From Piled Higher and Deeper   Read more
From Piled Higher and Deeper   Read more
Peter Kirby has made a ranking of biblioblogs using a different method than has been used in the past: by number of other sites linking there. Exploring Our Matrix comes in at #10. Click through to see the others. Â Â Read more
Some think that they can start with certain information about, and/or knowledge revealed by, God, and then proceed to extrapolate to key values. That those values end up resembling those of the individual and their culture is, we are reassured, entirely coincidental. I’d like to suggest that the process, whether admitted or not, is always the opposite. Sometimes it happened in a previous generation, so that a later generation genuinely does embrace a vision of God and correlated valued which... Read more
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Darton, Longman and Todd has made a free sample of the forthcoming book Time and Relative Dimensions in Faith: Religion and Doctor Who available on Scribd. The book can be pre-ordered on Amazon.com. TIME AND RELATIVE DIMENSIONS IN FAITH: Religion and Doctor Who by davidm1618Â Read more
“Simply pretending to hold a watermelon does not validate your argument.” – Steve Caruso Via Robert Cargill. See also the posts by Nathan Campbell, Tom Verenna, and Joel Watts about Joseph Atwill’s claims for more of the background. (UPDATE: Now see also posts by Unreasonable Faith, Richard Carrier, and JT Eberhard)   Read more
David Hayward shared this cartoon of his: The question of whether Christianity should be community-focused, Bible-focused, or Jesus-focused is itself the focus of a lot of ongoing debate. Most would acknowledge, at least in theory, that Jesus should be the center. But it is debatable whether one can really have “Jesus alone” any more than “Scripture alone.” Human thought is not so easily disentangled. And just as we cannot get at the Scripture independent of our human minds and cultures... Read more
I found this cartoon yesterday on the Polyp website when I was working on my recent post about conspiracy theories and Margaret Atwood’s novel The Year of the Flood. I appreciated its satirical treatment of our tendency to think of Jesus as one of us, one who could address us in this way with no sense of irony or anachronism involved. Read more
Yesterday in my class on religion and science fiction, we began discussing Margaret Atwood’s dystopian novel The Year of the Flood. On the same day, news broke of a salmonella outbreak in multiple states involving some seven different strains of the illness, with CDC workers returning to work despite the so-called government shutdown. News also broke that a UN worker may have brought cholera to Haiti and caused the recent epidemic. How are these connected? The novel is set in... Read more
Several people on Facebook drew my attention to a misleading press release about Joseph Atwill, who is listed there as a “Biblical scholar,” even though there is no evidence that he has relevant qualifications or research to his name. His view is similar to ones that have been discussed on this blog before. The press release claims “ancient confessions recently uncovered now prove, according to Atwill, that the New Testament was written by first-century Roman aristocrats and that they fabricated... Read more
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