Regnum Caelorum

AI Tylenol Bottle with Gibberish Text A couple days ago we were told by Trump and RFK jr that we should be concerned about a potential causal link between Tylenol use during pregnancy and autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Given that Tylenol is pretty much the only over-the-counter medication that is considered safe to take for fevers and pain during pregnancy, I can only imagine the confusion being generated right now about how to cope with pain and fever during pregnancy . Now I'm not a medical doctor, so please don't just take my word for it. I'll supply a series of links below to resources written by those qualified to give medical advice. I think, however, we should be able to see through a lot of the current rhetoric if we understand how both cherry picking and ignoring confounding variables can lead to very misleading conclusions that can result in needless fears and even false guilt among moms with autistic children who took Tylenol during pregnancy.  The backgrou...

From the time I was child I've been fascinated by the natural world, and since I was in high school I've been very concerned about developing good ways of bridging the perceived gap between Geology and the Bible. I majored in Geology in college with the intention of going to the Institute for Creation Research after graduation. While in college I became disenchanted with that enterprise (for reasons I'll discuss later), and I've focused since then on developing what I hope are faithful ways of interpreting Scripture as a theological text rather than a scientific text. Over the last few years, I've become progressively more concerned with our need to respond to global environmental problems such as climate change and land use issues that are unsustainable for our planet. In the process, it's become increasingly clear to me that the evangelical church does not have a meaningful way to engage in these types of issues in a way that is both Biblically grounded and re...

White-tailed Deer On Tuesday, March 3rd, 2009 President Obama overturned legislation enacted at the end of the Bush Administration that weakened the Endangered Species Act. Bush's legislation allowed government agencies to launch projects without consulting government scientists if they deemed that those projects would cause no harm to endangered species. I completely agree with what Obama did. Government agencies are not qualified to say what projects might harm endangered species, and scientists, at least in principle, ought to be able to provide more guidance for what may or may not be harmful to endangered species Red-cockaded Woodpecker A threatened species due to habitat loss But what I found interesting was the following quote  from President Obama: "Throughout our history, there's been a tension between those who've sought to conserve our natural resources for the benefit of future generations and those who have sought to profit from these resources....

Mike Erre I finished this book a little while ago, but for some reason, I'm just getting around to blogging about it. The subtitle of this book asks the question, "Have we tamed the Son of God to fit our lifestyle?" I doubt a single book published on the subject has answered "no" to that question, so it's not surprising that the theme of this book is that we have taken the Jesus of the Scriptures and conformed him into the image of a nice, happy Jesus that fits into the values of suburban culture. There's really nothing ground breaking or revolutionary about this book. The ideas contained in it have been written by others for years, and many are common critiques of evangelicalism even from its staunchest defenders. For instance, the chapter entitled "The Danger of Theology" gives the same distinction between knowing God and knowing about God that has been explained by J. I. Packer and countless others within evangelicalism. At the same time...

Paul as Interpreter of Israel's Scripture Richard B. Hays R. B. Hays has written a book detailing the narrative substructure of Paul's letters. He argues with convincing clarity that when Paul quotes or cites Old Testament texts, he is not just prooftexting his own arguments. Rather, he is drawing them in, often quite subtly, to the narrative context of the Old Testament quotation. He may only cite one verse, but he will continue to use vocabulary from the Old Testament narrative to situate his readers within that narrative and give his audiences both identity and exhortation on the ground of their place in Israel's story. Hays has done a remarkable job, and reading this book ought to cause us to have our own imaginations "converted" as we read both Paul and the New Testament. Hays notes that Paul does not quote the Law to command his readers, even when those laws would seem applicable. Rather, he draws them in to Israel's story, situates them in their pr...

I woke up this morning to the Today Show telling me that they found the tomb of Jesus, his wife and son. Wow. I waited for the historian or archaeologist who made this discovery and found out it was James Cameron, the movie director who made Titanic . This "new" discovery has been around since 1980, and never was thought to amount to anything until Cameron and Simcha Jacobovici got their hands on it. Here's my take on it: Suppose I'm looking for a guy by the name of John. I know he died a few decades ago, but I can't find his body. I know him to be a poor, unmarried man from Baltimore with no children. In my search I happen to find a family tomb in Washington D.C. where there's a casket with John's first name (I can barely make it out, but I think it's "John") and also the first name of his father. Then I find in the tomb another casket with his mother's first name on it as well as a casket with the name of one of his siblings. But the...