Mon 18 Feb, 2008
Banishing Christianity from the public square (From Gene Veith)
A letter-writer to the “Washington Post” fulminates at the way NASCAR allowed the Daytona 500 to begin with a prayer. Not only a prayer, but one that “invoked Jesus Christ by name.” This, says the letter-writer, is another step in the effort to make Christianity into our nation’s official state religion. Read the letter.
Notice what is happening. Yes, the government is not allowed to favor Christianity in schools, the military, and public events. But now that same standard is being applied to a private event that receives no federal money (why should NASCAR need to?).
From “seeker” at two or three.net: 13 Misconceptions About Evolution. Seeker is a brave blogger. What he has listed there is quite good–but I can just imagine the missiles flying if I put the same up here at Thinking Christian!
One ancient mystery solved–but the big one remains (Scientific American, on the Burgess Shale, famous as one locus of research into the Cambrian explosion)
Michael Ruse on Dawkins’ Delusion (Uncommon Descent)
And more, this time from N.T. Wright quoted at Covenant, on what Archbishop Rowan Williams actually said, including:
First, quite simply, the Archbishop didn’t say what the media said he said. His real offence is that he has presumed to challenge the media’s vice-like control on public opinion, and so is being called arrogant and patronizing by people who don’t want reasoned discourse and prefer only catchy soundbites.
The second issue raised by the Archbishop’s speech is his careful deconstruction, in line more or less with that of Professor John Gray of this institution (Straw Dogs, False Dawn, Heresies, etc.), of the Enlightenment myth of secular progress and its accompanying political discourse. He has pointed out on the one hand the religious and indeed Christian roots of the Enlightenment’s vision of justice and rights, and on the other the way in which the secularist rhetoric, growing ever more shrill these days, effectively cuts off the branch of Reason on which it claims to be sitting – as, again, we see in the media reaction.
The Washington Post on The King’s College–a conservative Christian college in the heart of Manhattan (associated with Campus Crusade for Christ, by the way).
