I’ve long complained about the tendency of religious believers to thank God when things go well and blame others when they do not. And so I appreciated this cartoon in the New Yorker (HT Hemant Mehta): Its relevance to the recent discussions about Tim Tebow and other religious athletes is presumably obvious. On a related note, a friend sent me this: To be clear, I have no objection to people giving thanks, or blame, to God, should they see fit... Read more
Today I spotted a pair of animals just across the creek behind my house, which immediately struck me as being too large to be foxes. They have been hanging around, which gave me a chance to get a decent look at them, although they tend not to stand still for photos, and when they do, they camouflage well… So now I add coyotes to the long list of interesting wildlife that I’ve seen in my back yard or near the creek that... Read more
The blog Open Parachute is one of several that has highlighted the survey conducted recently, giving the perspective of a thousand Protestant clergy on subjects like evolution and the age of the earth. As with all surveys, one has to look at who conducted it, who participated, and who would self-select out of the process. LifeWay is a conservative Christian organization, and so it seems unlikely that many mainline Protestants would have participated. There are hundreds of thousands of clergy... Read more
As I continue to watch through Torchwood, I am struck by how much this darker, raunchier, more pessimistic spin-off of Doctor Who focuses on religious themes, imagery, stories and symbols. In this episode, “Dead Man Walking,” we learn that a church had been built on top of a site where a resurrection glove had been found half a millennium earlier. Earlier, when Suzie had been killed and brought back to life, she said that there was only darkness, and the... Read more
As if the news of attempts to get creationism into science classrooms were not bad enough, there is another proposed law that seeks to allow schools to mandate the recitation of the Lord’s prayer. Here’s the text of Senate Bill 251: Sec. 4.6. (a) In order that each student recognize the importance of spiritual development in establishing character and becoming a good citizen, the governing body of a school corporation or the equivalent authority of a charter school may require... Read more
There have been some further posts around the blogosphere about the Talpiot tomb and related matters featured in a recent Bible and Interpretation article, which I blogged about here. James Tabor offers six links for those who want to “keep up” on the latest about the subject. Antonio Lombatti responded via Jim West’s blog (as well as on his own), and then Elliott and Kilty responded to him there as well. UPDATE: Mark Goodacre has chimed in with a few... Read more
I came across a bit of educational humor which I thought might be worth sharing, and reflecting on: Publish or Perish : Ever wonder why God never received a permanent job at a good university? The Reasons : 1. He had only one major publication and it had no references. 2. Some people doubt that he even wrote it himself. 3. He expelled his first 2 students – for learning! 4. When one particular experiment went awry he tried to... Read more
This episode seems like the ultimate LOST/Doctor Who/Torchwood crossover. Martha Jones teams up with Torchwood to take on…Charles Widmore (actually, Professor Copley, played by Alan Dale). The similarity would have been there even if the same actor who played Widmore on LOST had not had the role he did in this episode. We still find his character as the head of a company which does unusual medical research on people. The show seemed at one point to almost be quoting... Read more
Several bloggers have mentioned the upcoming conference and accompanying book, with the title Jesus, Criteria, and the Demise of Authenticity. It might seem that the title could more naturally have been “Jesus and the Demise of Criteria of Authenticity.” But I suspect that the wording is intentional – what has changed is not so much the usefulness of the classic criteria, which often remain useful tools for sifting through evidence, but the expectation that the use of such criteria can... Read more
With his new book Jesus Have I Loved, but Paul?: A Narrative Approach to the Problem of Pauline Christianity, Daniel Kirk attempts to mediate between Paul and those who view him with some degree of suspicion or distaste. This post is part of the blog tour being hosted by Baker Academic Press, and will focus on chapter 3 of the book. Click through to the blog tour hub site for other posts on the book and promotional giveaways! Over recent... Read more
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