The number of supporters of intelligent design who are not religious seems to be rising rapidly. I remember when there didn’t seem to be any. Now there is an organization/blog for such people. ICON-RIDS stands for “International Coalition of Non-Religious ID Scientists & Scholars”. The blog has two contributors. Add that to one person I spoke to on a blog forum once (although it may have been one of the two people already mentioned, let’s assume it wasn’t) and someone... Read more

“To take away a neighbor’s living is to murder him; to deprive an employee of his wage is to shed blood” (Wisdom of Jesus son of Sira, 34: 22). Apologies if anyone assumed from the post’s title that I meant some other person named Jesus. It was a common name, you know… Read more

There has been a lot of discussion of the recent retraction of an old scientific paper by its author, Homer Jacobson. His reason for doing so is that the paper contained errors and inaccuracies, and yet it was being quoted by ‘creation scientists’ as supporting their position. Why didn’t he retract it sooner, you might ask? Because as long as it was a question of what scientists might do with it, he had little to worry about: they would either... Read more

Apparently the (comically unsuccessful) conspiracy that some proponents of intelligent design had been engaged in, to obscure their connection with particular religious traditions and outlooks, is breaking down. Michael Behe has made the connection explicit (in the process he calls Ken Miller a proponent of intelligent design as well). Bill O’Reilly also made the connection between ID and religion explicit, as did Ben Stein. To most people it was perfectly obvious anyway. It certainly was to its supporters in pews.... Read more

In my discussion with colleagues about Philip Kitcher’s book Living With Darwin we discussed the concept of the history of the universe thus far being hard to understand as merely a “3-billion year long curtain-raiser” to get us to the main act, which is us, humanity. Certainly some religious language and traditions may give this impression or even embrace this viewpoint. If you ask me, I doubt that the curtain raiser is over yet. This is still the overture, the... Read more

“As Jesus hung upon the cross of Calvary, it was literally the sin of the world that was hanging there at that moment of history. The people who physically saw that crucifixion, whether or not they were Christ’s followers, saw that it was not the justice but the injustice of man that was being carried out that day. In the arrest, trial and crucifixion of Christ, man’s sin was more than visible: man’s disobedience to God, man’s rejection of truth,... Read more

“Things fall apart”, and one thing that rapidly seems to be disintegrating is the Evangelical identity as typically understood in the second half of the 20th century. Here I’ve been talking of late about the “radical middle“. On the Parchment and Pen blog, there has been a discussion of what other terms, such as “historic Evangelical”, might allow one to distinguish one’s views from those of others (such as Joel Osteen). At Sojourners the term “red letter Christian” has been... Read more

“To demythologize the ascension is not to deny that Jesus “went to heaven”; it is simply to find a way of expressing this in language which takes it out of the realm of current or future space research” (James D. G. Dunn, in his article “Myth” in the Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels (Downers Grove: IVP, 1992) p.568). Read more

Next semester I will be teaching my course on “Paul and the Early Church” again. The last time I taught it, I got students to share the work, researching select passages from a given letter and then making their summaries available. This time, I’d like to try something different. I’ve looked at a number of overviews of Paul’s life and several shorter academic commentaries, but I still don’t feel as though I’ve identified ones that are clearly appropriate for an... Read more

“An event that has been just around the corner for a thousand years is a non-event. Thinking Christians should not behave as if the Parousia was a genuine possibility” (Anthony and Richard Hanson, in Reasonable Belief (Oxford University Press, 1981) p.196). For those not theologically trained, the Parousia is a technical term for the ‘second coming of Jesus’. The first time I read this statement by the Hansons I was shocked that someone could say something like this so bluntly,... Read more