What is Progressive Christianity? For me, it is a form of Christianity which tries to do justice to the following:
1) Christianity has naturally (if not consistently) historically stood for those values that bear the label "progressive" or "liberal": racial equality, social justice, poverty, inclusiveness, and so on.
2) To be a Christian at all, one has to allow for progressive revelation. One cannot claim that the Bible is authoritative, inspired, or anything else without realizing that there is change over the course of the Bible. Some recognize this, but stop at the end of the New Testament. Others stop with the creeds. But why stop at all? Why not accept that progressive revelation, however one understands it, is open ended and never finished? Looking back, and looking around, we can see things that New Testament authors didn't see, and find other solutions to the same problems they sought to address.
3) Progress is not only made in theology or in revelation but even more obviously in our knowledge of the natural world. Information from the sciences needs to be embraced as a source of progressive revelation, one whose certainty is far greater than even the most dearly cherished theological affirmation.
Here are some other sources I've come across recently, reflecting a progressive Christian perspective:
A talk by Rev. Tom Honey, which addresses head-on the popular view of God, which leaves us with a God who can get us a parking space but not stop a tsunami wave:
(HT Debunking Christianity)
Mystical Seeker drew attention to a nice article in Macleans about contemporary scholarly and progressive views of Jesus.
There is a Center for Progressive Christianity (and a specifically Canadian one too).
Monday, March 31, 2008
Quote of the Day (P. Z. Myers)
"I do not peddle atheism in the classroom, and am actually very careful, since I am a vocal atheist in the blogosphere, to reassure my students that apostasy is not required to get an "A" in my classes, and that they are free to hold whatever religious beliefs they want — the biology classroom is about evidence, not belief, and explanations supported by logic, not revelation" (P. Z. Myers, on his blog Pharyngula).
Firefox Expelled?
My last post featuring Expelled! The Video Game uses Java to allow the game to be played directly on the page if you have Java installed. If you don't and you use Microsoft Internet Explorer, you just see a box with a red x. Someone recently told me that on Firefox this crashes the browser altogether. This is bad news, but perhaps someone reading this knows enough about Firefox to suggest a solution. I'd prefer to not remove the playable version of the game and spoil the seconds of enjoyment it will give to visitors to my blog...
Sunday, March 30, 2008
Expelled! The Video Game
Pseudoscience needs the support of a video game to really flourish. Following on the great success of our Michael Behe vs. the Mousetrap game, we've now added a new addition to our products: Expelled! The Video Game.
Ben Stein is the wizard trying to defend his movie theater of hocus pocus from intruding scientists. Use left and right arrows to change P. Z. Myers' direction at any time. Press the space bar to have Ben Stein cast his spell and attempt to make PZ fade into ghostly nothingness.
Avoid the 'd' key at all costs, or Richard Dawkins will sneak past, right under Ben's nose!
[Like the last game, this one was created using MIT's Scratch program. Feel free to tinker with the game and make improvements, and if you do, please leave a comment with a link to let me know!]
Learn more about this project
Ben Stein is the wizard trying to defend his movie theater of hocus pocus from intruding scientists. Use left and right arrows to change P. Z. Myers' direction at any time. Press the space bar to have Ben Stein cast his spell and attempt to make PZ fade into ghostly nothingness.
Avoid the 'd' key at all costs, or Richard Dawkins will sneak past, right under Ben's nose!
[Like the last game, this one was created using MIT's Scratch program. Feel free to tinker with the game and make improvements, and if you do, please leave a comment with a link to let me know!]
Learn more about this project
Saturday, March 29, 2008
Around the Blogosphere
Metacatholic discusses the words attributed to Jesus in the Gospel of John and their implications for C. S. Lewis' famous 'trilemma'.
Thoughts in a Haystack highlights an insightful article about fundamentalism. Jim West also did so.
Henry Neufeld gives a wonderful summary of why there is nothing appealing about seeing the movie Expelled!.
Matt discusses what to do when the dishonorable ask you to do the honorable thing and stop pointing out their lack of honor.
Thoughts in a Haystack highlights an insightful article about fundamentalism. Jim West also did so.
Henry Neufeld gives a wonderful summary of why there is nothing appealing about seeing the movie Expelled!.
Matt discusses what to do when the dishonorable ask you to do the honorable thing and stop pointing out their lack of honor.
Quote of the Day (James Rowe Adams)
"I don't think we can describe God in any way. Human saying that God exists is to me a nonsense statement. That would mean that God is somehow confined within our intellectual capacities. The only thing we can do is say we have experiences and talk about some of those experiences by using God language. It is the only way we have to talk about such wonders as how we find ourselves at one with each other and the universe" (James Rowe Adams, quoted in Gary Stern, Can God Intervene? How Religion Explains Natural Disasters (Westport: Praeger, 2007) p.99).
Friday, March 28, 2008
Democralypse Now
A clip from Stephen Colbert's Democralypse Now has been shared on the Commonweal blog. It offers an entertaining view of the relationship between presidential candidates and controversial preachers.
Reviews of Michael Behe's The Edge of Evolution
Yesterday I mentioned Stephen Webb's review of Behe's The Edge of Evolution for Christianity Today's web site. A while back I wrote a review of Behe's book on this blog, which I also posted at Amazon.com, where it also led to some discussion. I also addressed the old "monkeys with typewriters" illustration, emphasizing that to be a meaningful analogy, one has to have a typewriter with only four letters (A, C, G and T), a language where every word has three letters, and where every combination of three letters is found in nature and means something.
Since the discussion of the book is apparently ongoing, I thought I'd revisit these earlier posts. For the perspective of biologists, see in particular the review by Sean Carroll, as well as those by Paul Gross, Ken Miller and Richard Dawkins. Ken Miller and Francisco Ayala are two Christians who are also top-notch biologists who have addressed Intelligent Design in general, and Behe's claims in particular, in their books, considering them from a theological as well as a scientific perspective. They find Behe's arguments wanting on both counts.
Since the discussion of the book is apparently ongoing, I thought I'd revisit these earlier posts. For the perspective of biologists, see in particular the review by Sean Carroll, as well as those by Paul Gross, Ken Miller and Richard Dawkins. Ken Miller and Francisco Ayala are two Christians who are also top-notch biologists who have addressed Intelligent Design in general, and Behe's claims in particular, in their books, considering them from a theological as well as a scientific perspective. They find Behe's arguments wanting on both counts.
Thursday, March 27, 2008
Fixed Earth: Setting the Record Straight
Jim West pointed out to me a web site called Fixed Earth, defending geocentrism from its opponents (who range from NASA to Madonna, apparently). It nicely illustrates that there are positions that are far more "literalistic" in their approach to the Bible, and thus far more ridiculous, but it is helpful to be able to ask those who claim they are interpreting the Bible literally why they don't hold those sorts of views.
Ultimately, longing to have a fixed earth reflects the fundamentalist longing to recover that feeling from childhood when you just knew you were the center of the universe, and that parents, life, angels, God and all that exists revolve around you. It isn't an expression of theocentrism but anthropocentrism and ultimately egocentrism.
A passage from the Bible that is mentioned on the site, however, is worth noting, since it makes it somewhat more likely that there was a historical Joshua, even though he clearly did not do most of the things attributed to him in the book that bears his name. According to one of the sources used by the author of Joshua, the Book of Jashar, Joshua addressed himself to the sun and moon. Since the author of the Book of Joshua opposed the worship of the sun and moon, and in his editorial comment makes it the LORD who stops the sun and moon in response to Joshua, it is clear that there was an earlier story in which the sun and moon were addressed as the Sun and Moon. How early this source was, and whether it is based on early historical traditions, we cannot tell, but at least it is clear that Joshua is not merely a figure invented from scratch in the time of king Josiah.
Also worth noting is the old story that NASA 'found' a missing day because of Joshua, which like most rumors and legends refuses to die out. The story is utterly false, as well as nonsensical if one thinks about it logically even for a few moments. The fact that it continues to circulate should give pause to anyone who tries to argue for the historicity of information in the Gospels on the basis that "eyewitnesses were still alive who could have set the record straight". Just try setting the record straight about anything. It is harder than it sounds!
