The Archive

Day: June 15, 2008

Christian theology and alien life

June 15, 2008 No Comments

Jill Tarter, director of the Center for SETI Research, once wrote that finding intelligent other-worldly life “will be inconsistent with the existence of God or at least organized religions.” But such predictions tend to come from outside Christianity. From within, theologians have debated the implications of alien contact for centuries. And if one already believes in angels, no great leap of faith is required to accept the possibility of other extraterrestrial intelligences.

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Consequences for officiant in same-sex marriage?

June 15, 2008 1 Comment

The rector faces discipline after becoming the first clergyman to conduct a gay ‘marriage’ in an Anglican church. Last night Bishop of London, the Rt. Rev Richard Chartres, ordered an urgent inquiry into the ceremony, which was held in one of the capital’s oldest churches last month.

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Inconspicuous consumption

June 15, 2008 No Comments

Writing in the much poorer world of 1899, Veblen argued that people spent lavishly on visible goods to prove that they were prosperous. To test this idea, the economists compared the spending patterns of people of the same race in different states—say, blacks in Alabama versus blacks in Massachusetts, or whites in South Carolina versus whites in California. Sure enough, all else being equal (including one’s own income), an individual spent more of his income on visible goods as his racial group’s income went down.

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Officiant speaks to media

June 15, 2008 No Comments

The service was conducted by the Reverend Martin Dudley, who told the BBC he had not broken any instructions issued by the bishops. “It wasn’t a gay church wedding, it was the blessing of two people who have contracted a civil partnership. … “They wanted more than I was able to give – they wanted something more like a wedding. I was not willing to do that because I believe that marriage is the union of a man and a woman.”

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Should bio-ethics focus on dignity

June 15, 2008 1 Comment

The problem is that “dignity” is a squishy, subjective notion, hardly up to the heavyweight moral demands assigned to it. In a 2003, editorial, “Dignity is a Useless Concept”, bioethicist Ruth Macklin argued that bioethics has done just fine with the principle of personal autonomy–the idea that, because all humans have the same minimum capacity to suffer, prosper, reason, and choose, no human has the right to impinge on the life, body, or freedom of another.

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Answering readiness

June 15, 2008 No Comments

One of the first things that Jesus did in his ministry was to reach out to twelve individuals and draw them into a circle of close companionship with him. . . . Jesus began his ministry alone, but it soon became a communal movement as he called followers to his side, not only because he sensed their potential in helping to build the kingdom of God but also because they were so curious about what he was doing.

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