This cartoon from David Hayward highlights an interesting question. Some think that, if they can find a verse in the Bible that says it is OK to be a jerk, then it is OK to be a jerk. But I’d suggest that, at this point, the very act of looking for justification for being jerk, shows that you are a jerk. And that status doesn’t change, or become less problematic, no matter what the Bible happens to say on the topic. What... Read more
The website IO9 highlighted my work on religion and artificial intelligence today. Click through to take a look. The chapter that article mentions is available on my Selected Works page. It is from the volume I edited, Religion and Science Fiction:. The coolest part was that a former student of mine spotted the piece even before it appeared in my feed reader, and got in touch. He blogs about comic books and other topics at Nerd Out With Me. Please... Read more
I was struck by these words of Michael J. Behe, quoted in a post by Larry Moran: “Malaria is a horrendous scourge…” Behe also treats malaria as evidence of intelligent design. And at least he is consistent, since in The Edge of Evolution: The Search for the Limits of Darwinism he writes: “Maybe the designer isn’t all that beneficent or omnipotent. Science can’t answer questions like that. But denying design simply because it can cause terrible pain is a failure... Read more
I recorded the class I taught yesterday, introducing Paul the apostle and the interpretation of his letters. I thought I would share it here, in case it is of interest. Read more
Young-earth creationism claims to take Genesis literally. It insists that the firmament mentioned there is not a solid dome, and that the “water above” the firmament were water vapors, a vapor canopy that provided the waters for the global flood. Unfortunately for this view, there is no evidence for it from the natural world. But young-earth creationists are notorious for ignoring scientific data, if they think that the Bible justifies their doing so. But unfortunately for them, the Bible is... Read more
I previously mentioned the word cloud that students made using PollEverywhere on the first day of my class on Paul and the early church. Today, I asked them to play “Where’s Pauldo?” and click on a map which I had inserted into Poll Everywhere, indicating where they thought Paul had traveled to. It was a map without modern country information on it, and so that made it particularly challenging. Students knew Paul had been to Greece and to Rome in Italy. Turkey,... Read more
The year before his book on the subject was published, Shirley Jackson Case wrote an article on the question of the historicity of Jesus. I suspect that few modern mythicists have read either. But the article is now available for free online, courtesy of JSTOR. Take a look at it, see how many mythicists there were a century ago, and then let me know if you think that recent claims of a mythicist “resurgence” are justified in our time, as opposed... Read more
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Inequality and social mobility (or lack thereof) in the United States, illustrated with LEGO. HT IO9. Read more
The latest Biblical Studies Carnival has been posted, hosted for the first time by Rob Bradshaw. Mike Skinner will be hosting the next one. HT for the cartoon to Phillip Long. Read more
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