Creationists can find 3,000 academics who will sign a statement against evolution. That’s not 3,000 academics in relevant fields, just 3,000 academics, including retired ones. I’ve yet to see mythicism show any sign of even coming close to that. And yet supposedly we are to believe that creationism’s 3,000 are irrelevant, but the 10 or so mythicist sympathizers show that the historicity of Jesus is “a theory in crisis”? I had the idea to make the above point a while back, when... Read more
The image above comes from Neil Carter’s blog, and I made a note of it as something to come back to at a later point. But then Kyle Roberts shared a quote from Neil Gillman, asking whether humans invent God or discover God. I appreciated his point that it is not necessary to give an either/or answer. On the one hand, no one ought to resist the conclusion that we project our ideals and our worst tendencies onto the divine, so that... Read more
If you haven’t heard yet, a statement has been issued by a group of hundreds of Muslim scholars, called the Marrakesh Declaration, on the subject of religious minorities in predominantly Muslim countries. After an extensive preamble explaining the context and background, the group does the following: Call upon Muslim scholars and intellectuals around the world to develop a jurisprudence of the concept of “citizenship” which is inclusive of diverse groups. Such jurisprudence shall be rooted in Islamic tradition and principles and... Read more
I really like the suggestion that Shayna Sheinfeld shared in a recent article, for using word clouds in a pre-test and then post-test in classes. If you ask students what they think, or think they know, about a topic, on the first day of class or the start of a new unity, and create a word cloud from their answers, and then do the same at the end of the semester or the end of the unit, you will be able... Read more
It has been interesting teaching my course on the historical Jesus again. Even in the few years that have passed since the last time I taught it, the strong shift in the academy away from an older approach to the subject has been very noticeable. Much of this is due to the impact of the work of scholars like Dale Allison (emphasizing the need to focus on the gist of Jesus) and Chris Keith (leading a charge to highlight the limitations... Read more
We all need a reminder from time to time that the traditions which the conservative hold on to and seek to preserve are not from time immemorial. This topic came up in my Sunday school class recently, and one individual said that he knew people who remembered how the advent of electric lighting in churches in the South had led to the creation of a midweek service on Wednesday nights. Now they are “traditional.” But they had not always been so. If you... Read more
Here are the videos of MYO’s Orchestra A’s performances at their recent Classical Concert at the Hilbert Circle Theater. They performed a movement from Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony: The Bach Concerto for Two Violins (with double the soloists): And Hoedown from Aaron Copland’s Rodeo: If you’d like to learn more about the Metropolitan Youth Orchestra, here’s a video that provides a great overview: And if you enjoy the music they make, the program would benefit greatly from your financial support! Read more
In my class on the Bible we recently covered the story of the Exodus. Just before we reached that point, I noticed a mention of a new documentary, which seemed to be recycling old ideas, called Patterns of Evidence: Exodus, which in turn is based on the book Exodus Myth or History? by David Rohl. I am happy to say that Hector Avalos has looked at the claims of the documentary in detail and shared his criticisms online. The TL;DR version... Read more
Question: What do you call someone who doesn’t know whether two gods exist? Answer: A “diagnostic.” HT Vance Socci for the joke. Read more
Hemant Mehta shared a really useful thought experiment/discussion starter, which deserves to circulate widely. It is inspired by a newspaper column by Robert Kirby, and takes the form of a simple question: if there was a button that you could push, which would tell you definitively whether there is a God, and more specifically, whether your thinking about God is correct or not, would you push it? The question might seem simple to answer, and it might seem that the... Read more
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