My pastor recently mentioned the fact that, because Earth’s water is a closed system, the water we drink is likely to include, sooner or later, water that was part of the wine at the last supper, or in the Jordan river when Jesus was baptized. Pliny the In-Between turned that scientific fact into an image about people trying to make money off of it. Which is worse? People rejecting science in the name of religion? Or people accepting but misusing... Read more
Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. Amazed and astonished, they asked, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear each of us, in our own native language? Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt... Read more
A conspiracy theorist is someone whose circumstance has conspired to make fantasy preferable to reality. They are unlikely to abandon their alternate reality until we can show them some alternate to the reality they’re fleeing — something better than the powerlessness and the meaninglessness that made the fantasy game seem like a more attractive choice. – Fred Clark Click through for the context. Read more
This Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal cartoon (HT Hemant Mehta) makes a good point that can be taken even further. One could object to any number of things, including things that young-earth creationists claim to be true, on the basis of it supposedly detracting from the value or dignity of human beings. “I didn’t come from a mere fertilized egg.” “I’m not modified dirt.” “I’m not a collection of chemicals.” I’m not a bunch of cells.” But we are a bunch... Read more
The Mandaeans and related topics have gotten mentions in the blogosphere and elsewhere online recently, and so I thought I would round up some of those instances: Brian LePort has been teaching about John the Baptist, and in the process, has been diving into the Mandaean sources. Tony Burke noted, as did I, the Mandaeans as a significant omission in Nicola Denzey Lewis’ recent book, Introduction to “Gnosticism”: Ancient Voices, Christian Worlds. Glenn Snyder noted the problematic treatment of the... Read more
The quote is from Sagan’s book The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, and was drawn to my attention in an article from Junior Skeptic magazine shared on the Skeptic website. Read more
Mike Bell created the above image, displaying the movement of individuals either remaining within or changing out of their religious communities. The data derives from the Pew surveys. I think this is striking in ways that reading the numbers, or graphing them in other ways, has not been. The fact that greater numbers have moved from the mainline to unaffiliated than the reverse, while it has been something close to a fair exchange between evangelicals and the mainline, are among the things... Read more
In a post yesterday, I wrote “Sometimes Biblical scholars are accused of attacking the Bible, or of attacking “believers,” or both. But the truth is that most Biblical scholars love the Bible, and are defending it from the distortions, misrepresentations, and lies that are committed by people who praise the Bible, but either don’t know or ignore what it actually says.” I thought that was memeworthy, and so offered a challenge to meme it. No one took me up on the offer, and... Read more
Another great treatment of philosophy of religion from Existential Comics. Read more
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