I began sharing links to interesting things on other blogs on Facebook and Twitter this morning, and I quickly realized that there were so many that it would soon turn into a torrent! And so here is a round-up of some of the posts that grabbed my interest and seemed worth sharing – with a special treat at the end. Let’s begin with David Meadows’ “Skept-o-meter,” i.e. a list of things that sets his alarm bells ringing: Claim is made... Read more
Via Star Roarz on Facebook. Read more
This isn’t the first Star Wars Last Supper I’ve come across. But it is, I think, the first one I’ve seen that includes George Lucas! Read more
A colleague of mine shared this bit of internet nonsense on Facebook: I am disappointed when anyone repeats bogus information without fact-checking it, but I am even more disappointed when it is an educator. I sometimes think that young-earth creationists might be atheists pretending to be delusional and dishonest Christians in order to make Christianity look bad. And when I see these lists of mostly fabricated parallels betwee Horus and Jesus, I suspect that they are created by Christians who... Read more
Via Star Roarz on Facebook Read more
Discussing (on Facebook) Pete Enns’ recent post on Canaanite genocide and the diversity of views in the Bible, I wrote the following, and thought I’d share it here too: Perhaps the key is that reading the Bible, without flattening it to claim that it has a single viewpoint and teaching, will lead us naturally to conclude that we need to figure out for ourselves what to do in conversation with others, and cannot just turn to the Bible to figure... Read more
A post about the nature of the Bible on Tom Rapsas’ blog includes an interesting question. Instead of cursing the fig tree for not bearing fruit in the story in the Gospels, why didn’t he bless it and make it fruitful? The real question for us today should be what the story means, and we ought not to make the mistake of treating it as though it were a real account of miraculous horticulture rather than a symbol. And approached... Read more
From Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal Read more
My students recently submitted assignments on the problem of evil. The reading on this topic included J. L. Mackie’s famous essay “Evil and Omnipotence” (not “Evil and Impotence,” as a student wrote in an essay for a colleague of mine). Mackie discusses the argument that good is a statement of contrast, and thus that there cannot be good without evil. Mackie is not particularly impressed with this line of argument, but students often disagree with Mackie about this. An interesting... Read more
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