Doctor Who is back, and I'm going to be discussing the details of the first episode of the new season, “Deep Breath,” with Peter Capaldi taking over as the Doctor. Spoilers ahead! In the new episode, many things that are familiar to viewers – from a dinosaur in London to Vashtra, Jenny, and Strax – are the first things we see. There seems to be a definite desire to emphasize continuity. This is common in first episodes after regeneration –... Read more
The intersection of religion and Doctor Who in this photo from the Doctor Who world tour caught my eye. How would you caption it? What Doctor Who dialogue could you imagine if this were a scene from an episode? In related news, I'm thinking of including on a list of fun assignments for a class I am teaching this semester, the possibility of writing a Doctor Who minisode in which the Doctor travels back into Earth history and meets Paul... Read more
The quote comes from Jonathan Bernier’s recent post, “Paul, Conversion, and Homosexuality,” and I highly recommend clicking through to read the whole thing. And after two millennia the world has reached the place in its pilgrim journey that it is submitting the matter of same-sex attraction to the rule of love, and the Church is slowly, reluctantly, doing likewise. The experience of Being-in-love has led us to confront our often less-than-loving attitudes towards homosexual persons, and this has brought us... Read more
I saw this ad on Reddit. It is no different than a lot of the degree mill scams around, except this one is using religion in service of the deception. If the Bible is “your only textbook” then you are not getting a college education – not even a Christian college education. Most Christians are aware that, even if you want to go to a Christian college and to major in Bible, you need lots of books to assist you in learning... Read more
Via God of Evolution Read more
This phenomenon has reached a galaxy far, far away. Read more
Sabio Lantz has shared some insightful comments about the problem of generalization in discussion of religion. There’s an extensive quotation below, but click through to read the entire post. Religions around the world nurture conflict and are used as tools for great suffering and nonsense. But religion can also be used in wonderful ways. It is thus a mistake to speak about spiritual and religious traditions as if there existed some coherent, unified, uncontested, unchanging or pristine version of that tradition.... Read more
The quote is something that Arni Zachariassen said on Facebook, and which I have quoted here with his permission. Very often I come across atheist critiques of Christianity that are shallow, uninformed and pretty much not thought through at all. Especially, it seems, in reference to the Bible. I often feel the exacerbated need to correct these critiques. My natural assumption is that they should know better. But why should they? I think we Christians get the critics we deserve.... Read more
The Facebook page “S**t Academics Say” shared two images, which I am passing on below. One is a diagram from Nature about the ways that academics use Twitter. The other is a PHD Comic about the real uses of Twitter by academics. I'll give you the latter first, then the original from Nature that it is based on. Which fits your experience better? Read more
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