It has often been said that asking the right questions is just as important as, if not more important than, finding answers to the questions we ask. This is perhaps nowhere more true than of the questions asked on final exams. This semester in my course on the Bible I’ve been trying to approach things differently than in the past, focusing on finding reliable information rather than on memorization and recall. The final exam for the course will ask students to... Read more

Doug Chaplin asks whether God loves ET, and shares a classic alien-oriented Christmas carol. Read more

P. Z. Myers looks at how the Louisiana Family Forum is reacting to its defeat as Louisiana’s Board of Elementary and Secondary Education voted to use high quality biology textbooks with reliable information. The Louisiana Family Forum site describes this in a manner that is thoroughly deceptive and misleading, asking in a poll on their web site: “Do you support BESE’s decision today to approve a list of Biology textbooks with known false and inaccurate information?” The “false and inaccurate... Read more

The Panda’s Thumb announced a new site dedicated to following the news about the planned Noah’s ark theme park – or perhaps we could just call it the theme pARK. The site intriguingly suggests that the young-earth creationists at Answers in Genesis put their money where their mouth is and build a full scale ark according to the Bible’s instructions, fill it with the specified numbers of humans and animals, and have it set sail for a year. It would... Read more

The British Library’s project to digitize its manuscripts from the Medieval period and before is continuing. This will eventually include descriptions of its illuminated Hebrew manuscripts. Read more

There are no words strong enough to express how DETESTABLE and REPREHENSIBLE this recent post at IO9 is. I’ll leave you to read it and then come back here to talk about it, if you’re so inclined. I suspect you’ll want to. Read more

IO9 shares pictorial representations of the cosmos, from ancient times until the present. The source is Ptak Science Books, which calls this series a “Visual Chronology of Cosmologies.” It draws on the book The Earliest Cosmologies by William F. Warren, which is available on Google Books: Read more

Chris Brady shares the new rules from the Society of Biblical Literature relating to calls for papers, multiple appearances on the program, and student papers. Read more

Thanks to Sean Winter for early notification about a conference being scheduled for May 2-5, 2012 at Princeton Theological Seminary. The title is “Creation, Conflict, and Cosmos” and the focus of the conference is Romans 5-8. Read more

The title says it all. There’s a post at Irtiqa about the impact that Paul Davies believes the discovery of extraterrestrial life would have on religion. He also discusses whether biological existence is a transitory phase in the history of life. Read more