My talk yesterday on Doctor Who and religion was well attended. A colleague snapped a photo afterwards when I was still answering questions but numerous people had had to slip out. I honestly don’t remember doing the jazz hands thing, but I’m sure it was appropriate in connection with whatever point I made. Also, apparently the window behind me looked like a cross, and some colleagues wished that I were taller and had extended my hands upwards to allow for... Read more
Rachel Held Evans posted an interview with Derek Webb on her blog. It includes the following wise statement: I have simply tried to avoid giving short answers to questions for which there are no short answers. And I know there is a real temptation in our culture that we must. But that is a lie. Just because someone asks doesn’t mean you have to answer, especially if goes against what feels like wisdom or against your conscience. So I do... Read more
HT Matthew Morgenstern on Facebook Read more
Hemant Mehta shared this church sign. What it says is quite ironic, given that, since it is from a Free Methodist church, it is probably intended to be antievolutionist. But taken at face value, it is an excellent summary, putting in a nutshell a point made at greater length in a chart that Scott Bailey shared: See too the treatment by P Z Myers of the young-earth creationist distinction between historical science and observational science. Read more
Today’s Bizarro comic addresses an interesting theological point. As human beings have found themselves seemingly under assault from forces of nature – volcanoes, earthquakes, floods, storms, etc. – they have sought ways to appease those forces. The idea that they might act mindlessly, that there might be no justice or injustice involved in the destruction they wreak, only blind apathetic processes, seems not to have occurred to anyone until relatively recently, presumably because the very fact of our existence and... Read more
Although it might seem just like one more “Moses parts X” cartoon, today’s Non Sequitur comic actually gets at an interesting point, if you think about it. When people in modern industrialized nations talk about miracles, they often have in mind things like finding a parking spot, or finding one’s car after exiting (it may feel like escaping) the mall. So many people have no sense of what slavery could actually be like, and what liberation from an oppressive dictator... Read more
The title is (I hope obviously) not asking whether Andrew Lincoln was born of a virgin. It is about the book which Andrew Lincoln has written, Born of a Virgin?: Reconceiving Jesus in the Bible, Tradition, and Theology. I had the privilege of reading the book in advance of publication, and have already mentioned it a couple of times here on the blog. Here is what I wrote for the purpose of providing an endorsement: There are topics which are such a... Read more
In my First Year Seminar class “Faith, Doubt, and Reason,” I shared the thought experiment “What Would It Take To Make You Lose Your Faith?” That’s something I shared here on the blog previously, and because of the scenario it has come up in connection in recent discussions of religion and science fiction in general, or Doctor Who in particular. If you are a Christian, and in traveling through time or space in a TARDIS you discovered that some key... Read more
HT IO9 Read more
This is apparently the official poster for the Doctor Who 50th anniversary special. The BBC has released some additional details about the episode. A pressing question for some of us is this: What were the American Academy of Religion and Society of Biblical Literature thinking, scheduling their annual meeting so that it overlaps with such an important event?! Read more
Select your answer to see how you score.
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In