Ultimately, longing to have a fixed earth reflects the fundamentalist longing to recover that feeling from childhood when you just knew you were the center of the universe, and that parents, life, angels, God and all that exists revolve around you. It isn't an expression of theocentrism but anthropocentrism and ultimately egocentrism.
A passage from the Bible that is mentioned on the site, however, is worth noting, since it makes it somewhat more likely that there was a historical Joshua, even though he clearly did not do most of the things attributed to him in the book that bears his name. According to one of the sources used by the author of Joshua, the Book of Jashar, Joshua addressed himself to the sun and moon. Since the author of the Book of Joshua opposed the worship of the sun and moon, and in his editorial comment makes it the LORD who stops the sun and moon in response to Joshua, it is clear that there was an earlier story in which the sun and moon were addressed as the Sun and Moon. How early this source was, and whether it is based on early historical traditions, we cannot tell, but at least it is clear that Joshua is not merely a figure invented from scratch in the time of king Josiah.
Also worth noting is the old story that NASA 'found' a missing day because of Joshua, which like most rumors and legends refuses to die out. The story is utterly false, as well as nonsensical if one thinks about it logically even for a few moments. The fact that it continues to circulate should give pause to anyone who tries to argue for the historicity of information in the Gospels on the basis that "eyewitnesses were still alive who could have set the record straight". Just try setting the record straight about anything. It is harder than it sounds!
Stephen Webb on Michael Behe
Thanks to The Panda's Thumb for drawing attention to Stephen Webb's review of Michael Behe's latest book for the Christianity Today web site. I know Stephen, and thus hope that the comment I left (reproduced immediately below) is taken in the spirit of dialogue with which it is offered:
Stephen, you know I like you as a person, but this review simply shows how easily Behe's case can seem persuasive to someone who is outside of the fields of biochemistry, biology, genetics, and other relevant fields. But the truth is that scientists within those fields have looked at Behe's arguments, and have found them wanting. Behe has failed to persuade the overwhelming majority of scientists for one simple reason: they know the evidence far better than the general public does.
I am reminded of the Book of Proverbs, which warns us that "The first person to present his case seems right, until another steps forward and questions him". I'd encourage you to allow Behe to be cross-examined by one of the Christians who also has relevant expertise in biology, such as Ken Miller or Francisco Ayala, and then see if Behe's arguments seem as persuasive as you apparently find them now.
Are You Sure? Teaching Windows Vista to Trust its Users
Having had much interest in my solution to the black screen after login problem on Vista, I was encouraged to share what I know (even though it isn't my own solution) about shutting off the requests for confirmation when running a program.
The name of this annoying feature is the User Account Controls. All you need to do to switch it off is search for "User Account Controls" - then all you need is the willingness once you've done that to keep clicking that you do indeed want to switch it off, even when it asks repeatedly whether you are sure, and suggests it isn't a good idea. The links in this post will help if you need step-by-step and even pictorial guides. You can even get rid of the "Windows has blocked some programs" balloon.
With all these requests for confirmation, I am reminded of the piece of humor that has circulated (which is not an account of something that actually happened) about what it would look like if GM made computers and if Microsoft made cars.
The name of this annoying feature is the User Account Controls. All you need to do to switch it off is search for "User Account Controls" - then all you need is the willingness once you've done that to keep clicking that you do indeed want to switch it off, even when it asks repeatedly whether you are sure, and suggests it isn't a good idea. The links in this post will help if you need step-by-step and even pictorial guides. You can even get rid of the "Windows has blocked some programs" balloon.
With all these requests for confirmation, I am reminded of the piece of humor that has circulated (which is not an account of something that actually happened) about what it would look like if GM made computers and if Microsoft made cars.
Can Noah's Ark Be Salvaged?
This post is not about whether a 'real ark' can be found on a mountain somewhere. The question is whether the story of Noah's Ark can be told today in a way that continues to serve any healthy, positive, meaningful purpose. The story is so familiar from childhood that we can forget that it is about God obliterating not merely the whole human race except for Noah and his family, but also every other living thing. The fact that this is clearly not a story about something that actually happened can alleviate some of the difficulty, although not all. The same applies to other morally difficult stories in the Bible, such as the accounts of genocide in Joshua - that these are not factual historical accounts helps, but does not resolve the issue entirely. Like these, the story of Noah's ark remains a story that depicts God as though God would do this sort of thing, and it is imperative to ask why, and whether we can make sense of it.
We can certainly use the story to ask difficult questions about how we personify and anthropomorphize God, but in doing so we will have to read against the grain of the story. We will need to ask whether God is to be thought of as a celestial Andrea Yates, who even though she knows every hair on each of her children's heads, nonetheless submerges each one in the water until they are drowned, because she knows she cannot protect them from turning away from her and living evil lives in the future. But in so doing, most would say that she herself has crossed the border into evil and/or insanity. The flood story can make us ask: do we depict God as evil or insane? But the story still sits uncomfortably in our tradition even if we try to answer "no", and all the pairs of cute furry animals in the world will not make the story one that is appropriate for children.
The best way to make sense of the story is to show how it, like all the Biblical literature, reflects the development of human thinking about God that has led us to where we are today, rather than as static proclamations of things one ought to believe about God. The story of Noah and the flood makes the most sense (even if it remains problematic) when contextualized in this way. The author of the story in the Bible (who seems to have drawn on two earlier Israelite accounts) ultimately derives the story from his broad Mesopotamian heritage. The Israelite authors were trying to make sense of a story they could not simply discard, in the context of their monotheistic worldview. In the earlier story found in the Gilgamesh epic, the polytheistic context allows one to make sense of the story - some gods want to wipe out the noisy humans, but one that does not saves Utnapishtim. There is no need, in that context, to have a deity who at once is interested in saving human life and destroying it. In the context of ancient Israel's ethical monotheism, the author of the Noah story does the best he can with what he had inherited, and attributes the flood to the one God (what else could he do?) and explains the action as judgment on human sinfulness (how else could he make sense of it?).
In our various canons of Scripture, we have not only the story of Noah, but that of Job, which shows (as do other stories) that one cannot simply do what the author of Genesis did, and Job's friends did: i.e. blame disasters on humans having done things wrong and thus having deserved to have bad things happen to them. In light of what we know from geology, which the author of Genesis did not, namely that such a worldwide flood never happened, we have other options available. In light of the book of Job, and our scientific understanding of floods and tsunamis, we not only have the option of exploring other approaches, it is absolutely imperative that we do so.
In the end, the story of Noah reminds us that we think about theology in historical contexts, with limited human reason, in partial and piecemeal ways. Its challenge to us is that any language that we today use about God will look as inadequate and perhaps even as horrific to future generations of humans, as that in the Noah story does to us.
We can certainly use the story to ask difficult questions about how we personify and anthropomorphize God, but in doing so we will have to read against the grain of the story. We will need to ask whether God is to be thought of as a celestial Andrea Yates, who even though she knows every hair on each of her children's heads, nonetheless submerges each one in the water until they are drowned, because she knows she cannot protect them from turning away from her and living evil lives in the future. But in so doing, most would say that she herself has crossed the border into evil and/or insanity. The flood story can make us ask: do we depict God as evil or insane? But the story still sits uncomfortably in our tradition even if we try to answer "no", and all the pairs of cute furry animals in the world will not make the story one that is appropriate for children.
