Today I saw Star Wars: The Clone Wars with my son, at a matinee showing. We were the only ones there. I am not sure whether that has to do with the nice weather or the at best lukewarm reviews the animated film has received, but I was surprised. The movie is movie certainly has as much of the adventure and depth of story that any other Star Wars film, special, animated series or other installment has had. It also... Read more

According to the majority of Christian fundamentalists, the Book of Revelation is about the future (perhaps distant, perhaps near and already begun). Our future, that is, and not merely the future from the perspective of the time in which it was written. Yet they appear not to have thought through the implications of treating the book in this way, or have ignored substantial parts of the Book of Revelation itself. If the fundamentalist approach (typically what is in technical terms... Read more

I’ve just posted a brief recap of what we covered today in my Sunday school class, as well as what we’ll be doing next time. I tried to move forward in as open-ended a fashion as possible, and I think the topics we touched on ended up being a bit too scattered. Hopefully by looking at a familiar set of stories and asking historical as well as cultural and other kinds of questions, we’ll be able to keep more focused... Read more

Yet another great illustration of the relationship between science such as evolution and pseudoscience such as intelligent design from Sneer Review (click through to see the full-sized version): Evolution is at 2146 meters and rising. Intelligent Design can’t get off the ground. Read more

Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, who will become vice president if John McCain is elected president, has spoken in the past about her views on creation, evolution and science education. Those interested in these issues will want to take a look! Read more

As I’ve been finishing off the manuscript of my book on the burial of Jesus (which should be available from Booksurge in a few weeks if the process goes smoothly), I started thinking (as I often do) about LOST. On LOST, Jack begins catching glimpses of his deceased father. Eventually he finds the empty casket. For a while, we wonder whether we are dealing with something “supernatural” or merely a combination of coincidences and hallucinations. LOST clearly explores spiritual and... Read more

Martin at Sneer Review has posted another installment in his “Teach Both Sides” series of posters. Don’t miss the DNA code in the background! Read more

There may not be a genuine scientific dispute over evolution as such, but there certainly is dispute from those outside of the relevant natural science about whether there is a dispute. Here are just a few recent posts related to evolution on blogs I read: Jason Rosenhouse continues his coverage of the Sixth International Conference on Creationism.Mike the Mad Biologist asks if molecular evolution is a good way to teach this subject to high school students.Mystical Seeker shares a personal... Read more

Classes begin today here at Butler University. This semester I’ll be teaching The Bible, South Asian Civilizations (a core curriculum Global and Historical Studies course), and Heresy (which is, in essence, a course about early Christian extracanonical literature and the debates about and development of doctrine in the early church, but that doesn’t have quite the same appeal that “heresy” does). Read more

Sometime yesterday I had my 150,000th visit to this blog, counting from the time I moved it to Blogger in June of last year. Thanks to all visitors who’ve made this such a fun and interesting experience so far! Read more