Jim Naughton at The Lead links to a Psychology Today blog which shares an e-mail from a pastor uncomfortable with bonobo behavior. Although the pastor in question seems to believe that after Adam and Eve ate a literal fruit from a literal tree of knowledge, God intervened in the world to force tectonic plates to shift and bonobos to start having homosexual intercourse, I think there are far simpler and more satisfactory ways to make sense of the available evidence.... Read more

Tom Verenna and I may disagree about lots of things. But here’s something we agree on. This is wonderful: Tina Guo performing Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto No.1 in E flat major, Op. 107: II. Moderato– Watch more Videos at Vodpod. Read more

Many bloggers (including some with expertise precisely in the area where Beck seems to lack it) have pointed out how much Glenn Beck got wrong in his statement about Constantine and the Dead Sea Scrolls. Finally, a courageous blogger has stepped forward to treat Beck fairly and defend what he got right. And since someone asked me, here’s a recording of the program in which he made the statements in question. http://cloudfront.mediamatters.org/static/flash/player.swf Read more

There is a post about LOST at Doc Artz, which takes seriously the revelation that the show is at its heart profoundly theological. I particularly liked the artice’s way of putting things: in “The End” what we had thought were “flash sideways” were revealed to be “flash upwards.” Read more

If you think the pun in the title of this post is lame, you’ll be glad I decided not to make the one about being “atone deaf.” Ken Pulliam has been blogging about problems with the penal substitution theory of atonement. Yesterday he interacted with and shared parts of a post of mine on that topic. Read it and find out what he and I agree about and what we disagree about. I should also mention James Bradford Pate’s post, inspired by comments on... Read more

HT Open Parachute Read more

In the discussion of Rob Bowman’s closing statement in the Great Trinity Debate at Parchment and Pen, I was asked what I think of the application to Jesus in the New Testament of verses which, in the Jewish Scriptures, refer to Yahweh. My answer is that Jews who believed God might bestow his name upon an exalted agent would probably have considered it appropriate to ask whether any of the texts mentioning Yahweh in the Scripures refer to the agent called by... Read more

The Ancient World Online shared a link to this useful site, which maintains a database of courses on less commonly taught languages. Read more

There’s a review of Jimmy Dunn’s latest book, Did The First Christians Worship Jesus, at the blog Diglotting. Read more

So many videos worth sharing. John Loftus shared this debate between Bart Ehrman and Craig Evans: And Unreasonable Faith has a disturbing video from Tennessee with students and a teacher talking about evolution and creation in the science classroom: If these aren’t your cup of tea, you can try the Star Trek-Gilbert & Sullivan mash-up at IO9. Read more