The best way to make sense of the story is to show how it, like all the Biblical literature, reflects the development of human thinking about God that has led us to where we are today, rather than as static proclamations of things one ought to believe about God. The story of Noah and the flood makes the most sense (even if it remains problematic) when contextualized in this way. The author of the story in the Bible (who seems to have drawn on two earlier Israelite accounts) ultimately derives the story from his broad Mesopotamian heritage. The Israelite authors were trying to make sense of a story they could not simply discard, in the context of their monotheistic worldview. In the earlier story found in the Gilgamesh epic, the polytheistic context allows one to make sense of the story - some gods want to wipe out the noisy humans, but one that does not saves Utnapishtim. There is no need, in that context, to have a deity who at once is interested in saving human life and destroying it. In the context of ancient Israel's ethical monotheism, the author of the Noah story does the best he can with what he had inherited, and attributes the flood to the one God (what else could he do?) and explains the action as judgment on human sinfulness (how else could he make sense of it?).In our various canons of Scripture, we have not only the story of Noah, but that of Job, which shows (as do other stories) that one cannot simply do what the author of Genesis did, and Job's friends did: i.e. blame disasters on humans having done things wrong and thus having deserved to have bad things happen to them. In light of what we know from geology, which the author of Genesis did not, namely that such a worldwide flood never happened, we have other options available. In light of the book of Job, and our scientific understanding of floods and tsunamis, we not only have the option of exploring other approaches, it is absolutely imperative that we do so.In the end, the story of Noah reminds us that we think about theology in historical contexts, with limited human reason, in partial and piecemeal ways. Its challenge to us is that any language that we today use about God will look as inadequate and perhaps even as horrific to future generations of humans, as that in the Noah story does to us.
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
God's Wife
No, this post isn't about Asherah - although that would be an interesting topic. No, this post follows up on an earlier one inspired by a student's comment in class about whether God, as depicted in the Bible, is an abusive husband. Books like Hosea and Jeremiah that use the metaphor of Israel and Judah as unfaithful wives do not address the issue of whether that justifies various punishments by the husband. Anyway, the student in question has pursued the subject further on her own blog. The main point she arrives at is a question: should we treat our spouses the way God is depicted as treating his, or should we reconceive the way we think about God's relationship to his people in accordance with what we think it is appropriate for husbands to do today? Please do take a look and leave a comment over there, as well as here!
I also have to share the recent post on Codex about "satan" in the Book of Job, not only because it is a subject I touch on in class, but because it is connected via a cartoon with Star Trek. Not to be missed!
I also have to share the recent post on Codex about "satan" in the Book of Job, not only because it is a subject I touch on in class, but because it is connected via a cartoon with Star Trek. Not to be missed!
Daring to Deny the Doctor
There is an interesting post on IO9 about a man who has become a Christian and as a result is renouncing Dr. Who, categorizing it together with alcohol and materialism as things from which he has been delivered.
I hope Mark Goodacre will have something to say about this! :-)
I hope Mark Goodacre will have something to say about this! :-)
Waiting to Expel
Rather than continue to add links to my previous post about the expulsion of P. Z. Myers from a movie entitled Expelled! which complains about the "Darwinian establishment" allegedly expelling and censoring people because of their views, I've decided to post this follow-up.
If you haven't been following the issue, please do look into it. The irony is that those who cry that they are being persecuted and censored can, for once, be seen clearly to have been projecting their own approach onto those they disagree with.
There is a web site dedicated to the issue: Expelled Exposed.
Amused Muse offers two reviews of Expelled.
Higgaion highlights the contradictory explanations offered by the same people for PZ's expulsion. The Bad Idea Blog offers a whole series of posts on the subject, the latest being the movie's producers scrambling to deal with the bad PR from this incident.
Pharyngula offers some action items as well as highlighting more dishonesty from the Expelled camp.
The Panda's Thumb asks what went wrong that this much-trumpeted movie is turning into one that has to be given away for free, and notes Uncommon Descent's attempt to place the blame on "Clinton" Dawkins.
John Pieret has several posts including one on spin.
Jason Rosenhouse and Mike the Mad Biologist join in the debate about how to best frame the religion-science issue. Greg Laden recommends a relentless critique of antiscientific/pseudoscientific creationisms. James Hrynyshyn asks what's wrong with "telling it like it is?"
A lengthy collection of skeptical rants is offered by Ben Stein in the first person.
If you haven't been following the issue, please do look into it. The irony is that those who cry that they are being persecuted and censored can, for once, be seen clearly to have been projecting their own approach onto those they disagree with.
There is a web site dedicated to the issue: Expelled Exposed.
Amused Muse offers two reviews of Expelled.
Higgaion highlights the contradictory explanations offered by the same people for PZ's expulsion. The Bad Idea Blog offers a whole series of posts on the subject, the latest being the movie's producers scrambling to deal with the bad PR from this incident.
Pharyngula offers some action items as well as highlighting more dishonesty from the Expelled camp.
The Panda's Thumb asks what went wrong that this much-trumpeted movie is turning into one that has to be given away for free, and notes Uncommon Descent's attempt to place the blame on "Clinton" Dawkins.
John Pieret has several posts including one on spin.
Jason Rosenhouse and Mike the Mad Biologist join in the debate about how to best frame the religion-science issue. Greg Laden recommends a relentless critique of antiscientific/pseudoscientific creationisms. James Hrynyshyn asks what's wrong with "telling it like it is?"
A lengthy collection of skeptical rants is offered by Ben Stein in the first person.
The Well-Tempered Universe
Atheists are sure they are the winners either way:
An even more interesting line of inquiry, in my opinion, is to ask what metaphors and symbols we can use to do justice to our existence in a universe that seems "finely tuned" to be just at the border of meaning and meaninglessness, order and chaos, despair and hope, lonely emptiness and powerful interconnectedness. How do we do justice to the fact that people can perceive this same universe, and their place in it, in diametrically-opposed ways?
Are there any genuinely new images of and symbols for God that do justice to what we currently know? Many people turn to other traditions in light of our progressing scientific knowledge, but where are the creative new ideas in theology that do not simply reshuffle existing concepts and language, but offer new metaphors?
- If religion is a natural phenomenon, explicable in terms of neuroscience and biology, then it loses the supernatural element that has been its historic focus.Religious believers are sure they are the winners either way:
- If religion is "unnatural", then it seems to lie outside of the sphere of that which can be proven, or even discussed rationally.
- If the appearance of life is scientifically inexplicable, then God must have done it.How do we get out of an impasse in which both sides seem not to realize that, in the end, their viewpoints are founded on impressions of reality and metaphysical convictions that cannot be proven to their opponents? Speaking of a personal creator whose existence is inexplicable is no more and no less obvious and self-explanatory than a multiverse that just happens to exist and, thanks to its inexplicably being infinite, inevitably produces a universe that can support life, in which we happen to be.
- If the appearance of life is scientifically explicable, then the fine-tuning necessary to bring that about through natural processes points to a creator.
An even more interesting line of inquiry, in my opinion, is to ask what metaphors and symbols we can use to do justice to our existence in a universe that seems "finely tuned" to be just at the border of meaning and meaninglessness, order and chaos, despair and hope, lonely emptiness and powerful interconnectedness. How do we do justice to the fact that people can perceive this same universe, and their place in it, in diametrically-opposed ways?
Are there any genuinely new images of and symbols for God that do justice to what we currently know? Many people turn to other traditions in light of our progressing scientific knowledge, but where are the creative new ideas in theology that do not simply reshuffle existing concepts and language, but offer new metaphors?
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Around the Blogosphere
Some interesting recent posts from around the blogosphere include:
John Wilkins asks whether a Christian can accept natural selection as true. I left the following comment:
Indigenous Stranger shares a video of Karen Armstrong. IO9 has updates that touch on religious aspects of the new season of Battlestar Galactica.
James Tabor believes that scholars have been too quick to dismiss the Talpiot tomb as the tomb of Jesus. I've been thinking a lot about the burial of Jesus lately (and hope to find a publisher for a small book I've written on the subject in the near future). Thus far, I've felt persuaded that the Gospel authors after Mark changed his narrative to give Jesus the sort of burial in their retelling of the story that they couldn't give him in reality. But what if the changes in fact reflect something that they did but couldn't disclose, and only felt free to drop hints about after those who tampered with the tomb were dead? Because of some of the more outlandish claims and assumptions, possibilities may have been overlooked without due consideration. That Jesus could have been a widower with a son, rather than unmarried, is not at all implausible. That the "Mariamne" ossuary could belong to two people, "Mary and Mar(th)a", is interesting. That there could be a Joses and Matthias sharing the tomb, all these together united by fictive kinship rather than blood, is not incompatible with what we know about the Jesus movement.
