1. Ezra Klein on bookshelves:
Bookshelves are not for displaying books you've read -- those books go in your office, or near your bed, or on your Facebook profile. Rather, the books on your shelves are there to convey the type of person you would like to be. I am the type of person who would read long biographies of Lyndon Johnson, despite not being the type of person who has read any long biographies of Lyndon Johnson. I am the type of person who is very interested in a history of the Reformation, but am not, as it happens, the type of person with the time to read 900 pages on the subject. More importantly, I am the type of person who amasses many books, on all sorts of subjects. I'm pretty sure that's what a bookshelf is there to prove. The reading of those books is entirely incidental.
(HT: Postmodern Conservative)
2. The Punctuation of Political Power
3. Rod Dreher says what child-men need is some tradition:
Today's child-men have been formed by a culture that has lost – or, rather, thrown away – a relatively fixed standard of manhood. It used to be that virtue was the measure of a man. Was a man just? Was he brave (and not necessarily in terms of physical courage)? Was he honorable in his dealings with those weaker than he? Did he respect women? Did he believe in something higher than himself? Did he submit to the concepts of duty and respect?
It's not that all men, or even most, lived by this general code. It's that they recognized that they would be judged by it, and judged themselves by it. That's mostly gone, replaced by a therapeutic model in which the autonomous self is its own judge, and personal satisfaction is the measure of a life well lived.
4. N.T. Wright says that many Christians are wrong about heaven being an eternal, ethereal existence:
There are several important respects in which it's unsupported by the New Testament. First, the timing. In the Bible we are told that you die, and enter an intermediate state. St. Paul is very clear that Jesus Christ has been raised from the dead already, but that nobody else has yet. Secondly, our physical state. The New Testament says that when Christ does return, the dead will experience a whole new life: not just our soul, but our bodies. And finally, the location. At no point do the resurrection narratives in the four Gospels say, "Jesus has been raised, therefore we are all going to heaven." It says that Christ is coming here, to join together the heavens and the Earth in an act of new creation.
Indeed, it is surprising that even many Biblically literate Christians seem not to be aware of this truth. (HT: The Christian Mind)
5. Twins Save Mom's Life, Kick Loose Deadly Tumor From Mom's Cervix While Still in Womb
Shortly after becoming pregnant, Stepney of Cheam in South-West London was taken to the hospital after suffering what was believed to be a miscarriage. Soon doctors realized she was still pregnant, but had developed life-threatening cervical cancer. Stepney declined to have an abortion and doctors at the Royal Marsden Hospital in London agreed to give her reduced chemotherapy in the hope of stopping the cancer spreading during the pregnancy.
But it wasn't the chemo that ultimately saved Stepney. "I couldn't believe it when the doctors told me that the babies had dislodged the tumor," she said. "I'd felt them kicking, but I didn't realize just how important their kicking would turn out to be. I owe my life to my girls, and that's why I could have never agreed with a termination."
(HT: Reformed Chicks Blabbing)
6. Quote of the Week: "Disparate peoples can coexist in three ways: in isolation, under hegemony, or at war. In the absence of hegemony, peaceful intercourse is an elusive ideal." -- Arnold Kling
7. Can you spot the difference between the work of the minimalist artist Donald Judd and mass-produced furniture? Take this quiz to find out. (HT: Very Short List)
8. 5 Reasons Why the Emerging Church is Now Receding
The Emerging Church is about contextualization and practice. How do we contextualize the gospel for a postmodern world?
Unfortunately, some Emerging Churches look like the continuation of the Seeker movement, even as they decry the Seeker-focused mindset. Incense, candles, icons. These aspects of worship might be helpful for ministry to postmodernists somewhere. They would look silly in rural Tennessee. Contextualization does not always look the same, something the Emerging Church conversation affirms in theory, but often ignores in practice.
