The Monday Tour 3/27/06

Joe Carter talks about the "The Forgotten Vice of Gluttony"

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At Intellectuelle, Hannah Im notices "The Emergent Church is Like a Homeschool Group". For this interested in the emergent church on a more theological level, check out The Jesus Creed, the online home of Scot McKnight
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There were a couple of posts at Street Prophets on belief and doubt - and the life hits we take that impact that. Lexie speaks to some of that with "He's Gonna Meet Me" based on the 22nd and 23rd Psalms
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"The Evangelical Mind Revisited" by Alan Wolfe is an interesting read (HT: The Lion Rampant)
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A very interesting "Beauty Talk" from Catez Stevens
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Marla Swoffer mostly bows out of blogging with "Hello and Goodbye" . Her reasons: her priorities, her purpose, her problems, and her privacy.
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This is a very interesting thread at Baghdadee on the current political situation in Iraq. Notice Salim's remark #8 particularly
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Jeremy Pierce talks about Eugene Volokh's "Why Would Blacks Become Republicans?" in his "Race Traitor". Links inside go to Huffington Post as well. It is all very interesting stuff on black Republicanism with some insight on racism as well.

Bart Ehrman's "Misquoting Jesus : The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why" is the subject of Jeremy's "Critiques of Bart Ehrman"
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Jan at a View From Her seems to hook me every week (have any of you linked this women yet!). She gets the Hat Tip for "Top Ten Reasons Why Men Should Not Be Ordained " as well as this opportunity for men who believe in the importance of stem cell research to step up to the plate. I am glad I think a different idea is better - for obvious reasons.
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Next week

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Christian Carnival CXIV (114) is up

The introduction from David at all kinds of time . . . :

I have the pleasure and honor of, yet again, being able to host the weekly Christian Carnival. Unfortunately, with work as it is, I won't be able to do the beautiful categorization that so many often contrive to add flavor to the CC, but I've done my best to throw in a comment here or there. Without further adieu...

About Christian Carnival:

Contributing a Post to the Christian Carnival

The Christian Carnival is open to Christians of Protestant, Orthodox, and Roman Catholic convictions. One of the goals of this Carnival is to offer our readers to a broad range of Christian thought.

Posts need not be of a theological topic. Posts about home life, politics, or current events, for example, written from a Christian worldview are welcome.

Update: As the goal of this Carnival is to highlight Christian thought in the blogosphere, entries will be limited to blogs that share that goal. Blogs with content that is focused on a business, that has potentially offensive material Christians may not want to link to on their sites, or has no reference to distinctively Christian thought may not be included in this Carnival. There are other Carnivals that would be a more appropriate venue for that material. I realize that this will be a judgment call on the part of the Carnival administrator, and being human she may make mistakes. However, as the Christian Carnival is getting quite large, and it is sometimes questionable whether the entrants are seeking to promote Christian thought, I find this necessary.

Update: We also expect a level of discourse that is suitable for a Christian showcase. Thus entries may be refused if they engage in name-calling, ad hominem attacks, offensive language, or for any similar reason as judged by the administrator.

So, if you have a post in this framework - go here to find out more: Christian Carnival info. BTW, if you really want progressive Christian thought to have wider presence . . .

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Natural Law: The Five Furies of Conscience

[Number six in a series]

This continues to look at the concept of natural law - primarily tied to ideas presented in What We Can't Not Know, by J. Budziszewski (J Bud from here out) - almost everything below is an idea from J. Bud.

As I posted in in "Natural Law: It's Source and Discernment":

The curiosity is that those things that natural law theorists would say comprise the natural law cut across cultures, time, religion, and philosophy - in other words they are nearly universal. The reason is that these are general revelations of God that overflow from His character because we are all created in His image. That, of course, leads us to the means to discern it: we look in the moral codes of the whole planet for those similarities that appear - those things that we "just know" are right and wrong.

In the chapter "Some Objections" in the book linked above Budziszewski raises an objection and answers it:

Objection: "You natural law thinkers seem confused about whether natural law comes from God, from nature, from conscience, or from reason.

Answer: Traditionally, the authority of natural law has been found in the Creator, its content in the design He has imparted to us - which is also part of the design, and which includes deep conscience as a part.

However, our deep conscience is warped by our own surface conscious:

Romans 1:19 because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them. 20 For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse. 21 For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened.