The above suggestions do not persuade me that the Talpiot tomb is the tomb of Jesus. It could be, but there is no evidence that has yet been presented that makes it seem more likely that it is than that it is not. That's a shame, since if I could be persuaded, I could finally write a book that would sell lots of copies and make some serious money! :-)
Also, anyone who is interested in the James ossuary and Biblical archaeology in general should try to get hold of a copy of the recent 60 Minutes about Oded Golan.
Finally, Qalmlea discusses a new word: PZification.
John Wilkins asks whether a Christian can accept natural selection as true. I left the following comment:
I think the issue is complicated because there areJoel Willitts asks where we should begin a consideration of Paul and the Law, highlighting (as I have done in a number of posts) the importance of Romans 2.
(1) Christians for whom the Bible, understood in a particular way, trumps everything else, and so they reject natural selection;
(2) Christians who hold in tension both traditional theistic ideas and natural selection; and
(3) Christians who revise their thinking about God in light of natural selection and other data from the sciences.
Some would dispute calling the latter "Christians", but the same sort of diversity in terms of accepting the conclusions of philosophy and then science in the modern sense is there all through the history of Christianity.
The real question is thus not whether a Christian can accept natural selection, but how those of us who do should think differently about God as a result.
Indigenous Stranger shares a video of Karen Armstrong. IO9 has updates that touch on religious aspects of the new season of Battlestar Galactica.
James Tabor believes that scholars have been too quick to dismiss the Talpiot tomb as the tomb of Jesus. I've been thinking a lot about the burial of Jesus lately (and hope to find a publisher for a small book I've written on the subject in the near future). Thus far, I've felt persuaded that the Gospel authors after Mark changed his narrative to give Jesus the sort of burial in their retelling of the story that they couldn't give him in reality. But what if the changes in fact reflect something that they did but couldn't disclose, and only felt free to drop hints about after those who tampered with the tomb were dead? Because of some of the more outlandish claims and assumptions, possibilities may have been overlooked without due consideration. That Jesus could have been a widower with a son, rather than unmarried, is not at all implausible. That the "Mariamne" ossuary could belong to two people, "Mary and Mar(th)a", is interesting. That there could be a Joses and Matthias sharing the tomb, all these together united by fictive kinship rather than blood, is not incompatible with what we know about the Jesus movement.
The above suggestions do not persuade me that the Talpiot tomb is the tomb of Jesus. It could be, but there is no evidence that has yet been presented that makes it seem more likely that it is than that it is not. That's a shame, since if I could be persuaded, I could finally write a book that would sell lots of copies and make some serious money! :-)
Also, anyone who is interested in the James ossuary and Biblical archaeology in general should try to get hold of a copy of the recent 60 Minutes about Oded Golan.
Finally, Qalmlea discusses a new word: PZification.
Lost in Transmission
I just read Nicholas Perrin's Lost in Transmission, which I would certainly recommend to anyone interested in exploring how the personal story of a scholar relates to their scholarship, and any conservative Christian wanting to hear from an Evangelical scholar about the need to not simply dismiss historical investigation, academic inquiry, and other fields of knowledge relevant to understanding the Bible.
There are points here and there that I would disagree with (for instance, when Perrin attributes far greater significance to Gerhardsson's work on memorization and tradition than it deserves), but there is one more significant overarching criticism. The book tries to present itself as a response to Bart Ehrman's book Misquoting Jesus. But it isn't, and reading it with that expectation will result only in disappointment.
Let me share a nice quote from the book, which is typical of the book's approach as a whole: "When people succumb to that temptation of ignoring challenges to their faith, they are in the end demonstrating that they are more committed to the feeling of having a lock on the truth than they are to truth itself. When Christians succumb to the same temptation, there is the added temptation of justifying their intellectual disengagement by appealing to faith or the Holy Spirit or something like that. Not only does this rationale shut down a discussion that is probably worth having; it also usually has more to do with intellectual laziness or megalomania than anything remotely Biblical or divine" (p.xxi).
All I can add to that is "here here!" Oh, and I was glad Nicholas answered the question that has been on my mind since I first heard him read a paper at SBL: No, he isn't related to Norman.
There are points here and there that I would disagree with (for instance, when Perrin attributes far greater significance to Gerhardsson's work on memorization and tradition than it deserves), but there is one more significant overarching criticism. The book tries to present itself as a response to Bart Ehrman's book Misquoting Jesus. But it isn't, and reading it with that expectation will result only in disappointment.
Let me share a nice quote from the book, which is typical of the book's approach as a whole: "When people succumb to that temptation of ignoring challenges to their faith, they are in the end demonstrating that they are more committed to the feeling of having a lock on the truth than they are to truth itself. When Christians succumb to the same temptation, there is the added temptation of justifying their intellectual disengagement by appealing to faith or the Holy Spirit or something like that. Not only does this rationale shut down a discussion that is probably worth having; it also usually has more to do with intellectual laziness or megalomania than anything remotely Biblical or divine" (p.xxi).
All I can add to that is "here here!" Oh, and I was glad Nicholas answered the question that has been on my mind since I first heard him read a paper at SBL: No, he isn't related to Norman.
Monday, March 24, 2008
Did Jesus Predict His Death? The Witness of Mark and John
The Gospel of Mark and the Gospel of John are viewed by many as having been written independently of one another. When they agree, it is potentially significant. They may disagree on whether Jesus predicted his resurrection in a way that could, at least in theory, be understood at the time, without the benefit of hindsight (more on that in a moment). But they agree on Jesus predicting his death - indeed, both have Jesus say three times that "the Son of Man must..." in connection with this.
Mark also adds Peter's response to Jesus' first such prediction: he rebukes him. Jesus then calls Peter "Satan" (Mark 8:31-33). It is unlikely that the church invented this story, but in order for it to be historical, Jesus must have predicted something that could have been controversial for Peter along these lines: death, suffering, rejection, or something of that sort at the very least. One can relate this as well to the vow at the last supper.
Mark plausibly situates the first passion prediction after John the Baptist had been killed, and immediately after it was mentioned that some thought Jesus was John the Baptist. As James Crossley pointed out in a comment on an earlier post of mine, there is nothing implausible about Jesus foreseeing death as at least a real possibility, in view of his mentor's fate.
In light of this, John's Gospel is revealing in some of its references to the resurrection. The temple saying is taken as a prediction of the resurrection, but only with the benefit of hindsight (John 2:19-22). And he mentions that on the Sunday after the crucifixion, John and Peter still had not understood from the Scriptures that Jesus would rise (John 20:9). Is the author not here acknowledging that the understanding that this was foreseen came from Scripture rather than from predictions that Jesus himself made?
Mark also adds Peter's response to Jesus' first such prediction: he rebukes him. Jesus then calls Peter "Satan" (Mark 8:31-33). It is unlikely that the church invented this story, but in order for it to be historical, Jesus must have predicted something that could have been controversial for Peter along these lines: death, suffering, rejection, or something of that sort at the very least. One can relate this as well to the vow at the last supper.
Mark plausibly situates the first passion prediction after John the Baptist had been killed, and immediately after it was mentioned that some thought Jesus was John the Baptist. As James Crossley pointed out in a comment on an earlier post of mine, there is nothing implausible about Jesus foreseeing death as at least a real possibility, in view of his mentor's fate.
In light of this, John's Gospel is revealing in some of its references to the resurrection. The temple saying is taken as a prediction of the resurrection, but only with the benefit of hindsight (John 2:19-22). And he mentions that on the Sunday after the crucifixion, John and Peter still had not understood from the Scriptures that Jesus would rise (John 20:9). Is the author not here acknowledging that the understanding that this was foreseen came from Scripture rather than from predictions that Jesus himself made?
