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
A commenter asked a good question about the geographical shift in early Christianity, from Jesus of Nazareth active primarily in Galilee according to the Synoptic Gospels, to a church whose leaders are based in Jerusalem. One can certainly articulate reasons why a move of this sort would have made sense – Jerusalem was the hub of Jewish life and identity, after all. But there is still less that is indicated about this explicitly in the New Testament than a historian would... Read more
IO9 shared the above comic, depicting a future in which people have found a way to exploit a religious loophole in laws regarding medical ethics. It is OK to make exceptions for sincerely-held religious beliefs. Well, what if someone finds a way to foster certain beliefs, in the interest of scientific advancement…and profit? If you like the comic, you may want to pay a visit to Kickstarter to support the project of which it is a part. But there’s no need to... Read more
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Troll Amnesty Day
I hereby proclaim this day Troll Amnesty Day. Having recently seen a person behaving trollishly on this blog, and dealt with by commenters here without any need to resort to banning them, I’ve decided to lift all previous bans, and give a second chance to all commenters that have previously been banned. This will also give the rest of us another chance to see if we can illustrate ways of dealing with inappropriate behaviors besides banning. I will still ban anything that... Read more