Rocky Carvel posted today about the tension between losing the Biblical moorings of conservative Christianity and a vibrant and powerful experience of Christianity. I can really relate to his post: in my case, I think that having had a life-transforming experience actually gave me the courage to engage in critical thinking about what I believe and in critical study of the Bible. The Bible had been important to my faith, but it was not ultimately what it was about, and had not... Read more

Last semester, my department chair discovered that there is an endowed chair at Butler University which has been unfilled for some 60 years, the Clarence Goodwin Chair of New Testament Language and Literature. The chair was last held by its first and (to my knowledge) only occupant, Bruce Kershner. Since then, it has been unfilled – until today, when I received official announcement that I am going to be appointed to this position! I’m grateful to the late Clarence Goodwin whose generosity created the... Read more

There are a number of volumes in the series Popular Culture and Philosophy (from Open Court – take a look at some of the forthcoming titles!) and the Blackwell Philosophy and Pop Culture series from which I’ll be using chapters as readings this semester. But the thing I love most about both these series is the subtitles of the books, many of which are brilliant and hilarious. Here are a few examples: The Undead and Philosophy: Chicken Soup for the... Read more

Jim West was famous for many things, among which hatred for cats. And so now that he’s no longer blogging, we can post videos like the ones below without fear of retribution. First, there’s a cat that is being called “Ninja cat.” Good luck trying to prevent it from sneaking up on you! And here’s another cat that could successfully audition for the role of antichrist: Read more

The Panda’s Thumb reproduces a speech by James Downard which argues that it is not lack of intelligence that explains why people (religious believers, atheists, and probably everyone) believe things that aren’t supported by evidence or even have evidence against them. I had to skim parts of it, but hope to return to it, as it looks insightful. Anyone who has previously been a young-earth creationist will probably acknowledge that they weren’t stupid at the time, and that their change in viewpoint was not... Read more

Thanks to Jim Davila (whose own blog is also in the top 100 list) I just learned that Exploring Our Matrix is currently #23 on Technorati’s list of top religion blogs. There are many blogs on there I wasn’t familiar with, and so it looks like a list worth exploring further! There are a couple of familiar biblioblogs in the Top 10: Jesus Creed and Parchment and Pen. Thank you to all regular readers, visitors and those who have linked... Read more

If you’ve long wanted to start watching LOST, but didn’t think you could get caught up, a short video has been released that will get you up to speed in 8 minutes and 15 seconds. I still recommend watching the whole series if you can find the time. And LOST Untangled – which offered hilarious explanations and recaps of episodes in recent seasons. Read more

The polyvalent religious imagery and language was back again on Heroes tonight [SPOILERS in what follows]. The “family” of the carnival is explicitly likened to a cult at one point, the first of the two episodes had Biblical resonances (“Upon This Rock”), and the motif of water flowing and flowers blooming in the desert evokes Biblical imagery – not to mention it being for all intents and purposes “miraculous”, however much there may be an alleged “scientific” nature to the... Read more

NT Wrong (of Durham, North Carolina) has decided to produce another monthly Top 50 of biblioblogs. I came in at number 5. Read more

John Hobbins seems to think that we all should post our annual blog stats. I have no objection! In 2009, Exploring Our Matrix had 303,226 page loads, 232,554 unique visitors, and 50,017 returning visitors according to StatCounter. I don’t have any way of knowing which pages were the most popular for the year, but I am pretty certain it is my post on how to resolve the problem of a black screen after login when running Windows Vista. The fact that this remains one... Read more