Dust and Demons
I finally watched The Golden Compass; I have yet to read the books. The movie simply does not have any sort of atheist message. It does have a message against authority seeking to keep the lid on and prevent investigation of the truth. But the truth that is being opposed is "dust", something mystical and magical. One could as easily interpret the movie in terms of a "scientific establishment" opposing religion, as vice versa.
The whole story is mythical and magical. And where exactly the dividing line is between "magical atheism" and "theistic naturalism" and "pantheism" is hard to determine, if there is indeed such a line to be drawn in any meaningful sense. But certainly a universe that contains "dust" and "witches" and "daemons" (in the classic Greek rather than Judeo-Christian sense) is clearly not the world that the so-called "new atheists" are telling us we inhabit. It is much more the universe that a different brand of atheists perceive, such as Jennifer Hecht, who recently spoke at Butler University.
A key issue is the extent to which one believes that, even if one doesn't have all the answers, one has a worldview that is asking all the right questions. Then we must also ask about the place of the magical and the mysterious in a worldview that takes science seriously. Stories of the supernatural seem to be a natural part of childhood. Another key question is what stories we can tell children in the epic, mythic vein, that will not keep them in childish ways of thinking but prepare them well for adulthood.
The whole story is mythical and magical. And where exactly the dividing line is between "magical atheism" and "theistic naturalism" and "pantheism" is hard to determine, if there is indeed such a line to be drawn in any meaningful sense. But certainly a universe that contains "dust" and "witches" and "daemons" (in the classic Greek rather than Judeo-Christian sense) is clearly not the world that the so-called "new atheists" are telling us we inhabit. It is much more the universe that a different brand of atheists perceive, such as Jennifer Hecht, who recently spoke at Butler University.
A key issue is the extent to which one believes that, even if one doesn't have all the answers, one has a worldview that is asking all the right questions. Then we must also ask about the place of the magical and the mysterious in a worldview that takes science seriously. Stories of the supernatural seem to be a natural part of childhood. Another key question is what stories we can tell children in the epic, mythic vein, that will not keep them in childish ways of thinking but prepare them well for adulthood.
Sunday, March 23, 2008
WWJD? WWYD? Easter Edition
What would it be worth giving one's life for? What is worth the pain of crucifixion?
Would you have given your life, surrendering yourself to a painful, shameful death, because of a conviction that God would raise you to his right hand?
What if you had no such hope regarding the afterlife, but had a vision of the future, in which, even though many would kill and hate in your name, many more than otherwise would have would seek to love their neighbor as themselves? They would all fall short, of course, but many more would try than otherwise would have. Would you give your life, without hope of a personal reward, other than knowing that because you did so, the universe for the remainder of its history would be filled with more goodness?
What choice would you make in the absence of certainty about either outcome? What would you do in the hope of either, or both?
What would Jesus do? What would he have done if he had known that the kingdom he announced was imminent would not dawn in the way he expected, but would nonetheless take hold in the hearts of human beings, and inspire goodness down the ages?
Would you have given your life, surrendering yourself to a painful, shameful death, because of a conviction that God would raise you to his right hand?
What if you had no such hope regarding the afterlife, but had a vision of the future, in which, even though many would kill and hate in your name, many more than otherwise would have would seek to love their neighbor as themselves? They would all fall short, of course, but many more would try than otherwise would have. Would you give your life, without hope of a personal reward, other than knowing that because you did so, the universe for the remainder of its history would be filled with more goodness?
What choice would you make in the absence of certainty about either outcome? What would you do in the hope of either, or both?
What would Jesus do? What would he have done if he had known that the kingdom he announced was imminent would not dawn in the way he expected, but would nonetheless take hold in the hearts of human beings, and inspire goodness down the ages?
Stranger on the Shore
One can only speculate about the first post-Easter experience of "seeing Jesus", that is left undescribed in Paul's reference in 1 Corinthians 15 ("first to Peter"), that was perhaps in the original ending of Mark's Gospel (or the continuation of the story known to that author), and perhaps alluded to in John 21 and in the lost ending of the Gospel of Peter.
Peter returned to fishing. He wrestled with the failure of his expectations, with his own failure in denying Jesus, and perhaps with questions about whether things might have turned out differently had no one drawn a sword and cut off the ear of the high priest's servant.
He goes fishing, taking some of Jesus' other closest followers with him. They catch nothing, and much of the time is spent in silence. Then, they see a figure on the shore. He asks if they have caught anything, and they say no. He tells them to try again, and suggests a spot. They lower the net - and catch a huge number of fish. Peter makes a connection - isn't this the spot where he first met Jesus? He looks up, but the figure on the shore has vanished. Suddenly, Peter knows: it was Jesus. He tells the others, but they are skeptical, unpersuaded.
Peter spends much of the days that follow in prayer, seeking information and advice from rabbis and experts in the Law. What would the Messiah be like? Could the Messiah suffer? Could the Messiah return from the dead?
He contacts the rest of the Twelve, and they gather to hear what Peter has to say. They listen, and then he leads them in the prayer Jesus had taught them. "Father..." they begin. When they reach those words, "Your will be done", they mean it as they had never truly meant it before. "Not our will, but yours". A sense of peace washes over them. A sense of certainty that Peter is right, that Jesus has in fact been raised. And in their dreams, and in glimpses in crowds, and in mysterious encounters with unknown individuals, perhaps even in mystical visions, they too experience this phenomenon of "Jesus appearing".
The act of surrendering has transformed many lives. It seems to have been central to Jesus' own spirituality. There would be something fundamentally appropriate if it was central to the rise in the earliest disciples of the conviction that Jesus had been raised, as it has been for Christians all through the ages since then.
Peter returned to fishing. He wrestled with the failure of his expectations, with his own failure in denying Jesus, and perhaps with questions about whether things might have turned out differently had no one drawn a sword and cut off the ear of the high priest's servant.
He goes fishing, taking some of Jesus' other closest followers with him. They catch nothing, and much of the time is spent in silence. Then, they see a figure on the shore. He asks if they have caught anything, and they say no. He tells them to try again, and suggests a spot. They lower the net - and catch a huge number of fish. Peter makes a connection - isn't this the spot where he first met Jesus? He looks up, but the figure on the shore has vanished. Suddenly, Peter knows: it was Jesus. He tells the others, but they are skeptical, unpersuaded.
Peter spends much of the days that follow in prayer, seeking information and advice from rabbis and experts in the Law. What would the Messiah be like? Could the Messiah suffer? Could the Messiah return from the dead?
He contacts the rest of the Twelve, and they gather to hear what Peter has to say. They listen, and then he leads them in the prayer Jesus had taught them. "Father..." they begin. When they reach those words, "Your will be done", they mean it as they had never truly meant it before. "Not our will, but yours". A sense of peace washes over them. A sense of certainty that Peter is right, that Jesus has in fact been raised. And in their dreams, and in glimpses in crowds, and in mysterious encounters with unknown individuals, perhaps even in mystical visions, they too experience this phenomenon of "Jesus appearing".
The act of surrendering has transformed many lives. It seems to have been central to Jesus' own spirituality. There would be something fundamentally appropriate if it was central to the rise in the earliest disciples of the conviction that Jesus had been raised, as it has been for Christians all through the ages since then.
Hristos a înviat!
Hristos a înviat din morţi, cu moartea pe moarte călcînd şi celor din morminte viaţă dăruindu-le.
Saturday, March 22, 2008
How Much Did Jesus Foresee About His Death?
There is one piece of evidence, rarely given the attention it deserves, that indicates that Jesus, on the night of his last supper with his disciples, knew that "the end is nigh" - either for him, or for history as a whole. He took a nazirite vow - foreswearing the fruit of the vine, not until he had done something or other, but until he partakes of it in the kingdom of God. Either he would not live to bring the vow to conclusion, or the kingdom would dawn that soon.
