tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-57670872024-03-13T11:21:17.161-04:00ParablemaniaMusings: philosophy, theology, politics, Christian apologeticsJeremy Piercehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03441308872350317672noreply@blogger.comBlogger88125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5767087.post-1075570350434480352004-01-31T12:32:00.000-05:002004-01-31T12:34:07.340-05:00New location
I've finally finished transferring all the posts and comments to the new site:
http://parablemania.ektopos.com
Thanks to Matthew for setting this up and being willing to host this.
I haven't yet done much with format and template stuff, but eventually I want to get most of the stuff I've had here over there. I may not worry about changing the look much. From now on all posts willJeremy Piercehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03441308872350317672noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5767087.post-1075527890056552562004-01-31T00:44:00.000-05:002004-01-31T12:41:09.873-05:00Favorite husband and wife blogs
Sam thinks the best thing about this is being mentioned on Evangelical Outpost. I appreciate the mention itself, but I think I appreciate the award a little more than the mere mention.
Of course, the suggestion that we have to fight over a computer is a good deal off. Having three computers on a high-speed connection makes for a lot less computer competition, Jeremy Piercehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03441308872350317672noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5767087.post-1075527458648596722004-01-31T00:37:00.000-05:002004-01-31T00:39:14.873-05:00A David Kay quote you won't hear on CNN:
"Iraq was a very dangerous place. The country had the technology, the ability to produce, and there were terrorist groups passing through the country--and no central control."
A fair analysis of what Kay has been saying will take more sensitivity to complexity and nuance than most of the Democratic candidates seem capable of.Jeremy Piercehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03441308872350317672noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5767087.post-1075500422617123332004-01-30T17:07:00.000-05:002004-01-30T17:10:12.013-05:00On the SC debate: foreign policy
I had to miss another debate Thursday (why can't they pick another night?), but I'm looking at the transcript now. This one seems much shorter on substance and much more focused on serious sidestepping of questions and continued repetition of blithe campaign slogans, but there are some moments worthy of comment. I'll take the foreign policy elements first.
Tom Jeremy Piercehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03441308872350317672noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5767087.post-1075420769230703722004-01-29T18:59:00.000-05:002004-01-29T19:01:04.750-05:00Household unions
Thanks to a link by Andrew Sullivan, I've found a John O'Sullivan piece that makes the civil union/marriage debate even more complicated. He assumes first that traditional marriage will within ten years be gone. Given that, he proposes household unions, which can be formed by any group of people living together, whether they have any sexual relationship or not. These could be Jeremy Piercehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03441308872350317672noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5767087.post-1075406202033782152004-01-29T14:56:00.000-05:002004-01-30T11:18:56.090-05:00Wondering about the larger-scale effects of abortion
I had a thought today as I listened to someone on NPR discussing how tax cuts are the reason there won't be enough money to cover the growing programs Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid as baby boomers start to retire. It's not worth mentioning that we've known about this problem for a long time now, and the Bush tax cuts are pretty Jeremy Piercehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03441308872350317672noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5767087.post-1075345848073615922004-01-28T22:10:00.000-05:002004-01-30T11:24:49.576-05:00Moving
I haven't been writing much lately because someone has graciously offered to host my blog at a new location with Movable Type, so I'm in the process of transferring everything over there. It didn't read the Blogger export information correctly, so I'm doing it by hand, which I would have had to do with the comments anyway. I've gotten to January 2 now, and I hope to have it fully Jeremy Piercehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03441308872350317672noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5767087.post-1075255111434121222004-01-27T20:58:00.000-05:002004-01-27T21:30:14.250-05:00The libertarian: (i.e. the moral wimp)
Andrew Sullivan has a new article in Time. It gives the basic anti-Bush argument from libertarian premises, and he really does make the same fundamental mistake libertarians tend to make.
