David Hayward's cartoon above illustrates what happens when you tackle a question, thinking that all that will be involved is getting a simple answer. Usually instead what you get is an answer that brings with it many more new questions. Or as a character on LOST famously said, “any answers I give you will simply lead to more questions.” Read more
I haven’t tried it out yet, but the news AWOL shared about optical character recognition software that works with ancient Greek is exciting, and so I am passing it on now. If you get to try it out before I do, please let me know how it works! Read more
I’m happy to be part of the Patheos Book Club about Matthew Vines’ book, God and the Gay Christian: The Biblical Case in Support of Same-Sex Relationships. Patheos will be hosting a live chat with the author on May 14 at noon EST, with other guests to include Rachel Held Evans and Tony Jones. This book is absolute dynamite. It is quite possibly the most important book I have encountered on this subject. A lot has been written, but most... Read more
Here’s another YouTube video with a beautiful work by composer Ola Gjeilo, “Evening Prayer.” Read more
Sometimes a Facebook comment can make your day. I had someone tell me that they started reading my blog posts for two reasons. One was Daleks. The other is that they are the grandchild of Clarence L. Goodwin, who endowed the chair to which I was appointed in 2010! I responded with delight at the idea that Goodwin established a chair which supports my research and leads to me writing things that his grandchild now reads and finds interesting. And... Read more
Nijay Gupta kindly responded to my post. This is turning out to be a delightful conversation, one that seems to be drawing increasing numbers of other blogs into it! It seems that Nijay and I may not disagree substantively. I have no qualms about the way he puts it when he writes that, for the early Christians, “Jesus is not just the Davidic kind of “lord” (kyrios), but he is unique as a royal agent of God, deserving recognition as the... Read more
The video above is of James Bechel’s horn concerto, “The Glass Bead Game,” which is a wonderful piece of music. I recently bought a CD which contains that piece, as well as David Maslanka’s trombone concerto, of which there are likewise recordings online, such as this one with Michael Mulcahy as soloist. Read more
I recently had a new journal drawn to my attention, which some readers may also be interested to know about if they aren’t already aware of it. Science, Religion, and Culture is open access, and so click through and take a look to see if it is of interest, either to read or to submit your own work to. Read more
Nijay Gupta has offered a reply on his blog to my post which was critical of his claim that, since Jesus is referred to as “lord” in the New Testament, and “lord” could be used to refer to God, therefore Jesus was being identified with God. My complaint was, in the first instance, about the way the equation was presented, which seemed to me far too simplistic. But as Nijay points out, there are passages in the New Testament where... Read more
Richard Carrier has posted on arguments from consensus on his blog. It is, like most of his posts, unnecessarily long to make the point that it seeks to. Carrier suggests that laypeople can and should evaluate the arguments of experts, even with respect to the consensus. That seems to me strikingly odd – if laypeople who do not have the extensive knowledge professional scholars do can normally (and not just in exceptional rare cases) evaluate matters in that domain, then... Read more
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