9. Fred Sanders on the Top Twelve Theology Books of Christian History.
10. Eric Weiner of the Washington Post on why Republicans are happier than Democrats:
A 2006 Pew Research poll found that 45 percent of Republicans describe themselves as "very happy," compared with only 30 percent of Democrats (and 29 percent of independents). This is a sizable gap and a remarkably consistent one, too. Republicans have been happier than Democrats every year since the General Social Survey, conducted biannually by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago, began asking about happiness in 1972….
Basically, Republicans have in spades all the things that combine to make us happy. Church attendance is particularly crucial. People who attend religious services regularly are more likely to report being "very happy" than those who don't -- 43 percent vs. 26 percent (a happiness boost, by the way, that cuts across all the major religious denominations). In addition, Republicans are more likely to be married than Democrats, and married people are happier than singles….
If this isn't depressing enough for liberals, it turns out that some of their own pet policies are to blame for their unhappiness. Once in power, Democrats tend to focus on issues that, according to the science of happiness, have little effect on our contentment -- income equality, for instance, and racial diversity. Neither is linked to greater happiness. Countries with large disparities between rich and poor are no less happy than more egalitarian ones, studies have found. And the happiest countries in the world tend to be homogenous ones, such as Denmark and Iceland, not the ethnic melting pots that liberals celebrate.
11. On Exxon's record-setting tax bill:
[J]ust one corporation (Exxon Mobil) pays as much in taxes ($27 billion) annually as the entire bottom 50% of individual taxpayers, which is 65,000,000 people! Further, the tax rate for the bottom 50% is only 3% of adjusted gross income ($27.4 billion / $922 billion), and the tax rate for Exxon was 41% in 2006 ($67.4 billion in taxable income, $27.9 billion in taxes).
(HT: Instapundit)
12. Why are textbooks so expensive?
Textbook prices have been rising rapidly in recent decades, increasing at more than 2.5 times the rate of inflation from 1986 to 2004, according to a Government Accountability Office report.
Publishers can get away with these shenanigans because there’s a fundamental disconnect in the textbook marketplace: The people paying for the books (the students) are not the ones choosing them (the teachers).
(HT: Poliblog)
13. 10 Disasters that could end it all at any given second. (HT: The Presurfer)
14. James Joyner notes that being ex-president is more lucrative than it used to be:
Half a century ago, Congress instituted pensions for former presidents because Harry Truman was leaving office with no visible means of support aside from a small Army pension. Now, Clinton can make more for a single speech than he did any year he was president.
15. Smugopedia is a collection of slightly controversial opinions about a variety of subjects. Example: Yale -- Although Yale has a good law school, Yale itself can feel more like a retirement community for geniuses than a stimulating university: The great Yale faculty members get tenure there decades after doing their brilliant work elsewhere. (HT: The Presurfer)
16. Some economists are rethinking free trade:
[S]upport of free trade by the academic Establishment is a big reason why Presidents, be they Democrat or Republican, have for years pursued a free-trade agenda. The experts they consult have always told them that free trade was the best route to ever higher living standards.
But something momentous is happening inside the church of free trade: Doubts are creeping in. We're not talking wholesale, dramatic repudiation of the theory. Economists are, however, noting that their ideas can't explain the disturbing stagnation in income that much of the middle class is experiencing. They also fear a protectionist backlash unless more is done to help those who are losing out. "Previously, you just had extremists making extravagant claims against trade," says Gary C. Hufbauer, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. "Now there are broader questions being raised that would not have been asked 10 or 15 years ago."
