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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…
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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…
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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…
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Universalism and the gospel
“Although an earthly mother may possibly allow her child to perish, our heavenly Mother Jesus can never allow us who are his children to perish.” –Julian of Norwich I don’t know much about Rob Bell. It seems he’s kind of a big deal in the emerging/emergent church movement (or “conversation” as some folks prefer to…
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History with a preferential option for the poor
I probably should’ve read this years ago, maybe as an angry 19-year-old (though, come to think of it, I wasn’t really that angry when I was 19), but I recently started Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States. So far I’m pretty impressed: I was expecting a political harangue, but what Zinn’s doing…
A Thinking Reed 