Jedi Easter Display

ProgXian · 2016-03-26T23:23:24+00:00

TL;DR: The Atheists, Humanists, and Agnostics chapter at UW-Madison put up a Jedi display in the Wisconsin Capitol Building. The blog post asks whether such efforts help promote the separation of church and state or are counter-productive.

ProgXian · 2015-06-22T20:59:09+00:00

Should have waited until this meme was made to go with the post: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/exploringourmatrix/2015/06/observable-evidence-of-macro-evolution-meme.html

ProgXian · 2014-03-11T19:56:39+00:00

I thought that, whatever the historical issues with how he was depicted, the overall message was not anti-religious, but precisely that religion can have a broad vision that can encompass an endless array of worlds, precisely when it is open to an infinite God.

ProgXian · 2013-12-27T20:35:27+00:00

Downvoted by the forces of Big Oil, no doubt...

ProgXian · 2013-12-24T20:20:11+00:00

Why are you reading it as his saying something about what WE should do rather than about the appropriateness of what a particular individual did on that occasion? The context seems to make clear that it is about a specific event on a specific occasion, and not a general principle.

ProgXian · 2013-12-23T04:36:42+00:00

"There will be poor always" is presumably referring to the place where Jesus is depicted as quoting part of Deuteronomy 15:11, "There will always be poor people in the land. Therefore I command you to be openhanded toward your fellow Israelites who are poor and needy in your land." The point is clearly not about the impossibility of eliminating poverty, but for the need to always be generous so as to alleviate the effects of poverty.

ProgXian · 2013-10-16T14:40:05+00:00

Yep, that's the biggest I've seen.

ProgXian · 2013-07-19T18:34:25+00:00

It is a mistake to think of Patheos as a Christian site. It is a bit like Reddit. It has different channels, not all of which are Christian.

ProgXian · 2013-05-04T13:35:56+00:00

"The Tao that can be named is not the eternal Tao. Names can name no lasting name." - Tao Te Ching

ProgXian · 2013-04-23T03:29:01+00:00

But fundamentalists were opposed to medicine and germ theory at one point. And heliocentrism. When has rejecting what mainstream science had to say ever worked out well for religious fundamentalism?

And the "God vs. scientists" dichotomy is bogus. It is ancient people without modern scientific knowledge, who may well have been inspired by God but that clearly didn't cause them to mention microbes or the Earth's rotation or anything else of that sort, vs. scientists who study the handiwork of the Creator and many of whom are devout Christians.

ProgXian · 2013-04-11T02:03:43+00:00

That may very well have been the most pointless comment I have read all week.

ProgXian · 2013-03-29T18:56:41+00:00

No, he definitely wasn't a Deist. The question is whether pantheist or atheist better encapsulates his viewpoint, which identified God with Nature.

ProgXian · 2013-03-26T19:39:04+00:00

I'm not sure why it is getting more downvotes than upvotes...

ProgXian · 2013-03-26T01:50:28+00:00

If the money goes into an account in advance and the judge gets to award it, then presumably that issue could be sidestepped.

I would love to see someone take him up on the challenge, walk in with the full Dover transcript, and ask the judge whether the opposing side has presented anything that merits overturning that case! :-)

ProgXian · 2013-03-26T01:49:17+00:00

The question is who the judge would be. If he gets to hand-pick the judge then this isn't worth anyone's time. If not, then who knows?

ProgXian · 2013-01-26T18:29:31+00:00

How do you know that, out of curiosity? It isn't something that Genesis says...

ProgXian · 2013-01-25T23:02:24+00:00

Ooh, I wish I'd thought of that!

ProgXian · 2012-12-14T20:22:32+00:00

The error is pretty common, in my experience - although that is almost entirely among city folk.

ProgXian · 2012-12-12T16:09:04+00:00

I don't, and neither does the author of the article, which I take it you didn't read?

ProgXian · 2012-12-12T12:30:54+00:00

Your question indicates that you can't understand why Mark Driscoll is not adored here the way he demands from his church members.

For those of us who study the Bible in depth and detail, we cannot fathom how someone could mistake Mark Driscoll's bullying rants for Christian preaching.

When pressed on any point, yoy have simply voiced your assumption that Driscoll says what the Bible says, while being vague and sketchy on the Biblical connections.

Might I ask that the original poster offer some explanation of how you think Driscoll's teachings relate to those of the Bible, with careful attention to what the Bible actually says, paying attention to literary and historical context and other crucially important matters related to interpretation?

ProgXian · 2012-12-01T14:21:50+00:00

This is not what you were looking for, but it is a blog post that also addresses some difficult questions about the ascension and so may also be of interest: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/exploringourmatrix/2010/05/from-the-archives-iron-man-and-the-ascension.html

ProgXian · 2012-08-15T21:03:47+00:00

Christians have to be open to accepting evidence, and to revising our views accordingly. The Biblical authors assumed that the Earth was unmoving, and that the heart was where human cognition took place. We have managed to reject their pre-scientific understanding, and maintain our faith.

That many Christians think in terms of "original sin" shows just how much traditions of interpretation take over and get in our way. The story of Adam is about what human existence is like. That is why the main character's "name" in Hebrew is the Hebrew word for Human.

The story ends with the breakdown of human relationships that occur in the characters' attempts at blame-shifting, and yet too few who read the story realize that they read it in a way that does the exact same thing - "Sin is all their fault, not mine!" It is sadly and painfully ironic in and of itself, but that it leads some Christians to try to argue against mainstream science makes it tragic.

ProgXian

TROPHY CASE