Jon Rowe

Benjamin Rush Believed In Universal Reconcilliation

by Jon Rowe on January 1, 2011

Benjamin Rush — unlike the “key Founders” (Washington, J. Adams, Jefferson, Madison, and Franklin) — was identifiably an orthodox Trinitarian Christian. And he seemed to connect his political philosophy to that more traditional form of Christianity. Continue reading this post…

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Man on the Moon

by Jon Rowe on December 31, 2010

It was a good movie. I’m not going to link to it; if you want to find it, you can. The problem I have with the movie is that it wasn’t as good as Andy Kaufman. Perhaps that speaks to Kaufman’s inimitable comedic genius. I can think of no other person than Jim Carey to most closely imitate Kaufman; but even he couldn’t capture Kaufman’s essence. Or perhaps the problem was with the director. Maybe I should have produced the film. Continue reading this post…

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This one is for Tony Comstock

by Jon Rowe on December 31, 2010

I’m gearing up to teaching my “Law And Society” (POL 203 at Mercer County Community College — there are still seats left for those in the Trenton/Princeton vicinity) course for the Spring ’11. We study, among other things, obscenity standards and the Miller v. California case. Continue reading this post…

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Madalyn Murray O’Hair

by Jon Rowe on December 30, 2010

She was as wildly amusing as some of the religious extremists she debated. When I encounter fervent atheists on this site, I oft-feel like I am dealing with her ghost.

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Fred Phelps Has a Rival

by Jon Rowe on December 30, 2010

Pastor Steve Anderson. Continue reading this post…

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Universal Reconciliation & the Reductio Ad Hitlerum

by Jon Rowe December 29, 2010

Over at WorldNetDaily they seem to have a problem with the moderate evangelical best selling book “The Shack” because it’s too…moderate.

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John Adams on the French Revolutionary “Christian” Millennial Republicans

by Jon Rowe December 28, 2010

They were quite an ecumenical and diverse coalition. Read more about them here.

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Have Yourself a Merry Unitarian Christmas

by Jon Rowe December 24, 2010

Numerous articles and blogs have noted the strong case to doubt Christmas’ authentically “Christian” origins. Christ probably wasn’t born on Dec. 25. The Puritans banned the holiday because it wasn’t authentically Christian. And many of its rituals trace to the pagan celebration of the Winter Solstice or Saturnalia. The modern understanding of Christmas is also significantly influenced by Charles Dickens’ class “A Christmas Carol.” Some Christians argue we need to put “Christ” back into Christmas and remind folks what “Christmas” ...

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A Freethinker Makes the Case For America’s Anti-Biblical Revolution.

by Jon Rowe December 22, 2010

Here.

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Will “History” Ever End?

by Jon Rowe December 20, 2010

That’s the title of my latest guest post at Dispatches From The Culture Wars. I reproduce part of it below if interested in discussing it here: Writing in TNR, Mark Lilla informs that intellectuals in China seem genuinely interested in the theories of Carl Schmitt and Leo Strauss. I know more about Strauss than Schmitt. My admiration for the Straussians must be strange. I don’t agree with the Straussian neo-conservatism that wants war abroad and religious conservatism at home. Yet, ...

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Heads Up

by Jon Rowe December 18, 2010

I’ll be guest blogging at Ed Brayton’s Dispatches From the Culture Wars from Dec. 19-27. My grades (for 21 credits) are due Tuesday morning, so I’m not sure how much blogging I will do till then.

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Steve Drain, Ex-Libertarian

by Jon Rowe December 16, 2010

As a libertarian, good riddance.

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Does The Bible Teach Necessity As a Defense (or permitted exception) to Incest?

by Jon Rowe December 14, 2010

In my last post I noted, if one wants to justify (the normally prohibited kinds of) incest (as noted, if you extend “incest” beyond the nuclear family, we are all distant cousins), perhaps one could use, NOT same sex marriage but the Bible itself in certain circumstances (though what that Columbia U Prof. did probably doesn’t qualify under the exception). The Bible does in some sense prohibit incest like it prohibits lying and rebellion against government. I used those latter ...

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Self-Serving Slippery Slopes

by Jon Rowe December 14, 2010

Analogies can be tricky things. That’s something that Dr. John Corvino has noted. Over at the Volokh Conspiracy, our old friend EV has blogged about the recent case of the Columbia Professor charged with incest. Unfortunately some commenters have (expectedly) used this to engage in their anti-gay biases. One good thing I hope comes out of the moral-philosophical analysis is the following insight: The existence of the self serving slippery slope. That’s something in which attorneys and philosophers who make ...

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Death Penalty

by Jon Rowe December 12, 2010

I have an issue with the death penalty on government incompetence grounds. But when there is no doubt that someone has done something like this, I’d like to see a system where we not just execute these people but do so within a less than 10 year time frame.

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Should We Thank Pornographers?

by Jon Rowe December 11, 2010

Economist Steve Horwitz kindly pointed to a great little article of his on futurism. I can’t find a thing in it with which I disagree. He writes: But even there it took years for the vast majority of e-commerce to be profitable. For most of the first decade or so of the World Wide Web, the only profitable business was that most mundane of human activities: sex. Adult websites provided perhaps the only consistently profitable business in cyberspace; they also ...

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Steven Pinker on how, morally, we are better than before.

by Jon Rowe December 11, 2010

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Futurism

by Jon Rowe December 11, 2010

The last few hundred years have seen dramatic advances in scientific and technological developments. Yet, when we imagine a future 30 plus years away, we tend to “see” scientific advances arriving prematurely. Folks in 1950 thought everyone would have flying cars by 2000, and, likewise, all diseases would be cured by then. One thinks of Back to the Future 2 which took place in 2015. If those predictions were accurate, we only have to wait four more years for “Mr. ...

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The Porcaro Bros.

by Jon Rowe December 11, 2010

I like them better with Boz Scaggs than Toto (though the latter has its moments; Steve Lukather is a smokin’ guitarist).

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Life is what happens to you when you are busy making other plans

by Jon Rowe December 8, 2010

My thoughts on the 30th anniversary of John Lennon’s death. You don’t need me to tell you he was a genius; he was. (So was Paul, but John was better). You don’t need a music degree (I have one) to learn that this genius is something you (probably) can’t teach. You can teach folks to sing/play well. And to write tunes that “work.” Work in the sense of hitting the right notes with the right chords at the right time ...

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So Help Her God

by Jon Rowe December 8, 2010

For our Sara Palin critics, check out Jonathan Turley’s take down of her “history.” I’ve crossed paths formally and informally with a number of the names he mentioned. My friend Ray Soller of my other group blog American Creation gets cited. And he, with an informal relationship, supports the research of Peter Henriques and Michael Newdow, who were also mentioned in Turley’s post. Likewise, my friend Chris Rodda, i.e., the anti-David Barton, is referenced as well.

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