Another location that I visited while in Rome last summer was the Vatican, and given my interests, I had to get to the Vatican Museum. Here are some photos from that visit – I invite you to stroll through the museum and share my experience! But before we go in and wander together, first, here I am with St. Peter’s Cathedral in the background. Read more
In a recent Facebook exchange, I formulated some points that seem to me to have a wider applicability, and so I am sharing them here, more or less in the same form as I first wrote them… Your underlying aim is to escape from the uncertainty inherent in the human condition. Historical study, for instance, only offers probabilities at best. But you desire certainty, and so you pretend that the Bible is the fruit of the tree of knowledge, and... Read more
Dear students, here’s a super-simple tip on how to avoid plagiarism. Imagine someone reading your sentence and asking, “How do you know that?” If the answer is something like “I read/heard/saw it somewhere” or “somebody told me,” you should acknowledge that source. If the answer is something like “everybody knows that,” you probably don’t need to cite a source—but perhaps verify that the knowledge is really as common as you think. Chris Heard, on Facebook If the above quote doesn’t... Read more
I was delighted to have an opportunity to see an advance screening of Martin Scorsese’s new movie Silence tonight, a couple of days before it opens here in Indianapolis. I went with a friend who has read Shūsaku Endō’s novel, and he said the movie is remarkably faithful to the book – except perhaps the very final shot of the movie, which I won’t say anything about here. This blog review will not remain spoiler free, and so if you are trying... Read more
I have mentioned before that I will be teaching a new course this semester on the Bible and music. And I also shared a setting I made of texts from Amos, to music that I wrote. The score to the piece is now available on IMSLP. Well, another option for students is to take an existing melody and adapt Biblical words to fit. And so in this case too, I felt that I ought to do that myself before asking students to do... Read more
Questioning involves courage, refusal to allow one’s beliefs to be challenged involves fear. And so which should be called “faith” and which should be called “doubt”? The quote resulted from resharing the older post “Doubt in Faith’s Clothing” on Facebook. Read more
The quote comes from James A. Haught’s book 2000 Years of Disbelief. For more about Ustinov’s views on religion, see his interviews in the “This I Believe” series and with Mike Wallace. There is certainly a sense in which beliefs – held dogmatically – divide people. And recognition of our shared uncertainty has the potential to unite us. But the belief that everyone is an inherently valuable human life can also unite us, and crippling doubt not only can fail... Read more
I don’t want to be a ham, but I am sure this author got some ribbing about her name, when writing about Israeli food. Something doesn’t seem quite kosher about this… Perhaps that is the very reason that, unlike on almost any other book cover, here the author’s name is so small that you could almost miss that it is Josephine Bacon. To be fair, this is not as ironic as finding a restaurant called “Cheeseburger in Paradise” on a... Read more
The return of Sherlock on New Year’s Day included a request for Sherlock to become a godparent, which leads him to comment on God. In the episode Sherlock says, “God is a ludicrous fiction, dreamt up by inadequates who abnegate all responsibility to an invisible magic friend.” Yet in the same episode, Sherlock shows himself unable to get jokes made at his expense, and we also learn how his views on determinism have changed. He now views premonitions and intuition as... Read more
I am grateful to have had Christina Petterson’s review of Richard Carrier’s book, On The Historicity of Jesus, drawn to my attention. It appeared in the journal Relegere. Here are two excerpts, to help persuade you to click through and read the rest. I am just sorry that sometime soon, if he hasn’t already done so, Richard Carrier will inevitably declare Petterson incompetent, ignorant, and/or insane. Read more
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