Having struggled in vain to get Windows XP to work on my computer (with an nVidia GeForce motherboard and graphics card), and finding indications from others that the blue screen of death (BSOD for those who experience it so often they need an abbreviation) is par for the course when the two are combined, I have returned to Vista. My hesitation to do so was not simply because of issues experienced previously (my “black screen after login” post continues to... Read more

A student who was making a presentation to my class on the Bible today had discovered a page I created a while back, called a Statement of Faith for Biblical Literalists. I am simply reproducing it here, for those readers who may not have seen it: Statement of Faith for Biblical Literalists ARTICLE I: One day = six days Genesis 1:1-2:3 says God completed the creation of the heavens and earth in six days. Genesis 2:4 speaks of the (single)... Read more

Imagine this. A person you don’t know writes to you from her hospital bed, calling you ‘friend’, and offers to transfer power of attorney over her bank account to you in order that you give the money to charity. All she asks for is your personal information and bank details. What makes clear that this is a hoax and a scam? First, there is the obvious fact that a stranger is asking for your bank account details and other personal... Read more

In a comment on my recent post about the flat-earth cosmology assumed by the author of the Gospel of Matthew, one reader of this blog suggested that there is a mountain from which one can see all the kingdoms of the earth – on the moon! That, it is presumed, is where Satan took Jesus in the story in Matthew 4. Apparently for this individual, no lengths are too great to go to in order to defend his presuppositions from... Read more

It has been a while since I’ve shared links to other blogs, and there have been a number that I’ve considered particularly significant. Top of the list is Julie Bogart’s entry The Aberration about modern fundamentalist Christianity as a rather odd and aberrant “blip” far from the mainstream of historic Christianity. If you read only one link from this page, let it be that one. Joel Willitts has a post at Euangelion about the Antioch incident in Galatians 2, which... Read more

There is an interesting panorama photo taken by the Spirit lander on Mars that features what looks like a human or humanoid figure. What has not been noted is the scale of the object, which does not appear to be that far from the lander, and thus is presumably not that big. Be that as it may, this could be the first evidence that someone, at some point in time, played with action figures on Mars. My guess is that... Read more

“I also don’t think that there is really a theory of intelligent design at the present time to propose as a comparable alternative to the Darwinian theory, which is, whatever errors it might contain, a fully worked out scheme. There is no intelligent design theory that’s comparable. Working out a positive theory is the job of the scientific people that we have affiliated with the movement. Some of them are quite convinced that it’s doable, but that’s for them to... Read more

Today one of my students was astute enough to notice the worldview implied in Matthew 4:8, with its reference to a high mountain from which it was possible to view all the kingdoms of the world. Matthew seems to have thought the earth was flat, even though by his time the Greeks had made some progress in detecting the spherical form of the earth. The idea of multiple heavens above and around the earth is found in Paul’s writings, and... Read more

Where does an openness to ‘taking things on faith’ become gullibility? Does God view us favorably when we show we are open to falling for claims that do not have evidentiary support? If so, why would a willingness to believe without evidence that an individual was raised from the dead 2,000 years ago be more positive than a willingness to believe that someone in Nigeria wants to transfer millions of dollars into your account? To state that one of the... Read more