Zeba Crook and Richard Carrier Discuss the Historicity of Jesus

Last updated on: May 21, 2014 at 11:21 am By James F. McGrath

Click the above to watch their discussion on YouTube. I didn’t watch the whole thing, having just gotten back from Israel late last night, but I listened to snippets. On the whole, the parts I listened to seemed to provide a good overview of the scholarly consensus view as well as of the mythicist viewpoint. I appreciated Carrier’s acknowledgment that the argument from silence (especially when coupled with dubious claims such as that “Pontius Pilate was a meticulous record-keeper”) don’t work... Read more

Frozen as Metaphor for Academia

Last updated on: May 21, 2014 at 10:17 am By James F. McGrath

From PhD Comics via Marc Cortez. On a related note, I finally got to watch the movie Frozen on the plane back from Israel yesterday, and really enjoyed it. Read more

Jesus Chris

Last updated on: May 21, 2014 at 8:58 am By James F. McGrath

This example of why it is important to think seriously about placement of labels as a librarian is brought to you via my friend and colleague Brent Hege, who shared the above image on Facebook. Read more

Blinding Belief and Skepticism

Last updated on: May 21, 2014 at 8:13 am By James F. McGrath

IO9 had an article about the way prior assumptions and beliefs affect our perception. If you are prone to believe that the world is filled with miracles, you may believe you have experienced them. But conversely, if you are persuaded in advance that there is no such thing as the supernatural, that too can distort your perception – in ways that can be scientifically studied! In theory, many people – whether Christians, atheists, or something else – try to remain... Read more

Contesting Faith, Truth, and Religious Language at the Creation Museum

Last updated on: May 21, 2014 at 6:05 am By James F. McGrath

My colleague Brent Hege has written what I consider to be quite possibly the most important critique of the Creation Museum from the perspective of Christian theology: “Contesting Faith, Truth, and Religious Language at the Creation Museum: A Historical-Theological Reflection.” It was published in Theology and Science. UPDATE: There was a very small number of free downloads, and so I am sharing a pre-publication version which Brent has kindly made available. Read more

Brentwood Jazz Quartet

Last updated on: May 20, 2014 at 7:02 pm By James F. McGrath

The Brentwood Jazz Quartet offers nice jazz arrangements of some classic Christian melodies. Click on the above for a sample, and if you like it, click through for a longer playlist on YouTube. Read more

How The Hymns Are Chosen

Last updated on: May 20, 2014 at 8:57 am By James F. McGrath

By Dave Walker Read more

What Living In Romania Taught Me About The New Testament

Last updated on: May 19, 2014 at 6:02 pm By James F. McGrath

Here's another repost from the early days of my blog: I love the surprised look on people’s faces when I tell them that I didn’t really understand the New Testament until I lived in Romania. Romania was part of the Roman Empire at one point, but even had this not been the case, it still would be part of that region stretching along the Eastern Mediterranian, up into the Balkans, over into Turkey and North Africa and other places as... Read more

Spotting Bad Science and Scholarship

Last updated on: May 19, 2014 at 8:08 am By James F. McGrath

I became aware of this infographic a while back, and wanted to comment on it, both in relation to science and also in terms of how it relates to other fields. Some of the details are relevant only to the natural sciences – there is no way to double blind test a historical reconstruction. But some things seem to me to be problems with media reporting about science, rather than “bad science,” and precisely the same sorts of issues... Read more

Danger Mines!

Last updated on: May 19, 2014 at 6:25 am By James F. McGrath

Many churches are filled with metaphorical mines, mostly theological, but sometimes of other sorts. But today at Qasr al-Yahud, the traditional site of Jesus' baptism, I saw a church with real ones. The Jordan River at this point is the boundary between Israel and Jordan. Elsewhere the border comes further eastwards. Now that there is peace between Israel and Jordan, the site is open, and so we were a mere 15 feet or so from Jordan (the country, on the... Read more