The popularity of C. S. Lewis among fundagelicals is a bit puzzling, because he was, relative to them, a liberal. One thing he does for them, though, is give them an orthodox-sounding way to make the doctrine of Hell less odious. Lewis, you see, thought Hell was something people inflict on themselves by rejecting God. But [...]
Ross Douthat promotes myth about religious basis of morality
April 25, 2012 By 17 Comments
Ross Douthat, who inexplicably has job as a columnist at the New York Times, is doing an exchange with William Saletan at Slate that looks to be full ‘o all kinds of fail, but this entry (HT: Julian Sanchez) especially caught my eye:
PZ Myers gives exactly the right response to “presuppositionalist” Sye
April 19, 2012 By 16 Comments
A number of years ago, back when I was still in college, I got invited on to a Christian podcast IIRC called “The Narrow Mind” (way to play to stereotypes there!). It ended up being one of my first encounters with a branch of Christian apologetics called “presuppositionalism.” Basically, presuppositionalism involves declaring that all reasoning [...]
Dale Allison quote on the apocalyptic Jesus
April 16, 2012 By 1 Comment
I managed to dig up a quote from biblical scholar Dale Allison’s book Resurrecting Jesus that strikes me as highly relevant to last week’s discussion of Bart Ehrman’s book:
Threatened blasphemy prosecution for debunking “miracle” statue
April 16, 2012 By 1 Comment
Ugh: look at what’s happening in India (HT: Ophelia):
Questions for Bart Ehrman/Ehrman sort-of defends Christianity
April 13, 2012 By 20 Comments
So in my previous post I mentioned that Bart Ehrman’s view, which I share, is that Jesus’ earliest followers didn’t think he was God, and on top of that Jesus was an apocalyptic preacher who went around saying that God was going to establish a literal Kingdom of Heaven on earth very soon. Since Jesus [...]
From the archives: Bart Ehrman’s misleading piece on the history of Christian Fundamentalism
April 13, 2012 By 5 Comments
Haven’t done a “From the archives” post yet this week, and I realized I needed to link this post while writing a separate post I’m working on, which will appear shortly.
Review: Bart Ehrman’s Did Jesus Exist?
April 12, 2012 By 60 Comments
I’ve decided to write two posts on agnostic Biblical scholar Bart Ehrman’s new book. This is the main review, which discusses Ehrman’s main theses and arguments. The other post will be about issues of interest to people involved in atheist-Christian debates, but which are secondary issues within the book itself.
Way to go Daniel Fincke!
April 3, 2012 By 5 Comments
On Sunday (in a not-April-Fool’s post) Daniel Fincke posted a long defense of Richard Dawkins’ Reason Rally speech. In a comment thread at RichardDawkins.net, Dawkins commented to say, “I am extremely pleased by Daniel Fincke’s article, which says exactly what I SHOULD have said and, to my regret, didn’t make sufficiently clear in my Reason [...]
1.5 million children stolen–guess who’s responsible?
March 28, 2012 By 6 Comments
I wouldn’t normally link to PZ because I assume you all read him anyway, but I just had an uncanny experience at his blog. I read the headline 1.5 million children stolen, and felt like I was suddenly Batman (as played by Adam West): “There’s only one organization that could have pulled off a plot [...]
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