Conversation Among Friends

I recall a while back JM posted a site that computed the cumulative probability (likelihood) represented by the life of Jesus Christ in the context of the fulfillment of prophesy.

One whole book on this topic is that by Prof. Peter Stoner "Science Speaks".

Folks, check out this "The Foundations of Karl Rahner" by Mark Fischer. It's a study guide for seminarians. Apparently, few people ever completely read Rahner's basic course "Foundations of Christian Faith" (which appears to be Catholic seminarians' 101 course). This was written as an answer to the problem, and a good answer it is. Very concise, very informational, also readable for evangelicals, i believe, as there is probably little difference at the foundation level.

highly recommended

 pmm

A couple of weeks ago BH and I went to stand, shiver, talk, and pray at the Saginaw abortion clinic.

I have prayed for an end to abortion for a long time, but never before a clinic where babies are actually being aborted.  There is a significant difference in the sense of dread that comes out of nowhere.  I think this "dread" is something that CS Lewis writes about -- asking why should we really ever have this emotion -- especially if the soul is not real.

So says the byline of an article in The Economist from last week. It makes the case that for those of us who desire to see abortion numbers drop (I think we're pretty much all in that category), legislation is not a tool that anyone should expect to be effective for achieving that outcome:

[According to] the largest global study of abortion ever...Restricting abortions...has little effect on the number of pregnancies terminated. Rather, it drives women to seek illegal, often unsafe backstreet abortions leading to an estimated 67,000 deaths a year. A further 5m women require hospital treatment as a result of botched procedures.

Joey,

This article reminded of one of our lunchtime conversations about your dreams of making cash via stock market and news analysis.  Now I know what to call you: a quant.

The Blow-Up
This summer, as a meltdown in the subprime credit market spilled over into other markets, all eyes were on the mathematically trained financial engineers known as "quants." Who are these guys?

Following up on Haley's discussion last night of the rapid melting of arctic sea ice, here is a link to a blog post highlighting how the ice melt is happening much faster than models have predicted:

link

(JS, beware, it's from the Daily Kos...don't explore other parts of the site unless you want to risk a coronary) 

Nietzsche Would Laugh — Morality without God

This is an interesting piece on the "New Atheism".

js

interesting story over at slashdot:

Folkses -

interesting link on bbc: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7021358.stm