I received word yesterday that the eBook from a conference held in 2003, at which I read a paper, has finally been published. The title is Visions of the Human in Science Fiction & Cyberpunk, and the book can be downloaded as a pdf. My chapter is “The Desert of the Real:  Christianity, Buddhism & Baudrillard in The Matrix Films and Popular Culture.” Read more

Via Tom Thatcher I learned that the Australian eJournal of Theology is back and available online. Read more

Hi everyone! Blogger is working again, and so blogging can resume! Apologies to all of you who wanted to comment and couldn’t. As for me, it was even worse – I wanted to blog, and couldn’t! Read more

When a blog ends its life at Blogger and moves to Patheos, do you say that the blog has undergone an aPatheosis? Read more

Charles Halton has shared his translation of the Akkadian “Prayer to Any God” as well as an introductory video. Read more

Chapter 4 of Earl Doherty’s book Jesus: Neither God Nor Man focuses on the subject of disciples and apostles. Doherty begins by asserting that “In the rough and tumble world of religious proselytizing, the appeal to Jesus’ own words and actions, the urge to claim a direct link back to Jesus himself in order to confer authority and reliability on each apostle’s preaching of the Christ, would have been an inevitable and indispensable mark of the early missionary movement. There would also have been an... Read more

Via John Morehead I learned of two interesting articles about robots and artificial intelligence. The first is “The Myth of the Three Laws of Robotics – Why We Can’t Control Intelligence.” It argues that we cannot simply program away the danger of robots harming us or taking over. The second is “Robo Credos, Digi-Dogmas, and Android Orthodoxy: The Belief Systems Of Robots In Cinema.” I think the title says it all. Read more

Respectful Insolence has a post up with the title “Straw men and projection: Tools of quacks and conspiracy theorists to deflect critical thinking.” It will likely be of interest no matter which sort of fringe pseudoscience/pseudoscholarship most interests/frustrates you. Read more

Michael Bird and Joel Willits announced yesterday that their blog Euangelion has moved to Patheos. We’ll be neighbors soon – although I’m guessing I may end up around the corner with the Mainline Protestants.:-) Read more

It is certainly an advantageous aspect of Earl Doherty’s book Jesus: Neither God Nor Man – The Case for a Mythical Jesus that it consists (at least thus far) of relatively short chapters, suitable for blogging. Chapter 3 begins with some general information about the Hellenistic world, before turning its attention to the argument that Paul’s language of Jesus having been revealed suggests something spiritual, and does not naturally serve as a reference to an incarnation (p.40). This last point I... Read more