Editor's Note from November 12, 2015

Issue 35: Fractals, zombie ants, and a dashing evangelist-monk. /

The main warning I’ve given to prospective writers for The Behemoth is that we don’t do polemics. Debates can be helpful. Iron sharpens iron. But while The Behemoth runs a lot of articles that draw from science, we won’t argue about origins or climate change or most of the fights people think about when someone says “Christianity and science.” We’re a magazine searching for awe, wonder, and beautiful orthodoxy.

More recently, I’ve started adding another warning: We try very hard not to publish sermon illustrations. Like debates, sermon illustrations can be wonderful and helpful. (Hello, friends at PreachingToday.com!) But sometimes, when I hear science used to illustrate a theological point, it can suck a lot of the life out of the science story. (The same can be true for historical anecdotes.) I want the science to provoke awe and wonder. I don’t want it just to be an example for “the real point.”

But my favorite Behemoth pieces are the ones that don’t end with the science, where a discovery about the world truly prompts thinking about who God is. And in this issue, Joel Bezaire’s piece on fractals and Chad Meeks’s article on zombie ants both show a real love for their subjects and a real desire to think about what kind of God created them. I’ll admit I was skeptical about both pitches at first. But I can’t argue with their results.

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Also in this Issue

Issue 35 / November 12, 2015
  1. Why Fractals Are So Beautiful

    We’re finding infinitely complex, self-similar shapes all over creation. And we’re just getting started. /

  2. I Want to Be a Zombie Ant

    How a fungus can turn an insect into a new creature bent to its own will. /

  3. The Handsome, Pun-Loving Missionary Who Teased Popes

    Columbanus died 1,400 years ago this month, having re-evangelized Western Europe. /

  4. Big Cottonwood Canyon

    “Resurrection must be like this” /

  5. Wonder on the Web

    Issue 35: Links to amazing stuff.

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