Romans 7:15 For what I am doing, I do not understand; for I am not practicing what I would like to do, but I am doing the very thing I hate . . . 22 For I joyfully concur with the law of God in the inner man, 23 but I see a different law in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin which is in my members.

J. Bud analyzes how the conflict between our knowledge (deep conscience) and beliefs (surface conscience) shows up. He talks about:

The Five Furies of Conscience

Conscience has a number of faces:

• In cautionary mode, it alerts us to the peril of moral wrong and generates


• In accusatory mode, it indicts us for the wrong we have already done.

The most common way this happens is through the first fury: remorse. J. Bud points that this is the least of the furies: we do not always feel remorse when we do wrong, and some people never feel it. Even if we do not feel remorse, guilty knowledge

generates objective needs for confession, atonement, reconciliation, and justification. These other furies are the greater sisters of remorse: inflexible, inexorable, and relentless, demanding satisfaction even when mere feelings are suppressed, fade away, or never come

This leads to the most harrowing mode:

• In avenger mode, it punishes the soul that does wrong but refuses to read the indictment. How this works is easy to grasp. The normal outlet:
  1. of remorse is to flee from wrong;
  2. of confession is to admit what one has done;
  3. of atonement is to pay the debt;
  4. of reconciliation is to restore the bonds that have been broken; and
  5. of justification is to get back in the right
  
  If we do not do "feed" the furies the right way; then they will be fed in some other way - driving our lives further out of kilter. For example:
  1. we do not flee from wrong, but just from thinking about it;
  2. we compulsively confess every detail of the story but the moral;
  3. we punish ourselves again and again offering every sacrifice but the one demanded;
  4. we simulate the broken bonds of intimacy by seeking companions as guilty as ourselves; and
  5. we seek not to become just but to justify ourselves.

The Purpose of the Furies

J. Bud presents the greater purpose of conscience as not to inform us of moral truth, but to motivate us to live by it - driving our lives out of kilter is the exhortation of last resort. Therefore, "pursued by the five furies, a man becomes both wickeder and stupider in a progressively downward spiral: more wicked because his behavior becomes worse, more stupid because he tells himself more lies."

Of course, he intended to become wicker and stupider - that is what obstinacy and denial are all about. J. Bud points out (as anyone who has experienced redemption by "bottoming out" will know) the persons only hope is to become even wickeder and stupider than planned - to become so wretched that they come to themselves - or God. He posits that what is called "the left hand of God" may be the left hand of His mercy; and that perhaps, in order to eventually soften a heart he will let it become even more rocklike.

This is obviously hard on everyone around the fool but no less drastic means may be available in order to preserve free will - which God seems intent on preserving. God seems willing to do almost anything to save a soul; and then the souls impinged on by that soul; and then . . .

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The Monday Tour 3/20/06

Usually I do not post Street Prophets or Brain Cramps posts here because, well - I write a lot in both. At Street Prophets is a great post by a Buddhist (well, I think Christian but Shakti won't agree) on "Surrendering Disbelief to Practice Forgiveness". I posted this quote at Debunking Christianity linked below that pertains to the Forgiveness thread - and I do not want to stick it in at comment #52. C.S. Lewis:

my self-love makes me think myself nice, but thinking myself nice is not why I love myself. So loving my, enemies does not apparently mean thinking them nice either. That is an enormous relief. For a good many people imagine that forgiving your enemies means making out that they are really not such bad fellows after all, when it is quite plain that they are. Go a step further. In my most clear-sighted moments not only do I not think myself a nice man, but I know that I am a very nasty one. I can look at some of the things I have done with horror and loathing. So apparently I am allowed to loathe and hate some of the things my enemies do. Now that I come to think of it, I remember Christian teachers telling me long ago that I must hate a bad man's actions, but not hate the bad man: or, as they would say, hate the sin but not the sinner.

For a long time I used to think this a silly, straw-splitting distinction: how could you hate what a man did and not hate the man? But years later it occurred to me that there was one man to whom I had been doing this all my life - namely myself. However much I might dislike my own cowardice or conceit or greed, I went on loving myself. There had never been the slightest difficulty about it. In fact the very reason why I hated the things was that I loved the man. Just because I loved myself, I was sorry to find that I was the sort of man who did those things. Consequently, Christianity does not want us to reduce by one atom the hatred we feel for cruelty and treachery. We ought to hate them. Not one word of what we have said about them needs to be unsaid. But it does want us to hate them in the same way in which we hate things in ourselves: being sorry that the man should have done such things, and hoping, if it is anyway possible, that somehow, sometime, somewhere he can be cured and made human again.

