Bruce Gerencser shared the above graphic, which another blogger made from a quote of his. Bruce writes, “for any Christian who happens to stumble upon my deep, dark, evil corner of the blogosphere, I’d love to hear your explanation of Jesus saying, love your enemies, while God, the alter-ego of Jesus, tortures his enemies in hell. It seems the words of Jesus don’t match the actions of Jesus.” I’ve suggested before (taking my cue from Rabbi Harold Kushner) that there are principles... Read more
I appreciated the convergence of these two cartoons in my feed today. The first came to my attention via Ted Herrlich. The second is by David Hayward, who also made a similar point in an earlier cartoon: Read more
I appreciated this way that Tim Dooley expressed a major problem with Jesus mythicism on Facebook, and so asked for permission to turn it into a meme. Mythicism tries, on the one hand, to turn the writings of early Christians who thought Jesus had lived in history into evidence of something else, while on the other hand, it concocts belief in Jesus as a purely celestial figure for which the evidence is there own implausible interpretations of texts which appear to mean something else.... Read more
The Institute for Creation Research recently shared the above image on Facebook, claiming that Jesus quotes from Genesis more often than any other book in the Old Testament. That claim is verifiably false. This is a clear example of them (1) assuming that what is central to them simply must have been important to Jesus, (2) not bothering to actually check, (3) asserting as truth what they have not in fact investigated, and (4) not knowing the Bible well enough to have... Read more
A quote from Dan McClellan, which I mentioned in another recent post, and have now turned into a meme. Read more
It may be time to redesignate the so-called “Gospel of Jesus’ Wife” as the “Gospel of Grondin’s Interlinear.” A new development that it has taken me a couple of days to blog about, but which is still in time for the upcoming York Christian Apocrypha Symposium focused on “Fakes, Forgeries, and Fictions: Writing Ancient and Modern Christian Apocrypha.” Mark Goodacre has two guest posts by Andrew Bernhard, and there is also a post by Christian Askeland on the ETC blog.... Read more
Several memes and political cartoons have addressed the hypocrisy in Kim Davis’ desire to have her own freedoms respected, while demanding the right to discriminate against others. Here are a few of my favorites: And this one is from a while back, yet could have been made today: The first two come via other Patheos bloggers Hemant Mehta and Ben Corey. Ben’s mirrors this statement which Daily Kos turned into a meme: Read more
On Facebook, Joe Childers wrote the following: Concerning the county clerk in Kentucky: Religiously neutral civil mechanisms are the only possible way for true religious freedom to exist for multiple religions simultaneously. Civil servants who are religious ought therefore to be even more scrupulous about preserving religious neutrality in their duties than non-religious servants, for they are more directly enjoying religious freedom in their own lives and have more to lose from threats to that freedom. I asked for permission... Read more
Bob MacDonald has posted the latest Biblical Studies Carnival. One of the things he includes is my post about the bloggers’ dinner at SBL and AAR this year. We have a proposed day and time, but still need a venue. Anyone know downtown Atlanta well enough to make some suggestions? The September carnival will be hosted by William Hart Brown. Read more
Michael Kruger has made a video which describes his own experience of having taken classes with Bart Ehrman, who he depicts as attacking Christianity. He complains that youth groups do not prepare student intellectually for their experience at university. That is true – but what Kruger seems to want is not intellectual and academic preparation, but inoculation that will prevent students from learning new things at university. He seems not to realize that it is the inaccurate depictions of the Bible, Christian history,... Read more
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