Last Monday, I wrote at length about the TIME magazine cover story concerning porn-use among young men. The response to it over the last week has been overwhelming. I thought there were several items worth mentioning here. The author of the TIME cover story is Belinda Luscombe, and she took issue with my characterization of her reporting. In the comments section, she writes:
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Bart Ehrman debates Richard Bauckham about the Gospels
Attention, fellow Bible nerds. The audio above features two big-hitters debating the authorship of the Gospels. Bart Ehrman, a well-known skeptic, squares-off against Richard Bauckham. I think Bauckham powerfully and decisively refutes Ehrman in this one. Here’s a description of the show from the “Unbelievable” website: Bart Ehrman’s new book “Jesus Before the Gospels” makes the case that the stories about Jesus would have changed and evolved before they were written down as the Gospels. Richard Bauckham, author of “Jesus and the Eyewitnesses”, defends the view that the Gospels were written by those with access to eyewitness testimony of Jesus’ first followers. They debate who wrote Mark, whether the…
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If GOP caves on marriage, why not also on religious liberty?
It was clear in 2012 that Mitt Romney would be the last GOP presidential nominee to defend traditional marriage. Neither Windsor nor Obergefell had yet been handed down, but the writing was on the wall. The country had shifted, and the GOP would eventually reflect that shift. That is why I wrote the following in early 2013:
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Speaking the truth about the “Dragon Lady” and sex-reassignment surgery
This strange story has to be seen to be believed. Here is the report from The Daily Mail: A transgender former banker claims to be the first and only person to have both ears cosmetically removed as part of her ongoing quest to become a ‘dragon’. Born Richard Hernandez in Maricopa County, Arizona, the 55-year-old has undergone a number of painful procedures over the past few years including nose modification, tooth extraction and eye colouring. She also has a forked tongue and a full-face tattoo as part of her transformation into a ‘mythical beast’. Most people reading this would probably agree that something has gone deeply awry with any person…
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An unseemly troll but a fine review
Several weeks (months?) ago I received a package in my faculty mailbox at work. I was so taken aback by it that I snapped a photo of it (at right). It was obviously a book mailer, but the label on the outside said this: “Are Conservative Evangelical Men More Likely To Abuse Their Wives?” I didn’t even know what was inside the package, but I already knew that this was a transparent troll—a marketing ploy. They send out a book to a bunch of conservative evangelical men, and then they put a label on the outside of the package with an ugly insinuation about conservative evangelical men. The publisher wasn’t…
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Norton Hall Band – “All Creatures of Our God and King”
I teach at Boyce College, which is the undergraduate school of Southern Seminary. We have a number of music groups here at Southern. The one above is Norton Hall Band. They have a new album out that you can download from iTunes. They filmed this video right here on campus. The video is really well done. The song is even better. Enjoy!
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The Darkness of Porn and the Hope of the Gospel
TIME magazine has published one of the saddest, most horrifying cover stories I have ever read. It is not horrifying like the carnage of war. It’s horrifying like the carnage of a culture that is committing slow-motion suicide. The essay documents a civilization-wide calamity on a scale that we have not seen before. The title of the article is “Porn and the Threat to Virility” by Belinda Luscombe. I am not linking to the article here simply because the cover art for the magazine and at least one of the images within the article are too explicit to share. Indeed, the article is itself fairly explicit and definitely NSFW. Having…
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Juan Williams says Pres. Obama’s SCOTUS nominee is not a centrist
Juan Williams writes in The Wall Street Journal that President Obabma’s nominee to the Supreme Court is not a centrist in his judicial philosophy. Here’s an excerpt: As Republicans and Democrats wrangle over Judge Merrick Garland’s Supreme Court nomination to replace the late Antonin Scalia and whether or not to hold confirmation hearings, attention has been distracted from a fight of far more historical consequence. Over the past half century, regardless of whether a liberal or a conservative resides in the White House, the critical issue facing any Supreme Court nominee is where he or she stands on the political contest of wills over how to read the Constitution. In…
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Donald Trump is not pro-life
This shouldn’t be a surprise at this point, but it is now established beyond all reasonable doubt that Donald Trump is not pro-life. How do we know that? He gives no evidence that he even knows what the pro-life position is. You can’t defend the sanctity of human life if you don’t even know what it is. Even worse is that when Trump tries to express his beliefs on abortion, he articulates a pro-abortion rights position. And he usually doesn’t even realize that’s what he’s done! His foot is in his mouth, but he is none the wiser. In an interview with CBS News today, he did it again (watch…
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Why “punish” abortionists but not those who receive abortions?
Yesterday, Donald Trump said in an interview that the law should “punish” women for getting abortions (see above). Trump quickly reversed himself in a subsequent press release. Still, in his initial remarks, Trump was able to accomplish a trifecta of political travesties. First, he projected a caricature regularly perpetrated by pro-abortion people against pro-lifers—that we care only for babies and not for their mothers. Second, while arguing for the pro-life position, he misrepresented what pro-lifers actually believe and alienated viewers from our cause. Third, Trump has put pro-lifers in a defensive position rather than strengthening the cause. All this while he was supposedly trying to help the cause! With “friends”…