17. Why Doing Sprints is Great for Your Health
18. Walter Reich on terrorism and the poverty myth:
The belief that poverty is a root cause of Islamist terrorism has been thoroughly discredited. Numerous studies of terrorism have debunked the notion. Islamist terrorists themselves, as well as those who live among them and know them well, have repeatedly attributed Islamist terrorism primarily to religious and ideological motivations and to the logic that—against America and the West—terrorism is used because it works. As Abdel Aziz Rantisi—a Hamas leader until he was assassinated by the Israelis—said of suicide bombing, “It is the most effective strategy for us. For us it is the same as their F-16.”…
It turns out that members of Islamist terrorist ¬groups—¬Al Qaeda, Hezbollah, Hamas, etc.—tend to be from relatively privileged back¬grounds. “As a group,” Krueger notes, “terrorists are better educated and from wealthier families than the typical person in the same age group of the societies from which they originate.” For example, one study compared 48 Palestinian suicide bombers from Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad with 18,803 fellow Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza and found that the bombers were less than half as likely as the general population to come from families below the poverty line, and that “almost 60 percent of the suicide bombers had more than a high school degree, compared to less than 15 percent of the general population."
19. Time Waster of the Week: dragTheDot (HT: Neatorama)
20. Fast Driving May Lead to More Stock Trading:
If you get speeding tickets, watch out: The chances are good that you will also engage in possibly dangerous investing behavior, too. That is the implication of a new study that found that individuals who receive more speeding tickets tend to churn their portfolios...
They found that, other things being equal, an investor’s portfolio turnover rate rose 11 percent after each additional speeding ticket he received.
(HT: Marginal Revolution)
21. Why paper cuts hurt so much. (HT: Instapundit)
22. Quarter of Brits think Churchill was myth:
Britons are losing their grip on reality, according to a poll out Monday which showed that nearly a quarter think Winston Churchill was a myth while the majority reckon Sherlock Holmes was real.
The survey found that 47 percent thought the 12th century English king Richard the Lionheart was a myth. And 23 percent thought World War II prime minister Churchill was made up. The same percentage thought Crimean War nurse Florence Nightingale did not actually exist. Three percent thought Charles Dickens, one of Britain’s most famous writers, is a work of fiction himself. Indian political leader Mahatma Gandhi and Battle of Waterloo victor the Duke of Wellington also appeared in the top 10 of people thought to be myths.
Meanwhile, 58 percent thought Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s fictional detective Holmes actually existed; 33 percent thought the same of W. E. Johns’ fictional pilot and adventurer Biggles.
(HT: Outside the Beltway)
23. Tim Stafford on This Samaritan Life:
The problem is not that my religion is strange. The problem is that my religion is familiar. Like Samaritans and Jews, Christians and non-Christians have a partly shared worldview (our Western traditions, which include the Bible), a shared point of origin (Christendom), and well-defined points of contention (the exclusivity of Christ). We are familiar with what each other believes. We're suspicious of one another. So we start off with a grudge.
24. Bad times makes feminine woman more attractive:
Current events, it now appears, shape sex appeal. According to a recent theory in psychology, individuals react defensively when the world around them (the "system") is threatened. This defensiveness generally prompts them to embrace the status quo, along with any of its associated stereotypes. In a new test of the theory, researchers found that men who read one article conveying pessimism about their country became significantly more interested in traditionally feminine women - women who were portrayed in profiles as "vulnerable, pure, and ideal for making men feel complete."
25. LOLCat LOL Owl of the Week
moar funny pictures
26. Philosopher Dennis Dutton on astrology:
Astrology, to cite but one example, is frequently cast in the role of an outmoded competitor to modern astronomy. This is a misunderstanding of the function that astrology plays in people’s lives. Astronomy is about planets, stars, and galaxies; astrology, however, is about me, and the special place I have in the grand cosmic scheme. It explains my unique personality, my special hopes and desires. From astronomy I learn that I am but an insignificant creature in some minor corner of the universe; astrology tells me I am someone unique and important. In this respect, astrology does not function as an alternative to scientific astronomy, but as a rival to the personal support provided by religion.
(HT: Siris)
27. Foreign languages easier to learn when they're sung rather than spoken -- Daniele Schon and colleagues have completed a study showing that hearing foreign words sung can help with this segmenting process - a finding that has obvious practical implications for learning new languages.
