Painting Fakes

My family and friends include a number of stong supporters of Israel.  A lot of conservative Christians feel this way, for reasons which include their understanding of Biblical prophecy, their immersion in the history of Israel via our shared religious heritage, and a fear of the spread of Islam.  This means at a time like now my Facebook feed is flooded with pro-Israeli propaganda. I find it distressing.  I am not a supporter of Hamas.  As far as I can tell they're an unprincipled group of religious ideologues.  Nor do I have anything against Israelis.  However, in the context of a war in which there are currently 200 Palestinian casualties for every Israeli one I think Israel's supporters need to ask themselves some serious questions.  What could lead someone, particularly a Christian from a neutral country, to lend support to the stronger party in such an asymmetrical war? In the interests of keeping it real, I've taken to updating the death ...

So, my rather haphazard journey through the world of Christian apologetics has brought me to William Lane Craig.  The much-traveled Craig is perhaps the most prominent conservative evangelical apologist in the English-speaking world, holding debates with militant atheists in all sorts of places in between his day job as Research Professor of Philosophy at the Talbot School of Theology in Southern California.  He was even part of a widely advertised debate here in Brisbane City Hall with prominent atheist scientist Lawrence Krauss.  I couldn't get to the debate but friends who did told me I didn't miss much. Craig is a prolific author and speaker, with over 30 books in print as well as numerous articles, scholarly and popular, and DVD's of his lectures and debates.   Reasonable Faith: Christian Truth and Apologetics  is his attempt to bring all this together in a package.  It started life as material for his seminary courses in apologetics and was origin...

We are currently being forced to accept, reluctantly and to our collective sorrow and shame, that for a long time our society has been remarkably tolerant of the sexual abuse of children.  Our Royal Commission here in Australia has been sitting for some time now, hearing horrendous stories of abuse in institutions which are mostly connected to the churches, Catholic and Protestant.  That we are hearing these stories has little or nothing to do with the willingness of churches and institutions to admit fault and change their ways, and everything to do with the courage and persistence of abuse survivors who have fought to be heard every step of the way. Now, as if to remind us that it's not just the church, the British legal system has finally wound its methodical way to the conclusion that Rolf Harris is guilty of 12 counts of sexual assault committed on four young girls between 1968 and 1986.  These charges seem to be the tip of the iceberg.  A makeup artist he on...