Posts

The MAGA Cult

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If you had any doubts about whether Trump is the leader of a personality cult, look no further than the AI-generated images from his followers. The propaganda posters use a combination of religious and political/nationalistic symbolism to exalt Trump as a (near) object of reverence and worship. Notice the similarities to similar propaganda posters from the cult of Chairman Mao in China. The religious symbolism is different but the combination of religio-political symbolism is clear. Similar types of religio-political symbolism is used to support the cult of Kim Jong Un in North Korea. The cult of Hitler in Nazi Germany is in the same tradition. Let me be clear. I don't care who anyone votes for, but MAGA followers fit every meaningful characteristic of a cult, and Trump is clearly a personality cult leader. Also, I'm not calling Trump a fascist or a nazi or a communist. The political views of these personality cult leaders are incidental to their overall strategies for gaining ...
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Christian Monotheism Revisited

From its beginning, Christianity has fundamentally seen itself as a monotheistic religion, affirming the existence of only one true God, the creator of the universe. Among monotheistic religions, Christianity is unique in that while we strictly adhere to the worship of one God, this single God exists in three distinct, coequal, and coeternal persons: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Nothing that follows here contradicts this. At the same time, there are many passages in both the Old and New Testaments that don't fit comfortably into a simplistic understanding of Christian monotheism. For instance, see Psalm 82 (NIV84):      1 God presides in the great assembly;           he gives judgment among the “gods”:       2 “How long will you defend the unjust           and show partiality to the wicked?  Selah       3 Defend the cause of the weak and fatherless;  ...
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The Proper Translation of Exodus 21:22-25

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Recently I came across a video by Dan McClellan responding to a criticism of his view of Exodus 21:22-25. I agree with many of McClellan's criticisms of that content creator, who seems to be in over his head addressing the translation of Exodus 21. However, I also think that McClellan overstates his case, and I believe he's assigning more certainty to his view than is warranted by the evidence. McClellan's position is that these verses treat causing a miscarriage to be punishable only by a fine, while harm to the mother is punishable according to the principle of lex talionis . However, this is not clear in the text, and I consider this to be a less likely understanding of its meaning. Let's look at the text that expresses his view as it appears in the NRSVue: 22 “When people who are fighting injure a pregnant woman so that there is a miscarriage and yet no further harm follows, the one responsible shall be fined what the woman’s husband demands, paying as much as the ...
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Autism and Tylenol: Should We Be Concerned?

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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...
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A Metaphorical Imperative

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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...
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Preservation and Conservation

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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....
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The Jesus of Suburbia

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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...
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