I’ve finally gotten around to converting my conference papers from this year into pdf files and making them available online. Here are the links: Mandaean Polemic Mark’s Missing Ending Feedback is always appreciated! Let me know if for some reason a link doesn’t work. Read more

My sister sent me a link to this video, and I think many readers may appreciate the way it illustrates how communication can go wrong (admittedly not always with such amusing results)… It reminded me of a commercial from a while back that made the same point using different song lyrics (which I wasn’t too surprised to find is also available on YouTube): Read more

[NOTE: In sharing the text of the unsolicited e-mail below, I did not expect so many to find this post via search engines and potentially miss the broader context of discussion on this blog. For those interested in this topic, I would like to also strongly recommend that you read my post on how I know Barack Obama is not the antichrist]. Here’s the text of an unsolicited e-mail I received. Given the interest in the “Obama as antichrist” notion,... Read more

Michael Dowd and Connie Barlow, responsible for the book Thank God For Evolution, have now begun a newsletter called The Evolutionary Times. In related news, the Clergy Letter Project now has its own YouTube channel. And the latest Global Spiral is out from Metanexus, including articles on subjects like Christian physicalism and post-metaphysical theology, as well as an excerpt from Keith Ward’s most recent book (about which I hope to resume, and finish, blogging soon). There’s also video and audio... Read more

Here are members of the Butler Children Orchestra and the League of Extraordinary Musicians performing “Mythos” by Soon Hee Newbold, in a concert I missed the Saturday I was away at SBL: Read more

I had a very interesting conversation at SBL with an old friend and a friend of that friend. I entered the conversation (already in progress) with an abrupt question (from the friend’s friend) about whether I thought the Bible was “the Word of God uniquely revealed” (or something to that effect). As I tried to think of a balanced, witty, insightful and profound reply, my friend chimed in and said “Just answer, no thinking about it, yes or no…” (or... Read more

“Ideologue Ralph Nader’s bestseller Unsafe at Any Speed raised consciousness about the very real dangers of the automobile; ideologue Richard Dawkins’s bestseller The God Delusion raises our consciousness about the very real dangers of religious dogma. Religion, like the automobile, may lead to tens of thousands of pointless deaths every year. Religions, however, are even more valuable than the automobile to humanity. At the price of the “smog” of sometimes misleading superstition, religions keep the prosocial emotions in consciousness. Society... Read more

Tonight I finally got to see the movie Hancock. I wish I had been able to be among the earliest viewers of the movie, to be truly and completely caught off guard when Charlize Theron’s character reveals her power and throws Will Smith’s through the wall, together with the fridge. Even so, it was a great movie, with a lot going for it. The underlying premises are all intriguing – from the idea of a superhero who needs to improve... Read more

One of the surprises waiting for me when I got back from SBL was that the cover design for my forthcoming book The Only True God: Early Christian Monotheism in Its Jewish Contexthad been finished. Here’s what it is going to look like: The fireworks on the cover are not, to my knowledge, intended to represent the “fireworks” that often fly when people discuss God in general or monotheism in particular. The cover is a bit surprising for a book... Read more

Most of the phishing attempts and scam e-mails I warn people about are not hard to spot as such. But here’s one that could just be mistaken for an authentic e-mail by someone who doesn’t look at it closely enough. The key for realizing this is an attempt to get your account info rather than a genuine e-mail from Capital One is that the web site it sends you to is not the Capital One site, but a site made... Read more