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Bonnie found a post at Jolly Blogger on "The Essence of American Religion" and commented on it at Intellectuelle

"...in saying that the essence of American religion is the belief that God loves me, this would go a long way to explaining the state of American Christianity. In a country where so many claim to be Christians, maybe its the case that most of those believe in a God who is only half a god, or one quarter, or one tenth of a God. To believe in a God of love, without believing a God who is also holy, righteous, omnipotent, merciful, wrathful, omnicient, etc., is to believe in a dimunitive god. Thus we have a diminutive Christianity - a Christianity adhered to by millions yet which is grows more and more irrelevant in our day..." (David Wayne at Jolly Blogger as quoted at Intellectuelle)

At her own blog. Bonnie gives you some questions you can ask yourself as you contemplate your life and your faith (in case you do not have enough). The first one:

• How much of what we think (or say) we are doing in the name of the Lord are we really doing from either a mistaken sense of calling or justification of sin?

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Last week I linked Lexie's "Pro-Choice...Pre-S~x". This week the insight she got from Psalm 11 in "Pro-Choice...Pre-S*x: p. 2"
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Again, I found this discussion interesting enough to participate in, so I might as well throw it onto the list. Debunking Christianity will not go in my list of things to check frequently (or at all - I am trying to quit :-) ) - but I did go to "WWJD?" and participate quite a bit. I am almost ashamed that I did so because Tyler at Habakkuk's yelled "Hey, JCHFleetguy!" at me and one of the comments at Habukkuks said:

JCHFleetguy is right, however, not to visit them. He really needs to make arguments which rest on a mutually accepted authority, and they have no authorities in common with him.

Ah, what I will not do when my ego is challenged. Frankly, the post I was in was on the level of "Can God make a rock He cannot lift?". I "should have said" (why do we do that?) read these 6 books and come back with a bit higher level apology for atheism. Oh well.
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"And on a lighter (nontheological) note" my wife and I got a real kick out of the site linked here.
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Everything posted at Iraq the Model this week is worth reading if you want to more deeply understand the situation on the ground there.
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Jesus Creed has "Emerging Peter: Slavery 1":

So, in today’s post I want to offer an experimental reading. Only after such a reading will I turn to a more traditional look at the text. I will offer a “reading of the oppressed.”

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"You mean Biblically-styled marriages work? Shocking!"
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Teresa at Spitting Into the Wind comes up with a theme post. One of the themes from Debunking Christianity above is the Virgin Birth as impossible because a sperm "is necessary" and that it was rape by God anyway. Teresa quotes an essay by "my man" C.S. Lewis in "Science and Religion" that deals with half that.
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Hey, here is how you separate church and state the old fashioned German way: Ban the Koran. (HT: Sun Comprehending Glass)
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Leave it to Joe Carter to let the conservative cat-out-of-the-bag and demand his cheap gas. You just cannot trust bloggers to keep a secret.
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Besides linking and commenting on Joe Carter's "sage wisdom" on "Soul Mates and Manly Men" "sage wisdom"; Jan lets the cat-out-of-the-bag on why "We Go Together".
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I have to go round up some cats. Next week.

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Christian Carnival CXIII (113) is up

The Innovation Edition

The introduction from John at Light Along the Journey:

Why call this week's Carnival the "Innovation" edition? Two reasons: One, I am an ENTP Myers-Brigg Personality Type which makes me an innovator by nature. Two, I am going to try out something completely new for all the "Carnivalites" (is that a word?) out there.

Say, wouldn't you love to be able to read all the posts submitted to the Carnival without having to click, click, click, click, click? Sure you would, and I think I have found a way to do it! Go to www.bloglines.com/login and login using the email john@lightalongthejourney.com and using the password "carnival". Next click on the "Clippings" tab in the upper left area of the screen, and finally click on the "Clippings" folder shown below it. If you've done it right, wham! all the posts (hopefully) are displayed on the column on the right, just waiting for you to scroll down through them all and read to your heart's delight. PLEASE don't click anything else or change any settings to allow everyone to scroll through and read the posts.

About Christian Carnival:

Contributing a Post to the Christian Carnival

The Christian Carnival is open to Christians of Protestant, Orthodox, and Roman Catholic convictions. One of the goals of this Carnival is to offer our readers to a broad range of Christian thought.

