My op-ed piece appeared today in USA Today. The title is “God, the Devil and TV’s ‘Lost’.” Since it was shortened for publication, I thought I’d share the unedited version. Since everyone is wondering how LOST will end, it seems only fair to share the original ending of my op-ed piece! Religion on LOST: Telling God from the Devilby James F. McGrath Subtlety is not something we usually associate with television or religion. But for the last six years, ABC’s “Lost,”... Read more

Religion Dispatches is starting a series on Doctor Who, to which I’ll be a regular contributor. It is organized by Gabriel McKee, who is also a contributor himself. Take a look! Read more

While you wait for my op-ed piece on religion in LOST to appear in tomorrow’s USA Today, and a fantastic interactive treatment of the subject to appear on their web site, here are some other treatments of the topic from around the blogosphere: There’s a look ahead to the finale from DocArtzThe Lead focuses on LOST and redemptionNik at Nite revisits the episode “Recon”And on the broader topic of religion and sci-fi, Paleojudaica looks at Israel and transhumanism. Read more

Given the coincidence of the release of Iron Man 2 and the celebration of the Ascension in the Christian calendar, I thought I’d adapt and repost this blog post from a couple of years ago: “The ascension is harder to believe in than the resurrection.” Someone made the above statement in a conversation we were having, and I immediately thought of something mentioned in chapter 5 of Keith Ward’s book The Big Questions in Science and Religion. After discussing briefly... Read more

Having listened today to “Vitava,” the second and most famous section of the suite Ma Vlast by Bedrich Smetana, I thought it would be nice to see if there was a recording freely available online that I could share. Not surprisingly I found several at the Internet Archive. The recording embedded below is of a 1952 recording of Kubelik conducting the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. http://www.archive.org/flow/flowplayer.commercial-3.0.5.swf?0.4676871309415251 There are also some new concert offerings at Wolfgang’s Vault, including a 1986 concert by... Read more

I saw today that the New York Times has an inerview with Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse and an interactive gallery of the characters on LOST. I’ve been helping USA Today put together an interactive treatment of religion and LOST, which should be appearing on their web site early next week. They will also be publishing an op-ed piece I wrote about religion on LOST. In other LOST news, a rogue satellite could interfere with cable viewers of the finale. The (probably) last podcast has... Read more

I discussed back in 2008 the possibility that the message of LOST might be that we should never focus on mysteries at the expense of people. Much of what we have seen since then raises the same issue, and regardless whether LOST provides a particular slant or answer, and if so what that answer is, either way it is a topic worth thinking about and reflecting on. Today’s cartoon from NakedPastor raises the same issue, but in relation to theology and... Read more

Two opposing views on the intersection of historical study, naturalism, skepticism, miracles and related issues, expressed in the blogosphere today: Ken Pulliam’s post focuses primarily on a recent chapter by Richard Carrier asking whether the resurrection traditions are more trustworthy than other ancient accounts of the miraculous which we dismiss. Michael Barber’s post offers a different perspective, arguing that fairness requires that we leave room for the inexplicable. Of course, such debates about the question in the abstract are rendered unnecessary when... Read more

And here’s the latest LOST Untangled: http://a.abc.com/media/_global/swf/embed/2.6.3/SFP_Walt.swf Read more

“So Lost has moved from being a tv show to being a religion? It has a mythos, it has a cast of characters, it makes no sense…” — Rose LaVista (on Facebook) Read more