One would be hard pressed to find a more pessimistic or straitjacketed view of life (and afterlife) than that espoused by John Calvin (1509-1564), the theologian-pastor of Geneva who played a leading role in the Protestant Reformation. His doctrine of predestination held that God elected to save certain people who would enjoy a heavenly afterlife, [...]
Tags:anti-essentialism·Calvinism·Calvinist·David Harvey·election·essentialism·eternal damnation·Geneva·heavenly afterlife·John Calvin·John Piper·Mark Driscoll·Max Weber·neo-Calvinism·post-modernism·post-modernity·predestination·Protestant Ethic·Protestant Reformation·Protestants·Southern Baptist·Southern Baptist Convention·spirit of capitalism·the elect
In a recent poll of over 3,400 Americans, the Pew Forum on Religion ironically found that atheists and agnostics know more about religions than do believers. Here is the abstract:
Atheists and agnostics, Jews and Mormons are among the highest-scoring groups on a new survey of religious knowledge, outperforming evangelical Protestants, mainline Protestants and Catholics on [...]
Tags:agnostics·atheists·blind faith·Catholics·comparative religion·ignorance·Jews·Maimonides·Pew Forum·Protestants·transubstantiation·U.S. Religious Knowledge Survey
In May of this year, John Avise — an evolutionary biologist at UC-Irvine — published an article (“Footprints of Nonsentient Design Inside the Human Genome“) in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, one of the world’s leading scientific journals. The article, which attacked Intelligent Design “theory” on the ground that an omnipotent and [...]
Tags:accomodationists·Adam and Eve·Augustine of Hippo·Catholic theologians·Diarmaid MacCulloch·fall from grace·Footprints of Nonsentient Design Inside the Human Genome·human genome·intelligent design·John Avise·justification for God·Leibniz·non-overlapping magisteria·non-sentient selection·problem of evil·problem of suffering·Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences·Protestants·rebellion·sin·Stephen Jay Gould·The Reformation·theodicy·theology·unintelligent design
