The discussion of the way some envisage God as running a protection racket led commenter arcseconds to quip “Nice immortal soul you’ve got there. Pity if something were to happen to it.” I thought that deserved to be turned into a meme. Here are a few attempts. Feel free to do better, and if you make your own, please share it with me! Read more
Mike Kok has been blogging through the question of the genre of the Gospels and the history of scholarship on the subject, and of late he has reached Richard Burridge’s work on whether the Gospels are Bioi, i.e. ancient biographies of the sort written in that historical and cultural context. His latest post features a chart comparing the features in a number of works (the right column of which unfortunately doesn’t show up properly in Chrome). Andrew Lincoln’s forthcoming book... Read more
My review of Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam trilogy has appeared in The Marginalia Review of Books. Click through to read it! Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam trilogy is available on Amazon.com Read more
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A friend of mine recently said to me that there is a need for an “I feel your pain” button on Facebook – something that allows you to express the sympathy that we often want to express by clicking “like” but refrain from doing because “like” sounds as though we are taking pleasure in their pain. What do you think about having an “I feel your pain” button? What other buttons would you add to Facebook posts? Read more
I have sometime found myself in a debate with someone whose views I do not actually find objectionable, because they used the term “Intelligent Design” but meant something very different by it. The view that the cosmos is “intelligently designed,” that the universe is “fine tuned” for the sort of life that we are to come into existence and thrive within it, is very different (in my opinion) from the view that posits Intelligent Design specifically in the realm of... Read more
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SF Signal and IO9 are both reporting that science fiction author Frederick Pohl has passed away. UPDATE: When I first saw this news and blogged about it, I somehow managed to muddle Frederick Pohl and Poul Anderson in my mind. The latter passed away more than a decade ago. I apologize for the confusion. Read more
VinnyJH asked in a recent comment a question that I too have often asked: I’ve often wondered how someone who believes that God designed everything goes about distinguishing the characteristics of a thing that is designed from those of a thing that isn’t. If there are no undesigned things, how do you determine that any criteria can successfully make the distinction? Proponents of Intelligent Design argue that, in the genome, we see evidence of a Designer who created complex specified... Read more
From Cartoon Church. My church doesn't have a first class option, but at least it also doesn't have cramped exit row seating either… Read more
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