Let's look at Sullivan's complaints:
"Where once education was essentially the preserve of states, school principals and parents, this President has expanded the federalJeremy Piercehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03441308872350317672noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5767087.post-1075153144100324962004-01-26T16:39:00.000-05:002004-01-26T16:41:09.186-05:00Interpretation and homosexuality passages II
This email discussion is continuing. I got a response back, I've sent off a response to that, and I've gotten another one back already. It's venturing into broader issues of interpretation and inerrancy. I've included it in the original file and in the Arguments About Sex and Sexuality collection.Jeremy Piercehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03441308872350317672noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5767087.post-1075090481544953952004-01-25T23:14:00.000-05:002004-01-25T23:16:55.590-05:00Interpretation and homosexuality passages
I received an email from someone who I assume would prefer to remain anonymous, in response to some of what I've said about homosexuality. His basic thrust was that he couldn't understand how I could take passages about homosexuality literally to conclude that there's something bad about homosexuality despite all the evidence against that view, Jeremy Piercehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03441308872350317672noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5767087.post-1074997518439547792004-01-24T21:25:00.000-05:002004-01-24T21:29:03.810-05:00Realized millenialism
That's the new name some people are trying to use for what has traditionally been called amillenialism, which is the view that I think does the most justice to the biblical accounts of the end times. I've seen at least two links to this piece in the last week or so (from Andrew Warnock and Discoshaman), and I've finally gotten around to reading it. People often ask me what Jeremy Piercehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03441308872350317672noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5767087.post-1074958374343384682004-01-24T10:32:00.000-05:002004-01-24T13:08:38.873-05:00Head vs. heart?
Discoshaman looks at Dean's "heart over head" comments as a symptom of a general trend among Democrats to favor policies that sound nice but end up disastrous.
"Sure, they destroyed the black family with inept social engineering, razed inner city neighborhoods and built unlivable human ant farms and created an incompetent public school monopoly. . . But their hearts were in the Jeremy Piercehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03441308872350317672noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5767087.post-1074956723315151442004-01-24T10:05:00.000-05:002004-01-24T10:06:53.403-05:00Inconsistency on states' rights
Josh Claybourn has a nice snippet on Democratic candidates' views on states' rights at the end of his comments on Thursday's debate:
"It's interesting that the candidates will support States' rights when it suits them, but run from it when it doesn't. For instance Sen. Edwards was firmly in favor of letting States determine what constitutes marriage, and Dean wasJeremy Piercehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03441308872350317672noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5767087.post-1074914437363584082004-01-23T22:20:00.000-05:002004-01-23T22:25:17.716-05:00A Deeper Notion of Marriage
What is supposed to be so harmful about gay marriage? What turns out to be the main reason Christians should want to safeguard the term ‘marriage’ has to do with the biblical concept of marriage, and it’s something almost no one I’ve been reading on the topic mentions. It’s no wonder that Andrew Sullivan can’t find any argument for why Christians are so opposed to gayJeremy Piercehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03441308872350317672noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5767087.post-1074911143831274742004-01-23T21:25:00.000-05:002004-01-23T21:31:29.140-05:00Blaming the wrong people
On NPR today, Diane Rehm and Ken Auletta (media critic and writer for The New Yorker) were ganging up on the media for attaching the "angry" label to Howard Dean. Apparently they saw none of the anger that so many people have seen. Now I don't know who they've been following, but it's hard to watch and hear him when he says "George Bush" without noticing that he Jeremy Piercehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03441308872350317672noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5767087.post-1074908113995455972004-01-23T20:35:00.000-05:002004-01-23T20:36:43.123-05:00NH debate comments:
The short of it: I wasn’t able to watch this one, so I have more to say, given that I was looking at a transcript for this. Kerry, as in Iowa, seems presidential but seemed like he’s back to the old-school liberal positions that Bush will have an easier time running agaisnt. Edwards’ reason for voting against the $87 million for Iraq made sense. He looked like a fool on the Jeremy Piercehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03441308872350317672noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5767087.post-1074907611907195182004-01-23T20:26:00.000-05:002004-01-23T20:32:08.170-05:00John Edwards on Iraq
John Edwards is in the large group of Democrats who had the same evidence President Bush had and supported the military action to remove Saddam Hussein from power, some of whom have strongly insisted that Bush knew there were no WMDs on the same intelligence they had while supporting him. I hadn't known how strong Edwards' support for this action was.