Posts need not be of a theological topic. Posts about home life, politics, or current events, for example, written from a Christian worldview are welcome.

Update: As the goal of this Carnival is to highlight Christian thought in the blogosphere, entries will be limited to blogs that share that goal. Blogs with content that is focused on a business, that has potentially offensive material Christians may not want to link to on their sites, or has no reference to distinctively Christian thought may not be included in this Carnival. There are other Carnivals that would be a more appropriate venue for that material. I realize that this will be a judgment call on the part of the Carnival administrator, and being human she may make mistakes. However, as the Christian Carnival is getting quite large, and it is sometimes questionable whether the entrants are seeking to promote Christian thought, I find this necessary.

Update: We also expect a level of discourse that is suitable for a Christian showcase. Thus entries may be refused if they engage in name-calling, ad hominem attacks, offensive language, or for any similar reason as judged by the administrator.

So, if you have a post in this framework - go here to find out more: Christian Carnival info.

Read more!

Natural Law: The Four Witnesses

[Number five in a series]

This continues to look at the concept of natural law - primarily tied to ideas presented in What We Can't Not Know, by J. Budziszewski (J Bud from here out).

J Bud lists four "witnesses" (he says "at least" so there may be more) that tell us of the content of natural law, or as C.S. Lewis called it in Mere Christianity: the law of human nature or decent behavior. Very little of what follows, quoted or not, isn't a direct quote or paraphrase from J. Bud's book. I will try to make it clear when I depart from that - so that I do not put my words (or someone else's) in J. Bud's mouth.

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"Classical education taught its pupils that there was some real moral knowledge in the universal common sense of plain people; the task was not to get free of it but to refine it. By contrast, modern education teaches its pupils to distance themselves from this common moral sense, to call it not knowledge, but "belief". A person of modern education wants to know how we know before deciding what we know; he demands a critique of the faculty of knowing before conceding he knows anything at all.

This suspicion is partly reasonable and partly unreasonable. The reasonable part is that, up to a point, we can certainly investigate how we know things. The unreasonable part is that in order to do so, we have to know something already - otherwise we have no equipment for the investigation. There must be some first principles that are not derived from other principles, some first knowledge that comes to us without prior investigation. It isn't because we are taught ethics that we know we have duties to other people; and if we didn't already know it, we couldn't be taught ethics."

He goes on to point out that this "underived" knowledge is not all of natural law; and it is the most fundamental part - and the most disturbing. It is disturbing because, since it is underived, "the investigation of how we know is mostly descriptive". We just know, and the mechanism for that cannot be defined.

What are the four witnesses?

The Witness of Deep Conscience

According to theologians of the Middle Ages (5th century to 15th century), the conscience is divided into two parts. Synderesis (probably a misreading of suneidesis) is the faculty in human beings that knows God's moral law; this faculty remained unaffected by the Fall and the expulsion from the Garden of Eden. Conscientia is the faculty by which human beings apply the moral to concrete cases; it dictates what should or should not be done under particular circumstances. Whereas synderesis cannot err, conscientia is fallible (Encarta)

Synderesis, or deep conscience: Cannot be erased, cannot be mistaken, and is the same in every single human being. The only way to tamper with it is by self-deception - to tell yourself you really do not know what you know. It includes the knowledge of inviolable goods like friendship; of formal norms like fairness; and everyday moral rules like "Do not murder".

Deep conscience is the reason a person who says they do not believe in right and wrong may shrink from murder; why even a man who murders may have pangs of remorse; and why even if the man has deadened himself to remorse shows other symptoms of deep-buried guilty knowledge.

Conscientia, or surface conscience: J Bud gives "at least" nine ways surface conscience can be blurred or err (and asks you to compare Aquinas's Summa Theologica, Prima Secundæ Partis, Question 94, Articles 4 and 6):

1. insufficient experience: we do not know enough to reach sound conclusions;
2. insufficient skill: we haven't learned the art of reasoning well;
3. sloth: we are too lazy to reason;
4. corrupt custom: it hasn't occurred to us to reason;
5. passion: we are distracted by strong feeling from reasoning carefully;
6. fear: we are afraid to reason because we might find out we are wrong;
7. wishful thinking: we include in our reasoning what we are willing to notice;
8. depraved ideology: we interpret known principles crookedly; and
9. malice: we refuse to reason because we are determined to do what we want.

