The past few days I’ve had a bad cold, and this morning our internet service wasn’t working at home, and that made for a quiet day today, blogging-wise. Thinking about that brought the song “Transmission Ends” to my mind, which I haven’t heard since many years ago when I owned the Chris de Burgh album Man on the Line – on vinyl! If you listen to the very end, you’ll probably get why the song came to mind. Chris De Burgh-Transmission... Read more

“To be a fundamentalist, you have to have a book. And you have to forget the book has a history.” — R. Joseph Hoffmann, in his blog post “Defining Fundamentalism“ Read more

Jim Linville has shared a plethora of LOLcats, largely focused around topics related to Biblical studies and academia. In fact, I think it is every LOLcats picture he has ever created, including some I don’t remember seeing before. Below are some of my favorites, but click through to enjoy many, many more. Read more

The Lead shared links to the first two pieces in a new series that Gene Robinson is writing for The Washington Post on homosexuality and the Bible. The first is essentially about hermeneutics and Biblical interpretation. The second focuses on Leviticus. Read more

Here are two renditions of the Romanian Christmas carol “Astăzi vin să-mi plec genunchii.” The music is by Baptist songwriter-composer Nicolae Moldoveanu, and the words are by Simion Cure: Read more

Jay over at The Clever Badger has posted his review of a recent children’s book, Mary Mae and the Gospel Truth, by Sandra Dutton. The book’s focus is on the story of Mary Mae, a child caught between a conservative religious upbringing which includes young-earth creationism, and exposure to science education that she gets at school. I too have received a review copy and am looking forward to reading and reviewing the book as well. Read more

Sandra Dutton suggests that a science-focused theme park would be a good response to the Noah’s Ark Theme Park that Answers in Genesis is planning to build. I know that Indianapolis’ wonderful Children’s Museum includes a number of great science-related components and activities, including a mock fossil dig. But I can’t think of a full-fledged science theme park. Learning occurs surprisingly effectively when we’re not conscious that learning is what we’re doing – we’re just having fun. Alas, that same... Read more

Joel Watts posted on D. M. Baillie’s classic book on Christology, God Was in Christ, and the need for Christology to agree with what is known about the historical figure of Jesus. In the process Joel mentions some “disagreeable points” related to my book The Only True God – although the way he puts it leaves it ambiguous whether he is referring to disagreeable points in my book, or points in my book that make him disagreeable. 🙂 Read more

Steve Wiggins has written a delightful post full of wonderful metaphors related to the way some people use the Bible. Here’s my favorite part: So here’s our dilemma: we live in a society enamored of a book it doesn’t understand. Bible verses are used like Band-aids, pasted over every perceived rupture of continuity, but never quite reaching to the ends of the wound. Even after a semester of bald instruction…students generally revert to what they know. To learn what the... Read more

Mark Stevens has started a meme around the blogosphere, asking what the most embarrassing book is that we have on our shelves. Jim West, Tom Verenna, and George of the blog σφοδρα have already joined in. This is a hard question for me to answer. I have young-earth creationist books on my shelf, which are obvious candidates. But I have hung on to them precisely so that I can critique them when I teach on religion and science. So that lessens the... Read more