Jerome Murphy-O'Connor has suggested another piece of evidence: from Gethsemane on the Mount of Olives, Jesus could have seen that a group of people was headed their way, and made his escape if he had wanted to. This seems plausible, except that the Gospels suggest that those who were supposed to be keeping watch while Jesus prayed fell asleep.
If Jesus said what the Gospels claimed, that some alive when he was would witness the kingdom's dawn, then we know that Jesus expected the kingdom to arrive shortly. The question is whether Jesus thought he himself would live to see it, or rather thought that his death would somehow be instrumental in bringing it about.
Jerome Murphy-O'Connor has suggested another piece of evidence: from Gethsemane on the Mount of Olives, Jesus could have seen that a group of people was headed their way, and made his escape if he had wanted to. This seems plausible, except that the Gospels suggest that those who were supposed to be keeping watch while Jesus prayed fell asleep.
If Jesus said what the Gospels claimed, that some alive when he was would witness the kingdom's dawn, then we know that Jesus expected the kingdom to arrive shortly. The question is whether Jesus thought he himself would live to see it, or rather thought that his death would somehow be instrumental in bringing it about.
Can One Simply "Believe The Bible" About Easter?
One could begin simply with the question of what Easter is, and that would be enough to make one realize that the question of "what happened" is a historical question, even if we mean "what happened to change the lives of the disciples?" and not "did Jesus enter the resurrection age?" When it comes to questions about the past, prior to the time of anyone alive today, historical study is the only approach open to us, and provides the only tools available for addressing such topics.
The claim to simply "believe the Bible", when it comes to Easter, is not in fact simple at all. It is in the end dishonest, since the person who makes the claim either has not read the Bible carefully enough to realize the problems, or is willfully ignoring them or denying their existence.
A fundamentalist will pick and choose while denying they are doing so. The stories of Jesus eating fish will be chosen, ignoring the fact that the earliest stories lack such details. The fundamentalist will allow the honorable burial in John to completely obscure from view the dishonorable one in Mark. The fundamentalist apologist will take Matthew's addition of guards at the tomb at face value, even though it forces him to change the goal of the women who go to the tomb, and to attribute to the Jewish leaders an understanding of Jesus' claims that even the disciples are acknowledged not to have had. The fundamentalist apologist will never focus attention on those stories in which Jesus doesn't look like Jesus, in which those who had the experience of seeing him doubted, or in which the focus is clearly symbolic and eucharistic as he is discerned to be present in the breaking of the bread. The fundamentalist will ignore the fact that the Gospels are evenly divided over whether Jesus was first seen in Jerusalem or Galilee (In Mark and Matthew they are told to go to Galilee; in Luke, they are told to stay in Jerusalem).
A historian must also pick and choose, but does so because of an honest assessment of the state of the evidence. One cannot simply believe what the Bible says on this subject, since the Bible says diverse things that do not come together into a coherent whole. A historian takes the oldest sources, the ones most likely to contain reliable data because they are closest in time to the events themselves, and gives them priority.
I am a Christian, and as such I value truth. And thus I must choose the honesty of history to the dishonesty of fundamentalism, no matter how painful or disconcerting the path it places me on may be.
The claim to simply "believe the Bible", when it comes to Easter, is not in fact simple at all. It is in the end dishonest, since the person who makes the claim either has not read the Bible carefully enough to realize the problems, or is willfully ignoring them or denying their existence.
A fundamentalist will pick and choose while denying they are doing so. The stories of Jesus eating fish will be chosen, ignoring the fact that the earliest stories lack such details. The fundamentalist will allow the honorable burial in John to completely obscure from view the dishonorable one in Mark. The fundamentalist apologist will take Matthew's addition of guards at the tomb at face value, even though it forces him to change the goal of the women who go to the tomb, and to attribute to the Jewish leaders an understanding of Jesus' claims that even the disciples are acknowledged not to have had. The fundamentalist apologist will never focus attention on those stories in which Jesus doesn't look like Jesus, in which those who had the experience of seeing him doubted, or in which the focus is clearly symbolic and eucharistic as he is discerned to be present in the breaking of the bread. The fundamentalist will ignore the fact that the Gospels are evenly divided over whether Jesus was first seen in Jerusalem or Galilee (In Mark and Matthew they are told to go to Galilee; in Luke, they are told to stay in Jerusalem).
A historian must also pick and choose, but does so because of an honest assessment of the state of the evidence. One cannot simply believe what the Bible says on this subject, since the Bible says diverse things that do not come together into a coherent whole. A historian takes the oldest sources, the ones most likely to contain reliable data because they are closest in time to the events themselves, and gives them priority.
I am a Christian, and as such I value truth. And thus I must choose the honesty of history to the dishonesty of fundamentalism, no matter how painful or disconcerting the path it places me on may be.
Friday, March 21, 2008
Parable of the Day (Dave Tomlinson)
Jesus told this parable to a gathering of evangelical leaders. 'A Spring Harvest speaker and a liberal bishop each sat down and read the Bible. The Spring Harvest speaker thanked God for the precious gift of the Holy Scriptures and pledged himself once again to proclaim them faithfully. "Thank you God", he prayed, "that I am not like this poor bishop who doesn't believe your word, and seems unable to make up his mind or not whether or not Christ rose from the dead". The Bishop looked puzzled as he flicked through the pages of the Bible and said "Virgin birth, water into wine, physical resurrection, I honestly don't know if I can believe these things Lord. In fact, I'm not even sure if you exist as a personal Being, but I am going to keep on searching." I tell you that this Liberal Bishop rather than the other man went home justified before God. For anyone who thinks he has arrived at his destination has hardly begun, and he who continues to search is closer to the destination than he realizes.'
(Zondervan, 2003) pp. 61-62.The Days After The Crucifixion
The sun is setting, the start of the Sabbath is at hand. On Friday, Jesus had been executed by the Romans, and buried according to the requirements of Jewish Law in a tomb located nearby, presumably there to accomodate the corpses of criminals executed on the site.
Did any of Jesus' followers try to rectify the situation? Did they hang around Jerusalem, courageous enough to try to take the body and give it the honorable burial it deserved? Or when they fled Gethsemane, did most of them head towards Bethany, and from there directly to Galilee?
We know Peter lagged behind, not getting close enough to hear, but close enough to be confronted because of his accent and to deny Jesus. But where did he go from there? Were he and the others conscientious enough to observe the Sabbath rather than leave town as quickly as possible?
Back in Galilee, some time later, the disciples had dreams, visions, encounters that persuaded them that Jesus was alive, that God had taken this individual who mistakenly thought the dawn of the Kingdom of God was imminent, and had made him Lord of that very Kingdom, which was yet to dawn fully.
That was Easter. When it occurred, and how it relates to the conviction that something monumental happened "on the third day", is hard to discern through the tensions and obscurities in the evidence.
Those experiences, rather than anything to do with the tomb, are at the heart of the Christian faith. While the events of the days that followed the crucifixion are shrouded in mystery and uncertainty, the Easter experiences continue to be part of human experience from then until today. And for those of us who have had such experiences, they do not prove anything about what happened to Jesus' body, or an empty tomb. But they do shine light on our existence, and the fact that we inhabit a universe where such experiences are possible fills us with awe, and wonder, and reverence. And it leads us to spend our lives seeking to do justice to the character of the universe and of human existence such experiences hint at.
What happened to Jesus' body is a historical question, and it is shrouded in mystery much as the body itself was shrouded in a linen sheet that may or may not have been clean. The experience of a new birth does not allow one to short-circuit or bypass historical investigation. It 'merely' changes the way one views life forever.
Did any of Jesus' followers try to rectify the situation? Did they hang around Jerusalem, courageous enough to try to take the body and give it the honorable burial it deserved? Or when they fled Gethsemane, did most of them head towards Bethany, and from there directly to Galilee?
We know Peter lagged behind, not getting close enough to hear, but close enough to be confronted because of his accent and to deny Jesus. But where did he go from there? Were he and the others conscientious enough to observe the Sabbath rather than leave town as quickly as possible?