28. New Thoughts On Language Acquisition: Toddlers As Data Miners -- Researchers are studying a ground-breaking theory that young children are able to learn large groups of words rapidly by data-mining. Their theory, which they have explored with 12- and 14-month-olds, takes a radically different approach to the accepted view that young children learn words one at a time -- something they do remarkably well by the age of 2 but not so well before that.
29. Sprinters should kick-off with their right foot -- All sprinters should start with their right foot in the rear kick-off position on the starting block. Doing so will give them an advantage of about 80ms compared with starting with their left foot in that position. That's according to Adam Eikenberry and colleagues who say the effect of foot position on starting time has to do with differences in the workings of the left and right brain hemispheres.
30. Big Mac: The Whole World On Your Plate -- A burger and fries may be the quintessential North American meal but it can also be viewed as the perfect example of humanity's increasingly varied diet, according to researchers who have conducted a unique study of the plants used around the world for food.
31. Tobacco Could Kill One Billion By 2100, WHO Report Warns -- In a new report which presents the first comprehensive analysis of global tobacco use and control efforts, WHO finds that only 5% of the world’s population live in countries that fully protect their population with any one of the key measures that reduce smoking rates. The report also reveals that governments around the world collect 500 times more money in tobacco taxes each year than they spend on anti-tobacco efforts.
32. North Korea Remains No. 1 Persecutor Of Christians:
This year's No. 1 spot on Open Doors' 2008 World Watch List is no stranger: North Korea has now topped the list for six years in a row.
There is no other country in the world where Christians are being persecuted in such a horrible and relentless way. The kingdom of Saudi Arabia holds a solid No. 2 place, followed closely by Iran. Maldives is No. 4.
33. A useful explanation of the Laffer Curve
(HT: RedState)
[S]upport of free trade by the academic Establishment is a big reason why Presidents, be they Democrat or Republican, have for years pursued a free-trade agenda.
Free trade does increase living standards, but in the US exports and imports only make up a small portionof GDP. While the benefits of free trade are real they are not so powerful as to create magic. What no one has ever demonstrated, though, is that protectionism or whatever non-free trade policy you might be thinking of, does not do more harm than good. I think it was Clinton who put quotas on steel imports to help workers caught in downsizing. The net cost came out to something like $100K per job per year. For that kind of money it would have been cheaper to send every unemployed steel worker to law school.
This begs the question of why....why is the steel worker who looses his job to foreign competition deserving of $100K+ per year of policies to protect his job when, say, the steel worker who looses his job because Shop Rite moves away from cans of coffee and peas and towards vaccuum packed bags and frozen veggies gets nothing but a few weeks unemployment. An economy creates and destroys jobs every day. Jobs that trace themselves to foreign trade are not fundamentally different from any other job. None of the problems cited, the middle class feeling squeezed, low skilled workers finding fewer opportunities, etc. can be traced to trade.
They also fear a protectionist backlash unless more is done to help those who are losing out.
Those losing out are not losing out to free trade for the most part. Free trade is being made a scapegoat for a lot of other causes.
Brother Joe:
I went to the link regarding N.T. Wright's discussion about life after death. First of all, it sounds like purgatory ;).
Second, to me, it is surprising that even many Biblically literate Christians try to tell us what heaven is going to be like. With all due respect to you, N.T. Wright, John Polkinghorne and the rest of biblical academia: you guys don't really know jack.
Father Polkinghorne gave us this little gem: "God will download our software onto his hardware until the time he gives us new hardware to run the software again for ourselves. Thank you, Father, for clearing that whole thing up for us. I sure am glad I'm going to that big server in the sky where there will be no gnashing of bytes, and no biting of Apples, and we will all be Apple imacs instead of Commodore 64s.
