MSI Press Blog

SASKATCHEWAN  “Between the blush at dawn and dusk the long kiss of land and sky, bare against each other.”  From “The Prairie” in This Land by Ken Odland  The sun shown brightly as we crossed the border into the neighbouring province of Saskatchewan. Temperatures approached 30° Celsius, about 10 degrees above normal for September. Immediate impressions, as seen from the highway, were checkerboard fields of amber, ochre, and green. Fall is harvest time in the prairies and many farmers were taking advantage of the fine weather to collect their crops. On distant horizons, columns of dust rose behind tractors pulling reaping machines. Grain elevators, always beside railroad tracks, were prominent landmarks in most small towns.  British Columbia’s landscape is mostly mountainous; Alberta has mountains to the west and prairie to the east; Saskatchewan, at least the southern section, is endless flat prairie. Two tongue-in-cheek sayings that capture the essence of this fla

  Excerpt from How to Argue with an Atheist , by Professor TL Brink STEP #2: Accept the limits of reason     STUDENT: Dr. Brink, is it OK for our weekly religion discussion?   BRINK: You are right on time. Any problems with what we covered last week?   STUDENT: No, like I said, I am a rational kind of person, so I have no problems accepting that I exist and that other people exist.   BRINK: And what about that people are driven by values?   STUDENT: Oh, yeh, that too is logical, but I just can't see what that has to do with religion. Humans to me are just like other animals: they exist, they have desires. So where does God fit into the picture?   BRINK: That is a few more steps down the road.   STUDENT: Must be, because what you said last time was so rational, and religion still seems irrational.   BRINK: Tell me what you mean by being rational.   STUDENT: Following the rules of reason.   BRINK: Give me an example of good, rational reasoning.   STUDENT: Like the one we talked about