This date in 1517 is traditionally considered to mark when Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the church door in Wittenberg, sparking the protestant revolt from Roman Catholic christendom.

Over 4 years ago I wrote and posted on this blog my 25 Theses on the Modern State of Christian Faith. While it was certainly a bit presumptuous of me to write these theses, I nevertheless contend that the undertaking was useful in strengthening my own faith as well as providing a framework of debate over the challenges facing Christianity today.

I still hold most of those theses to be true, while I admit that some require elaboration and/or revision. Some further reading if you're motivated:

- link to the 25 Theses

- Favorable response and elaboration on the Theses here, including the threat of Islamicism to Christianity

- Michael Romano's rejoinder to the Theses: Enchiridion of Commonplaces against Sayre and Selderane

- Another blogger's decidedly Catholic response to the Theses here

Looking back on the Theses now, some of them strike me as prescient considering the current intersection of religion and politics in American society, particularly #'s 2, 8, 9, 14, 19, 21, and 24. Here is number 24:

In attempting to influence the morals of the society through the political process, the Christian denominations must not allow themselves to be politicized. Certain political processes and realities govern in modern representative democracies, including compromise and sometimes manipulation. As Christian groups, such as the state Catholic conferences, learn to be effective in influencing the political process through lobbying and other tactics, they must not let those processes come to govern the particular religions themselves.

On this day in 1795 poet John Keats was born. A few quotes to celebrate his life and works:

On beauty...

"'Beauty is truth, truth beauty,' - that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."

I used to think this statement vacuous until I read this quote also from Keats:

"A thing of beauty is a joy forever: its loveliness increases; it will never pass into nothingness."

If we cling to a modern notion of beauty--something fleeting and quite worldly--then the truth-beauty equation falls apart. But if we insist on a timeless and enduring nature of beauty (real beauty?) then it makes sense.

On pain and growth...

"Do you not see how necessary a world of pains and troubles is to school an intelligence and make it a soul?"

“Pleasure is oft a visitant; but pain Clings cruelly to us.”

"Don't be discouraged by a failure. It can be a positive experience. Failure is, in a sense, the highway to success, inasmuch as every discovery of what is false leads us to seek earnestly after what is true, and every fresh experience points out some"

"There is an electric fire in human nature tending to purify - so that among these human creatures there is continually some birth of new heroism. The pity is that we must wonder at it, as we should at finding a pearl in rubbish."

The latest word in Science magazine is that drinking hot coffee while talking to another person gives you "warm" feelings towards that person.

According to a new study, coffee remedies false memory recollection during times of sleep deprivation.

China King. It's somewhat like Burger King, except they serve Chinese food... and butcher deer in their kitchen.

We wouldn't condone such behavior from a child, so why do we encourage it from adults on television?

Voting fraud. It's nothing new, but it's a problem that we must address now to strengthen the integrity our electoral system. Close elections like 2000 and 2004 show the need to obtain a vote count that is both legitimate and as accurate as possible.

By now you've surely heard about the organization called ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) and its promotion of false voter registrations across the country: Nevada, Missouri, Ohio, Connecticut, Indiana, and elsewhere.

ACORN is openly liberal and has endorsed Barack Obama for president. Thus these illegal registrations are likely geared towards gaining him illegitimate votes.

Two steps must be taken before the next election:

1. End early voting, except for true and verifiable absentees. There have been thousands of illegal registrations that we know of so far. How many do we not know about and how many have already resulted in a vote because of early voting? The more time we have to vet the registrations and to reduce fraud, the better.

2. Clean up the voter registration rolls. In many major American cities, Indianapolis included, the rolls actually include more names than the number of residents in the city. Dead people, convicts, and those that have left the jurisdiction, all need to be purged from the list. This would dramatically reduce the opportunity for voter fraud. Local newspapers need to make this an important story, and local government officials need to make this an area of focus.

What happens if we do nothing?

Though unlikely this election, if we have another close contest in 2008 or later, we could be facing litigation rivaling that of 2000 in Florida, if we do not have clean voter rolls. The level of scrutiny and money involved in modern elections ensures it.

The Washington Times (granted, not usually my most trusted source in news) has a pretty good article summing up the story on Barack Obama's request to Iraqi officials to delay the latest withdrawal of U.S. troops from that nation.

The article is good because it explains the somewhat shaky sourcing of that original story. It also places the story in historical context by giving several past examples of political candidates involving themselves in the nation's foreign policy while abroad.

Back on September 18 I wrote that this story could explode and end up hurting Sen. Obama's candidacy. Looks like I was wrong, as few have tried to make any hay out of it.

I do not like any candidate taking actions that could interfere with the current president's ability to carry out the nation's current foreign policy. That sort of meddling can only weaken any president's ability as the commander-in-chief. But the key from a political fallout perspective is the motivation behind such meddling. In the case of Obama, we have no evidence (how could we?) that his motivation was personal political gain. If he just wanted Congress to have a say in the troop withdrawal, which under our constitution, it doesn't, then the story is a non-starter.

