Phill Sacre

Category: Random other stuff

  • Top Gear Patagonia Special: The dark side of social media?

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    I’ve just finished watching the Top Gear Patagonia Special (and, not that it really matters with Top Gear, but if you’re still planning to watch it this will discuss the episode content and should come with a spoiler warning). The end of the second part is pretty intense – a nationalist gang in Argentina essentially…

  • Happy Christmas

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    I’d just like to wish all my blog readers a very Happy Christmas. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was…

  • God’s Existence and Kalam

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    This academic year, I’ve been taking a class on the Doctrine of God. Last week we were studying God’s eternity, and as part of that we looked at the Kalam Cosmological Argument (William Lane Craig’s formulation of it – that link goes through to his website, where you can watch a short video on the Kalam which…

  • Is Evolution becoming a religion?

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    This other day I read Nick Spencer’s article “The big fat lies of evolution” (you’ll have to read it to understand the title). He talks about the way a layperson – not a scientist – casually used an evolutionary mechanism to explain obesity. He concludes: But the use of this narrative [i.e. the evolutionary narrative], by someone…

  • Always talking past each other

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    Earlier today, I had a conversation with someone on Twitter about the Bible. One of the comments he made was that people from my particular ‘tribe’ in the church – i.e. conservative evangelical – aren’t always very good at engaging in a way which people can understand.  I’ve been thinking about this a bit recently:…

  • Marriage and ‘Public Theology’

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    I’m doing a course at college at the moment called ‘Public Theology’, which is basically about how theology and the public sphere (e.g. politics, society) interact. Earlier this week I did a seminar on marriage, i.e. how the church should engage society on the topic of marriage. As regular readers will know this is something…

  • Happy Christmas

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    I’d just like to wish all my loyal blog readers a happy Christmas. May it be peaceful and refreshing and full of good cheer! This term at college I am going to be studying the book of Hebrews, which talks a lot about the supremacy of Christ. I’d like to quote from the opening verses,…

  • Don’t rely on one Bible translation!

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    Quick bit of obvious advice today: Don’t rely on a single translation of the Bible when you’re doing some serious Bible study. Today I was preparing a sermon on John 1:19-34. And, because I’ve been learning New Testament Greek over the last couple of years, I feel like I needed to get my money’s worth…

  • Secularism: What does it mean to you?

    Secularism: What does it mean to you?

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    The title of this blog post is taken from an article I read yesterday. The Guardian basically asked a few different people what secularism meant to them, and published their responses. To be honest, the article doesn’t encompass a huge range of beliefs (most of the people there seem to be atheist / humanist in outlook),…

  • Hate Speech

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    A few days ago, I tweeted a link to an article on the Spectator: “Revd Dr Alan Clifford’s ‘homophobic’ comments referred to the CPS” (it might be worthwhile reading the article for some background), and I noted that it had worrying implications for free speech. Anyway, someone replied to me on Twitter this morning and…