Today in my Sunday school class, we started a new topic, beginning a study of the Epistle to the Hebrews. We spent a significant amount of the time on authorship, and the uncertainties about it (I explained the reasons why I was persuaded it was not Paul, including the very different style of Greek). I was impressed that everyone was not only open to the possibility that Priscilla might have written it (a possibility apparently first suggested by Adolf von... Read more
David H. Bailey has posted a wonderful blog entry which makes an analogy between Hiroo Onoda, who continued holding his ground according to the commands he had been given during WWII for almost 30 years after the war ended, and young-earth creationists. Here’s a taste: Unlike the history of World War II, the last holdouts in the battle over the age of the earth and evolution have not yet given up. Even in 2013, numerous groups are proposing state laws that... Read more
A friendly reminder to those living in areas where clocks need to be changed tomorrow. Goodbye, hour. You'll be sorely missed. Read more
On Wednesday, John Morehead shared a link to an article about posthumanism, science fiction, and religion. One of the things Martin Erdmann said about science fiction and religion in the article was: These “socially and culturally expedient myths”, however, are purely scientistic in character. That is, they exalt the epistemological imperialism of scientism. Yet, because they present metaphysical claims (e.g., transcendence, unio mystica, physicalism, etc.), the scientistic myths of science fiction still qualify as religions. These religions are developed according... Read more
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Today's Bizarro comic helps focus attention on the relationship between natural instinct and morality. The natural world is full of behavior that could be considered to run counter to many human systems of moral teaching. We do not expect cats to ask, after catching a mouse, “What Would Jesus Do?” – nor even some feline equivalent…perhaps “What Would Aslan Do?” Yet many of the instincts that lead to such behaviors are ones that we share with other living things on... Read more
Both Jim Davila and John Byron link to and discuss the article in The Tablet about a new video game which involves following the rules in Leviticus. I’d be interested to know what sort of possible educational uses a game like this might have, and how much someone who plays it ends up understanding about Leviticus! Read more
David Hayward posted this image on his blog yesterday: His botching of the title (confusing “who’s” and “whose”) isn’t the only problem. The statement in the speech bubble is suggesting that we make God in our image, and David’s commentary points out that we are incapable of completely avoiding idolatry. If we think about God, if we speak about God, we commit idolatry, since we make images with our minds and words, and not just with our hands, utilizing wood... Read more
I apologize for the wacky title, but if a movie is made which features August Pernilla as Mary and Christian Bale as Jesus, then one simply has to make some sort of reference to their other roles along the lines of the title to this post, and get it out of one’s system. Or perhaps we should actually discuss science fiction and superhero saviors in connection with the movie, if there is interest. The movie I am referring to is... Read more
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