Seriously, Joe, I'm feeling snarky about this because not one academic has any notion of what heaven is going to be like nor can they tell us what life after death is going to be like. I resent being told that only biblically-illiterate Christians can hold goofy ideas about heaven. I'm sorry, but ALL ideas about heaven--on this side of the grave--are goofy. It's fun to speculate and some might seem more accurate than others, but please spare me the condescension.
P.S. I didn't disagree with one thing that either Wright or Polkinghorne said.
Some thoughts re: #16 here.
jd:
But without the connotations of working your way into heaven.Know in the experiential sense, of course, but that doesn't keep academics from having a better understanding of what the Bible does say about heaven.
This is merely a common modern dualistic analogy. Like all analogies, it shouldn't be pressed to its logical limits; that will inevitably result in absurdity. (But I do appreciate a good punning, nonetheless.)
Methinks your snarkiness is a bit misplaced. Lighten up!
I was rather hoping for a Cray XT or XMT system instead of the Apple... maybe even an IBM System Z at the very least.
Re. #5: Another issue that affects evangelism is the lack of clarity and focus regarding the nature of salvation. With traditional doctrines such as the exclusivity of Jesus Christ and the existence of hell being questioned (and, in some quarters, outright denied), evangelism is no longer a priority. Saved… from what? Saved… by whom?
Good point. Christians love to pronounce on the "good news", but Christianity is a good news, bad news proposition. The good news is only good, or necessary, in light of the bad news: original sin and the universal irredeemability of man. But the problem with selling this message is that both the good and the bad news of Christianity come from within the faith. The good news would be compelling if the bad news was some pre-existing condition of human nature, but it isn't. With Christianity you catch the good news and the bad news together. If you're not Christian, then you don't have the pre-existing notion that you are doomed to an eternity of torment merely for being born. Without that notion, the good news is quite meaningless and uncompelling.
It seems harder and harder for even Christians to hang onto the pure paranoical pessimism and hopelessness that the Evangelical notion of original sin requires. Even the Catholics can't maintain such a dour outlook anymore. In this month's FirstThings there's an article about who can be saved. Surprisingly even atheists like me can be.
But the author is correct. Without that certain fear of damnation outside of the faith, Christianity becomes just another personal lifestyle choice.
The "man-child" phenomenon is more readily attributable to the way that women behave today. Women give everything away up front, and leave no good reason for marrying them. In fact, not only is there no benefit to men beyond a modicum of respectability from a culture that already tolerates pretty much everything two consenting adults do, there is a lot of legal danger for men to get married.
Here's a breakdown that I did when this discussion got started after Kay Hymowitz's recent article, on the good, the bad and the ugly that men get from dating and marriage today. If you look at it, you'll see that there is no good reason for men to subject themselves to the pains of marriage when they don't have to.
There is too much analysis of men, and not enough of women, primarily because women as a group would pitch a fit if similar scrutiny and abuse were sent their way.
cynic but that doesn't keep academics from having a better understanding of what the Bible does say about heaven.
Their better understanding doesn't keep them from GUESSING what heaven is like.
This is merely a common modern dualistic analogy. Like all analogies, it shouldn't be pressed to its logical limits; that will inevitably result in absurdity
I don't need to be reminded that this is analogy, Perfesser. My point is that in a sense everything the Bible says about heaven is analogy. It's written in the only way that can possibly explain anything about eternity. It's impossible for us to understand. No doubt Polkinghorne understands it better than I, but being human, his picture is so far from the reality that you'll have to pardon me if I smile at his naivete.
Methinks your snarkiness is a bit misplaced. Lighten up!
Unfortunately, you could preface all my comments with that remark ;) If I had a blog, that could be its name.
Part of my snarkiness stems from seeing this discussion in the same light as the discussion about election and predestination. I guess I believe in the doctrine; but I don't like it. It's not a doctrine I'm willing to die for. It's a doctrine that can drive new Christians right out of their minds and right out of the church. I think it should not be taught to any new Christians whatsoever. New Christians need milk, then real food; not cod liver oil.
