Al Gore, Global Warming, and Two Questions for the Skeptics

Robert Parham at EthicsDaily.com has posted an article about Al Gore’s interview on “60 Minutes” last night (Sunday), discussing the “toxic partnership” between religious fundamentalists, who deny global warming in an effort to protect a hyper-literal reading of the Bible, and free-market ideologues, who deny it to protect their financial interests.

Gore compared global warming skeptics to those who deny that Apollo 11 actually reached the moon, or ever left the Earth.

On Trying to Change Christian Attitudes Toward Homosexuality

At the Associated Baptist Press, David Gushee writes a moving editorial on the modern Christian response to homosexuality, a response that is too often based on fear, loathing, and ignorance. Gushee challenges us to extend the “rudiments of Christian love of neighbor” to homosexuals. Among other things, Gushee calls on Christians to stop blaming homosexuals for our social ills, to speak accurately about homosexuality as a sexual orientation, and to recognize the full humanity and dignity of homosexuals as persons made in God’s image. For Baptists, Gushee’s words challenge to us take seriously our long-standing position, rejected by the Southern Baptist Convention, that Jesus Christ is the criterion upon which the Bible is to be interpreted.

Southern Baptist President: Libera Media is Ruining America (Just Look at Canada)

Frank Page, president of the Southern Baptist Convention, rails against the “liberals” in an American Family Association webcast. Writes Bob Allen at EthicsDaily.com:

Page, who completes his two-year service as top elected leader of the nation’s second-largest faith group in June, described the prospect of a future Supreme Court ruling that gay marriage is legal in all 50 states as “a frightening thought.”

“I think it’s going to dramatically change everything,” he said. “The entire societal paradigm is going to shift. Nothing will be the same. The only place where people will be able to sense some sense of normality will be within the walls of Bible-believing churches. Because once they leave the walls of the Bible-believing churches, they are going to live in a world that is totally different.”

Would churches be in peril?

“Just look to Canada,” Page said. “Already in Canada, if you are as a pastor, you speak against homosexuality, you can be jailed. And I’ve told my people in my church, ‘You just have to come visit me in jail, because they may be where we’re headed.’ I’m just saying life is going to change if that happens. Life is going to change as we know it.”

Life in America would never be the same, Page said, unless the people of America were to wake up and ask, “What have we done?” He viewed that as unlikely.

“The liberal control of the media, most of the media, the liberal control of most of education, of most of movies, television–their control is so pervasive and so virulently opposed to a conservative viewpoint of life, they would make it extremely difficult for our nation to ever wake up and do anything about it,” he said.

Follow this link for the complete article.

I wonder if Page has read “Young Goodman Brown.” Perhaps Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short story should be added to the Southern Baptists’ Sunday School literature.

Faculty Lean Left; Students Don’t Care

Scott Jaschik at InsideHigerEd.com writes about a soon to be published study of professors’ and students’ political views.

One of the key arguments made by David Horowitz and his supporters in recent years is that a left-wing orientation among faculty members results in a lack of curricular balance, which in turn leads to students being indoctrinated rather than educated. The argument is probably made most directly in a film much plugged by Horowitz: “Indoctrinate U.“

A study that will appear soon in the journal PS: Political Science and Politics accepts the first part of the critique of academe and says that it’s true that the professoriate leans left. But the study - notably by one Republican professor and one Democratic professor - finds no evidence of indoctrination. Despite students being educated by liberal professors, their politics change only marginally in their undergraduate years, and that deflates the idea that cadres of tenured radicals are somehow corrupting America’s youth - or scaring them into adopting new political views.

Brian Kaylor criticizes Richard Land

At EthicsDaily.com, Brian Kaylor, Communications Specialist for the Baptist General Convention of Missouri, outlines a long list of “personal insults and character assassination[s]“ from Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission. Land’s targets are many and varied, and his language is often unfortunate.

Kaylor maintains a popular blog, For God’s Sake, Shut Up!, named after his book. The subtitle reads: Lessons for Christians on How to Speak Effectively and When to Remain Silent.

Sheri Klouda and Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary

Some backgroud: Sheri Klouda joined the faculty at Southwestern Baptist Theology Seminary (SWBT) in 2000, entering a tenure-track position in 2002. She was assistant professor of Old Testament languages, and the only female teaching in the School of Theology. In June 2003, SWBT hired Paige Patterson as president. In April 2006, the Seminary informed Klouda that her contract would not be renewed, because she was a female. It is Patterson’s position that women should not instruct men at SWBT, because women are not qualified to be pastors at local churches.

Ben Stein’s Expelled

Andy Guess at Inside HigherEd writes about Stein’s upcoming documentary on the teaching of Intelligent Design at American universities and colleges.

Cycling: Catching Up

I haven’t blogged about cycling over the last couple of weeks, because I’m a lazy bum. But I have been on my bike, either outdoors or on my trainer. My semi-annual tune-up last week went well, and now my gears shift when I tell them to. (That’s always good.)

Bush Defends War in Iraq, Gas Prices Going Up, and I Love My Bike

The New York Times reports on President Bush’s speech at the Pentagon in which he asserts the Iraq war, now five years old, has made “the world better and the United States safer” (quoting the article). Meanwhile, CNNMoney.com reports that gas prices have just begun to ramp upward. The national average price per gallon is expected to peak at near $4 in late spring. A CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll finds that 75% of Americans report financial hardship due to rising gas prices. (In this article, one expert predicts that gas prices will not reach $4 per gallon—that seems to be a minority opinion based on my reading.)

Arthur C. Clarke

CNN.com is reporting the sad news that Arthur C. Clarke has passed away.  Follow this link for the story.  I don’t have time to comment now—more later.