Fred Clark posted about the obscure first half of 1 Corinthians 11, and offered a Whovian suggestion about what “because of the angels” might mean. And so I decided it was worth turning into a picture: That passage continues to puzzle me, and my suspicion is that in the first half, Paul is at times quoting the Corinthians, much as he does elsewhere in the letter, perhaps also quoting them quoting his own words, as well as quoting what they said.... Read more
I learned that Unfundamentalist Christians made a version of the Left Behind poster before David Hayward did, and so having shared his, I wanted to share this one and give credit where credit is due. Read more
Here’s a round-up of all my posts about Doctor Who episodes from the Jon Pertwee era: Spearhead from Space Doctor Who and the Silurians The Ambassadors of Death Inferno Terror of the Autons The Mind of Evil The Claws of Axos Colony In Space The Daemons Day of the Daleks The Curse of Peladon The Sea Devils The Mutants The Time Monster The Three Doctors Carnival of Monsters Frontier In Space Planet of the Daleks The Green Death The Time... Read more
David Hayward offers a funny parody of one of the actual official ads for the Left Behind movie. That one claims to speak on behalf of Satan rather than God, however. Read more
From XKCD. HT Marc Cortez and PZ Myers Read more
Think about this for a moment. Jesus didn’t write a book. And yet many of Jesus’ followers believe that the production of a book was one of the most important results of his coming, and the only way to get at who Jesus was, what he stood for, and much else. Supposedly, from the perspective of many in our time, one of the most important aspects of Jesus coming was the creation of the Bible. And yet Jesus neither wrote some... Read more
Hemant Mehta shared the above video, which is based on a new book by  astronomer David Weintraub, Religions and Extraterrestrial Life: How Will We Deal With It? . It might be one to incorporate into a class of mine on either religion and science, or religion and science fiction (the subject spans the two, not yet being something known, but something that we may possibly discover in the future, at which point science fiction would become science fact). One of the... Read more
This episode is of great interest, not only because it marks the end of the Jon Pertwee era, but also because of the strong elements related to Buddhism. Not only broad themes but specific plot elements from this episode are echoed in the later Peter Davison episode with a Buddhist focus, Kinda and Snakedance. The chanting of “om madhi padmi hum” was something the Doctor himself used and recommended in “The Abominable Snowmen.” Here it is used to commune with a being not... Read more
I recently read an assignment which drew on sources critical of the Documentary Hypothesis. Ironically, the assignment was in fact plagiarized from a number of online sources. And at least one of those sources in turn clearly plagiarized from another. Here’s a bit of text: The J, or Jehovahist, document (usually known as the Yahwehist document) supposedly was written around 850 B.C., and was characterized by its use of the divine name Yahweh. Elohim is the divine name that identifies the E, or Elohist,... Read more
Benjamin Corey has a post about how many conservative Christians justify violence. He says, Bottom line: if you think that “love your enemies” is fair game for a thousand loopholes and can’t be taken at face value, then you probably shouldn’t be drawing hard lines on any other issue in scripture. Because, if “love your enemies” isn’t straightforward, we should probably just throw up our arms and admit that nothing else in the Bible could be, either. He also included... Read more
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