Anyone who reads this blog regularly probably thinks the answer is obvious. But the question is asked afresh and explored well in an article by Damien Walter in The Guardian with the same title as this blog post (HT John Morehead on Facebook). It includes great quotes such as “Any sufficiently advanced technocrat will be indistinguishable from God” and “Religion is a battle ground, and walking away from it only concedes the war to your opponents.” Read more
Today is Colin Baker's 70th birthday. And so, to mark the occasion and express my appreciation, I thought I would repost some thoughts I shared when I blogged about “The Twin Dilemma”: When Colin Baker took on the role of the Doctor, something marvellous occurred. More than ever since the first regeneration, there were moments when one could really have believed that this was truly the same character that had featured on the show in its beginning. At times Colin... Read more
It seems that Richard Dawkins may be right about infectious memes. But they aren’t just an issue for religious people. I have on multiple occasions encountered claims by atheists who insist that there was no village of Nazareth in the first century, often citing outdated or misunderstood archaeological data, or worse still, things written by people who are not themselves archaeologists and yet nonetheless feel they are qualified to offer a completely different interpretation of the existing evidence than professional... Read more
“Day of the Daleks” is one of the episodes from the Jon Pertwee era that I clearly remember seeing when I was younger. It may well be the first story I encountered which featured a temporal paradox – time travel from the future to the present in an attempt to stop something from happening, only for it to turn out that the time travelers actually caused the event in the first place. It is also the first episode I remember... Read more
And a couple more great recent items from PHD Comics: Read more
In a blog post about denialism, Mark Hoofnagle writes: Denialism in most people is a defense mechanism that protects their core values from being undermined by reality. And no matter what your ideology, at some point, you will have a conflict with the facts because no ideology perfectly describes or models all of reality. You are going to come into conflict with the facts at some point in your life no matter where you are on the ideological spectrum. The question... Read more
I just noticed that today is June 6th, 2013. That’s 6/6 in the year 2+0+1+3=6. And yet nowhere have I spotted in the blogosphere or on Facebook someone suggesting that today the world will end, the antichrist will arise, or anything else of the sort. Could it be that most people are finally tiring of the end-of-the-world apocalyptic hype? Read more
The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia published in 1915 is very popular among conservative Evangelicals and, being in the public domain, it can be accessed online in quite a number of places. I wonder how many of its users have read the article on “Evolution.” It really illustrates how the modern young-earth creationist stance is not ‘the classic conservative viewpoint’ as it claims to be, and that the view that evolution and Christian faith are incompatible has a long history of... Read more
I've been discussing information literacy in general and Wikipedia in particular not only here, but on Facebook, quite a bit in recent days. One discussion asked about the appropriateness of a scholar citing a Wikipedia article, if only to offer it as a brief introduction to a topic. The question was posed by Joseph Kelly on Facebook: So I’m reading a volume from the LHBOTS, and the second article in it cites a Wikipedia page to orient readers to the... Read more
If you are a scholar or language geek like me, you probably think this post is about writing a homily in Ethiopic. But it isn’t. Geez magazine is looking for people – not necessarily Christians! – who can produce sermons that get away from the tired and painful familiar cliches. You could win up to $500, and I know some readers of this blog might be up for trying! Click through for more details (and see the video below). Since there... Read more
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