Monthly Archives: July 2008

Earthquake Preparedness

If you ever have trouble finding your glasses, wallet, or keys, it’s even harder after an earthquake—but you’ll need them more than ever. So watch where you put them—your medicines, too—every day and every night. This is off-topic but it might be useful to someone. The recent Chino Hills earthquake has re-awakened California to reality. …

July 31, 2008 – 12:03 pm | By Tom Gilson | Posted in Unfiled | Tagged | Comments (3)

“Despite Overwhelming Evidence, Creationists Cling to Unreality”

I’m afraid I have to disagree with Nathan Schneider again. This time it’s about his AlterNet assessment of the Dover trial and the Intelligent Design controversy. I have several things to say about it. For starters, he makes this most curious allusion: The Dover trial followed in the footsteps of its notorious predecessor, the famed …

July 31, 2008 – 11:19 am | By Tom Gilson | Posted in Origins and Science | Tagged , , | Comments (11)

“The Coming Persecution”

From Charles Colson: It is all about equal rights, the gay “marriage” lobby keeps telling us. We just want the right to marry, like everyone else. That is what they are telling us. But that is not what they mean. If same-sex “marriage” becomes the law of the land, we can expect massive persecution of …

July 30, 2008 – 12:39 pm | By Tom Gilson | Posted in Life and Choices | Tagged , , | Comments (1)

New Age “Evolution”

Here’s a good example of how not to marry science with a worldview: the so-called Evolutionary Manifesto. There are lessons here for Christians who want to understand origins both in relation to the teachings of science as well asto alternate religions. This Evolutionary Manifesto is not the product of science, but of a New Age-oriented …

July 30, 2008 – 7:00 am | By Tom Gilson | Posted in New Age, Origins and Science | Tagged , | Comments (6)

Nothing New Under the Sun

Self-oriented, lightly founded moral philosophy is not so new after all. Going back some 350 years: Doubtless there are natural laws; but good reason once corrupted has corrupted all…. The result of this confusion is that one affirms the essence of justice to be the authority of the legislator; another, the interest of the sovereign; …

July 29, 2008 – 7:00 am | By Tom Gilson | Posted in Ethics | Tagged , | Comments Off

Progressive Secularists?

Wise words from Anthony Esolen: For the progressive secularists are misnamed. They cannot possibly progress, since they have ruled out the notion that there is any end towards which we are to proceed; the admission of an end would bring back the dreaded transcendent; it would revive the sleeping metaphysical giant. [Link: Touchstone Magazine - …

July 28, 2008 – 3:21 pm | By Tom Gilson | Posted in The Faith | Comments (3)

Hitchens’s Second Question

(Note added 9/3/08: Comments are closed here, but the discussion remains open. See the final comment on this thread for explanation.) The real question Christopher Hitchens was trying to get readers focused on here (as opposed to the one he said he was answering), was something like this: “Why should we think people who believe in …

July 28, 2008 – 10:27 am | By Tom Gilson | Posted in Ethics, New Atheism | Tagged , | Comments (100)

Threaded Comments

As noted on the new “Wall,” I am testing a Threaded Comments feature. Please let me know what you think. The limit for nested comments is 4 layers (original comment, then 3 layers of replies) deep. If this doesn’t work out and I turn it off, no comments will be lost. They will be re-arranged, …

July 28, 2008 – 6:11 am | By Tom Gilson | Posted in Unfiled | Comments Off

Hitchens on “Finding Morals Under Empty Heavens”

Christopher Hitchens says that since he published God is Not Great, [t]he case that keeps coming up against me is this: If the heavens are empty (as I maintain in my little book God Is Not Great), then why should anyone behave ethically? [Link: Search Magazine - Finding Morals Under Empty Heavens] The question has …

July 28, 2008 – 5:52 am | By Tom Gilson | Posted in Ethics, New Atheism | Tagged | Comments (5)

More Food For Thought

We do not require great education of the mind to understand that here is no real and lasting satisfaction; that our pleasures are only vanity; that our evils are infinite; and, lastly, that death, which threatens us every moment, must infallibly place us within a few years under the dreadful necessity of being for ever …

July 27, 2008 – 7:45 pm | By Tom Gilson | Posted in The Faith | Tagged | Comments Off