The above Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal cartoon offers a clever rejoinder to the “I don't believe in love” claim. It led me to think of another. One can respond to the claim to disbelieve in love by pointing out that that state of disbelief, and the reasoning that drives it, is every bit as much “just a bunch of chemical reactions” in the brain. And so isn't that stance self-contradictory, akin to saying that one doesn't believe in thought? One... Read more
I like the most recent XKCD cartoon and its take on the “slippery slope” idea. People always assume that one is going to slip in a direction that they want to go. And in fact, often the things that are really valuable are really hard and take a conscious effort. But anything can become a habit, a custom. People who being by volunteering an hour often find themselves working full time for a charity before they know it. That isn’t... Read more
I came across the image above on Reddit. What do you think? Would Genesis be likely to be understood better or worse if it began with “Once upon a time” rather than “In the beginning”? Read more
Someone in the atheist subreddit shared the above image, which they proudly proclaimed that they had fixed to reflect their lack of religious sentiment. A number of commenters there expressed the view that the recipient of the card, even if an atheist, would likely not be impressed with the change. Some think that the only way to appreciate love or a sunset properly is to mention God and ignore or even deny scientific accounts of the processes involved. And some... Read more
Yesterday’s Speed Bump cartoon featured God using a phone with autocorrect, which kept “fixing” his King James English. The cartoon brings into focus a serious point – that people imagine God speaking with the language – and the concepts, and the morals, and much else in terms of baggage – that came with the texts and translations that influenced them. Hence the idea that God speaks in what is in fact merely typical English of the Elizabethan age. Interestingly, Non... Read more
After I shared a link to some parody songs that appeared on the blog “Stuff Fundies Like,” Chris Eyre shared a post that he wrote a while back with some modified song lyrics, to be sung to the tune of a famous Bonnie Tyler song. Here’s the chorus of “Holding Out For a Rapture”: I need a rapture I’m holding out for a rapture ’til the end of my days ‘Cause I don’t want to work For the Kingdom on... Read more
I couldn’t resist (with inspiration from a Facebook comment by Carl Beck Sachs) using this Star Trek phrase in reference to the range of views that scholars hold on the hypothetical document Q, proposed to explain the overlaps between Matthew and Luke on material that is not in Mark. (See the bottom of the post for an image that takes the connection further). Mike Kok has been exploring the evidence for Q on his blog, asking whether Luke knew Matthew’s... Read more
From Friday's Non Sequitur. Human religions tend not to command that one remain at suitable temperatures for humans, either. Read more
There was an interesting article recently about the movie RoboCop, suggesting that director Paul Verhoeven had preemptively connected the main character in the movie with Christ-figure typologies of the superficial sort that some would have inevitably come up with afterwards anyway. It is thus interesting to reflect on how storytelling may satirize – and at the same time contribute to – the kinds of superficial analyses that most frustrate storytellers. It can be challenging to get students and other readers and... Read more
Young-earth creationism does not merely posit a young Earth, but a young universe. And its view of both the Bible and of nature is heretical. And so Peter Kirk has suggested that we refer to it as “young universe creationism heresy.” Or “YUCH” for short. The acronym for “young-universe creationist kookiness” works even better… Read more
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