A Thinking Reed

  • Japan

    Natural disasters are the kinds of events where bloggers, unless they’re on the scene, can’t add much value to the coverage from quality news sources. But I wanted to at least make note of the ongoing events in Japan and encourage folks to pray if they’re the praying sort and give if they can afford…

  • Making Sense of Evolution: God of the future

    John Haught concludes Making Sense of Evolution with some reflections on how an evolutionary picture of the world should inform–and even transform–our view of God. As we’ve seen, Haught thinks that evolutionary science reveals a creation that is unfinished and in process, analogous to an unfolding drama rather than a perfectly engineered machine. And how…

  • Missouri tea party hates puppies

    For years, Missouri earned the dubious distinction as the nation’s “puppy mill capital” because its lax humane regulations and enforcement allowed dog breeders to raise puppies at low costs in terrible, overcrowded conditions. Last fall, Missouri voters approved a referendum to finally solve this problem — the Puppy Mill Cruelty Prevention Act — which mandates…

  • Evolutionary theology as theology of the cross

    Though he doesn’t use the same language, John Haught argues, in effect, that Intelligent Design is an example of what Lutherans call the “theology of glory” because it purports to discern God in obvious and outward ways (in this case, by finding “scientific” evidence of design in nature). For a theology of the cross, by…

  • Friday Links

    Somewhat abbreviated… –Here’s the Red Cross disaster newsroom page for donations and updates on today’s earthquake and tsunami in Japan. –How climate change can lead to increases in earthquakes, tsunamis, and volcanic activity. –The Christian Century responds to B.R. Myers’ anti-foodie polemic, drawing some useful distinctions. –A study finds that chickens are capable of empathy.…

  • Friday Metal: Darkest Era “The Morrigan”

    That’d be the aforementioned Irish folk-metal band. This is the EP version of one of the songs from their debut album. The video is not entirely non-cheesy.

  • Odds and ends

    In lieu of more substantive blogging… —Lent: I managed to make it to an Ash Wednesday service at lunchtime yesterday, but I have no grandiose plans for Lenten discipline. Every year it’s tempting to think that I’ll really get back on track (after the seemingly inevitable decline in my churchgoing, prayer life, Bible reading, almsgiving,…

  • What is the goal of animal-welfare reforms?

    Prof. Gary Francione of Rutgers University takes issue–not surprisingly–with the claims made recently on behalf of the effects of animal-welfare reforms on meat consumption. He questions the methodology of the study and also notes that meat consumption is increasing overall (even if welfare reforms might have slowed the rate of increase). He also argues that…

  • Making Sense of Evolution: Design or drama?

    As we saw earlier, John Haught thinks it’s something of a category mistake to oppose natural selection to divine action, as though these were explanations operating on the same causal level. As he develops his theology of evolution, Haught emphasizes that a major source of this confusion is thinking of God as a “designer.” This…

  • Making Sense of Evolution: Multi-layered explanation

    I’m reading Catholic theologian John Haught’s Making Sense of Evolution: Darwin, God, and the Drama of Life. Haught is a well-known advocate of “theistic evolution” and argues that theology hasn’t adequately come to grips with Darwin’s impact on our understanding of the world, which he thinks should have serious repercussions on key theological concepts. Theistic…