I did not finish my review of Keith Ward’s The Big Questions in Science and Religion last year, but at least I can get it done early in 2009. The subtitle to this chapter is “Are there any good science-based arguments for God?” Ward begins by surveying the once-popular (and in some circles still-popular) notion that humanity naturally progresses through three stages in its intellectual evolution: religion, metaphysics, and finally science. Yet the twentieth century demonstrated that science did not... Read more

Happy New Year! An nou fericit! La multi ani! Welcome to 2009! (Hope you enjoy your stay) Read more

I finally watched the remake of The Day The Earth Stood Still, starring Keanu Reeves, Jennifer Connoley, and of course GORT. The allusions to the story of Noah and the ark were explicit, but I wonder how many who are familiar with both stories will really think about both the similarities and differences. For one thing, it seems that a super-intelligent, powerful alien may well be the closest we can come, in the context of our own worldview, to the... Read more

Apparently the forces of darkness are mounting an attack, this time on the Christian holiday of New Year’s Day, which commemorates and worshipfully celebrates the anniversary of the day on which a Romanian monk miscalculated the year in which our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ was born. In addition to the anticalendricals, it seems that the Chinese, Jews, and Muslims are all opting out and deciding to celebrate other days as their new year. More recently the ranks of these... Read more

I have not yet read the book Christology and Science that has made some ripples in the blogosphere lately. I certainly hope to do so in the near future. The subject definitely interests me. Here are some questions one might ponder about Christology. If one believes that God is omnipresent, then in what sense if any could God be present in Jesus to a greater extent than elsewhere? If one believes Jesus was fully human, then how could he not... Read more

Reflecting further on the tendency of fundamentalists and inerrantists to flatten the voices of Scripture, to blend them or select from among them in order to reduce them to a single voice, it became apparent to me that the early church chose a different path, consciously trying to avoid this. Matthew rewrote Mark, adding to, subtracting from, and otherwise modifying Mark’s story in numerous ways. Had the church wanted to go the fundamentalist route, there was a clear path to... Read more

I think another aspect typical of inerrantist approaches to the Bible interfered with communication in a recent discussion of the subject of “literalism” in the comments on an earlier post. There I asked about the specific meaning, in context, of Matthew 16:28. One commenter kept trying to turn the discussion onto the breadth of possible meanings of “kingdom of God”. Thinking about why this happened, I suspect that this commenter may have been substituting (consciously or unconsciously) Mark’s version of... Read more

“When I became a religious affairs correspondent, and started to meet Christian intellectuals, I came to realise that some at least believed nothing I found abhorrent or ridiculous. They no more take the Bible as a work of history than I do. There were some with whom I could and can talk seriously in the confidence that we understand the world in almost exactly the same light and see it disfigured by the same shadows” (Andrew Brown, “Why I Am... Read more

The latest Dharma Special Access video has been posted. They tend to be up only a short while and then disappear again, so LOST fans will want to hurry over there and find out what they have to say about Christian Shepherd’s white shoes (and whether inside them he has four toes on each foot). Read more

Above I offer my understanding of inerrancy’s circular logic in poster form. I apologize if my statements about “literalism” and “inerrancy” are not couched in the language of friendly dialogue that I usually strive for. But the truth is that supporters of these viewpoints bully other Christians, and make them feel as though they are being unfaithful to God, the Bible and the Church by questioning them. I know this from experience – including being on the bullying side in... Read more