Top 50 list of contemporary Theistic thinkers

Here is an interesting list from the best school folks of their 50 leading Theist intellectuals in 2013. While DBH was surprisingly on that list, who I think is still a bit of a hidden jewel, conspicuously missing is six other thinkers I would round off my top 10 with, never mind top 50 (Rene Girard, Rosalind Picard, Tim Keller, Hilary Putnam, John Behr and John D. Barrow). It's also interesting that they have physicists like Chris Isham, Don Page and Michael Heller on the list, but not Nobel laureates like William Phillips, Charles Townes (who is almost 100 by the way), Arno Penzias and Tony Hewish (all very outspoken Christian physicists). At any rate, I love that they took the time to create this list, and hope it becomes an annual thing.  You can follow the link here:

http://www.thebestschools.org/blog/2013/01/06/50-smartest-people-faith/


Just for posterity, and b/c there is not much funner than making top 10 lists of anything, my top 10, would, not in order, go:

1) WLC -- if you needed one guy to defend the Theist worldview, it would have to be this guy.

2) Girard. I think he has a chance to change how a lot of fields think about themselves, not just the anthropology of religion.

3) Plantinga. He probably would be the guy you would want to fill in for Craig if Craig was too busy working on that upper body or embarrassing Sam Harris or Peter Atkins

Atkins debacle ->->  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIuua7HZRxw

4) Putnam and 5) DBH. Other notable philosophers that would just be outside my list: Bas van Fraasen, who is on their list, Edward Feser, who is a rising star, and Peter van Inwagen, who can tackle the problem of evil, the most credible challenge to Theism, better than anyone I have read.

6) Tim Keller and 7) John Behr would be my theologians/pastors on the list. These guys, because of their trade, are probably grossly underrated as pure thinkers. They both can talk and write about things in ways most people cannot, and, most importantly, take the human tapestry and how it relates to the Sacred in ways that make us understand how Sacred the Sacred is, yet how near it is and can be. I don't always agree with him, but N.T. Wright would have to be a honorable mention. A great, great speaker, and "The Resurrection of the Son of God" is the most important Christian apologetics book written in the last 100 years.

8), 9), and 10) You could pick a lot of scientists. I would add Rosalind Picard, not just because she is obviously brilliant, but because there are so many vocal Christian scientists from MIT today (Hutchinson, Van Vooris, come to mind) that someone from MIT should be on the list. I love John D. Barrow, so he is in. He is also the funniest guy on this list. I would round off with Jennifer Wiseman, an astrophysicist who is at NASA and is in charge at AAAS to better bridge science and religion. Honorable mention to all the nobel laureate scientists that could be on my list and all the other obvious choices like Knuth and Francis Collins. Also, I really think Polkinghorne will go down as one of the best critical thinkers of our time, mostly because he is highly visible and because he has the respect of both honest theologians and honest scientists.

So what's your top 10?

The Leader of the PayPal Mafia

In 2002, EBAY purchased a small, then recent IPO for 1.5 billion dollars, a high price for a company making a fraction of that. More than 10 years later, the investment in PayPal was clearly a good one. Co-founder Peter Thiel was a big part of that transaction happening.

Peter Thiel is an interesting guy. He's on my radar because of his involvement in disseminating Rene Girard's work, whom, as I have written previously, may have the great, orignal contribution to Religion in the 20th century.

Thiel met Girard at Stanford, from where he obtained his law degree from. Amongst Thiel's accomplishments was his $500,000 early investment in Facebook, which gave his VC a 10% stake-- that is worth billions now. He also is a big supporter of biomedical science, and provides grants for ideas that, believe me, won't normally get funded by national institutions.

Thiel also is openly gay. a through-and-through libertarian, and a Christian. Not a combination that is too prevalent in the human population.

Thiel is clearly a fascinating and brilliant guy. And for me, I am quite excited he is involved with Girard. As I am going through "I see Satan fall like lightning", it is encouraging to know that a guy with the resources, worldview and intelligence like Thiel will be around to help spread the Girardian viewpoint.

We need more Gene Robinsons, embracing of homosexuals

"For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature: And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence [sic] of their error which was meet." Romans 1:26-27

"Your mother recognizes all you're desperate displays
And she watches as her babies drift violently away
'Til they see themselves in telescopes
Do you see yourself in me?
We're such crazy babies, little monkey
We're so fu**ed up, you and me" - Adam Duritz, Counting Crows

Upon these penned words stands what many Scripture-studying Christians have, for right or wrong, depicted homosexuality to be.

There have been many interpretations for Paul's words, however, it is fair to say that historically the majority of Christians have interpreted these words as an indictment against homosexual relationships as we know them today.

Absence of Jesus' condemnation on a subject is not a good argument, but it should be at least part of the thought-process. My thoughts are this: Jesus spent His time embracing the marginalized and condemning the religious. When we combine those things with the entire theme of Scriptures when understood rightly, Jesus as Redeemer of all people, all people in need of redemption (or Paul, "all people are the same', c.f. Adam Duritz above), it is frankly difficult to attribute the bigotry Christians have shamefully displayed towards homosexuals to anything but natural Darwinian anxiety masquerading as Scriptural instruction. Or, at the very least, condemning attitudes towards homosexuality masquerading as Scriptural attitudes.

Perhaps if Christians spent more energy learning from the homosexual community, it would be better served time. Homosexuals probably represent roughly 5% of the human population; yet is there a more powerful lobbying group in America? Yet Christians represent the majority of Americans, and we know how that lobbying is going. Instead, Evangelical Christians in Washington spend their time lobbying against the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, so that the other 40 states or so can continue to allow employers to fire employees for their sexual gender (Yeah, that really can still happen). Furthermore, homosexuals are, as they should be, an integral part of the Christian community. In 2013, with all the tools we have to understand Scripture in its proper context, isn't it time to embrace our brothers and sisters instead of fearful Darwinian behavior ruling the day? While Scripture may very well have negative things to say about at least some homosexual behavior, it also does for some heterosexual behavior. Perhaps our energy is better served getting it right on our end, instead of projecting our failures on other communities.

One of the upshots I see here is voices like Gene Robinson are even more important than we know. If mainline Protestantism continues to shun the homosexual community, it will contribute to the Protestant community's continued depreciation in the Western world. And, in my opinion, this will be against the Will of the God we claim to cling to.