From PHD Comics Read more
From PHD Comics Read more
I am delighted to be part of the Patheos book club about Eben Alexander’s book, Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon’s Journey into the Afterlife. It is an account of the author’s experience while in a coma. It may be appropriate to call it a “near death experience.” But that very term may introduce assumptions that deserve investigation. Mystics who were not in comas have claimed to have similar experiences. And so ought the experience be treated primarily in terms of how... Read more
Via First Things Read more
The cartoon above came to my attention via Kissing Fish on Facebook. It is a nice addition to the collection of cartoon tributes to Leonard Nimoy on religious themes which I put together yesterday. IDIC is a Vulcan motto – and we can see it expressed on Star Trek in Spock’s adherence to logic while participating in living and making decisions with beings whose logic, emotions, and even biology are different. The Vulcan salute, as most if not all readers will be... Read more
The title of the first episode of season 4 of LOST comes from Ben’s words of warning to Jack at the end of last season. The episode begins with a flash forward of Hugo driving his vintage Camero in a car chase, pursued by police. He saw something or someone in a convenience store and then ran. While at the police station, he thinks he sees someone swimming and then the room flooding. When the police officer says that he... Read more
The question raised in this People in White Coats cartoon is an interesting one. There are stories of martyrdoms of miracle-workers, and not just from early Christian sources. But do those stories make any sense if the individual in question actually performed the kinds of miracles they are supposed to have? We can understand why a persecuted group might delight in depicting their leaders as doing better than opponents and being vindicated by God in a variety of ways. But what... Read more
It seemed appropriate to round up some of the tributes to Leonard Nimoy which have had religious elements to them. They are all in a similar vein, although The Onion’s is the most distinctive of them, followed by David Hayward’s. Read more
Everyone knows that you can Google. Did you know that you can also Hovind? Notorious charlatan and tax evader Kent Hovind is fairly well known. But his son Eric has followed in his father’s footsteps (with respect to his anti-science stance, not with respect to tax evasion), and has created as search engine that allows you to avoid getting all that nasty accurate information that one might find via Google (assuming one is lucky and knows how to search). It... Read more
The cartoon above is by Tom Gauld. It seems to me to do a good job of illustrating how people tend to exalt their own heritage and denigrate that of others. This relates directly to how Islam is being treated in the media. I’ve said it before: any Christian who reads the Qur’an differently than they would want people to read the Bible is ignoring what is arguably Jesus’ most famous and most central moral teaching: treat others the way... Read more
In an essay earlier this semester, a student quoted Proverbs 18:9 as evidence that laziness was viewed negatively in ancient Israel, expressing themselves in a modern way which seemed to envisage someone who relies on handouts or the system and refuses to work. Prov. 18:9 says: One who is slack in work is close kin to a vandal. Or in another rendering: A lazy person is as bad as someone who destroys things. I offered a comment asking about what this... Read more
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