Thank you to Dănuț Mănăstireanu for drawing this video to my attention! It is taken by a drone, and includes the Dead Sea and its vicinity, including Masada. Read more
Thank you to Dănuț Mănăstireanu for drawing this video to my attention! It is taken by a drone, and includes the Dead Sea and its vicinity, including Masada. Read more
Two blog posts came to my attention yesterday, both focused on the importance of asking the right question, although otherwise on very different topics. First, Ben Irwin highlighted New Testament scholar Dale Martin’s words quoted in the image above. Determining what the loving thing to do is is not simple or challenging. But it is the right place to focus – not on whether something is “what the Bible says,” since the Bible itself tells us time and time again to prioritize love,... Read more
Doctor Who returns to television in September. But Comic Con usually offers teasers for upcoming seasons and movies, and this year is no exception. IO9 shared this trailer, which really does make the upcoming season hard to wait for: The BBC Doctor Who blog breaks down the trailer and highlights lots of details, while IO9 has more details about things Peter Capaldi and others said about the show at the Comic Con panel. There was also a new commercial at Comic Con for Mockingjay... Read more
I confess that I was not aware of Shane Dawson before I saw this video which has been circulating over the past couple of days. [NOTE: video contains swearing] I want to express my appreciation for the honest sincerity with which Dawson talks about his sexual identity. And I want to draw attention to the role that religion and God play in the video. One of the reasons it took therapy for him to be able to finally acknowledge his attraction towards... Read more
We had an interesting discussion of prophecy in my Sunday school class recently, as we continued working our way through 1 Corinthians. I’ve often heard people suggest that preachers are the closest equivalent today to ancient Israel’s prophets. I’ve often viewed that as a problematic stance, since it seems designed to add to the authority of modern preachers, while also ignoring the fact that few such figures today preface their words with “thus says the LORD.” But if one reverses the... Read more
If you don’t get it, look up Luke chapter 4 and read the context. This nicely illustrates the problem with looking up “verses” to see “the Bible says” and constructing your viewpoint from that. Atomized, contextless Bible verses can be configured into lots of different patterns, lots of different theologies. And in some of them, a quote from the Devil apparently fits perfectly well… Read more
I almost opted for the alternative plural forms of both words in the title of this post – “Theoretical Cosmoi and Historical Jesi.” Just in case anyone was wondering. But I figured it was better to have the words in the title be recognizable. I am constantly surprised when mythicists regard the number of theories about the historical Jesus as evidence that there wasn’t one. Academics are aware that numerous theories means two things: the field is a popular and highly productive... Read more
Richard Beck wrote recently about a condition which he calls “orthodox alexithymia.” Here is a sample: Orthodox alexithymia is produced when the intellectual facets of Christian theology, in the pursuit of correct and right belief, become decoupled from emotion, empathy, and fellow-feeling. Orthodox alexithymics are like patients with ventromedial prefrontal cortex brain damage. Their reasoning may be sophisticated and internally consistent but it is disconnected from human emotion. And without Christ-shaped caring to guide the chain of calculation we wind... Read more
I recently had a mythicist troll ask for evidence that Jesus is taught as a historical figure at any secular university. I could have merely offered Butler University and been done with it – and perhaps added the University of North Carolina for good measure. But despite the question coming from someone who was clearly a troll, it seems to me worthwhile not just presenting some of the relevant evidence, but also discussing the trick that some mythicists use to avoid accepting... Read more
Kim Fabricius considers a number of possible and oft-proposed identifications for the opposite of faith, and proposes that the real opposite of faith is fear. He writes: There is a lot of fear around in the church today. Fundamentalists are afraid of scholarship and science. Traditionalists are afraid of change and newness. Many of us are anxious about secularism or alarmed by militant Islam. And a lot of Christians are seeking safety by demanding our rights, defending our territory, acting like victims,... Read more
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