I’m also going to share the first of three clips (each) about Richard Dawkins, Stephen Weinberg, and atheism that have been made available on YouTube. They will be of interest to students from my Religion and Science class, but presumably also to others. They are from a BBC series called “The Atheism Tapes”.I’m also sharing a clip of John Polkinghorne, and one of a very large number of excerpts from lectures by Ken Miller, who has had a key role… Read more

I’m finally getting around to posting on last Saturday’s Masters of Science Fiction. Unfortunately I didn’t catch the beginning of the show, but even what I saw was wonderful, particularly as it relates to my current research on religion and artificial intelligence. A lawyer who is arguing the case that an android named Jerry is “human” does so by pointing out not its great intelligence (it was built with limited intelligence, to do things like eliminate mines from a minefield… Read more

There is an interesting blog post about the recent Wikipedia edits made by employees at Answers in Genesis. I will let it speak for itself, and share it merely as a follow-up to my previous blog entry about Wikipedia.Also amusing is the release of a creationism board game. There is a review of it in the latest Reports of the National Center for Science Education. Read more

There is a very important post about Richard Bauckham’s recent book Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimonyon the Vridar blog. There it is drawn to our attention that one particular instance of testimony about the Holocaust (an example Bauckham uses in his book), which is assumed to be reliable, turned out to in fact be fiction. A similar point was made about oral tradition by Ted Weeden at SBL not that long ago, pointing out that whereas… Read more

Today is the first day of classes at Butler University. This semester I’m teaching The Bible, Religion and Science, and South Asian Civilizations. Useful links on those subjects are always welcome. What are other faculty and students who are reading this teaching/taking this semester? Read more

Here are some suggestions:1) Don’t Panic – print a copy of the cover of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and paste it on your office door, across your computer screen, wherever necessary.2) Go on the Atkins diet – the first few days can be tough, but then you get a nice boost of energy.3) If your office doesn’t have a coffee maker, buy one, and use it frequently – of course, if you go on the Atkins diet, you… Read more

The famous warning of Dean Inge that “when the church marries the spirit of the age, she finds herself a widow in the next” is particularly relevant when trying to relate one’s faith to science, which is not only always progressing, but often undergoes paradigm shifts that themselves give birth to whole new worldviews. As I gear up to teach a course on religion and science again, I am mindful that by the time the course is over, some givens… Read more

Last night I watched the documentary The Privileged Planet, and also finished reading Paul Davies’ latest book Cosmic Jackpot: Why Our Universe Is Just Right for Life. To the credit of the Discovery Institute, who produced the documentary, they did little more than argue that our place in the universe is special, in a vague sense, and that this indicates that our existence has a purpose. Paul Davies, in his book, makes perfectly clear that he feels simply appealing to… Read more

In order to refer to it more conveniently in a discussion I’ve been having on Scot McKnight’s blog, I’m reposting here an entry from my old blog about the humanity of Jesus and what it means to take it seriously. I begin by mentioning the very strong evidence that Jesus was mistaken about the nearness of the end. Although John Meier has argued that the key sayings (Mark 9:1; 13:30) may stem from the early church rather than being authentic… Read more

There have been some recent discussions and disagreements between scholars in my field about the usefulness or otherwise of Wikipedia. Two recent articles (here and here) show what anyone would have expected – that those with vested interests actively engage in biased editing of its pages. This is no surprise, and anyone who doesn’t understand this facet of all Wiki sources should not be using them. For educators, this means we need to ensure that our students understand the nature… Read more