But, most of all, I resent academics' insistence that this doctrine "makes sense," and that they understand it; it doesn't and they don't.
It's not fair to blame professors for the pricing of college textbooks. What do you want them to do? They need to get the material to the students somehow, and for some courses there isn't really an inexpensive alternative to an expensive textbook?
Some publishers are pretty good at keeping prices low (e.g. Hackett), but it's hard for me to use only Hackett books for every course. If I want to teach a good historical introductory historical philosophy course, it's actually cheaper with a textbook than it is to buy less-expensive smaller books for the various figures I want to include, at least if I want it to be a comprehensive course. The only alternative would be the look more in-depth at a few works and not give a comprehensive course. If I'm going to sacrifice on things like that, maybe I can get away with using only low-priced books, but that's not always possible, and it involves sacrificing something important.
JD,
The point Wright is making (and it is a very good one) is that the whole notion of talking about "going to heaven when you die" rather than "the resurrection of the body" is a huge shift away from the center of early Christian thought. To say that Wright is being presumptuous because "we don't know what heaven will be like" is very much to miss the point.
Bah. Ezra Klein's bookshelves-are-for-show is at least as old as The Great Gatsby:
"A 2006 Pew Research poll found that 45 percent of Republicans describe themselves as "very happy," compared with only 30 percent of Democrats (and 29 percent of independents)."
In related news, a recent study has confirmed that idiots and drunks comprise the happiest members of American society. ;-)
You know this all sounds like to much hard work.. I would rather get one of these.
http://www.spotinheaven.com
oyarsa wrote:
The point Wright is making (and it is a very good one) is that the whole notion of talking about "going to heaven when you die" rather than "the resurrection of the body" is a huge shift away from the center of early Christian thought. To say that Wright is being presumptuous because "we don't know what heaven will be like" is very much to miss the point.
I'm going to get snarky again.
First, pardon us ignorants for thinking that heaven is anywhere but here. Actually, the Bible talks about heaven being a separate place. That doesn't mean it's so, but pardon us ignorants for thinking that--and for WANTING to think that.
Second, even if it's actually here, WE will be so different that we'll hardly recognize the place. If anything, we'll be saying: "So that's what it was supposed to look like!!! Praise God!!"
Third, what difference does it really make?
In related news, a recent study has confirmed that idiots and drunks comprise the happiest members of American society. ;-)
And in a further study, it was found that those same happy idiots and drunks changed parties and became Democrats--a more comfortable home.
jd, I was going to respond more substantively, but I fear that I will just be fueling the fire (and that's an analogy that you can run with however you please). But I will answer one of the questions you posed to Oyarsa:
Does Biblical fidelity mean nothing to you?P.S. I'm no "Perfesser," but thanks anyway.
JD,
Again, you want to talk about going off to Heaven. The Bible and the Early Church want to talk about the Resurrection of the Body and "New Heavens and New Earth". This is a pretty big difference.
It's the difference between Jesus dying and going to Heaven, and Jesus rising from the dead.
In case anyone is interested, I wrote an essay on this topic here:
Mt. St. Michel and the Chicago Suburbs
Cynic and Wonders:
I think you're both refusing to see my point. I don't disagree with anything you've said, only with your talk of certainty about something which you "see darkly."
The Bible DOES talk about going to heaven. Jesus DID die. He DID ascend. I don't think it matters that much how we think it's going to happen with us. It's all a picture and a parable and an analogy for something which we can only begin to understand.
Of all people, Oyarsa, you should remember the scene in Perelandra where Ransom is seeing images of what Maleldil looks like. He takes different forms before Ransom and each one scares Ransom to death. Maleldil is simply trying to make his true appearance palatable or comprehensible to a human. He ends with spinning wheels of fire.
And in a further study, it was found that those same happy idiots and drunks changed parties and became Democrats--
Wow, Bush changed parties! Leave it to the liberal media to sit on that story!
