A Thinking Reed

  • The trouble with tradition

    Lutheran theologian Robert Benne laments the ELCA’s departure from the “Great Tradition” of marginalizing gay people and its descent into the dreaded “liberal Protestantism.” The problem, it seems, is that the ELCA hasn’t given sufficient weight to the opinions of white male pastors and theologians. One thing I’ve noticed is that whenever someone makes an…

  • Natural theology or theology of nature?

    Following up a bit on this post… In his book Religion and Science, which is based on his Gifford Lectures, Ian Barbour distinguishes between natural theology and the theology of nature. Natural theology tries to prove God’s existence by appealing to some feature of the created order. Barbour denies that natural theology can achieve its…

  • “The Age of Tough Oil”

    Elizabeth Kolbert on the disaster in the Gulf.

  • The apotheosis of Dr. Shephard

    I’m still not entirely sure what I think about the controversial Lost finale (short version: my heart liked it, but my head is skeptical), but the best, or at least most enthusiastic, apology for it I’ve read has to be this exhaustive re-cap from Jeff “Doc” Jensen at Entertainment Weekly: part 1, part 2.

  • Science, faith, and the “God hypothesis”

    Kim Fabricius has another set of provocative theological propositions at Faith & Theology–these ones on what he calls the “God hypothesis.” By this he means the attempt, by various religious thinkers, to take on the “new atheists” on their own turf and argue for God’s existence on “scientific” grounds. As usual, Fabricius definitely scores some…

  • Animal rights, human wrongs

    Nice article from the National Journal (via Scu) on the current political and legal landscape for the animal rights/protection movement. What’s striking to me is the contrast between the modesty of the goals of organizations like the Humane Society and the rhetoric of their opponents. Somehow, giving farm animals enough space to stand up and…

  • What would ethical egg production look like? And how would we get there?

    To make the point of the previous post a little more concrete, let’s think about what truly ethical egg production would look like from a “moral vegetarian” perspective. Remember, the moral vegetarian isn’t opposed to all forms of animal use, but opposes those uses that constitute exploitation (i.e., harm the interests of the animals involved).…

  • Vegan versus vegetarian utopia revisited

    Jean Kazez and Scu of Critical Animal both have critical posts on this essay on veganism by philosopher Tzachi Zamir. The argument appears in a slightly different form in his book Ethics and the Beast, and I discussed it a bit here. While I, as a “moral vegetarian” (to use his terms) find Zamir’s argument…

  • Musings on a social- and ecological-market economics

    My two recent posts on property rights and libertarianism don’t really adequately represent the way I think about economics these days. For the sake of argument, I accepted certain principles held by libertarians, but I don’t think those principles are sufficient. Libertarian principles have a simplifying austerity that can be appealing–I found them appealing for…

  • Coming up for air

    Thanks to everyone for their kind congratulations on the birth of our daughter. If you have kids, you don’t need me to tell you that it’s an exhilarating and exhausting experience. And if you don’t, my paltry words won’t be able to do it justice. I can’t go so far as to say we’re in…