Monthly Archives: March 2009

No Private Claim On Jesus

The hometown folks’ response took a surprising turn when Jesus delivered his first message to them. The passage is Luke 4:16-30: And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up. And as was his custom, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and he stood up to read. And the scroll …

March 12, 2009 – 7:57 pm | By Tom Gilson | Posted in Knowing God, The Faith | Comments Off

Emerging and Adjusting To Life Again

It’s been eight weeks now since I caught pneumonia, and almost five months since it all really began with a severe case of bronchitis, and in a sense it’s finally about over now. I look back on the time with a kind of numb retrospective astonishment. It’s not completely over, because there were complications that …

March 11, 2009 – 4:37 pm | By Tom Gilson | Posted in Knowing God, The Faith | Comments (1)

Closing (?) Word to Nick Matzke

Following a really quite interesting report on his recent time with Richard Dawkins and others in Oklahoma, Nick Matzke wrote this additional on Panda’s Thumb: I just had this same morality cause/justification debate over here with an evangelical, I’m not particularly inspired to do it again. http://www.thinkingchristian.net/20[…]hitler-link/ I appreciate the mention there. For the record, …

March 11, 2009 – 11:59 am | By Tom Gilson | Posted in Ethics, Origins and Science | Tagged , | Comments (1)

ESCR: Poor Policy Thinking

From the President’s blog and an accompanying science memorandum: That is why today, I am also signing a Presidential Memorandum directing the head of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy to develop a strategy for restoring scientific integrity to government decision making. To ensure that in this new Administration, we base our …

March 9, 2009 – 4:22 pm | By Tom Gilson | Posted in Life and Choices, Origins and Science | Tagged , , , | Comments (14)

Request for Prayer

I’m having a pulmonary function test done this morning, to try to sort out why I haven’t recovered fully from pneumonia yet. (It started in early January.) Please pray for some good answers to come from this. Thanks!

March 5, 2009 – 7:42 am | By Tom Gilson | Posted in Miscellanea | Comments (11)

Pennock, Monton, Matzke, Luskin, et al. (So Far)

This entry is part 3 of 5 in the series Pennock, Monton, Matzke, Luskin

IN case you’ve missed it—it started with a post named Robert Pennock the Conciliator, in which I made remarks on philosopher of science Robert Pennock’s article on Intelligent Design (ID) in U.S. News and World Report. That post drew attention from another philosopher, Bradley Monton, whom Pennock had rather gouged in the USN&WR piece. Monton …

March 4, 2009 – 9:49 am | By Tom Gilson | Posted in Ethics, Origins and Science | Tagged , | Comments (14)

Ethical Answers

Goodness is no mere philosophical category to debate over, though some of us have been doing that here lately. It is at the heart of human desire, and it is the very nature of God himself. God’s goodness is far too large a topic for any writer. Still I am going to try to take …

March 3, 2009 – 9:37 am | By Tom Gilson | Posted in Ethics | Tagged , | Comments Off

To Conquer Or To Give Ground?

From C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man: From this point of view the conquest of nature appears in a new light. We reduce things to mere Nature in order that we may ‘conquer’ them. We are always conquering Nature, because ‘Nature’ is the name for what we have, to some extent, conquered. The price of …

March 2, 2009 – 10:23 pm | By Tom Gilson | Posted in The Faith | Tagged , | Comments (1)