NASA just announced that, using the Spitzer Telescope, they have detected a total of seven earth-like planets orbiting the star Trappist-1, and three of them lie in the habitable zone in which liquid water can exist. We can be sure that this system is going to be getting a lot of research attention in coming years. Located 40 light years away, I imagine that we’ll also try to send a probe in that direction as soon as possible, too. Read more
Details in the image above about an upcoming event in Indianapolis, with discussion and some musical foretastes of the upcoming performance of Mendelssohn’s Elijah. The work is fascinating for those interested in the intersection of the Bible and music, from its dramatic beginning with Elijah’s curse, to its ending which incorporates a range of scripture. Hope you can make it to both events, but at least one of them! Read more
IO9 highlighted how the new Star Wars novel Aftermath: Empire’s End has offered a religious justification for the way Obi-Wan lied to Luke in A New Hope. There a passage is read in the Church of the Force from the Journal of the Whills which says: The truth in our soul Is that nothing is true. The question of life Is what then do we do? The burden is ours To penance, we hew. The Force binds us all From a... Read more
The above piece by Russian composer Andrei Petrov is but one of many musical works inspired by the account of creation in Genesis. If you are in Indianapolis, don’t miss the performance tonight of Aaron Copland’s “In The Beginning”! Read more
I love this analogy. Certainly Facebook is the place in our time where one’s so-called friends aggrivate a person’s suffering by commenting on it at length in “conversations” that are in fact more like independent monologues, or indeed diatribes. Perhaps it would be a useful activity to try to paraphrase the Book of Job into a Facebook format? Is that something that a professor should do, or would it work better as a student project? What do you think of... Read more
The entirety of Schoenberg’s “Moses und Aron” is on YouTube (just the music, not a staged version of the opera): So too is his Jacobsleiter (Jacob’s Ladder): Both are fascinating works in terms of both their relationship to Schoenberg’s developing artistic vision (often referred to, despite Schoenberg’s objections, as “atonality”) and his own religious views. I can’t help but think that Schoenberg knew and intended as symbolic not only the opera Moses und Aron (even the spelling of Aaron’s name... Read more
Ham’s brand of Christianity is more like Bible fan fiction than the Christian faith most members of mainstream churches would recognize. It is important not to let Ham defined what it means to be a “real” Christian, since his version is a modern confabulation of Victorian fundamentalism and bonkers pseudo-historical speculation. Visit Colavito’s blog to learn more about the Nephilim vs. dinosaurs gladiator exhibit, and the Tweets related to it, that inspired the above quote. Read more
https://relcfp.tumblr.com/post/157076569064 Read more
Richard Beck’s words in a recent blog post seemed to me meme-worthy. Here is the quote (with a little extra, to show that it is worth clicking through to read the whole thing) – the meme is at the end of the post below… And as the fear of death falls upon us so does the power of the Devil. Gripped by fear our capacities for love, compassion and hospitality quickly dry up and evaporate. Perfect love, battling hard to... Read more
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In