Does anyone know what “textbook” this is a photograph of? After I asked that question, a commenter quickly informed me that it is from Behold Your God: Magnifying His Majesty by Frank Hamrick and Jeff Hedgepeth. Take a look: The image has been making the rounds, appearing on BoingBoing and IO9 among other places. Let’s work through the questions in this “textbook,” shall we? The first one says that atheistic evolutionism has to do with “the existence of matter.” In answer... Read more
As a number of other bloggers have already mentioned, the NA28 – that is, the latest critical edition of the Greek New Testament – can be read online for free. It lacks the critical apparatus indicating differences between manuscripts, and features just the eclectic text, i.e. what the committee decided was most likely to represent the original reading. Here’s a sample of what it looks like when you copy and paste from it: ΚΑΤΑ ΙΩΑΝΝΗΝ 1:1 Ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ... Read more
Scot McKnight shared a link to a Yahoo! News item which listed five “useless” and five supposedly better alternative degrees. The data behind the story seems to be bogus. A quick glance at online surveys of alumni indicates that the matter is, at least, more complex. One survey indicates more business majors unemployed than religion majors. And a look at a more reliable source, Georgetown University, suggests that there isn’t a huge gulf between religion majors and business majors when... Read more
David Hayward shared this older cartoon of his today: The title seems to me precisely wrong. There is indeed a dividing line between those who see the world in terms of binary opposites, and those who see the world as rich, complex, deep, beautiful, and defying simple categories. But that line cuts through the whole of humanity, distinguishing between different sorts of religious believers, but also between different sorts of atheists, while placing some in those categories together on the... Read more
Revelation 21:8 says: But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars—they will be consigned to the fiery lake of burning sulfur. Revelation 21:27 adds in reference to the New Jerusalem: Nothing evil will be allowed to enter, nor anyone who practices shameful idolatry and dishonesty—but only those whose names are written in the Lamb’s Book of Life. Given that the claims of young-earth creationism about both the... Read more
Like the proverbial hieroglyphics, the song “My Egyptian Grammar” by The Fiery Furnaces seems like it must have a key somewhere to deciphering it. Can anyone help make sense of it? Both the name of the band and the title of the album from which it comes (Widow City) have religious references. HT The Oriental Institute, which is mentioned in the song. Here are the lyrics: “My Egyptian Grammar” I never thought it could have happened to me. But on the... Read more
Via Inside Higher Ed, I discovered this parody of Les Misérables which depicts instead the despair not of young revolutionaries in France in a bygone era, but young graduates in the present day: I think the video simultaneously makes a useful point, and undermines it, illustrating in the process what education is really for. On the one hand, many students go to university anticipating that it will all but guarantee them a certain type of job or standard of living. It... Read more
Mithras is one of the more popular figures for Jesus mythicists to point to as having been the precursor to and inspiration for everything Christians eventually believed about Jesus. There have been numerous attempts to address the misinformation about bogus and slim parallels online. But since the claims continue to be made (much as creationist misinformation continues to circulate with no apparent effect of its having been debunked on countless occasions), I thought I would mention a couple of Mithras-related... Read more
I continue to encounter – and to find incredibly puzzling – the claim that depicting God creating through evolution portrays God less favorably than depicting God creating directly and instantaneously. Here is why: In either view of creation, the world includes suffering, starvation, carnivores eating other animals, parasites devouring hosts alive, illnesses of a variety of sorts, and much pain. While there is no evidence that the world ever contained living things but lacked the above, even if one accepted... Read more
I’ve long loved the melody “Ashokan Farewell” and so I was delighted when someone brought to my attention this video of Jay Ungar, who wrote it, performing his composition, accompanied by the Molly Mason Family Band. Read more
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