Chris Hallquist has uploaded another chapter of his book for comment/questions. I don’t have anything very helpful to say, since I mostly agree with him and Dennett. “I feel strongly about this, and your questions make me sad” is a really bad approach to an argument about truth claims. I disagree with some of the stuff about the use of mockery , but that’s more a content disagreement than a “I think religious readers will misunderstand X as currently outlined.”... Read more
This weekend, I attended a silent retreat. The timing of the retreat on Saturday made it a good time to reflect on preparations for Advent (and plenty of other things — the retreat ran from 9am-6pm, and my friends offline will know it was only by the grace of God that I kept my motormouth from running all that time). The Advent season is similar to Lent, a time of reflection, purification, and anticipation before a great feast. So, many... Read more
A friend of mine (who you may have seen on this blog as squelchtoad) posed a delightful question on facebook: The doxology at the end of the Lord’s prayer is often written “For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory.” Is it meant to mean “the kingdom, the power, and the glory” or is “the power and the glory” an epithet for “the kingdom”? Catholics don’t incorporate this doxology into the end of the Lord’s Prayer (though, in... Read more
Tis the season for finding gifts, and how could you possibly do better than books? Seriously, when I was a little kid, the tooth fairy left money and YA fiction in our beds. It’s hard for me to cull from my list of favorites, so these seven books (plus one bonus recommendation) are all culled from things I read for the first time in 2012. Oh, and don’t forget that when you buy books or anything on Amazon through my... Read more
Yesterday, I wrote a little response to Chris Hallquist’s open call for comments on his book draft. Turns out I had misunderstood how big a claim Chris was making, which he helpfully clarified in a comment, and I’m sure the finished work will help prevent people from making my mistake. I only had two other issues worth commenting on with the chapter, one that’s picayune, and one that’s probably beyond the scope of what Hallquist is trying to do in this... Read more
Over at Cross Examined, Bob Seidensticker has an objection to C.S. Lewis’s Trilemma, and John E_o raised the same question over here. Bob says, why stay stuck in Lewis’s framework that Jesus Christ must be either a lunatic, a liar, or the Lord of all Creation? Can’t we just pick ‘legend?’ We have no problem with wisdom taken from the Koran or the story of Gilgamesh or the Upanishads or any other book of religion or mythology despite its being... Read more
Chris Hallquist (who blogs in the Patheos Atheist channel as the Uncredible Hallq) is in the process of writing a book tentatively titled Angry Atheists?: Why the Backlash Against Popular Atheism Is Silly. As he writes it, he’s posting drafts of chapters on his blog to invite comment, sort out confusion, etc. The most recent chapter he’s revised and posted is to be Chapter Two: The many gods I don’t believe in (yours included). Since I guess I’m in the intended... Read more
I ordered a copy of Three Parts Dead (and cajoled three friends into having a book club) when I read the ever trustworthy Alyssa Rosenberg’s glowing review. But I just found out that the author is doing an AMA on Reddit, and his intro alone is probably enough to attract the interest of some of you folks. Three Parts Dead follows Tara, a junior associate in an international necromancy firm. She’s been hired to resurrect a dead fire god, but as... Read more
Patheos invited religious bloggers to share stories about people we’re thankful for who’ve supported us in our faith. Technically, they asked us to do this for Thanksgiving, but as I was late to the faith, it’s thematically appropriate that I be late to the prompt as well. I turned out to be embarrassingly easy to snare. When I was coming out of Commons (the big dining hall on campus), Yale Students for Christ were tabling outside, and they’d put up a sign... Read more
Frankenstein is at least the great-uncle of the zombie story. The alternate title of Shelley’s book is The Modern Prometheus and we can’t quite decide, when it comes to necromancy, whether it’s more frightening to have Prometheus, Frankenstein, Faust and all the rest fail in their quest or succeed. Somewhere along the way, our Frankenstein’s creatures acquired a lot more hardware than the bolts in the neck. Today, Shelley’s story has more in common with HAL and cyborgs than it... Read more
Select your answer to see how you score.
Unequally Yoked
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In