J Bud points that underneath the results of this bad reasoning is still the witness of deep conscience, no matter how "twisted and falsified on its path into current awareness". In a later part of this series, I will look at deep and surface conscience, and the implications of violating them.

The Witness of Design as Such

If, as Richard Dawkins wrote:

"We are survival machines, robot vehicles blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules known as genes" (Preface to "The Selfish Gene")

then why should we listen to the "witness" of our conscience at all? If our genes are blindly programmed, then our conscience may be part of the program - a means for our genes to direct us by remote control. In that case, a wise man may try to find a way to turn off the remote. Dawkins thinks so:

"Let us understand what our own selfish genes are up to because we may then at least have the chance to upset their designs, something no other species has ever aspired to do" ("The Selfish Gene")

J. Bud:

"Unless deep conscience is designed to tell us the truth, there is no particular reason why it should. And so a pre-supposition of regarding deep conscience as a witness - as we all, deep down, know it is - is that it has been designed to tell us the truth by someone wise enough to do so"

As J Bud points out "He has set eternity in the hearts of men" - He has designed us to long for Him, reverence Him, and adore Him. The best evidence for the sensus divinitatus is that we were designed to have it. J Bud states that this recognition of design does three things for our moral knowledge:

1. It vindicates deep conscience: if Synderesis has been designed by God as a witness to moral truth; then we can trust it to be reliable;
2. It confirms we have duties not only to neighbor but to God Himself, to whom we owe the possibility of the experience of anything good;
3. It informs us that just as our deep conscience is designed, so are we.

The Witness of Our Own Design

J Bud points out four ways that our moral design shows itself not individually, but at the level of the species.

First, interdependence. We are not hive creatures, but we are not self-sufficient either. It shows in a number of ways. We depend on each other:

1. Physically
2. Intellectually
3. Developmentally
4. Procreatively
5. For identity
6. Morally
7. Politically including public justice

Second, complementarity. Not only do we depend on each other, we depend on each other in a particular way. One illustration is in the natural diversity of our bents and abilities, which is the basis of our division of labor. J Bud posits this not like two fingers working together, but like the fingers opposing the thumb in order to grasp. Our differences are precisely what allows us to work together. J. Bud of course mentions men and women in this area.

Third, spontaneous order. Humans, if left to themselves, quickly form a rich array of associations such as family (this is the central and foundational structure), neighborhoods, villages, businesses, vocational groups, religious societies, and schools. Edmund Burke wrote:

"to be attached to the subdivision, to love the little platoon we belong to in society, is the first principle (the germ as it were) of public affections. It is the first link in the series by which we proceed toward a love to our country and to mankind. The interest of that portion of social arrangement is a trust in the hands of all those who compose it; and as none but bad men would justify it in abuse, none but traitors would barter it away for their own advantage" ( Reflections on the French Revolution )

Fourth, subsidiarity. Since Aristotle two principles have been seen:

1. connaturality: culture should develop in partnership with our design filling the outline our first nature provides; and
2. diminishing spontaneity: as a hierarchy of associations and relationships rise from the individuals and families at the base of the social structure (up to and including government), the higher the rung the less spontaneous it is and the more contrived; or, the higher you go the less help the structure gets from nature and the more help it needs from culture.

These two features imply the risk that though the higher rungs ought to protect and co-operate with the more spontaneous lower rungs - the higher rung's lesser spontaneity means they may not.

This implies a rule, subsidiarity, which was a natural assumption but not put into words until 1931 by Pope Pius XI:

"As history abundantly proves, it is true that on account of changed conditions many things which were done by small associations in former times cannot be done now save by large associations. Still, that most weighty principle, which cannot be set aside or changed, remains fixed and unshaken in social philosophy: Just as it is gravely wrong to take from individuals what they can accomplish by their own initiative and industry and give it to the community, so also it is an injustice and at the same time a grave evil and disturbance of right order to assign to a greater and higher association what lesser and subordinate organizations can do. For every social activity ought of its very nature to furnish help to the members of the body social, and never destroy and absorb them." ( "On Reconstruction of the Social Order" )

As Pius said, what brought this to the forefront was the industrial revolution, and the danger that between the collectivists on one side, and the individualists on the other, all the "little platoons" between the state and the individual would be destroyed and/or absorbed.

