Really Recommended Posts 5/13/16- full quivers, the man who refused to salute, and were you there?

I hope you won’t mind a somewhat shortened Really Recommended Posts this week. I had to make them brief for several reasons. First, I am taking a class on historical writings in regards to special divine action. It is wonderful. Second, these are super high-quality links so you should read them all instead of skipping a couple. Third, I’m tired and I’ve been sick. As always, let me know what you think, and be sure to let the authors know as well.

The German Non-Saluter Myth– I think this is a pretty cool story about the man in the photograph that heads this post. He is largely (and, it seems probably legendarily) believed to be a man who directly experienced much oppression at the hands of the Nazis. However, it seems that closer investigation (with comparison of family photos) suggests it was simply a pious Protestant who refused to bow the knee, as it were. Yet the “boring” story of the latter possibility has its own power: the power of faith over tyranny.

Quiver full speech crashes airplanes– The notion that a certain class of people ought to be deferred to rather than challenged is common. Here is a post that analyzes the frequent complementarian assertion that men ought not be challenged in their authority by women and applies the same idea to pilots and copilots. This isn’t just an ivory tower thought experiment–real stories are brought forward, and it turns out it doesn’t seem to work very well.

Were You There?– A common challenge issued from young earth creationists is to ask scientists and other believers: “Were you there?” It’s intended to score rhetorical points, showing that someone can’t really know that the world is quite ancient when they weren’t there themselves. Here’s a post addressing this common challenge.