“Nevertheless the opinion of experts, when it is unanimous, must be accepted by non-experts as more likely to be right than the opposite opinion. The scepticism that I advocate amounts only to this: (1) that when the experts are agreed, the opposite opinion cannot be held to be certain; (2) that when they are not agreed, no opinion can be regarded as certain by a non-expert; and (3) that when they all hold that no sufficient grounds for a positive... Read more
A Christian university offers a “free course” so its students can get a license to carry a concealed firearm? Why are guns so important to the folks at Liberty that they offer a course on concealed carry free of charge? If a Christian college offers free courses on carrying guns, but charges money for courses on the Gospels and the letters of Paul, what does this say about the school’s priorities and mission? The quote comes from Larry Behrendt’s blog... Read more
Kent Hovind has suggested that God may have put difficulties in the Bible to weed out the atheists. I’d like to suggest that it is more likely that God put them in there (if indeed God is to blame) in order to see which Christians would be honest enough to acknowledge them, and which would become dogmatic and dishonest charlatans like Hovind and lie about them. See further the posts about Biblical errancy elsewhere on Patheos blogs Daniel Linford and... Read more
I am pretty sure that this image is just a Star Wars fan trolling Christians. But of course, Qui-Gon does look a lot like the stereotypical image of Jesus, he dies fighting a bad guy who looks a lot like traditional views of the devil, and he manages to resurface from the netherworld of the Force, which is not exactly a resurrection, but still adds up to him fitting a lot of the superficial Christ-figure motifs. So what do you... Read more
Jennifer Guo has posted the latest Biblical Studies Carnival on her blog. Click through to explore highlights from biblioblogging last month. As always, Phil Long has details about upcoming carnivals. Read more
An opinion piece about academic conferences in the New York Times a while back got a lot of attention, and I created a draft post about it but didn’t return to the topic until now. On the one hand, it was saying something that I have said before – that it is hard if not impossible to quantify the value of such conferences, and administrators at some point are going to begin to question their value. On the other hand, the same... Read more
I had the two images above forwarded to me by a blog reader. They represent the average composite that emerged from combining the features of actors who've portrayed Jesus and Satan in films. I'll bet you can tell which is which without needing captions. Does this tell us anything about our stereotypes regarding these figures? Here is some more information about how these images came about, again forwarded to me by the same individual: The project came out of Bluefield... Read more
Happy new year to all who read this blog (and who use the Gregorian Calendar)! Read more
Rachel Held Evans shared the above words, in a post which also says “even the most painful religious experiences cannot simply be discarded. They must be confronted, molded, repurposed. It’s a messy, sacred process” and “Yes, we are called to grow and mature, and yes, our convictions and denominational affiliations will likely change, but I’ve found I’m a better writer—and a better person—when I’m more focused on outgrowing the old me than I am on outgrowing other people in my community.” Click... Read more
Courtesy of Bored Panda. Read more
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