From Pearls Before Swine. The cartoon gets at the heart of the matter, which isn’t the religious language that people use or views that they hold per se. The real problem is that people use such language and adopt viewpoints without thinking seriously about what it means and what the implications are. Read more
A couple of calls for papers, which share in common the idea of crossing time and space, albeit in different ways. One is from the Science Fiction & Fantasy Area of the Southwest Popular/American Culture Association, looking for proposals about Doctor Who and Torchwood. The other is for a graduate conference at Duke University on the theme “Across Time and Space: Religious Transmission in Cross-Cultural and Cross-Generational Contexts.” And to go with it, here is a cartoon by Tim “Spike” Davis, for those... Read more
Dealing with an exploitative dictator by overthrowing that ruler and replacing them with oneself as dictator is fighting the dictator, but not dictatorship. Likewise, one can fight fundamentalists in a manner that is equally fundamentalist and so does not fight fundamentalism. This was a comment I left on a recent blog post about diagnosing and treating unreformed fundamentalism. See also Libby Anne’s response to Allan Bevere’s post, in which she offers some interesting push-back on a number of points. Read more
Another great cartoon from Spike Davis. Read more
My recent posts about mythicism, responding to Larry Moran and Jerry Coyne, has sparked discussion on other blogs. See the posts by Don Burrows, Tim O’Neill at a brand new blog called “History for Atheists,” and Chris Eyre. I also had a piece by Brent Lyons drawn to my attention, in which he discusses the pitfalls he fell into when he first started skeptically questioning the historicity of Jesus. Any other posts on this topic that I have missed? UPDATE:... Read more
The “war on Christmas” is Orwellian in character. It never ends, and is manufactured not by the purported enemy but by conservative cultural Christians, as a means of giving people an ideological focus that makes them prone to manipulation. Presumably you have seen the latest version, complaining about plain red cups at Starbucks? John Pavlovitz offered this insight in a post that is worth reading in its entirety: In truth, the War on Christmas cries are really a gift we... Read more
If you’re a student who will be at the Society of Biblical Literature annual meeting in Atlanta in November, why not RSVP for the “What I’m Telling My Students Luncheon” that the Student Advisory Board is holding on November 23rd from 11-12:45? If you attend, and have seen the old headshot of mine that was used on the event website, you will be able to see in person how much weight I’ve lost over the past year! 🙂 Read more
Jim Davila mentioned this piece, “From Sorrowing Earth” by Nigel Butterley, on his blog recently, indicating that the composer was inspired to write another piece, “In the Head the Fire,” by the War Scroll from Qumran. I have not tracked down a recording of the latter piece – if anyone can point me in the right direction, I’d be grateful, as I am very interested in compositions that set extracanonical texts to music, as Rodrigo did with other Qumran texts, Holst did... Read more
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