I received this in an e-mail from WhoNA: We are pleased to announce our collaboration with Indy PopCon (www.indypopcon.com) to bring Sylvester McCoy as our guest for the convention. Sylvester is better known for his role as the 7th Doctor in Doctor Who and Radagast the Brown from the Hobbit movies. He will be attending all 3 days of the convention and his autograph booth will be right next to us in the Exhibit Hall. Check out further information about... Read more
I find it very odd that, in the year of the 10th anniversary of the debut of the TV series LOST, the biggest news around the world is a plane that went far off course and disappeared. Tony Rossi shared some thoughts and quotes from the show’s stars about the role of spirituality in the series, and in particular the series finale. In a recent Entertainment Weekly interview, the show’s producers said: Cuse: “Lost was metaphorically about lost people looking for... Read more
The quote from Hemant Mehta in the image above comes from a post of his, discussing how young-earth creationists reacted to the announcement yesterday that ripples of gravitational waves from cosmic inflation soon after the Big Bang had been detected and confirmed. It is ironic that anti-science creationists now oppose a scientific view which atheists initially balked at because it reminded them too much of Genesis. I particularly liked the quote, because to genuinely and legitimately reject something, you really... Read more
Both of these were in my Facebook feed last night, and so it seemed worth sharing them together. In case you have missed the news, Fred Phelps, founder of the infamous Westboro Baptist Church, has been excommunicated from that church and is said to be near death. Read more
What else can you imagine being found on the cutting room floor of the Bible's editors? Read more
Richard Carrier’s talk about the Acts of the Apostles seems to slip back and forth between two claims. One is that the work is historical fiction. The other is that it is trying to be history but failing. The actual evidence complicates this claim. Carrier mentions Colin Hemer’s classic study of Acts, Book of Acts in the Setting of Hellenistic History. That work shows that the background information in Acts about individuals and local details are frequently accurate where there... Read more
I just received the official letter that I have been promoted from the rank of associate professor to professor. For those who may not be aware of these aspects of academia, or live in a country where the ranks have different titles, in the United States the system is as follows. The tenure track usually involves being at the rank of assistant professor up until one applies for promotion and tenure in one’s sixth year. The next rank is associate... Read more
A careful reader of the publicity material in the photo in my last post pointed out that it actually mentions “Jesus’ diving nature” where presumably it meant “Jesus’ divine nature.” Proof-reading is crucial! Although perhaps they can say that diving is here a metaphor for the incarnation… Read more
I have yet to read either of the dueling books, How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee and How God Became Jesus: The Real Origins of Belief in Jesus’ Divine Nature—A Response to Bart Ehrman. When I do, I will discuss them in terms of their contents and arguments. But the latter probably wins clean hands down for the cleverer marketing strategy. I just got this in the mail together with a copy of the... Read more
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