Why the west invaded Iraq 12 Oct 2009 It’s awkward to say openly, but now-departed President Bush is a religious crackpot, an ex-drunk of small intellect who “got saved.” He never should have been entrusted with the power to start wars. From here. Politics Religion
Evolution Culpability and the Catholic Church 12 Apr 2010 The facts are no longer open to interpretation: not only bishops and archbishops, but the then head of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, AKA the Inquisition, knew and covered up rather than dealt with pedophiles in the priesthood, and enabled further abuse. Michael Ruse, long an accommodationist,… Read More
Politics Indian terror suspect not really suspicious 20 Jul 2007 In yet further evidence that due process is a bulwark against the arrogance and incompetence, not to say potential police statery, of intelligence agencies, it turns out that the core piece of evidence against Dr Haneef, the Indian doctor being detained by the Australian government against the law, is wrong…. Read More
Religion Agnostics needed! 26 Aug 2010 There’s an advertising headline I never thought I’d see. We’re conducting a web survey of nonbelievers (atheists, agnostics, doubters, sceptics etc.) So far, we’ve had a good response, with over 1700 usable submissions. We’ve got lots of atheists, but we do not have as many agnostics as we would like…. Read More
After the 2003 call, the puzzled French leader didn’t comply with Bush’s request. Instead, his staff asked Thomas Romer, a theologian at the University of Lausanne, to analyze the weird appeal. Dr. Romer explained that the Old Testament book of Ezekiel contains two chapters (38 and 39) in which God rages against Gog and Magog, sinister and mysterious forces menacing Israel. Jehovah vows to smite them savagely, to “turn thee back, and put hooks into thy jaws,” and slaughter them ruthlessly. In the New Testament, the mystical book of Revelation envisions Gog and Magog gathering nations for battle, “and fire came down from God out of heaven, and devoured them.” The question is would it have mattered if the other head of states expert theoligian would have said, yea sounds right to me… Why was there any puzzlement to start with? There is no new data since the time of the various Gog and Magog stories… “crackpot” is a term that presupposes there is evidence to bring to bear on the veracity of this claim, in a world of accomodation to faith it seems out of place.
Theologians are not scientists, any more than poets are, so it is not, I think, useful to say they have no new data. They are in my view more like those experts in role playing games who adjudicate on matters of arcane game lore. But I bet that the French president asked someone who happened to have the knowledge that made the comment and request comprehensible, to some degree, so that he would know how to respond. That it was a theologian is beside the point. He may as well have asked someone who had once been an evangelical but left the faith. It was simply a tradition with which he, as a cosmopolitan and refined man, knew nothing of.