Everyone knows that images of Jesus have changed over the years, centuries and millennia. Much like Doctor Who has featured different regenerations of its main character, and the show itself has been many different things over the years, one could perhaps usefully ask whether the “character” of Jesus in Christianity does not seem like it is that of a very old time lord who regenerates into someone slightly different in each (re)generation. This thought was sparked not so much by... Read more
Many students show up in required core curriculum courses uncertain why they are being made to take it, and as a result resentful. One of the ways I try to explain the necessity of Liberal Arts elements of education even for those pursuing professional degrees is as follows. If you bench press/lift weights, the reason for doing so is, I suspect, not to prepare yourself just in case you happen to find yourself in a real life situation in which... Read more
On blogs I read, the past few days have seen the sharing of the following videos. You are bound to really love at least one, and will most likely enjoy all of them. First, via IO9 here’s Brent Spiner (aka Cmd. Data) doing his impressive Patrick Steward (aka Jean-Luc Picard) impression: Via Marc Cortez, the world record for parallel parking (very useful on most campuses if you can learn to do it as per the video): Via Irtiqa, a video... Read more
I began this post wanting to share the news that the forger of the lead codices has admitted that they are fakes – but David Elkington is claiming that his are real. See Steve Caruso’s, Joel Watts’, Jim Davila’s and Tom Verenna’s posts on the subject for all the details. Elsewhere in the skeptical blogosphere, Joe Felsenstein points out that criticisms of Dembski’s No Free Lunch continue to be ignored by proponents of Intelligent Design. John Wilson emphasizes that no one takes... Read more
The title of this post is intentionally provocative. It reverses the similarity that some conservative religious believers (and some atheists) will at times use polemically, claiming that liberal believers are, for all practical purposes, no different from atheists. I don’t want to deny that there is a distinction, or that there are similarities. What I want to say is that, to the extent that there are similarities, the resemblance and direction of influence is in most cases the other way... Read more
I was rather surprised to read an article today claiming that most people are unaware that they can search for keywords in documents and websites, as simply as pressing CTRL+F, entering the search term and clicking or pressing enter. I suspect that there are plenty of other things that some of us take for granted, and others never hear about. One thing I have learned to do recently is to turn to Google Books first, even in looking up things... Read more
Although I’ve had this for a while, it seemed worth sharing again for the start of a new academic year… Read more
Brian LePort kindly posted a response from Craig Evans to my blog post about his recent article in The Bible and Interpretation (see also his paper on the subject on his web site). I will be the first to admit that, for Morton Smith to have been telling the truth about finding the text at Mar Saba, rather than having forged it himself, one has to accept some particularly striking coincidences, most notably the similarities with the novel The Mystery... Read more
Fox Mulder on the X-Files had a poster of a UFO in his office, with the words “I Want To Believe.” The poster became famous. But why is it such a popular image? And what is the relationship between that sort of belief and religious belief? Many staple fringe ideas of our time – some of which are regularly featured in science fiction, such as belief in alien abductions and crashed flying saucers at Roswell – have many parallels and... Read more
Jim West posted several entries on his blog connected with the fact that today is the anniversary of the birth of Rudolf Bultmann. Although I appreciate his New Testament work, it is his theological work that I value most. Although many have misconceptions about his idea of “demythologization,” what it is, in essence, is an expression of two core convictions: that it is not possible and not necessary to adopt a first-century pre-scientific worldview in order to be a Christian,... Read more
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