Today’s blog is opening the electronic mailbag to answer some questions and respond to comments. Question from Scott and many others. “What is a blog?” Blog is short for weblog. A weblog is a journal (or newsletter) that is frequently updated and intended for general public consumption. Blogs generally represent the personality of the author or the Web site. Authoring a blog, maintaining a blog or adding an article to an existing blog is called “blogging”. Individual articles on a blog are called “blog posts”, “posts”, or “entries”. The person who posts these entries is called a “blogger”. During my post about Peter Singer on Thursday, December 1st I offered membership in an organization to be called “The Rumps of the Know-Nothings”. That was a response to the description that Mr. Singer used to categorize religious people who hold onto outdated views of the sanctity of life. The bad news…only courageous reader Steve has joined my new organization. The good news…it
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There has been a politically correct Christmas greeting that has circulated the internet for the past couple of years. Best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low stress, non-addictive, gender neutral, winter solstice holiday, practiced within the most joyous traditions of the religious persuasion of your choice, but with respect for the religious persuasion of others who choose to practice their own religion as well as those who choose not to practice a religion at all. Perhaps that should be adopted as official “safe“ greeting for retailers this Christmas season. Target has been widely vilified for allegedly forbidding their employees from saying Merry Christmas. It turns out that was not exactly true. The story is now widely circulated and it has become another example of how too many Christians leap before we look in response to cultural issues. Please, please, please verify every email and petition for validity before you hit send. What Target has done is cleansed their website of every Christmas reference. They even list
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Celebrity atheist Michael Newdow had apparently been out of the spotlight far too long so he recently filed a lawsuit to have “In God We Trust” removed from coins. He believes the phrase violates the rights of atheists and he uses logic that is so tortured it is painful. Mr. Newdow is a physician with some training as a lawyer. I am hoping his skills as a doctor are better than his logic as an attorney. If the following is a sample of his closing argument skills then God…uhh…somebody help his clients. A bit of background is in order. Newdow is a minister ordained by the Universal Life Church. The ULC offers free ordination to anyone and includes (no kidding) the Reverend Courtney Love and the Reverend Tony Danza among it’s ordainees (their church conventions must be interesting). It seems that the Rev.Newdow started a church that wishes to raise money for it’s cause by selling pens for a buck. But here comes Newdow’s agonizing dilemma. “I’m a
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The Dallas Morning News ran a recent article called ‘10 ideas on the way out’. Yesterday we discussed Peter Singer’s ideas about the sanctity of life. Today we tee up the topic of monogamy. Our “expert” on the subject is a gentleman named Jacques Attalli. Here is his opening salvo… “Monogamy, which is really no more than a useful social convention, will not survive. It has rarely been honored in practice; soon, it will vanish even as an ideal.” Okay…it has officially happened. I have now become that grumpy old man that I used to ridicule. Mr.Attalli had my blood boiling after his first 29 words. Not bad. First of all, marriage is much more than a “useful social convention”. Marriage is the God ordained structure for family and societal health. And in my primitive circles monogamy is not rarely practiced. There are couples all over the world that have the maturity and the emotional health to remain in a monogamous and loving
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Recently the Dallas Morning News ran an op-ed feature called ‘10 ideas on the way out’. The subtitle confidently proclaimed that by 2040 many of the things we take for granted will no longer exist. I quickly scanned the list to see if major league baseball’s designated hitter would be an idea that would not endure. Sadly, that did not make the list. The list was a mixture of intriquing and frightening. According to these experts monogamy will be a quaint ideal from a less enlightened era and it will no longer be the norm. I am glad I will be dead before my wife finds that out. Another predicts the demise of the British Monarchy. But the one that rocked my world was seeing the number one item on the list penned by a man named Peter Singer. I believe he is one of the most dangerous people on the planet. That seems like a pretty bold statement because
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I knew that our family Thanksgiving would be a bit different this year. We were in the midst of a whirlwind tour of Israel when Turkey Day arrived. As the day dawned in Jerusalem I remembered past Thanksgivings with family all around. Watching the Macy’s Parade while the tantilizing aromas of roasting turkey and pumpkin pie and fresh baked bread filled the house. Watching the football games, eating way too much, and  then the afternoon lapse into semi-consciousness known as the traditional Thanksgiving day nap. I knew that this year would be a little different but I had no idea how much. When I heard our schedule I knew this would be a Thanksgiving like no other. Our final activity for this day would be a visit to the Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem. My first reaction was “no, no, not today”. But then I reconsidered. What better reminder of how very much I have to be thankful for than to relive this abomination of history. We
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On Sunday I returned home from my first tour of Israel. And today I stumbled across an article from the Christian Science Monitor that was written just a week before we left. The following paragraph is from that story. Officials in Israel say that out of about 2 million people who will realize their dream of visiting the Holy Land this year, more than half will be Christian. And among those, more than half will be Evangelical. With that in mind, the Israeli ministry of tourism has gone public with a plan to build – in partnership primarily with American Evangelical churches – a sprawling Holy Land Christian Center on the northern shores of the Sea of Galilee, home to some of the most notable chapters in Jesus’ ministry. The center, to be built on approximately 125 acres that the Israeli government is offering free of cost, would be a Christian theme park and visitors’ center, one that would be
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