Religious Experience and Psychedelics

Last updated on: February 24, 2025 at 9:53 pm By James F. McGrath

There’s a story behind how we ended up hosting a public lecture at Butler University on “Religious Experience and Psychedelics” and this is it. I was interviewed by Butler University’s student newspaper, The Butler Collegian, about this upcoming public lecture and thought it might be of interest for me to include the entirety of what I provided to the journalist. Each year Butler University has this Series on Religion and Society which brings four speakers to campus to share their expertise... Read more

Severance, Jesus, and the Soul: A Sci-Fi Thought Experiment

Last updated on: February 24, 2025 at 11:29 am By James F. McGrath

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Led To Severance By Jesus I did not expect the latest episode of Severance to feature a character saying that he had been led to severance by Jesus. I have been watching Severance avidly since it first aired. Such an interesting concept, not unlike that explored by Daniel Dennett in his short story philosophical thought experiment “Where Am I?” I’m teaching a course on religion and the mind, and so the show also connects somewhat with that. There had been... Read more

Were the Gospels Anonymous?

Last updated on: February 14, 2025 at 3:04 pm By James F. McGrath

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Someone asked the question on Reddit of whether the New Testament Gospels were anonymous. Here is the answer I provided. My own view is that they were anonymous in the same way that most ancient works were originally and in most copies. In Judaism the biblical texts were known by their first words and not separate titles. In antiquity in general authorship circulated as paratextual information rather than as something written within the text. The custom of listing the author... Read more

AI, Riddles, and the Jesus Seminar

Last updated on: January 30, 2025 at 11:05 am By James F. McGrath

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I read an article that sounded like more of the hype that has surrounded AI from the outset, claiming that AGI is just around the corner. AGI, as a reminder, stands for Artificial General Intelligence. It claimed that AI was already demonstrating superior skill to humans on certain metrics. Skeptical, I looked for details, and one of them was genuinely striking. It involves an LLM solving riddles, which would indeed seem to involve reasoning. If you have read my past... Read more

Motorbikes Don’t Have Windows (A Conversation With ChatGPT)

Last updated on: January 29, 2025 at 10:47 am By James F. McGrath

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I think the best way for me to help my fellow human beings understand what LLMs are and do, and what they are not and cannot be, is to engage in interaction with them in ways that hopefully make this clear. It is crucial to not just listen to what it says as though it is a rational human conversation partner, but what it is doing and how it functions. In the process, I alluded or referred to biblical texts... Read more

Understanding LLMs: Conversations With Claude

Last updated on: January 21, 2025 at 7:55 am By James F. McGrath

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It is urgent that people across all fields and disciplines respond to the appearance of Large Language Models (LLMs) and the chatbot interfaces with which humans can interact with them, but before there can be an appropriate response to LLMs, understanding LLMs must happen first. There is instead widespread misunderstanding, and this article seeks to address that. The most famous LLM is of course ChatGPT, and I have written about it more than once. Lately I have been experimenting with... Read more

New Reviews of Christmaker

Last updated on: January 17, 2025 at 12:59 pm By James F. McGrath

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Two new reviews have appeared online about Christmaker: A Life of John the Baptist. Dave Courtney writes about my book: Every once in a while I come across a book that I finish, set down, and immediately want to discuss with everyone and anyone. This is one such book, Only to find that it’s near impossible to find someone else who has read it. More people need to read this. While I had points of disagreement, it is inspired, fascinating,... Read more

Earthseed and the God’s Gardeners Compared

Last updated on: December 29, 2024 at 5:42 pm By James F. McGrath

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Apparently today is National Science Fiction Day. While also writing an article about the Bible and AI, I tested out the latest version of ChatGPT available at the time (ChatGPT4o, with the letter ‘o’ abbreviating omni) as well as the specific customized version called Scholar GPT, to see what they can do and how I need to adjust my assignments in light of improvements. What better test than to ask Scholar GPT to compare the two fictional religions that feature... Read more

Doctor Who, Joy To The World!

Last updated on: December 25, 2024 at 7:09 pm By James F. McGrath

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This post about the 2024 Doctor Who Christmas special “Joy to the World” will contain spoilers, because this is an episode that a religious studies professor who writes about Doctor Who has to comment on, and there’s no way to do so without discussing details, including the ending. The episode “Joy to the World” doesn’t just have the vague holiday connection that Christmas episodes tend to. The Doctor finds himself at the Time Hotel, which allows people to visit Christmas... Read more