Mike Skinner wrote a post about the end-times prophecy approach to the Bible, and the attempt by some to identify Vladmir Putin as Ezekiel’s Gog. Here’s the conclusion: Let’s stop the madness of pretending that ancient prophetic texts are futuristic codes for us to decipher current political events. Let’s read the biblical texts responsibly. Click through to read how he gets there, with good reasons why this way of approaching the Bible is problematic (to say the least). A few days... Read more
Happy St. Patrick's Day! Instead of simply drinking green beer or eating a green bagel, why not read something that Patrick himself wrote? Via the British Library blog, I learned of a website that has images of maniscripts of St. Patrick's Confession which can be viewed online, as well as translations into English and other modern languages. Read more
Via IO9 I learned that the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics has news so important that it needed to tell us today that they will tell us tomorrow. The leading guess is that they have discovered evidence of gravitational waves. But it really could be anything related to astrophysics. And so what do you think it is? Suggest something really exciting, really unlikely, really funny, whatever. If it turns out that you are right, you will be rewarded, as always, with... Read more
David Hayward shared the above cartoon, about coping with post-traumatic church syndrome. It is a real condition. And for victims of abuse, a punching bag – whether literal or metaphorical – can play a crucial role in the healing process. But we also need to be careful. This is one of the reasons abuse victims have been known to turn into abusers themselves. If you generalize from the man who beat you to all fathers or all men, from... Read more
Marc Cortez shared the above image. I think it actually helps get at a serious point. The role of death in the process is the thing that bothers some people about evolution. And yet, as the person who wrote in their own answer realized, death is not a problem unique to one viewpoint or even to evolution. Death is a reality, and no system of thought can pretend that their view makes everything disappear that seems disturbing on other views.... Read more
Via Claudia Christian on Facebook. Read more
Hector Avalos published a news article on the historical Jesus, which illustrates the danger of trying to interpret evidence in a field outside one’s own area of specialty. Avalos wonders how anyone could have doubted that Jesus came in the flesh, as 1 John mentions, if the historicity of Jesus was well established. This misses completely the nature and rationale of docetism, a known phenomenon which most scholars think was in view in the passage in question. Far from arguing... Read more
The Onion regularly features satire aimed at religion, often with good effect. Recent examples include the spoof news video about the leading cause of death being God needing more angels, and this magazine cover: Read more
“We have kept Jesus’ name on the label, but changed the contents of the bottle. The contents are no longer of his moral quality or spiritual integrity”–The Rev. Jacquelyn Russell A friend shared the above quotation from her mother on Facebook, and it seemed to me to deserve to be more widely shared. Read more
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