Links for 2012-05-07

To have grown up with an idea that earth is not flat, it never occurred to me that I will ever need to prove that to anyone, at least not to someone in my own family. But given that my grand dad (a very religious guy), who never had any formal education and who never came out of a hilly village in a poor part of an already poor country, we finally had yet another science versus religious 'commonsense' confrontation. He, like many other elders of the village where firm that Earth is flat, and understandably so as they never saw a world outside their village, never got any education and whatever they read was those 'holly' (entertaining) religious books.[...]As (round earth) is a guaranteed idea that we all grow up with so not many ever try to find out (or are even taught in schools) for themselves about the validity of what we believe. But during my process of educating my grand dad I realized that it is not very easy to prove this obvious science.

Sessions seems to accept the pretense that the so-called "gatekeepers" of American evangelicalism care about any other definition -- some set of theological or cultural distinctives other than the set of mandatory culture-war stances they now exist primarily to re-enforce. Let me be as clear as possible: For these gatekeepers, "evangelical" is not mainly a religious category. It is a political category. Or, more precisely, it is a tribal category employing political "stances" as tribal symbols. It's not about revivalism or biblicism or pietism. It is, above all else, about opposition to homosexuality and opposition to legal abortion. Period. What does "evangelical" mean? In America, in 2012, it means this: A white Protestant who opposes abortion and homosexuality.

A nice write-up, with some additional background and details about the proposed asteroid mining business.