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
The video above is the first part of an interview I did for the online podcast series Talk Gnosis. In a couple of days, they will release the second part which is for subscribers only. Click through for more details about how to become a subscriber, and let me know what you think of the video! Read more
Sometimes we neglect to explain how to do something, assuming that it should be common knowledge, and then live with constant frustration when others fail to know what we think they should. How to write to one’s professor in an appropriate manner is one such area. Perhaps we should just explain the rules, even if it means putting something like this on our syllabuses? Emailing is a genre with its own rules—very different from the rules of texting—that you need... Read more
The second episode in the new X-Files series is sort of X-Files meets X-Men. On the one hand, it had a very strong feel of the classic “monster of the week” kind of episode, while on the other, the specific case was clearly connected to the new theme that abductions and impregnations are the work of the government rather than aliens. For those interested in the intersection of religion and science fiction, there were a number of very interesting moments. The... Read more
Several bloggers have drawn attention to the cartoon above, including PZ Myers and Gavin Rumney. It is interesting to take a closer look at it in view of the recent attempts at discussion with atheists around a post on this blog. There have been a few individuals who’ve wanted to reduce discussions of “God” to one particular definition used by one particular subset of religious individuals. But the realities of human language, as of human religion, are more complex, and to... Read more
Readers of the Bible are sometimes surprised by the warning not just against being too wicked, but also against being too righteous (Ecclesiastes 7:16-17). The above diagram, which came to my attention on Facebook, seems to me to explain the point well. And it turns out it connects naturally with something that I have said in the past about the idea of the “narrow road” and the “slippery slope.” These phrases are used most by conservatives, about sticking to their (admittedly... Read more
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