A bit of interaction on the blog between two commenters produced a helpful analogy to explain why some thinkers find the concept of God a useful one, and preferable to alternatives. One commenter mentioned the famous image of infinite regress: “it’s turtles all the way down.” Another suggested that, when positing a single God as explanation for the existence of the universe, one is positing a turtle that can levitate. A levitating turtle, like a God who simply exists, is... Read more
HT Pharyngula and Crocoduck, and also Hemant Mehta, who has a practical way you can oppose Megan Fox’s crusade for ignorance. The video is incredibly disturbing, an illustration of the willingness of an individual who doesn’t even know how to pronounce words or their meaning to nonetheless make confident assertions about them, which is simply dishonest. Read more
I thought I should share what Richard Beck wrote about the penal substitution theory of the atonement, which is very popular today, particularly among conservative Evangelicals: Prior to Anselm, the main atonement theory used by the church was Christus Victor. Specifically, humanity was being held captive by the Devil and Christ died to free us from this slavery. The Harrowing of Hell icons in the Orthodox church, which are their Easter icons, depict this. In the Harrowing of Hell icons... Read more
A few people took photos of me at the conference, and so I thought I would share them. I have already shared my papers. I felt that all the sessions I was involved in went well. The discussion of Bart Ehrman’s book on Saturday was great. I thought that the mix of people who agreed and disagreed with him, as well as one another, was pretty near perfect. Gabriele Boccacini made the suggestion that there should be more conversations between... Read more
I had an interesting thought when a commenter shared how they respond to the claim that the entire globe must have been covered by the flood spoken of in Genesis. He points out that Acts 2:5 says that “there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven” in Jerusalem, which means the known world and not the entire globe. It struck me that, in order to press that to really mean every nation under the sky, one would have to say that... Read more
This is my conference paper for the Metacriticism of Biblical Studies section at SBL: ______ Can University Walls Keep Out The Internet? James F. McGrath, Butler University ABSTRACT Statements can be found on the websites of many sectarian educational institutions, indicating that faculty and students are required to subscribe to a particular doctrinal statement. The rationale for this was presumably clear, once upon a time. By requiring such conformity, the school could attempt to keep (or when necessary, eject)... Read more
“The Bible is not God, nor is it a substitute for God, and to treat it as if it were God or a surrogate of God is to treat it in the very way that it itself condemns over and over again.” — Peter J. Gomes, The Good Book: Discovering The Bible’s Place In Our Lives, p.40. Read more
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