If Humans Were Really Just Robots
Skeptical humanist writer Kurt Vonnegut wrote an experimental novel, Breakfast of Champions, in which he told one of his characters, Dwayne Hoover, that “everybody on Earth was a robot, with one exception—Dwayne Hoover.” When Dwayne finds out that he lives in a mechanistic universe, his morality goes haywire. He explains his wife’s suicide to himself (she drank Drano) by saying, “She was [just] that kind of machine!” He violently attacks two women because “he honestly believed that they were...
New Kevin DeYoung Book
Kevin DeYoung, What Does the Bible Really Teach about Homosexuality? (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2015), 158 pp. Here's a PDF sample, and here’s a study guide. DeYoung is using his gifts to serve the church; as I've said before, he's a gifted popularizer. But that doesn't mean this book is necessarily easy reading. The challenges made by "revisionist" scholars (DeYoung's favored term for those who affirm the morality of homosexual practice and claim that the Bible can be read to support their view)...
A Pair of Absolute Must-Read New York Times Opinion Columns on Homosexuality
1. Bruni This is what a lot of people genuinely think about the conservative Christian view of homosexuality. You need to know what they're saying. Here's a tiny, chilling excerpt: Our debate about religious freedom should include a conversation about freeing religions and religious people from prejudices that they needn’t cling to and can indeed jettison. Tinier, chillinger: Church leaders must be made “to take homosexuality off the sin list.” "Made to" means you can lose your business, your...
An Excellent and Important Point by Russell Moore
I find this point by Russell Moore to be very helpful and insightful: Many of those leading the discussion of religious freedom have little or no understanding of what motivates religious people. This shows up in almost all of these conversations, whether over the Little Sisters of the Poor fight not to be compelled to purchase contraception insurance coverage or the legislative attempts to codify RFRA. If one cannot empathize with why defying conscience on a matter of religious exercise is a...
Kurt Aland Says “Nein” to Textual Errors in the New Testament
Interesting video featuring legendary New Testament textual critic Kurt Aland: At the very end of the video there is an interview with Aland, and from it I took the following stills. First the interviewer (in German, of course) asks Aland whether there might be any errors in the Bible: Aland clarifies, basically: "You mean errors in the text of the Bible as we now have it?" And he proceeds to answer the question definitively: HT: Peter M. Head