The news has begun to appear on this side of the pond that actress Elisabeth Sladen, famous for her role as Sarah Jane Smith on Doctor Who and the spin-off The Sarah Jane Adventures, died from cancer today. She will be missed, and remembered fondly. There will be many melancholic older fans, and many truly saddened children, when they hear the news. Read more

Nick Norelli has made reference to objective morality again. Rather than write a lengthy comment, I thought I’d turn this into a blog post of its own. Nick’s point, if I’ve understood it, is that there is no objective reality. What God says is good, is good. If God commands slaughtering Canaanites, it is good. If God commands us to love our enemies, it is good. There is no objective standard that we can look to. Whatever God says is... Read more

At both Remnant of Giants and Religion Bulletin, Deane Galbraith continues his series blogging through Maurice Casey’s book Jesus of Nazareth: An independent historian’s account of his life and teaching. The latest post has a doubly-interesting discussion of the ending of Mark’s Gospel. On the one hand, Galbraith presents Casey’s interesting suggestion that the Gospel of Mark is an unfinished draft that was never completed. On the other hand, he argues against Casey for the conclusion that the ending of Mark... Read more

The National Center for Science Education has now made its periodical, Reports of the National Center for Science Education, available online for free. Read more

Sometimes the blogosphere seems to have a collective consciousness, or at least syncronicity. Four posts related to religion and video games appeared in my reader over the past day or so. First, one that answers the question that has been on everyone’s mind since they first played Super Mario Bros.: What’s Down There? Well, ChurchCrunch has the answer: In related news, New Scientist reports that a Godlike princess can not only conquer villains but improve childrens’ behavior. And Faith and Theology... Read more

I don’t know whether Steve Caruso was the original NT Wrong. But he is the new one. Read more

A happy holy week to Christian readers and happy Passover to Jewish readers. I’ve already shared previously some of the most relevant links I’ve come across – such as the social media Exodus – but a few things I’ve seen appear on blogs over the past few days seem to be worth sharing, and somehow interconnected. On the one hand, Duane Galbraith is discussing Maurice Casey’s recent book Jesus of Nazareth: An independent historian’s account of his life and teaching. I... Read more

There has been a lot of discussion over the years about how much and in what ways young-earth creationism and intelligent design are the same and in what ways they are different. Here’s one similarity: both are blasphemous. Both work with the assumption that God would only have created in a certain way, and would not work through processes such as those that biologists, geneticists, and paleontologists study. And since the evidence is more than adequate to demonstrate that the... Read more

A submission in Jim Linville’s creationist LOLCat contest explains why: Meanwhile, at BioBlog Allison Campbell offers another theory (in the looser sense) as to why dinosaurs didn’t survive down to the present day, from Bizarro Comics. Read more

Having created the Biblioblog Reference Library, Steve Caruso is now looking for biblioblog reference librarians to create featured articles – in essence, round-ups of key themes and topics. Read more