Evolution Religion and science 15 Jul 2007 There has been a bit of a resurgence of science versus religion posts and chatter in various forums* that I inhabit when I’m not working lately. It occurred to me that it might be time to do one of my sermons. There are basically two popular views of the relation… Continue Reading
Evolution A quotation 14 Jul 2007 A religious body or faith community that speaks only with only exclamation points but no question marks misses the complexity of creation and the beauty of evolution. Rabbi Kendall in Stuart, Florida Continue Reading
Evolution A review of Hitchens 9 Jul 2007 I probably agree with Christopher Hitchens on many substantive points. But I won’t be reading his book. Instead, we can thank this reviewer for their critical, ascerbic, and I suspect in the end accurate review of God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. Continue Reading
Humor No chance in Hell of a Catholic education 9 Jul 2007 Proving, contrary to the father’s comments in the story, that it really is the dark ages, an Australian Catholic Church school has banned (and since rescinded) a child whose surname is “Hell”…. The 15th century was the time of the rebirth of classical learning with the translation of Aristotle’s works and many Arabic scholarship into Latin. Continue Reading
Religion As ye sow… 9 Jul 2007 A woman who stabbed her entire family, killing her father and teenage sister, in Sydney, turns out to be a psychotic…. She was doing the right thing and her stupid parents’ religion (that parses both ways, and rightly) interfered. Continue Reading
Evolution Random things 4 Jul 2007 Back from the drinking sessionconference, with many good thoughts. One in particular is due to the talk by Aiden Lyons at ANU on probability and evolution – after more than two decades trying to figure it out, I had to wait for a grad student to put it all neatly… Continue Reading
General Science Etruscans 20 Jun 200718 Sep 2017 In a well known quote, the nineteenth century historian and classicist Theodore Mommsen said that the origins of the Etruscans was “neither capable of being known nor worth the knowing”. He had no idea of the results made possible by molecular genetic studies, naturally, as nobody did at that time,… Continue Reading
General Science Journalists and scientists – an antimatter explosion? 20 Jun 2007 What happens when you put journalists in contact with scientists? To hear some people tell it, it results in an antimatter-matter explosion that destroys careers and causing black holes of ignorance in the general population, particularly when the density is already great, as in political circles. Tara, from the scientists’… Continue Reading
History The World According to Genesis: Language and Society 15 Jun 2007 After the Flood, the earth is repopulated, and so R and P give us a list of notable ancestors. In 10:4-5 they say “And the sons of Javan; Elishah, and Tarshish, Kittim, and Dodanim. By these were the isles of the Gentiles divided in their lands; every one after his… Continue Reading
Politics Pell may be censured by Parliament 15 Jun 200718 Sep 2017 Cardinal-Imam George Pell, who threatened Catholic politicians with excommunication indirectly (and exclusion from the sacraments directly) if they voted in favour of stem cell research being permitted in a new Bill, is liable to being held in contempt of the NSW Parliament, just as his west Australian counterpart, Archbishop-Imam Hickey… Continue Reading