Good morning, all. I was surfing around on CNN.com and thought you might be interested in a couple of links. That's why you come to this blog, no? To be sent over to CNN, right? Sure it is!
The dead horse entry: God vs. Science?
Stem the tide: Stem cell happiness with the Catholic church.
A haggard story: More on the beleagured...
Pounding on the pulpits of America: Say hello to the IRS for me.
A Generous Internet: AKMA interviewed, Postmodernism gets its say (podcast).
Oh, my sermon is here.
the listening bar
New Sensation - INXS
Some song I cannot name - Red Hot Chili Peppers
Yes, a dead horse. Isn't 'we don't need God; science has all the answers' about 250 years old now? So 'with it'. Pretty much common currency in thinking circles by the 1950s... and the hippies reacted by burning joss sticks and learning Sanskrit.
The question is do these people in Missouri support only using adult stem cells or harvesting babies for this (like something out of dystopian science fiction)?
Thumbs-down on both Mr Haggard's actions (he fell faster than you can say 'in denial' or 'reaction formation') and the hyenas who outed him.
Use bugmenot.com to get past the Washington Times' registration page. Regarding the matters of church, state and race, quite.
I'm not wired for sound here but...
'AKMA in his book maintains that it’s clear that even the most thoughtful, sincere, learned people may be radically divided about how to interpret scripture.'
Well, yes, the thing isn't self-interpreting and nowhere in scriptura does it say sola! Do it on your own and you get everything from Ted Haggard to Jack Spong and diversions with Jim Jones. It has to be read in context the Catholic way as part of tradition.
Our pop-music tastes aren't that different.
Posted by: The young fogey at November 6, 2006 09:04 AMGet thee a sound card.
AKMA speaks about bodies of interpretation or communities of interpretation and the rightness, for example, of keeping someone off the road if they continually reinterpret a STOP sign. Anyway, it is far too nuanced for me to give it a proper shake here. Suffice it to say that AKMA's perspective is far from atomistic.
I took a class in my Baptist seminary days from an old school SBC Old Testament instructor. When we began reading Genesis the hands started shooting up. Ooh! Ooh! We all had the questions...and the room quickly divided. The professor said: Well, let's start with this notion...Science is the how. Scripture is the why. How does this shape our thinking about the issue. My impression is that he spoke for most folk. It is such a straw man argument. There are too many faithful scientists out there to suggest one does away with the other.
Blerg.
Haggard needs our prayers...so too do the evangelical conservatives who constantly recreate a pseudo-Christian purity cult. Eh. Fogey, you and I will disagree on this one no doubt...but Do we agree that Haggard is swimming upstream in a theological system that may have little forgiveness to offer? I dunno. It will be interesting to see that shake out as well.
I don't know a lot about the stem cell thing. The reading continues there.
Sorry to hear about your musical tastes. Heh.
Posted by: Tripp at November 6, 2006 09:21 AMBut the big question is *which* community does the Holy Spirit speak through, guaranteed by faith? (And yes, the process usually isn't tidy: robber councils, interfering emperors, 'reception' by the faithful and all that.) The Church Catholic past and present (Chesterton: 'tradition is the democracy of the dead'), Pastor Billy Joe and his friends or the consensus for now of the the German theologians of the month? (Of course you saw that one coming.)
'...the rightness, for example, of keeping someone off the road if they continually reinterpret a STOP sign.'
Right, all those anathemas in the councils, excommunications... or the modern slap on the wrist, Rome taking away somebody's licence to teach in its name. (Also, as recently as the 1920s an Anglican bishop was deposed in America for not literally believing in the creeds.) And getting slagged as 'mean-spirited' for it. Well, is the policeman as well for ticketing the dangerous driver?
(My sound card is in the machine at home.)
'Science is the how. Scripture is the why.'
Agreed.
'Do we agree that Haggard is swimming upstream in a theological system that may have little forgiveness to offer?'
We do. And I think we agree that a system like that only makes these problems worse. It's basic man-in-the-street psychology that if you repress a problem (like if you lie to yourself about your orientation) it only comes back with a vengeance. (Like Vernon Staley said heresy is the intellectual vengeance of suppressed truths.) Add to that the lack of forgiveness in that system and it's like lobbing a gas canister onto a November bonfire.
Posted by: The young fogey at November 6, 2006 10:32 AM