Tête-à-Tête-Tête

Ken Pulliam, a former fundamentalist, has possibly a bigger beef with the notion of penal substitutionary theory of atonement than I do. His latest is a response to another effort to defend the theory from the charges that this theory turns the notion of “justice” on its head: distorts it into something wicked, then attributes [...]

This is just a quick thought-dump… And post title not-withstanding, I would never try to project modern socio-economic theories onto the socio-economic systems of ancient cultures: that would be comparing apples to eggs. So, whether or not this bit is a definitive and responsible estimate of the Levitical system of civil finance it [...]

I rail periodically against retribution as a notion of justice here on the blog. I suppose it is an artifact of my interests in religion, human nature, and criminal justice that keeps this topic always relevant to me and makes me want to dwell on it at painful lengths. I spent the last [...]

Okay. I’ll play.
Statement:
Belongs to: (all religion, my religion, other people’s religion, something other than religion)
My view of this aspect of religion is: (favorable, neutral, unfavorable)
Religion is a sense of humility in the face of a world too wonderful/complex/awe-inspiring to fully understand or even fully cope with on a rational level.
Belongs to: all religion
My view is: [...]

Well, I’m not back in business yet… and, yeah – that’s mostly still a good thing. You may have noticed that there have been a trickle of eye-boogers coming in (unless you’re reading on Facebook or RSS)… so I’m getting there. Oh, yeah… by the way – the Eye Booger links are probably [...]

Without thinking Angels (or even Abraham or Isaac) are or were real, and without feeling it is strictly necessary to go find a positive message where nothing truly positive was originally intended in passages from the Jewish and Christian scriptures, I’m nonetheless moved by this (reformed) Rabbinic take on the Abraham / Isaac story, left [...]

I noticed Chris Mooney’s enthusiastic post earlier this week where he relayed some Accommodationist sounding words from Richard Dawkins. I expected that it would draw some return fire, and now it has.
See, Dawkins made these statements that express one of the important notions of accommodationism:
No, I don’t think they’re incompatible if only because there are [...]

My brother emailed me this link with a subject line reading  “I now have a label”
My brother hates religion but he does not have a problem with the concept of God.
I never cared much for church myself but that had more to do with neck ties and tight shoes than anything else.

Ok… I’m not taking the day all the way off today. I’m going to ask for some feedback. This Sunday, I’m to be leading the religious education group for teens at church. We have a great curriculum this year, but no lesson plan for this Sunday. I’m supposed to bring my own [...]

Not long ago, in an adult RE forum, a fellow enthusiast suggested that neither the apostles nor Jesus himself could have believed that Jesus was God, because they were all good, monotheistic Jews. I interrupted, even though I agree with him that Jesus and the apostles probably held a lower Christology than anything found [...]