I was fascinated by the recent New York Times article, “Inside the World of Racist Science Fiction.” Here’s an excerpt: It is unlikely that Mr. Trump has read any of these books. But members of his staff undoubtedly have. His former aide Steve Bannon is a fan of “The Camp of the Saints” and refers to it often — in knowing, offhand ways that betray both his familiarity with racist literature and his awareness of his target audience’s reading habits.... Read more
An article that my colleague Ankur Gupta and I wrote together, exploring the intersection of science fiction, artificial intelligence, wisdom, ethics, and religion, has appeared in a special issue of the journal Religions. The special issue is titled “So Say We All: Religion and Society in Science Fiction” and our article has the title “Writing a Moral Code: Algorithms for Ethical Reasoning by Humans and Machines.” Here’s the abstract: The moral and ethical challenges of living in community pertain not only... Read more
Here’s an example of professional hazard. I saw the above headline come through my feed, and initially thought that it involved some scandal having to do with the ranking of temples, and not the ranking of Temple University… Read more
A colleague shared a piece by Owen Strachan on another Patheos blog, one that argues against the positive view of doubt that is articulated by progressive Christians. I commented on Facebook and shared a few thoughts about it, and think that perhaps it is worth saying the same things and slightly more here on the blog. Here are my main points in response to the piece: 1) For a piece that is supposedly defending the “biblical view” of faith, the entire... Read more
Scot McKnight posted about infant baptism, which is apparently the subject of his new book, It Takes a Church to Baptize. In a series of upcoming blog posts he will talk about how and why he has shifted away from believer’s baptism to favoring infant baptism. I happen to have been baptized twice, which gives me an interesting perspective on this topic. The first time was as an infant in a Roman Catholic church, and the second was as a... Read more
You have probably all heard fundamentalists such as young-earth creationists insist that they don’t interpret the Bible, they just read it, and others should do likewise? Sometimes it is explicit and generally stated in more or less the way I just did. In others it is implicit: don’t see if a day can be interpreted in some manner other than as a literal 24-hour, just take the text at face valuem day means day, what everyone means by day. But... Read more
Steve Wiggins wrote another great post about water as a force of chaos in the Bible and its world. Here is an excerpt: More than a theological statement, the story of creation was actually a singular episode in Yahweh’s ongoing struggle against chaos. Step outside and look at the sky. If it’s blue it’s because there’s unruly water being held back by a great dome over our heads. If it’s gray, it may be raining, or it probably will be... Read more
Some might point to things I do and pictures I share from them as “the definition of nerdiness.” Gen Con presumably springs immediately to mind at the moment. But that isn’t literally a definition, and a definition I read in a book review on the blog of the publisher Hendrikson (for a book by Andy Walsh, Faith Across the Multiverse, that sounds really interesting) offered an actual definition that I like and so want to share. Let me give it in its... Read more
I’ve been meaning to mention this for a while, and didn’t manage to incorporate it into my recent post about comics in academia. And so blogging about this during Gen Con is perhaps the next best thing. A new comic book series called Dark Ark envisages Noah as not merely having to build an ark and gather animals, but also battle forces of darkness that seek to stand in his way. There was also a movie about Jesus as vampire hunter,... Read more
I’ve been meaning for a while to share some photos of the replica of a Mesopotamian board game that was created by my colleague Aaron “Gideon” Sears. With Gen Con having arrived (yesterday was Trade Day for game professionals and educators, today is the first day of Gen Con for everyone else), I’ve had my mind on gaming. I thus thought it was about time to finally get to this blog post. The game he made is a replica of... Read more
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