Expanding on a recent theme here, IO9 has hilarious instructions on how to be a more awesome crackpot. Christopher O’Brien and Scott Bailey discussed and shared links to a recent post of mine trying once again to explain differences between scholarship and pseudoscholarship. Scott also shared some humorous comments/expansions on the Facebook fail he shared earlier, many of which illustrate why sometimes just a little bit of thought, rather than extensive scientific knowledge, is sufficient to keep you from being duped by... Read more

I just had the auto-correct feature on my iPad turn a mention of a conference in April into a statement about a “conference in peril.” Fortunately I caught it before I sent the e-mail. But I am starting to wonder if I can turn this feature off, since it would be better to have lots of words underlined in red calling out to be fixed, than to be able to assume that what you intended to type is what actually... Read more

When scholars investigate a question – whether a question about historical events, or the interpretation of a text or other sort of data – they do not work in isolation. In every case, there is some dependence on other scholars who have worked on other aspects of the question, or on other texts or historical matters about which our own expertise is limited, but about which we need to have some understanding to work on the particular problem we are... Read more

Since words did not seem to be sufficing to get through to a mythicist who commented on a recent post on my blog, I have decided to try using pictures. And so hopefully the explanation that follows will be helpful. If you think that the Gospels in the New Testament are the same genre as this: then that probably means that the inside of the Bible you are using looks something like this: If so, that explains what has caused your... Read more

I’ve heard from a couple of people that have had issues commenting on the blog. I would love to ask how many are having this problem – but of course, if you cannot comment, that will make it hard to answer the question! In many cases, if you have trouble logging in with your Blogger/Google account, you can simply use Name/URL, or even post anonymously and self-identify within the comment, in a worst case scenario. I know that at least... Read more

Tim Bulkeley has two posts in the blogosphere today that deserve attention. One is on how modern publishing sometimes looks more like “unpublishing” – a failure to disseminate and share, which is what publishing means. His other post, at The Bible and Interpretation, focuses on how the poor interpretation of the Bible in fundamentalist circles gets mirrored by those atheists who reject the fundamentalist Christian belief system, yet somehow never get beyond the fundamentalist Christian approach to the Bible. Read more

I couldn’t think of a better title for this than the one Scott Bailey provided. From Failbook via Scotteriology Read more

A couple of links that relate by way of comparison and contrast. Steve Wiggins blogs about the human processes involved in building the Bible. In the process he includes the great picture on the right which symbolizes that so nicely. Tony Burke explains why he studies Christian apocrypha, and how it relates to interest in matters not only of faith but of censorship. Also, Daniel McClellan has posted a reminder to vote for the top biblioblog for this month. Read more

My irony meter was off the charts last night when, after just having posted about experts and those who don’t trust them, I saw that Uncommon Descent (the intelligent design blog) had a post illustrating what those without expertise do when they accept this principle, and yet want really badly to nevertheless be able to disagree with experts in a particular field. They simply say that the field in question, in spite of the successful research programs and publications and... Read more

Duane Smith has written a delightful post that reflects on and analyses the point of view of someone who doesn’t trust the experts. Duane’s whole post is important and insightful, and is worth reading and sharing widely. In his post, Duane quotes Isaac Asimov, and since it gets at the heart of the matter in a very memorable way, I want to share it below. The quote itself is well known and you’ve probably heard it before, but it bears... Read more