JD,
I think you're both refusing to see my point. I don't disagree with anything you've said, only with your talk of certainty about something which you "see darkly."
The resurrection of the body is not a wispy, allegorical thing of which we can only speak of in metaphors - any more than Jesus' resurrection is. Read I Cor 15 and Rom 8 - this is a concrete, solid, hope - both for us and the world we live in.
There are indeed hidden things of God that we can only speak of in imprecise language. Scripturally, the resurrection is not one of them.
Wow, Bush changed parties! Leave it to the liberal media to sit on that story!
Two things, Boonton:
First, you should stick to the thing you do best which is writing incredibly long posts including all kinds of impertinent facts about whatever strawman you think you're skewering and then taking those supposed facts and making a conclusion that can only be described as raging moonbat-BWWAAAHAAAHAAA- fever swamp lunacy. Stick to that. You are really good at that. Don't do humor.
Second, there's some kind of guacamole hanging off your pointy left ear. That's why no one's talking to you at this party.
There are indeed hidden things of God that we can only speak of in imprecise language. Scripturally, the resurrection is not one of them.
So tell me everything you know about that resurrection. Specifically, I want to know how long we're going to smell bad.
jd, for starters, you're confusing imprecise language (i.e. language that doesn't really reflect the true nature of the thing it represents) with imprecise details. We can affirm that the resurrection of the dead is not allegorical in nature while also admitting limits to what we know about the specifics of that. Anything beyond what Scripture says should rightly be called speculation.
And for my own part, I've been trying to say that we can be certain about what the Bible says, not particularly about what heaven will really be like. I tend to think heaven not so much streets of gold, crystal sea, etc., but I also agree with Wright, Oyarsa, et al. that the resurrection of the dead cannot be taken out of the equation. (There's also the matter of multiple 'heavens,' but that might confuse matters more.)
Christian Cynic, Keep in mind that the new Jerusalem spoken of in Revelation (with the streets of gold, etc) is presented as "coming down from Heaven as a bride adorned for her husband". It's a city from God on Earth where the dwelling place of God is now with man, and where the nations bring their glory to.
So, JD, given this image, what we can be certain about, is God's commitment to the good of the created order, even if it must (like us) also suffer a death and resurrection. That God wants things to be embodied, that he is concerned about more than just "souls". Resurrection is not the re-description of death (we get to go off to a better place), but the overthrow of death (setting creation free from its bondage to decay).
Now, evangelical language can be reconciled to this, by calling the new creation "Heaven". However, this isn't the scriptural language. And it is an important distinction - in funerals for instance, to have people cope with death by understanding that "it's all better this way" as if death is somehow a good thing isn't the scriptural model. Rather, we hope in Christ, knowing that being united with him in his death will lead to our being united with him in his resurrection - the resurrection of our bodies. This is core classical Christianity - hoping in the resurrection of Christ. Any system that leaves out the resurrection as the central hope of the faith is sub-Christian.
This discussion reminds me of Ambrose Bierce's definition of faith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel.
Hey Joe:
Exxon didn't pay more taxes than the entire bottom 50% of individual tax payers.
If you look at the original post the guy states that the adjusted gross income for the bottom 50% of taxpayers was $922 Billion. Just their FICA deduction on that amount would be about 7.5% of that amount, i.e. 69 Billion dollars. This doesn't include various sales taxes, property taxes, excise taxes that the bottom 50% of tax payers paid but which Exxon was able to deduct as an expense form their taxable income. Exxon may have paid more "income" tax but they certainly didn't pay more tax.
Why did both you and Glenn fall for this? Methinks it's the fallacy of credentialism. The guy who posted it has a phd therefore he must know what he is talking about.
Also re # 33, the Laffer Curve, I believe I posted a comment about the Laffer curve a few weeks ago explaining it exactly as your expert did but in 5 minutes less time when do I get a link?
Greg Marquez
goyomarquez@earthlink.net