As the sun sets on yet another semester in civil engineering here at UTC, thoughts turn to what we're really supposed to be doing. A large part of civil engineering is engaged in the building, maintenance and upgrade of our physical infrastructure, which includes roads, railroads, airports, water and sewer systems, to some extent electricity …
You Really Can Do Biblical Preaching From a Lectionary
Recently my wife and I ventured to Regent University for me to deliver a paper. While there we got the chance to view one of the University's new acquisitions, namely a Torah scroll from Yemen.The fact that a Christian university could acquire such a donation is a sign of the times: Evangelicals are about the …
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Why I Don’t Use Salutations in Emails
Recently one of my academic colleagues posted this piece on her fb page about how students should properly email their professors. One of the recommendations is as follows: Dear [1] Professor [2] Last-Name [3],... Right off the bat, here’s where you can establish that you view your relationship with your professor as a professional one. …
The Danger of Oversimplifying Extrapolation from the Sciences
This interesting tidbit, from Mechanics by John C. Slater and Nathaniel Frank (both of whom taught at MIT): The existence of fundamental laws underlying the behavior or nature has furnished the guiding principle of natural science ever since. It has also formed the basis of most modern thought in philosophy, political science, economics and the …
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Revisiting the Catholicism of "Christ Among Us"
Educating new Christians in the basics of the faith has always been an important task of the Church. A few years back I featured a series on Cyril of Jerusalem's Catechetical Lectures, which date from the fourth century. Evangelical churches can be very casual about the whole business, their reputation for dogmatism notwithstanding. With Roman …
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When the Catholic Faithful Were Not Allowed to Vote
If you listen to Catholic commentators--especially conservative ones--you'll hear about the obligation of the faithful not only to vote but to vote for the proper person, i.e., one that is pro-life, etc., and that it's a sin to fail to do so. But there was a time when the Church had a less roseate view …
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Is Reformed Religion Rational?
One of my Pentecostal academic friends directed me towards this piece, "How Christian Rationalism Turned Me Into a Psychopath, or A Biblical Defense of Feelings," by one Michael Minkoff, Jr.. It summarizes his journey through Reformed religion, how same religion attempted to drill into him the virtues of rationality and the vices of letting your …
Just One Bull Away…
His Holiness has done it again with Amoris Laetitia, his latest encyclical on the family. The traditionalists tell us he's betrayed basic Roman Catholic Doctrine. The loyalists (to the Church) say it really doesn't say anything new. And the revisionists fell a "thrill up their leg" while reading it. Given all of that, I'm reposting …
The Man Who Facilitated My Exit from the Episcopal Church
While searching out the web, I ran across an interesting article in the Lodi (CA) News-Sentinel dated 25 May 1995. The issue at hand was harvesting the organs of anencephalic babies (not fetuses) for their organ parts, by killing the baby first. Fr. William A. Sassman, his photo in the 1973 Tartan (St. Andrew's yearbook.) …
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A Fistful of Yuan, Thirty-Five Years Out
It's time to mark another anniversary here, in this case the thirty-fifth one of my family business' signing our first contract with the Petroleum Corporation of the People's Republic of China for the sale of pile driving equipment. That may not seem like much today but then we were selling into an economy that was …
Positive Infinity 