Thursday, November 27, 2008

Sweet the Turkey Beard was

Turkey Beard sans gobble, this one bloomed, sweet-smelling, almost three decades ago in a burned-over Cumberland County, N.C., glade near Methodist College.

The late Claude W. Rankin of Cumberland County made the image:

Monday, November 24, 2008

Breaking slender threads to the SBC


“This church really is historically tied to the Southern Baptist Convention, but lately it’s only been tied by the slenderest of threads,” the Rev. Julie Pennington-Russell of First Baptist Church Decatur, Ga., told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

It was her first Sunday in the pulpit following the Georgia Baptist Convention's approval of a policy allowing it to refuse donations from churches which do not adhere to Southern Baptist Convention's statement of faith.

At the outset, her appointment as pastor in Decatur attracted comment from Al Mohler, president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, who defended the SBC position that only men may pastor churches.

Southern Baptist Convention leadership (dominated by men) may be divided from the women in Baptist pews and homes.

Breaking those threads would lead the SBC where?


Wednesday, November 19, 2008

From machine souls the AI legal rights?

HAL9000

Ray Kurzweil was asked in a silicon.com interview, will machines ever have souls?

He dismissed the soul as mere "consciousness," thus finessing the issue of ensoulment.

Even if you accept that theological illogic, there is more to consider.


Monday, November 10, 2008

Monday, November 03, 2008

Hagan leads Dole and deserves to

Democratic U.S. senate candidate Kay Hagan was attacked from so deep in the gutter last week that her Republican opponent is drowning herself there.

Hagan has widened her lead by four points since Republican Liddy Dole launched her "Godless" attack ads [video], Public Policy Polling found in an Oct. 31 through Nov. 2 poll. The result is seven point lead for Hagan (51% to 44%).

[Read the rest at G. Frink's Blog]

Obama landslide: No McCain comeback

The blizzard of Republican smears and attack ads is failing to move the American electorate they underestimate.

This weekend's USA Today/Gallup poll found Democratic Presidential nominee Barack "Obama's favorable rating is 62% -- the highest that any presidential candidate has registered in Gallup's final pre-election polls going back to 1992."

Undecideds will not flock to McCain, a Pew national poll found on its way to predicting an Obama win. Indeed, pollster Peter Hart said the Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll, which gave Obama an eight-point lead, "has all the earmarking of an electorate that has reached an opinion that Barack Obama would be a good president."

An Obama Electoral College landslide is the possibility as sunrise reddens the sky this Monday morning in North Carolina, not a Republican Sen. John McCain comeback.