A Thinking Reed

  • Doing without Adam and Eve

    One argument you sometimes hear for the necessity of a “historical” fall and a “historical” Adam and Eve goes like this: if there was no historical first couple and fall into sin, then we are in no need of a savior and therefore the entire gospel loses its raison d’etre. This seems odd to me.…

  • Some links for the weekend

    – Peter Singer on balancing concern for the environment with efforts to lift people out of poverty. – Kevin Drum on the difference between liberals and libertarians. – Bob Herbert on Sargent Shriver: “one of America’s great good men.” – Peter Berger’s blog at The American Interest. (Here’s a piece on recent developments in American…

  • Varieties of “humane”

    From Grist, a run-down of the various schemes to label meat and other animal products as “humane” or its equivalent. Some key points: – There are no legally enforced definitions of “humane” (the same holds for “all-natural,” “sustainable,” “cage-free,” etc.); only products labeled “organic” are legally required to meet certain standards. – There are both…

  • Bultmann, modernity, mythology, and Pentecostalism

    Here’s an interesting piece from sociologist of religion and lay theologian (I believe he’s Lutheran) Peter Berger on the relevance of Rudolf Bultmann for today. Berger notes that Bultmann was right that the worldview of the New Testament is thoroughly “mythological” in that it portrays a world suffused with and permeated by supernatural forces (God,…

  • Friday Metal: The Crown, “The Tempter and the Bible Black”

    A little old-school Swedish death metal:

  • Where’s the Left? (continued)

    Here’s a much better-informed and thorough take on the “Where’s the left?” question I posted about here from a labor lawyer and blogger for the site Cogitamus.

  • “I was writing some songs that had fake Peter Buck riffs”

    I thought this was funny, from the AV Club’s interview with Decemberists frontman Colin Meloy: AVC: How did you meet Peter Buck [of R.E.M.] and decide to collaborate? CM: He’s kind of a Pacific Northwesterner these days. I think he splits his time between Seattle and Portland. He’s in The Minus 5 with Scott McCaughey,…

  • Ralph Nader and Ron Paul team up?

    Interesting interview with the progressive firebrand and the libertarian congressman (on Fox of all places), talking about the prospects for a left-right coalition:

  • Where’s the Left?

    Apparently there’s been a dust-up recently about the supposed lack of genuinely left-wing bloggers in the professional blogosphere. (See here for the run-down.) The charge, in a nutshell, is that many of the most prominent bloggers are so-called neoliberals: people with liberal policy goals but who embrace the deregulation/free-trade/globalization model that has been in vogue…

  • Christopher on “marriage as discipleship”

    Christopher makes some important points here, offering a corrective, I think, to some of the things I said here. For Christians, marriage isn’t just about “happiness,” but as Christopher rightly points out, it’s also a way of living out our discipleship. Or in Lutheran terms, it’s a vocation that allows us to learn to love…