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
Ecology and Biodiversity How not to Feyerabend 5 Oct 2007 On Monday night last, Jason Grossman, a philosopher form the Australian National University rang me with an idea. He was coming to my university to give a talk entitled “How to Feyerabend”, arguing that Feyerabend was a dadaist rather than an anarchist. I’d tell you more about his talk, but… Read More
Accommodationism Accommodating science: Evolution and change 2 Mar 20146 May 2014 Robert J. Berry is a geneticist at University College London. He is also an evangelical Christian and has written a number of works on the compatibility of religion (his kind, anyway) and evolution (Berry 1975). He was moved to write to the science journal Nature, in which he took to… Read More
Evolution Schadenfreude for AiG 7 Jun 200724 Nov 2022 Schadenfreude , n. Pleasure found in the misfortunes of Answers in Genesis, who employed a pornography actor to play Adam. Well, at least it makes sense – didn’t Adam and Eve fall because they had sex? I’m sure some Baptist told me that once… 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.