It is fascinating how much misunderstanding there is about transitional species, in particular among those who criticize science without knowing what they are talking about. If someone you know doesn’t understand this point, please share the above explanation with them! Read more
IO9 just posted a piece about transhumanism and fear of “tampering with nature” in the form of gene editing, brain chips, and other such technologies. What I found most interesting, not surprisingly, was the information about how more devout religious people’s views tend to differ from those of others. Here are the statistics: I suspect that many of the people who rank their religious commitment as high are conservative Evangelicals. And yet within conservative Evangelicalism, one often hears that God... Read more
I thought I would turn something I said in a recent post into an image, in case it helps it circulate more widely. I really do think this is an important point! Read more
Hemant Mehta shared a link to a MAD Magazine special issue, which included a two-page feature comparing things that Donald Trump has said with things found in the Bible. One could do this with any candidate, pretty much. But in the case of Trump it seems particularly appropriate because of the way that certain religious people have lent their support to him, in a way that seems quite bizarre given the disconnect between their claims about the importance of the... Read more
I’m in the process of finalizing the reading list for my course on Religion and Science Fiction. I found I could not choose from among the many novel options that I considered for the course. In the past I’ve had one novel and the rest of the course short stories and articles. This time I’m just opting for the latter, since there are plenty more short stories than I have included in the past, which would be perfect for this course... Read more
While in Italy, I had a conversation with a scholar from Sicily about the tendency for English-speaking scholars to ignore scholarship in languages such as Italian and Spanish. While I’ve tried to make a point of noticing, reading, and/or buying scholarly books that relate to my field written in Romanian (scholarship in which language is even more neglected), and I’ve read books in Italian by Edmondo Lupieri which are relevant to my work on the Mandaeans, I still feel that I... Read more
It was interesting to have an article come across my feed, providing guidance about whether one should quit one’s job and create video games instead, at the same time that I became aware that Leigh Grossman has a Kickstarter campaign for an RPG app: Do take a look, and consider either contributing or helping to spread the word. Leigh put together the monumental volume Sense of Wonder, an enormous compendium of science fiction stories and essays to which I contributed. And... Read more
John Morehead shared this exciting call for submissions: Call for Submissions for an anthology volume: Fantastic Fan Cultures and the Sacred They ways in which people pursue religion has changed in America and the West. Traditional, institutional religions are in decline, and even among those who claim “None” as their identity, an individualized spirituality of seeking is growing in popularity. As a part of this quest, the sacred often comes in seemingly nonreligious forms. Gary Laderman, a scholar of religion... Read more
I expect that I will be using Max Stern’s books about Bible and Music and Psalms and Music in connection with my course on the Bible and Music in the Spring. Stern is a composer, and not only is his piece exploring the story of Jacob wrestling with an angel interesting musically, but the expanded retelling on the screen as the music plays in the above video is also fascinating in its own right, as is the choice of images to... Read more
Chuck Queen wrote a helpful post recently, sharing his own experience of interacting with someone who insisted the Bible was clear – but didn’t accept its “clear” teaching on certain matters. The quote above is from that post. Click through to read the rest. I’ve said it often before, but it bears repeating. One should never say that fundamentalist Christians are “Biblical” or “inerrantists” or “literalists.” They are selectively Biblical, selectively literal, and the Bible’s inerrant meaning is always in fact what... Read more
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