Category: Thinking Out Loud
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Perspective
the abortion debate presumes that pregnancy itself contributes nothing essential to the creation of a rights-bearing person
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Help with Annotation
Originally published August 12, 2016. It seemed timely once again, alas. Context is everything. “I need your help with annotation.” “What do you have to annotate?” “English.” “What’s the assignment?” “Just to take notes. On Beowulf.”
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Prayer for Enduring Grading
May I never read another sentence with the adjective “heavy” or the adverb “heavily” in it, describing something that DOES NOT HAVE WEIGHT, EVEN METAPHORICALLY. Sighing. Heavily. Image: Stained glass windows at All Saints Church, Ripley, Yorkshire, by Tim Green from Bradford, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
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Life after Birth
One of the perennial questions of the humanities is “What is a good life?” Religious studies ends up in the College of the Humanities in some universities because religion is fully absorbed in answering that question. At least, that’s one way of looking at it. Some Christians think of Christianity as being primarily about “life […]
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An Evidence Problem
Professor Jerry Coyne, author of Why Evolution is True, recently asked the people of faith who correspond with him from time to time to say what evidence they would accept for the non-existence or non-reality of God. His point is that he’s able to say what evidence he would accept for the existence or reality […]
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“What It Means”
I’m sitting at the registration desk in the emergency room. The cheerful young lady on the other side of the Plexiglas barrier hands me a sheet of paper with a lot of words on it, and x’s by all the blank lines. “Initial four places and sign once,” she instructs. I skim the paragraphs. “I […]
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Beyond the Jargon of Sentimentality
There must be a way to talk about Jesus Christ that is not nauseating and off-putting and meaningless. That’s real and honest and qualifies as communication. That rings true as a message for actual humans, who live here in this world. Surely. Image: NOAA, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Matters of Interpretation 