“Generations to come will scarce believe that such a one as this ever in flesh and blood walked upon this earth” (Albert Einstein).These words were apparently spoken by Einstein about Gandhi. Can anyone help me find the source of the quotation? Last night we showed the famous Gandhi movie for students taking the South Asian Civilizations course that I and a few other professors teach. I hope to post some thoughts about Gandhi and Jesus sometime soon. Read more

In the beginning, God spokebut there were no ears to hearnor was there an atmosphere to carry the sound.God said, “let there be light”but there was no eye to behold its brightnessor to discern and distinguish its rainbow colors.Billions of years passed,and now there were people who could see, hear and create,and so they imagined God doing all those things.Some saw the moon, that it was beautiful,and the sun, that it was inexplicably bright,and worshipped them.Later some rolled the forces… Read more

I don’t post often enough on my current research area, the historical study of Jesus, so I’m glad when a conversation turns my thoughts (and my blogging) in that direction.A recent comment mentioned one of the classic arguments for an ‘apocalyptic’ Jesus – i.e. one that proclaimed the imminent ‘end of the world’. The argument is that it makes little sense to have an apocalyptic John the Baptist, followed by a non-apocalyptic Jesus, followed by an apocalyptic early Church.I’ve started… Read more

“Newton gave us a God of awesome power, sovereign, absolute. He was Lord of Dominion, ruler supreme. At the same time, he was given specific, somewhat menial tasks to perform, among them making periodic corrections to the motions of the celestial bodies” (Jeremy Campbell, The Many Faces of GOD (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2006) p. xvii).The quote continues: “The Church made the mistake of accepting this role for God. When it became clear that the heavenly bodies… Read more

The number of supporters of intelligent design who are not religious seems to be rising rapidly. I remember when there didn’t seem to be any. Now there is an organization/blog for such people. ICON-RIDS stands for “International Coalition of Non-Religious ID Scientists & Scholars”.The blog has two contributors. Add that to one person I spoke to on a blog forum once (although it may have been one of the two people already mentioned, let’s assume it wasn’t) and someone mentioned… Read more

“To take away a neighbor’s living is to murder him; to deprive an employee of his wage is to shed blood” (Wisdom of Jesus son of Sira, 34: 22).Apologies if anyone assumed from the post’s title that I meant some other person named Jesus. It was a common name, you know… Read more

There has been a lot of discussion of the recent retraction of an old scientific paper by its author, Homer Jacobson. His reason for doing so is that the paper contained errors and inaccuracies, and yet it was being quoted by ‘creation scientists’ as supporting their position.Why didn’t he retract it sooner, you might ask? Because as long as it was a question of what scientists might do with it, he had little to worry about: they would either ignore… Read more

Apparently the (comically unsuccessful) conspiracy that some proponents of intelligent design had been engaged in, to obscure their connection with particular religious traditions and outlooks, is breaking down. Michael Behe has made the connection explicit (in the process he calls Ken Miller a proponent of intelligent design as well). Bill O’Reilly also made the connection between ID and religion explicit, as did Ben Stein.To most people it was perfectly obvious anyway. It certainly was to its supporters in pews. But… Read more

In my discussion with colleagues about Philip Kitcher’s book Living With Darwin we discussed the concept of the history of the universe thus far being hard to understand as merely a “3-billion year long curtain-raiser” to get us to the main act, which is us, humanity. Certainly some religious language and traditions may give this impression or even embrace this viewpoint. If you ask me, I doubt that the curtain raiser is over yet. This is still the overture, the… Read more

“As Jesus hung upon the cross of Calvary, it was literally the sin of the world that was hanging there at that moment of history. The people who physically saw that crucifixion, whether or not they were Christ’s followers, saw that it was not the justice but the injustice of man that was being carried out that day. In the arrest, trial and crucifixion of Christ, man’s sin was more than visible: man’s disobedience to God, man’s rejection of truth,… Read more