The Witness of Natural Consequences

One penalty of breaking natural moral law is guilty knowledge. There are other consequences:

• those that give offense to others are hated;
• those that live by the knife die by them;
• those that betray all of their friends have none left;
• those that abandon their children have none to stroke their brows when they are old;
• those that travel from bed to bed lose the capacity for trust;
• those that torture their consciences are tortured by them in return;
• those that suppress moral knowledge become stupider than they intended

J. Bud notes some curious things (which apply to civil law as well as natural law):

• The consequence is not the reason the act is wrong; it only declares its wrong and disciplines us for committing it. In the United States, there is a penalty for driving on the left because it is a hazard to the public good.
• The declaration of what is wrong not only announces what is needed for the common good; but partly "determines" it. Driving on the left didn't have to be wrong - we could be in England.
• The system of penalties is not perfectly efficient; up to a certain degree of corruption in the will of the person subject to the law the penalty discourages violation, but beyond that point it actually provides a motive to go further. The person driving on the left may exceed the speed limit and careen around corners - a greater offense - to avoid capture for the lesser offense.

Next: "Natural Law: The Five Furies of Conscience"

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The Monday Tour 3/13/06

Bonnie at Intellectuelle links a "Round-up on Relationship" which taps into World Mag Blog

At her own blog, Off the Top, she answers the question "Why am I so fond of my goldfish?"
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I am at a loss to say what it means, or what it comes from, that "Men's Rights Group Eyes Child Support Stay"; but Lexie's take on it in "Pro-Choice...Pre-S~x" at Lexical Light feels good to me.
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"Here I Raise my Ebenezer" says Bryce at The Lion Rampant. Since I may be helping to plant a church - it caught my eye. It also is an interesting tale of closing doors and opening windows.
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The Carnival of Beauty: "The Beauty of Order" is up at Scribblings by Blair (HT: Just Marla)
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There is a new Arabic language website being worked on in Baghdad - Lampofliberty.org (misbahalhurriyya.org in Arabic) which focuses on classical liberalism/libertarian and is directed at policy makers in the Middle East

مصباح الحرية هي منظمة غير ربحية لا تتبع لأي حزب، وعملها تعليمي يسعى إلى طرح آراء الحرية في المجتمع لصانعي القرار، والمراقبين، ورجال الأعمال، والطلاب، ووسائل الإعلام في الشرق الأوسط. ومن أجل هذا الهدف سوف تنشر مصباح الحرية مقالات رأي، وتقارير خاصة بالسياسات، وترجمات لأعمال هامة.
مصباح الحرية هي مبادرة لمشروع جاك بيرن حول الحرية في الشرق الأوسط، حيث يهدف إلى نشر الأفكار المتعلقة بحريّة وكرامة الإنسان في جميع أنحاء الشرق الأوسط. ومن خلال الكتب، والصحف، وشبكة الإنترنت، وغيرها من الأدوات باللغة العربية، سوف يجلب المشروع إلى شعوب الشرق الأوسط رسالة عن الحرية، والمبادرة في إقامة المشاريع، والتعاون السلمي ليحلّ مكان الحكم الاستبدادي، والتبعية، والصراع الذي ميّز جزءاً كبيراً جداً من تجربتهم.
آخر خبر
(HT: Baghdadee)

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Jeremy at Parableman makes an important point: "Mexican-Americans Aren't Illegal Immigrants" in response to comments at Volokh Conspiracy
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The "Carnival of the Clueless #35" :

So for Cluelessness that reveals how far a once great and talented news service has fallen, the Associated Press is awarded the coveted Cluebat of the Week.
Why not check out the articles below for some more cluelessness that’ll make you smile. make you cry, and maybe even make you throw your diet vanilla coke at your monitor! Go ahead…you know you want to click it.

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"Boston’s Catholic Charities to stop adoption service over same-sex law". (HT: WorldMagBlog
Also linked at WorldMagBlog: Alvin Plantinga's "Whether ID is science is not semantics" on Judge Jones's Dover decision.

And another: "Schiltz on abortion and Down's". Does this scare you?:

Bob Edwards, the scientist who created Great Britain's first in vitro fertilization baby, gave a speech a couple of years ago at an international fertility conference in which he said, "Soon it will be a sin for parents to have a child that carries the heavy burden of genetic disease. We are entering a world where we have to consider the quality of our children."

This is frightening. It signals an erosion of societal consensus about our collective responsibility for vulnerable people.

