The Bosque Boys

A topic we've covered for baseball. Fox Sports from Rotten Tomatoes gives a listing of over 50 films.

A Chicago church has become the first congregation in that diocese to split from the Episcopal denomination. Article here. The pastor of this parish confounds the usual stereotype of conservative religious leaders.

The Rev. George Byron Koch, a former civil rights leader and corporate executive, leads a West Chicago church that proudly welcomes creative types, free-thinkers and people who don't worry about dressing up.
. . .
A longtime member of the NAACP and a former member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, Koch rejects the view that his church's stance is bigoted.

The issues are Episcopal blessing of same-sex marriage and practice, and the opinions of prominent Episcopal leaders that the Resurrection may be merely a metaphor.

An article on Jackie Robinson's Christian faith. From Good News Magazine.

Rush Limbaugh, and others, have asserted that humanity cannot change the earth's climate, because we are too small and weak; furthermore, to hold otherwise is to exalt humanity to god-like status. Only God can change climate.

While such an assertion sounds pious, in motive and content it is not. I have trouble believing that the motive for making such a statement is a desire to promote God's glory; more likely the motive is to protect the American standard of living and the environmental damage it does.

As a Christian, I judge the content of this assertion non-pious because it gives too little regard to the witness of Scripture. Genesis 1 teaches that humanity was created in the image of God and given dominion over the earth. While Genesis 3 teaches the Fall of humanity, that fall seems explained in the rest of Scripture as depravation, not deprivation. In other words, human power is depraved, bent in on itself away from God; it is not removed (deprived) from humanity.

Psalm 8:4-6 "what is man that thou art mindful of him, and the son of man that thou dost care for him? Yet thou has made him little less than God, and dost crown him with glory and honor. Thou hast given him dominion over the works of thy hands, . . ."

John 10:35 "If he called them gods to whom the word of God came (and scripture cannot be broken), . . ."

We are the species that has made tracks on the moon, utilizes the fission of atoms for energy and the fission and fusion of atoms for weapons, mapped the human genome, makes clones, made dams on rivers like the Columbia and Nile, and drills miles beneath the earth for oil. Don't sell us short on the damage we can do.

A Dutch businessman faces genocide charges for selling chemicals to the Saddam regime that were used for poison gas attacks during the Iran/Iraq War and against the Kurds. Story here.

From Shot in the Dark, an overview of periods in popular music--the good, the bad, and the merely ugly. He offers an interesting survey.

Today is the anniversary of the first perfomance of The Messiah done in Dublin April 13, 1742; music by Handel, words by Jennens. Story here.

Farmer brings up Calvinism in a recent post. I think he is both attracted and repelled by my Reformed (Calvinist) theology. While predestination is not the center of Reformed thought, it is the best known (or most notorious) single idea. A good, short introduction to the idea of predestination is found here on the Presbyterian Church (USA) web site.

Gateway Pundit does a smack-down of the New York Times on voter fraud. Voter fraud is a problem and it usually benefits Democrats.

"Human life is the basis of all goods, and is the necessary source and condition of every human activity and of all society."* In other words, to deprive you of life is to deprive you of all rights and of all possibilities on earth. Therefore, we as a society have held that the taking of a human life is serious, momentous, and radical. We offer extensive appeals on the death penalty to ensure that an innocent human life is not taken. We punish murder and manslaughter. We do not enter into war quickly or willingly, and observe rules of warfare. Our accepted social norms recognize the unique importance of a human life, and the seriousness of taking it.

Were we consistent, we would not be having the current debate on embryonic stem-cell research. Is an embryo an innocent human life? If you answer "yes", then you must oppose killing the embryo in order to extract stem cells. If you answer "no", then I challenge you to prove your position. Prove, beyond any reasonable doubt, that an embryo is not an innocent human life.

You see, the burden of proof is on the one who would take an innocent human life, who would kill. We would bring charges against someone who threw a grenade into a room, killing those within. If that person argued that he was unaware that anyone was in the room, he still would be charged with manslaughter. If you are going to demolish a building by explosion, the burden is on you to make sure that no one is in the building before you detonate the explosives. Society expects that you will search the building, fence the building, and search again immediately before detonation. Society expects that we will take active steps so as not to kill.

Since human life is the basis of all other goods so that the taking of a human life is momentously radical, those who would "harvest" human embryos must prove they are not killing innocent human life.

* Quoted from the Declaration on Euthanasia by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.