Robert Joustra on the false ultimacy of politics [Reviewing Nick Spencer’s The Political Samaritan: How Power Hijacked a Parable] Maybe our politics has become so ultimate because it’s one of the last things we have in common. Public narrows to mean political. The state, the last public project, exhausts our collective imagination, when it’s really only one institution, a specifically political one […]
Gilbert Meilaender on when curiosity can be vicious Many possibilities may pique my curiosity — I may wonder how … human beings respond to experiments harmful to their bodies, or even to suffering; how the development of a fertilized egg could be stimulated to produce a monster rather than a normal human being; how to […]
Lawrence Principe on a species of scientific fundamentalism The point is that [John W.] Draper [d. 1882] and [Andrew D.] White [d. 1918] were illegitimately transporting the emerging social stratification of their own era backward into earlier times. By constructing the notion that two rival camps – scientists and religionists – had existed throughout history, […]
Telford Work on science, religion, and facing reality Literalistic creation science must disregard or distort the massive and accumulating credible evidence of humanity’s evolutionary origins and character as well as the signs that the Bible’s creation accounts are not literal chronologies. Intelligent Design theory, already unattractive to scientists as a “science stopper,” cannot match its […]
Mark Seifrid on preaching law and gospel We must avoid the danger of producing by our preaching mere cathartic experiences, which ever only end in the implicit word, “You have been forgiven, go home and feel better.” This preaching finally becomes cheap grace. At the same time we must avoid dispensing mere moral instruction that […]
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