Back in Galilee, some time later, the disciples had dreams, visions, encounters that persuaded them that Jesus was alive, that God had taken this individual who mistakenly thought the dawn of the Kingdom of God was imminent, and had made him Lord of that very Kingdom, which was yet to dawn fully.
That was Easter. When it occurred, and how it relates to the conviction that something monumental happened "on the third day", is hard to discern through the tensions and obscurities in the evidence.
Those experiences, rather than anything to do with the tomb, are at the heart of the Christian faith. While the events of the days that followed the crucifixion are shrouded in mystery and uncertainty, the Easter experiences continue to be part of human experience from then until today. And for those of us who have had such experiences, they do not prove anything about what happened to Jesus' body, or an empty tomb. But they do shine light on our existence, and the fact that we inhabit a universe where such experiences are possible fills us with awe, and wonder, and reverence. And it leads us to spend our lives seeking to do justice to the character of the universe and of human existence such experiences hint at.
What happened to Jesus' body is a historical question, and it is shrouded in mystery much as the body itself was shrouded in a linen sheet that may or may not have been clean. The experience of a new birth does not allow one to short-circuit or bypass historical investigation. It 'merely' changes the way one views life forever.
Creationism and Censorship
Young-Earth Creationists and cdesign proponentsists regularly accuse the academy and the world of censoring them (whereas the truth of the matter is that they are ignored or passed over for doing weak science and in most cases simply not doing science at all).
If you want to see censorship and exclusion in action, you have to look at what creationists themselves do.
The latest (rather amusing) example is covered on a number of blogs: Pharyngula (more than once), Amused Muse (twice), ERV, Further Thoughts, The Austringer, The Bad Idea Blog, Hyper-Textual Ontology, Open Parachute, Sporadic Maunderings (twice), Stranger Fruit, Rev. BigDumbChimp, TeacherNinja, Matt's Notepad (twice), Conspiracy Factory (twice), Higgaion (twice, and oh the irony of the second one), Monkey Trials (three times), Bene Diction Blogs On (twice), Science Reporting, Sandwalk (multiple posts) and Thoughts in a Haystack (twice, the first attributing to me prophetic ability, but one doesn't need prophetic ability to talk about things that are ongoing characteristics of a movement). The Panda's Thumb has multiple posts on the subject. Greg Laden has a round up. You can also see what the other side(s) think(s).
Richard Dawkins, who was allowed into the showing of Expelled!, has posted a review.
If you want to see censorship and exclusion in action, you have to look at what creationists themselves do.
The latest (rather amusing) example is covered on a number of blogs: Pharyngula (more than once), Amused Muse (twice), ERV, Further Thoughts, The Austringer, The Bad Idea Blog, Hyper-Textual Ontology, Open Parachute, Sporadic Maunderings (twice), Stranger Fruit, Rev. BigDumbChimp, TeacherNinja, Matt's Notepad (twice), Conspiracy Factory (twice), Higgaion (twice, and oh the irony of the second one), Monkey Trials (three times), Bene Diction Blogs On (twice), Science Reporting, Sandwalk (multiple posts) and Thoughts in a Haystack (twice, the first attributing to me prophetic ability, but one doesn't need prophetic ability to talk about things that are ongoing characteristics of a movement). The Panda's Thumb has multiple posts on the subject. Greg Laden has a round up. You can also see what the other side(s) think(s).
Richard Dawkins, who was allowed into the showing of Expelled!, has posted a review.
Thursday, March 20, 2008
The Island has not LOST track of Michael
Tonight's episode of LOST (the last new episode until April 24th, when LOST will resume at 10pm) focused on the story of Michael after escaping the island. How exactly he "found rescue" we are not told, but he made it back to the U.S. eventually. He is feeling suicidal - after telling Walt what he had done, Walt didn't want to talk to him any more. After one unsuccessful suicide attempt, he hears ghostly whispers and sees a nurse who then vanishes. Later he tries to kill himself and is stopped by Tom (aka "Friendly"), who tells Michael he can't kill himself - the island won't let him. Michael does try, but the gun doesn't fire. An interesting side note is that on the game show that is on TV, a contestant answers a question about Kurt Vonnegut's novel Slaughterhouse Five, about a man unstuck in time. The show is interrupted with the breaking news that Oceanic 815 had been found. Michael goes to the hotel penthouse suite where Tom said he could be found. Tom is apparently one of the Others who can come and go from the island (not all can, apparently). Tom tells Michael that the plane is a phony - Widmore put it there, using bodies purchased or stolen from a cemetery in Thailand. Widmore, Tom says, doesn't want anyone to find out where the plane really ended up, except for himself. Michael is given this opportunity to redeem himself by saving the other survivors - but to do so, he'll have to kill everyone on the boat.
Once on the boat, however, he learns that that is not entirely true. Although he had been given a bomb to blow up the boat, instead of exploding after he types in the code 71776 and presses the button marked "Execute", instead of exploding it pops up a flag that said "NOT YET". Later, contacted by Ben, Michael is told that there are innocent people on the boat, and so he isn't to simply kill everyone. That isn't Ben's way - he says he won't kill innocent people, and welcomes Michael to "the good guys".
Before pushing the button, a ghostly Libby appeared and told Michael not to do it. The island may be on Michael's side, but isn't clearly on Ben's. Why would the island try to stop Michael, when one thinks it would know the bomb isn't real? Or was this a test, the appearance of Libby being a challenge for Michael to remember the previous occasion when he killed her, an innocent victim?
Lapidus tells Michael that Widmore believes him that the plane is a fake and there may be survivors. We don't know who to trust yet, if anyone.
At the end of the episode, Sayyid gives Michael away to the captain as a traitor. Alex had gone with Rousseau and Karl to the Temple, marked on a map Ben gave them by a Dharma logo, and said to be a safe refuge. But when they stop briefly on the way, Karl and Rousseau are shot, by whom we do not yet know. Alex puts her hands up and shouts that she is Ben's daughter.
We now know who all 6 of the Oceanic Six are: Jack, Kate, Hurley, Sayyid, Aaron and Sun. Why they will be the ones to leave is unclear. Sayyid revealed Michael as a traitor working for Ben, but later he himself will work for Ben. How will this come about, and when?
I originally wanted to call this post "Michael LOST his moral compass". But the most interesting thing in the episode was the control the island seems to have even in other parts of the world. The island is seeming less and less like a commodity to be used, and more and more like a god working in the lives of human beings and the unfolding history of the planet. But is that really the island itself, or someone who has harnessed the island's power?
We frequently think of God anthropomorphically. What might be gained, or LOST, in thinking about God as an island?
Once on the boat, however, he learns that that is not entirely true. Although he had been given a bomb to blow up the boat, instead of exploding after he types in the code 71776 and presses the button marked "Execute", instead of exploding it pops up a flag that said "NOT YET". Later, contacted by Ben, Michael is told that there are innocent people on the boat, and so he isn't to simply kill everyone. That isn't Ben's way - he says he won't kill innocent people, and welcomes Michael to "the good guys".
Before pushing the button, a ghostly Libby appeared and told Michael not to do it. The island may be on Michael's side, but isn't clearly on Ben's. Why would the island try to stop Michael, when one thinks it would know the bomb isn't real? Or was this a test, the appearance of Libby being a challenge for Michael to remember the previous occasion when he killed her, an innocent victim?
Lapidus tells Michael that Widmore believes him that the plane is a fake and there may be survivors. We don't know who to trust yet, if anyone.
At the end of the episode, Sayyid gives Michael away to the captain as a traitor. Alex had gone with Rousseau and Karl to the Temple, marked on a map Ben gave them by a Dharma logo, and said to be a safe refuge. But when they stop briefly on the way, Karl and Rousseau are shot, by whom we do not yet know. Alex puts her hands up and shouts that she is Ben's daughter.
We now know who all 6 of the Oceanic Six are: Jack, Kate, Hurley, Sayyid, Aaron and Sun. Why they will be the ones to leave is unclear. Sayyid revealed Michael as a traitor working for Ben, but later he himself will work for Ben. How will this come about, and when?
