A Thinking Reed

  • Sunday notes on Monday

    We subscribe to the Sunday Boston Globe since it’s the only day we really have time to read the paper. I used to read the Philadelphia Inquirer every morning when we lived there, but a longer commute here in Boston means that’s not really an option. Anyway, there were several items in yesterday’s paper I…

  • Pascal’s Fire 7: The end (of the universe and this series)

    Up until this point, Keith Ward has been arguing that the findings of modern science can point to, even if not demonstrably prove, the existince of an infinite mind that underlies and upholds the physical world in existence. But this is a far cry from what most of us mean when we talk about God.…

  • Is peace a winning issue?

    There’s been no shortage of people willing and eager to argue that any move by the Democrats toward an anti-war position will be an electoral kiss of death in 2006 and beyond. The victory of Ned Lamont in the Connecticut primary over incumbent Sen. Joe Lieberman has been hysterically denounced by friend and foe alike…

  • Avdat

    Iā€™m very happy to find out that friend of this blog Marvin Lindsay, formerly of Ivy Bush fame, has returned to the world of blogging! Marvin also recently published a really good op-ed in his local paper on Christians in politics.

  • The Christian Coaltion – "drifting to the Left"?

    Chip Frontz tipped me off to the news that the Alabama chapter of the Christian Coalition is disassociating itself from the national body on account of the latter’s “leftward drift.” The Alabama chapter is the third to do so. [Alabama chapter president John] Giles said the relationship between the state affiliate and national organization began…

  • "Don’t kid yourself, Jimmy! If a cow ever got the chance, he’d eat you and everyone you care about!"

    Here are some very bad, yet strangely common, arguments against vegetarianism: 1. “But other animals eat each other!” 2. “We’re at the top of the food chain!” 3. “How do you know plants don’t feel pain?” I’m not saying there aren’t good arguments against it, but you have to wonder why the really bad ones…

  • Slow food Nation

    The current issue of The Nation magazine is dedicated to “food issues” – farming practices, consumption habits, environmental concerns, etc. Contributors include Wendell Berry, Peter Singer, and Eric Schlosser among others. A good portion of it is available online.

  • Links of note

    Steven Riddle at Flos Carmeli is discussing Rod Dreher’s Crunchy Cons, here, here, and here. Camassia on Christians and political protest, here and here. In the American Conservative symposium on “right and left” that I mentioned recently, onservative writer Heather Mac Donald took issue with the allegedly widespread assumption that one has to be religious…

  • Pascal’s Fire 6: The contingent cosmos

    Previously we saw that a major difference between a strictly scientific or naturalistic worldview and a supernaturalistic or theistic one is whether or not personal existence is taken to be a derivative and ultimately reducible facet of non-personal existence. Another way of putting it might be to ask which is a more fundamental form of…

  • Follow-up on creation, natural evil, etc.

    Just wanted to call your attention to some of the excellent comments on these two posts. I haven’t had time to respond to all of them, but I’m really glad to get comments of such caliber here. (Of course, the post on booze has generated more comments than either of them.) Also, see this discussion…