’m going to flagrantly rip off Marvin and write my own “political autobiography” post, for my own benefit as much as anyone else’s. As Marvin points out in recounting a conversation with his right-of-center friend, location, if not everything, is something. I spent the late 90s and early 00s in two of the most left-wing…

  • Revolutionary pamphleteers as proto-bloggers

    I started reading Bernard Bailyn’s fascinating book The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution and was struck by his description of pamphleteering as the primary means by which revolutionary ideas were spread: It was in this form — as pamphlets — that much of the most important and characteristic writing of the American Revolution appeared.…

  • The theologian as amateur economist

    Usually any book review symposium will have a mix of negative and positive reviews, but the one on Kathryn Tanner’s Economy of Grace in the most recent Journal of Lutheran Ethics – not exactly a right-wing rag – has four pretty scathing reviews. In fairness, I haven’t read Prof. Tanner’s book, but if these reviews…

  • Blood Mountain

    Naturally one is a bit suspicious of any metal album that receives accolades from indie/hipster types, but I have to say that Mastodon’s new album Blood Mountain is pretty darn incredible. The critical hype about them being the second coming of Metallica (circa 1986) may be a bit overstated, but their dizzying mix of thrash,…