Flotsam and jetsam (7/20)

• Zondervan is offering 50% off deal on their A Reader’s Hebrew & Greek Bible.
• Matt Flanagan discusses the epistemology of testimonies, arguing that we are justified in accepting testimony as an epistemological starting point (basic belief), but that we can’t stop there.
• Mark Stevens has started a Christian scholars smackdown series. (He actually calls it a “showdown,” but that seems to tame. How about “Christian cage match” or “Theologians in the Thunderdome”?) Anyway, it should be fun so head over there and cast your vote.
• James McGrath offers a nice set of links to recent posts about Christian conservatism.
• R. R. Reno offers an interesting response to criticisms the Catholic Church has received about its recent document on disciplining priests.
• Halden offers the conclusion to a paper he presented recently on “blogging as theological discourse.”
• And, Lindsey Lohan is back in court today. (Just kidding. I’d never actually post a link to a story like this. I’m actually very annoyed that I know she’s due back in court today.)

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Flotsam and jetsam (7/18)

• Stuart points out a great story about atheists “de-baptising” people with hair dryers. What will they come up with next?
• NYT has a couple of opinion pieces. Frank Rich argues that the downfall of Mel Gibson parallels the decline of the Christian right over the last few years. And Maureen Dowd comments on the new Vatican policies regarding the sex abuse scandal and the ordination of women.
• C. Michael Patton has a very nice graphic for explaining what it means to be an evangelical. And James McGrath offers an infographic showing how states handle evolution in in their curricular standards. I was surprised to see how few make any explicit mention of evolution in their standards.
• Sara Coakley has finished a 3-part series on “Rethinking the Sex Crises in Catholicism and Anglicanism” (see also here and here).

Flotsam and jetsam (7/17)

• John Mark Reynolds discusses in a Washington Post forum whether all religions are the same. He argues that in religion, like in physics, small differences matter.
• A foundation has donated $400k to a California seminary (CDSP) to write liturgies for gay wedding ceremonies in Episcopal churches. This is interesting for at least two reasons. First, the  Episcopal church has not officially recognized gay marriages yet (emphasis on yet). Second, I had not idea it cost $400k to write a liturgy.
• Kevin DeYoung offers a very interesting graph showing (colorfully) the change in religious affiliation from childhood to adulthood. It’s particularly interesting to see the transfers in affiliation from one group to another.
• The Vatican has caused a bit of an uproar (they’re good at that) over its decision to make the ordination of women a serious crime on par with pedophilia.
• Patheos has an interesting set of posts on whether there’s a widening political rift in evangelicalism. (HT)
• Christopher Benson has a nice post on Postmodernism (nice list of resources) and whether we should now be talking about a distinctively “Biola School” of philosophy that is characterized by “analytic philosophy, a revised foundationalist epistemology, a classical evidentialist apologetics (indeed, it tends to reduce philosophy to apologetics), and a biblicist notion of propositional revelation.”

Flotsam and jetsam (7/16)

• Marilynne Robinson on religion and science again, this time on Huffpo.
• Jim points out an article on whether biblical archeology is being hyped by politics. I’m sure he’s only pointing it out because it’s well written. Not because he’s quoted in it.
• iMonk discusses the militarization of the rhetoric surrounding the creation/evolution debate.
• R. Scott Clark argues that the Vatican’s new policies on how to handle clergy misconduct could use a good dose of two-kingdoms theology.
• I love that Yahoo news headlined the story about the 19th century ship discovered in New York with “Ancient Ship Unearthed at World Trade Center Site.” Really? 200 years old qualifies as “ancient”?
• Diglotting has a review of Daniel Wallace’s Granville Sharp’s Canon and Its Kin: Semantics and Signfiicance. It’s tough to sell a book like this as compelling, but he claims: “have never read another book entirely devoted to a Greek linguistic issue that has been as captivating as this one.” Of course, that may not be setting the bar very high.
• And, apparently Snoop Dog tried to rent an entire country for his next video shoot. And I have a hard time renting a cabin for our next family vacation.

Flotsam and jetsam (7/15)

• J.R. Daniel Kirk tackles the question of whether Christianity has really done any good for the world, pointing to adoption, sex trafficking and peace as key areas of contribution. And Andrew Perriman offers his thoughts as well.
• The Vatican has tightened its rules on for disciplining priests involved in sexual abuse cases. NPR has a piece on it here.
• Larry Hurtado is at it again, posting his article “Jesus as Lordly Example.” He also announces the new blog site for his Centre for the Study of Christian Origins.
• Jesus Creed has a nice roundup of recent discussions on science and miracles.
• Inside Higher Ed has a very nice article on the Illinois adjunct who was fired for teaching about Catholic beliefs regarding homosexuality. Unsurprisingly, the situation is more complicated than they first appeared.
• Justin Taylor recommends a book for learning how to write non-fiction book proposals.
• And, apparently spending most of your time sitting down is bad for your health, even if you exercise regularly.

Flotsam and jetsam (5/28)

• Andrew Perriman addresses the issue of whether Jesus saw himself as God. He walks through a number of NT texts, arguing in each case that they show Jesus as one who had a special status before God, but not necessarily as actually being God. (HT James McGrath)
• You’ve probably heard by now that Belgian authorities raided Catholic church properties searching for evidence of a cover-up in the sex abuse scandal. Yesterday, Pope Benedict issued a harsh criticism of the raids and their “deplorable” methods. (Seriously, what could they have been hiding in the tomb of a dead bishop?) What I found most interesting, though, was the Pope’s continued claim of some “autonomy” for the church in investigating these scandals. Isn’t that what got the church into this problem in the first place?
• C. Michael Patton has posted a number of graphs that illustrate the relative sizes of major world religions and Christian denominations.
• Getting tired of American Idol? Try Young Imam, a Malaysian reality TV show where hopeful, young muslim scholars compete for a scholarship, a job, and a trip to Mecca. Globalization at its finest.
• If you haven’t heard about Horseboy, Daily Mail has an interesting article on him and other interesting people who have appeared in Google Streetview images.
• Here’s an article on brands that could disappear in 2011. No shock to find BP on the list, but Reader’s Digest and T-Mobile were a bit more surprising.

Flotsam and jetsam (6/12)

• Stephen Moshier takes John McArthur to task for his recent critique of the geological principle of uniformitarianism (i.e. geologic processes are the same today as they’ve always been). Moshier points out that McArthur’s definitions and arguments are a little outdated (i.e. he’s criticizing 19th century geology). The post serves as another example that we should be very careful offering authoritative critiques of work done in areas in which we are not specialists (see Giberson on that topic here).
• Philip Sumpter has finally concluded his extended (to say the least) series on theological interpretation. The posts in the series and the various discussions they sparked are worth perusing if you want to get a feel for the issues.
• T&T Clark’s “companions” series has been launched with its Companion to Methodism. I’ll be interested to see if they are as helpful as they look like they might be.
• In a rather shocking development, Pope Benedict has rejected demands for the Catholic Church to reverse its position on clerical celibacy. Did anyone really think this was going to go any differently?
• Apparently there are lots of sites where you can get your daily news in comic form…in Japanese. Why do they get all the cool comics?
• And, Matt Mikalatos discusses why Denver International Airport is watched over by the Egyptian god of death and other unusual stories about the airport (including its very own smoke monster). I connect through Denver quite a bit, so I paid attention to this one. I think I’m going to start flying through Minneapolis more instead.