"We know that he has Jeremy Piercehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03441308872350317672noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5767087.post-1074815677824024572004-01-22T18:54:00.000-05:002004-01-22T18:57:02.263-05:00Pacifism
I'm teaching on pacifism, war, violence, and related issues in my ethics class right now, and I've just finished a summary of the main arguments for pacifism and the responses to them.Jeremy Piercehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03441308872350317672noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5767087.post-1074721250667049292004-01-21T16:40:00.000-05:002004-01-22T11:22:31.076-05:00Bush's spending
Since I've been in the business of defending President Bush against conservatives, I might as well post a link to the conclusions of a non-partisan study of the Democratic candidates' proposed policies and how they compare to the current administration's. This looks as if people voting on this one issue should prefer Bush, despite the rhetoric of some of the Democrats to the Jeremy Piercehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03441308872350317672noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5767087.post-1074645619205983572004-01-20T19:40:00.000-05:002004-01-20T19:41:45.233-05:00Do Muslims and Christians worship the same God?
President Bush has gotten in trouble with some of his fellow evangelicals. They don't think he's a real evangelical because of his comments about other religions. He says Islam is a good religion, that Muslims, Jews, and Christians worship the same God, and that the beliefs of other good religions like Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, etc. will help Jeremy Piercehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03441308872350317672noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5767087.post-1074556897710305672004-01-19T19:01:00.000-05:002004-01-21T17:24:12.793-05:00Pornography, soap operas, and objectification
Will Baude considers and rejects the arguments of Catherine MacKinnon and Melinda Vadas that pornography leads to actual treatment of women as objects. (I think it treats the actual women who were photographed as objects, but I assume he's ignoring that fact, probably because he thinks they consented to being photographed nude, though this response Jeremy Piercehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03441308872350317672noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5767087.post-1074528119573140492004-01-19T11:01:00.000-05:002004-01-19T11:05:02.326-05:00Christian Carnival
I've just gotten a post accepted to the Christian Carnival, and I was asked to post the following announcement to gather more entries for it:
Please send your entries in now to the Christian Carnival, hosted by Patriot Paradox. Here is how:
To enter is simple. First your post should be of a Christian nature, but this does not exclude posts that are political (or otherwise) Jeremy Piercehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03441308872350317672noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5767087.post-1074527851898423782004-01-19T10:57:00.000-05:002004-01-19T19:06:07.106-05:00Abortion and violence
Antioch Road on the report of two more deaths from abortion via medication:
"A drug is supposed to avoid invasive surgical procedures, which almost always carry risk. Aborting a pregnancy, resulting in the death of child being carried in the womb, however, will always be invasive, even if a pill is used. It will thus always be dangerous to the mother."
Yes, abortion is Jeremy Piercehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03441308872350317672noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5767087.post-107448124306702142004-01-18T22:00:00.000-05:002004-01-19T08:27:06.466-05:00It's wrong simply because someone takes offense?
Normally I really appreciate almost every posting at Language Log, an excellent multi-author blog by linguists. An entry by Christopher Potts appeared today that seems to me to have disturbing implications.
He refers back to a post by Geoff Nunberg criticizing a September court decision that allowed the Washington Redskins to keep their name. TheJeremy Piercehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03441308872350317672noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5767087.post-1074475325386646942004-01-18T20:22:00.000-05:002004-01-18T20:35:19.186-05:00How can vampires raise their children?
Will Baude has a nice discussion of a tough legal issue that would come up if vampires turned out to be real. If I were a vampire, would I have the right to make my own kid a vampire? One of the reasons this does have a point is because it deals with what parents have the right to do that they believe is in the best interests of their children but most Jeremy Piercehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03441308872350317672noreply@blogger.com