Society will increasingly believe that a mother who forgoes an easy abortion and chooses instead to give birth to a disabled child should not look to the community for help. After all, it was her "choice."

And one more: Matthew Wise at Mere Orthodoxy takes on some words I am having more and more trouble with - literalism and fundamentalism - with "It's a Great Time to be Christian"
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Next week

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Christian Carnival CXII (112) is up

The introduction from Adam at Adam's Blog:

Welcome to the 112th Christian Carnival. For more than 2 years, once a week, we've come together to celebrate the best from Christian Bloggers. This week is no exception as we have a great list of posts for you:

About Christian Carnival:

Contributing a Post to the Christian Carnival

The Christian Carnival is open to Christians of Protestant, Orthodox, and Roman Catholic convictions. One of the goals of this Carnival is to offer our readers to a broad range of Christian thought.

Posts need not be of a theological topic. Posts about home life, politics, or current events, for example, written from a Christian worldview are welcome.

Update: As the goal of this Carnival is to highlight Christian thought in the blogosphere, entries will be limited to blogs that share that goal. Blogs with content that is focused on a business, that has potentially offensive material Christians may not want to link to on their sites, or has no reference to distinctively Christian thought may not be included in this Carnival. There are other Carnivals that would be a more appropriate venue for that material. I realize that this will be a judgment call on the part of the Carnival administrator, and being human she may make mistakes. However, as the Christian Carnival is getting quite large, and it is sometimes questionable whether the entrants are seeking to promote Christian thought, I find this necessary.

Update: We also expect a level of discourse that is suitable for a Christian showcase. Thus entries may be refused if they engage in name-calling, ad hominem attacks, offensive language, or for any similar reason as judged by the administrator.

So, if you have a post in this framework - go here to find out more: Christian Carnival info.

Read more!

The Monday (yeah I know) Tour: 3/7/06

Joe Carter hardly ever fails to interest me: First, he points out a "Divine Demarcation: Why Christians Should Discard 'Supernatural'?".

Then, he asks "Is Post-Modernism a Myth?"
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I suppose I have to :-) link these very good posts at Habakkuk's Watchpost since I was involved in both the comment sections: "On Neo-Orthodoxy and the Unbelievable" and "Science and Religion". Other commenter's are unsure whether I am actually stupid, or just proud of my ignorance. That's a tough call.
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Catez Stevens talks about "William Levi: The Bible or the Axe". A very interesting look at Sudanese Christianity.
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Marla Swoffer has the "Carnival of Beauty: The Bible". Nice stuff.
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"The Carnival of the Clueless #34" with the winner of Cluebat of the Week:

". . . the MSM is the winner of the Carnival’s Cluebat of the Week. Check out the rest of the entries for our usual jaw dropping idiocy brought to you by some of the best and brightest on the web. Ladies and Gentlemen: Start your Clicking!

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Linking a Guttmacher Institute criticism of contraception availability in Utah - or not
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Next week

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Christian Carnival CXI (111) is up

St. David's Day/Ash Wednesday Edition

The introduction from Dory at Whittenburg Gate:

This week's scheduled host seems to be out of communication, so we are filling in here at Wittenberg Gate, for the St. David's Day/Ash Wednesday edition of the Christian Carnival.

About Christian Carnival:

Contributing a Post to the Christian Carnival

The Christian Carnival is open to Christians of Protestant, Orthodox, and Roman Catholic convictions. One of the goals of this Carnival is to offer our readers to a broad range of Christian thought.

Posts need not be of a theological topic. Posts about home life, politics, or current events, for example, written from a Christian worldview are welcome.

Update: As the goal of this Carnival is to highlight Christian thought in the blogosphere, entries will be limited to blogs that share that goal. Blogs with content that is focused on a business, that has potentially offensive material Christians may not want to link to on their sites, or has no reference to distinctively Christian thought may not be included in this Carnival. There are other Carnivals that would be a more appropriate venue for that material. I realize that this will be a judgment call on the part of the Carnival administrator, and being human she may make mistakes. However, as the Christian Carnival is getting quite large, and it is sometimes questionable whether the entrants are seeking to promote Christian thought, I find this necessary.

Update: We also expect a level of discourse that is suitable for a Christian showcase. Thus entries may be refused if they engage in name-calling, ad hominem attacks, offensive language, or for any similar reason as judged by the administrator.

So, if you have a post in this framework - go here to find out more: Christian Carnival info.

Read more!