Neil Godfrey's latest rant includes a quote from George Orwell, and describes the fact that I will be addressing mythicism and religious freedom in a conference paper as “Orwellian.” And once again, there is no evidence of awareness of Poe's Law, as a mythicist writes things that seem like a ridiculous parody, something that no one could really believe, and yet it is real and not satire. Click through, read the post, see what is going on. Look carefully at... Read more
We really have no way of telling the difference between God revealing God's self through means which produce literature that looks like other religious literature, and people producing religious literature that expresses their beliefs. But given the difficult theological and moral issues that arise from taking the first stance, the second seems more attractive. Why make it harder for ourselves to disagree with ancient authors when they seem from our perspective to have been wrong, when we might be wrong... Read more
I am grateful to Michael Heiser for making me aware of Ben Stanhope's blog, “Remythologized,” and more specifically his post about a visit to the Creation “Museum.” It includes a discussion of Ken Ham's attempt to treat the seraphs of the Bible, winged serpentine beings, as pterosaurs or something similar. Read the entire post. From its subtitle, “27 Million Dollars of Bad Exegesis,” to its conclusion noting that the museum features a claim that the AiG website lists among the... Read more
I shared this a cappella humorous tribute to John Williams a couple of years ago, but it is worth bringing out and sharing again from time to time. I was reminded of it by the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra on Facebook, which is currently performing a series of concerts featuring John Williams’ music. Read more
Hemant Mehta has shared some photos from the unveiling of an atheist monument in front of a Florida courthouse. It was set up in response to the failure of the court to remove a ten commandments monument from that site. What I think is most interesting is that, in addition to quotes from a famous atheist, it also includes quotations from two Deists (see the recent discussion of Deism here), and a list of the punishments in ancient Israelite laws... Read more
In a recent blog post, Larry Hurtado noted Morton Smith's observation that Christology never turns up as an issue between Paul and the more conservative Jewish Christian groups that he interacted with directly and indirectly, centered in Jerusalem. And so this seems to confirm that Paul did not take a Jewish Messianic figure and turn him into something else for a Gentile audience. How does this relate to our overall interpretation of Paul's Christilogical statements, such as those from Philippians... Read more
Thanks to IO9 to sharing this explanation of Joseph Campbell’s idea of the hero’s journey, the set of standard features that recur in human storytelling, sometimes referred to as the monomyth. It actually does an impressive job of illustrating not just that there are recurring features, but also that myths, legends, and storytelling often switch up or combine the elements. Read more
Before Vridar had been shut down as a result of a copyright complaint from Joel Watts, I had begun to respond to something Neil Godfrey wrote there. Now that his blog is back (at the different address of Vridar.org), I will do so. But let me first direct readers to some discussion of the events that unfolded resulting in the blog being removed by WordPress. In addition to my own post (where much came to light in the discussion thread), see Ian’s... Read more
David Hayward has done it again. Such a simple and yet such a poignant idea – that in at least some instances, the church has become like Pharaoh. Behaving like tyrants, many authoritarian pastors have become the sorts of oppessive dictators that God's people need to be liberated from. Frequently in Jewish tradition, as well as in some streams of Christianity, the Exodus story is less about what supposedly happened at one time in the past, and more about a... Read more
If you are reading this in Google Reader, you probably need this reminder. Google Reader will cease to be available on July 1st and you will lose all your feeds and other data if you have not exported them before then. I have been using The Old Reader, because I want to be able to share select posts with people. But for those who do not need that functionality, many recommend Feedly as a convenient replacement. But for the short-term,... Read more
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