Updates

1) As a follow-up to a recent post on the webcast of “The Case for Christianity,” you now have an individual in-home option if you can't get to a host site. It's $99, so visit www.incastevents.com for more info.

2) Martin Gaskell’s guest post has nearly gone viral. Over the last few weeks, and the last two days in particular, TSR has experienced record traffic, almost all of it due to people coming from PZ Myers’ Valentine’s Day blog dismissing Martin, and Tuesday’s surprisingly favorable coverage of the case by the UK Guardian. In both cases, someone who has read Martin’s post here cited the link in the comments section, and folks from literally across the globe have flocked to read it, leaving quite a few, shall we say, ‘enthusiastic’ comments. Both Martin’s case, and the post about Bob Woodberry’s tenure outcome have been the most viewed posts (by far!), showing how important issues regarding academic freedom are to folks, on many sides of the issues.

As I have read many of the comments on the referring sites in addition to the ones submitted here, it has become glaringly obvious that there are parties on both sides that have their minds made up and no amount of discussing facts and new information will bend them to even consider another point of view. To me, that is the biggest tragedy revealed through this episode. While Christians have certainly been guilty of being ‘closed-minded’ on Genesis and other issues, it is not a phenomenon unique to people of faith.

I can’t think of how to comment or elaborate further without sounding trite, so let me just close with an encouragement to use this as an opportunity to pray for the eyes of all hearts to be opened, that all with eyes and ears may see and hear, and that we begin by showing mutual respect to fellow human beings, whether we believe they are created imago Dei or not.

SDG