To be sure, there is plenty of blame to spread around. Democratic legislation in the mid 90's urged Fannie and Freddie to start sub-prime loans and to loosen their lending practices. Once these practices began, however, numerous private financial institutions wildly adopted the practices as well.

The government started to catch on to the problem in 2002 and again in 2004, but too many in Congress (including Democrats who wanted to maintain available home ownership to lower income families) blocked the proposed new regulations over Fannie and Freddie--regulations proposed by President George W. Bush.

Bush has laid down on this issue, not defending himself from Obama's constant barrage of claims that Bush is to blame. McCain has been ineffective in explaining why Republicans aren't completely at fault.

As always, Saturday Night Live gets it right: (how sad that it can do what the GOP is unable to do)

The election is less than one month away and Senator John McCain's "straight talk express" is staring straight into the headlights of a freight train named landslide. Barack Obama's "weak" states are no longer weak for him and he is leading in every single swing state. Furthermore, a few of John McCain's "strong" states are now weak for him.

Electoral-vote.com, Pollster.com, and RealClearPolitics all tell the same story: McCain is falling behind in Ohio, Florida, Virginia, Colorado, and Nevada. Obama is pulling away in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. And finally, Indiana, Missouri, and North Carolina are now true toss-ups.

McCain's collapse in the polls can easily be corresponded with the nation's current economic woes, but that does not tell the entire story. We must ask why a worsening economy favors the Democrats politically this time around.

The fact that our current president is a Republican certainly presented a challenge to Republicans once the economic issue came to dominate the news cycle, but not an insurmountable one.

Here's the the cold truth: George W. Bush and the Republican party leadership in Congress have done an abysmal job defending and implementing economic conservatism over the last 8 years.

And to exacerbate the problem, John McCain and Sarah Palin have decided to clutch onto a mind-numbingly anti-intellectual form of populism--that is, of course, when they weren't too busy running inane attacks on Barack Obama. The conventional wisdom is that negative ads work, but that lesson can only be taken so far. You can tear your opponent down all you want, but if you do nothing to build yourself up, you'll still lose.

John McCain never established any credibility on economic issues, perhaps because he's always been as much populist as conservative, and his candidacy was thus ripe for a collapse in the polls.

After the dust settles from November 4, the Democrats will claim their victory as a strong refutation of economic conservatism. They'll be wrong. Their victory in 2008 will be for the same reasons they swept Congress in 2006. After that election I wrote, "...it is my sincere hope that they [Republicans] rediscover the conservative spirit that has energized and promoted the party for so many years."

Sadly they have not.

He probably doesn't even believe it but is just saying it to degrade Bush even further... But I digress. From Volokh:

Sen. Obama is suggesting that the standing in the world is lower now than back then. But can that really be right? As James Taranto points out, "In 2008, Obama fils has an excellent chance of becoming the next president. In 1959, there were large portions of the country where Obama père would have been treated as a second-class citizen." If our standing in the world — especially in places like Kenya — is lower now than it was in 1959 (a pretty big "if") I'd say that says more about the world than it says about us.

Voting has begun this week in Ohio, following a new law in that state. The law controversially also allows a person to both register and to vote in the same day.

I oppose this increased practice of early voting around the nation. I obviously see the need for absentee voting, which by logistics takes place at least some time before election day. Soldiers and others abroad, students at college, and similarly situated must not be restricted from voting.

But the current spat of early voting procedures across the nation goes much further. Now pretty much anybody can vote up to a few weeks before the election, often without the need to even come up with an excuse of absentee status.

One reason to oppose early voting is that it just 'goes against the gut' feeling of how an election should work. There is an allure to the primacy of a single election day when Americans undertake their civic right.

But a much more important reason is that early voting would seem to greatly increase the potential for voting fraud and illegal forms electioneering. More time + more places = more opportunity for fraud.

Ohio's law presents an even bigger danger. A voting registration fair, paid for by public or private funds, is a good thing. But not if that same drive is a ruse to get people to vote for a specific candidate. The possibility for the misuse of public funds to this end seems very high.

A new report out of Britain says that individuals who start using cell phones before the age of 20 have a five-fold increase in their risk of developing a specific type of brain cancer or a specific type of non-malignant tumor that can threaten hearing.

The report is based on a pre-existing Swedish study, and further studies are being conducted to give more definitive information on the link between mobile phone use and health problems. Questions that need to be answered include how much time of use might pose a danger and whether using phones in rural versus urban settings matters (rural settings require higher power transmissions).

The United States Congress heard testimony just a couple weeks ago regarding this latest research.

...

I've said it before, but I'll state it again: if a solid link to cancer is discovered, the resulting litigation could rival if not far surpass the lawsuits that faced tobacco companies in the last couple of decades.

If their is a strong link, we could be facing an epidemic in coming decades.

Peter Hitchens details China's 21st century version of colonialism in Africa. Shares many of the horrors of Europe's past colonialism, with some new problems added. A must read.