I originally wanted to call this post "Michael LOST his moral compass". But the most interesting thing in the episode was the control the island seems to have even in other parts of the world. The island is seeming less and less like a commodity to be used, and more and more like a god working in the lives of human beings and the unfolding history of the planet. But is that really the island itself, or someone who has harnessed the island's power?
We frequently think of God anthropomorphically. What might be gained, or LOST, in thinking about God as an island?
Wishing You A Historically Well-Informed Easter
Many people find Easter a particularly difficult holiday during which to integrate faith and reason. Christmas doesn't pose the same challenge - one may doubt or even deny the historicity of the infancy narratives, appreciating them as the sorts of stories ancient people were prone to tell to highlight an individual's significance. Jesus' birth itself is not seriously doubted, and so a historical core can still be posited. But when it comes to Easter, the question of whether the tomb was empty, if so why, and what if anything that has to do with Christian faith in the resurrection proves much less straightforward to address. The irony is that this weekend involves the most certain bedrock of our historical information about Jesus - the crucifixion - and an event that some would say cannot even be appropriately studied using the tools of historical inquiry at all.
I hope to gather here some historical and theological blog entries that are relevant to the subject. But let me begin by sharing my class notes on the death, burial and resurrection from my course on the historical Jesus. I'd love to know if anyone finds them useful - or has constructive criticism to offer. Also worth checking out is the Biblical Archaeological Review's offerings for this occasion: 24 Hours That Changed The World Forever.
Around the blogosphere, I've found the following to be interesting, useful, helpful, etc.:
Merkavah Vision has a three-part Easter sermon for this Friday, Saturday and Sunday.
Nouslife shares statistics about what the British public believes about the resurrection as well as the state of scholarly play.
There have been discussions of Geza Vermes' recent book by Euangelion, Targuman (twice), Maggi Dawn, Merkavah Vision, Jim West, Earliest Christian History, Paleojudaica (twice) and Deinde.
Jim West recommends an article entitled "Facts and friction of Easter".
The Lead wishes you a Happy Crossmas.
Jason Clark quotes Hippolytus.
Connexions has an Easter message from the Methodist president.
A post about the stations of the cross.
Theo Geek discusses Jesus' Death in Luke-Acts.
Sean the Baptist has a series of holy week reflections and a recommendation for Easter reading.
C.Orthodoxy has a collection of posts, including a discussion of whether the Good Friday-Easter story is appropriate for small children, and a follow-up on Easter Sunday.
Kim Fabricius offered a Palm Sunday sermon that looked ahead to Easter weekend.
Maggi Dawn offers an artistic depiction of the tortured Christ.
I hope to gather here some historical and theological blog entries that are relevant to the subject. But let me begin by sharing my class notes on the death, burial and resurrection from my course on the historical Jesus. I'd love to know if anyone finds them useful - or has constructive criticism to offer. Also worth checking out is the Biblical Archaeological Review's offerings for this occasion: 24 Hours That Changed The World Forever.
Around the blogosphere, I've found the following to be interesting, useful, helpful, etc.:
Merkavah Vision has a three-part Easter sermon for this Friday, Saturday and Sunday.
Nouslife shares statistics about what the British public believes about the resurrection as well as the state of scholarly play.
There have been discussions of Geza Vermes' recent book by Euangelion, Targuman (twice), Maggi Dawn, Merkavah Vision, Jim West, Earliest Christian History, Paleojudaica (twice) and Deinde.
Jim West recommends an article entitled "Facts and friction of Easter".
The Lead wishes you a Happy Crossmas.
Jason Clark quotes Hippolytus.
Connexions has an Easter message from the Methodist president.
A post about the stations of the cross.
Theo Geek discusses Jesus' Death in Luke-Acts.
Sean the Baptist has a series of holy week reflections and a recommendation for Easter reading.
C.Orthodoxy has a collection of posts, including a discussion of whether the Good Friday-Easter story is appropriate for small children, and a follow-up on Easter Sunday.
Kim Fabricius offered a Palm Sunday sermon that looked ahead to Easter weekend.
Maggi Dawn offers an artistic depiction of the tortured Christ.
And finally, an Easter cartoon that I first shared on my old blog last year:
It's Not Whether You Win Or Lose
Let's imagine a hypothetical (and admittedly implausible) scenario, in which some new information comes to light - whether through scientific investigation, or from a booming voice from a burning bush - showing that in fact the intelligent design crowd, or even the young-earth creationists, were right, and it turns out that evolution is utterly inadequate as an explanation for the development of life on this planet.
The vast majority of scientists would still, in that case, have nothing to be ashamed of. Evolution is absolutely the best conclusion one can draw on the basis of the evidence currently available. There is, at present, no viable scientific alternative, despite what some claim. There is no shame in working with the best available understanding, nor in overturning that understanding in light of new, unexpected discoveries.
The YECs and cdesign proponentsists, on the other hand, should be ashamed even if they turned out to be right. Because in the realm of science, and in the realm of honest discourse in general, it isn't whether your opinion or conviction happens to be right. It is how you reached your conclusion that matters. If someone picks a view of the universe because it makes them feel good, and doesn't care about the evidence, the fact that they happened to pick the one that was right doesn't mean for a moment that they made an intelligent, honest, careful, well thought out choice. The ID and YEC proponents have engaged in trickery and deceit, sleight of hand and misrepresentation of the facts. These things are utterly shameful behavior, even in the service of a viewpoint that happens to be correct.
Lest I be misunderstood, in view of the overwhelming evidence (which young-earth deceptionists and cdesign proponentsists dishonestly say doesn't exist or isn't persuasive) it is becoming increasingly improbable that the above scenario could ever actually happen. But science is always open ended - and that is the point. Creationists of the sorts mentioned in this post are not doing science, because they know the conclusions they want to draw and will let no evidence or logic prevent them from doing so.
When it comes to science, however, and when it comes to honesty, it isn't whether you win or lose that matters. It is how you play the game.
Let's apply the same thing to the "culture war" surrounding this subject - the battle for dominance not in terms of the scientific consensus but in terms of influencing the public. Could intelligent design's vocal advocates potentially persuade a majority of people in this country or even the world? It is certainly possible. But I ask those Christians who have listened only to that side and have accepted it because they want it to be true: Are you really committed to "winning" at any cost? If honesty and "fair play" are sacrificed, can it really be called a victory?
The vast majority of scientists would still, in that case, have nothing to be ashamed of. Evolution is absolutely the best conclusion one can draw on the basis of the evidence currently available. There is, at present, no viable scientific alternative, despite what some claim. There is no shame in working with the best available understanding, nor in overturning that understanding in light of new, unexpected discoveries.
The YECs and cdesign proponentsists, on the other hand, should be ashamed even if they turned out to be right. Because in the realm of science, and in the realm of honest discourse in general, it isn't whether your opinion or conviction happens to be right. It is how you reached your conclusion that matters. If someone picks a view of the universe because it makes them feel good, and doesn't care about the evidence, the fact that they happened to pick the one that was right doesn't mean for a moment that they made an intelligent, honest, careful, well thought out choice. The ID and YEC proponents have engaged in trickery and deceit, sleight of hand and misrepresentation of the facts. These things are utterly shameful behavior, even in the service of a viewpoint that happens to be correct.
Lest I be misunderstood, in view of the overwhelming evidence (which young-earth deceptionists and cdesign proponentsists dishonestly say doesn't exist or isn't persuasive) it is becoming increasingly improbable that the above scenario could ever actually happen. But science is always open ended - and that is the point. Creationists of the sorts mentioned in this post are not doing science, because they know the conclusions they want to draw and will let no evidence or logic prevent them from doing so.
When it comes to science, however, and when it comes to honesty, it isn't whether you win or lose that matters. It is how you play the game.
Let's apply the same thing to the "culture war" surrounding this subject - the battle for dominance not in terms of the scientific consensus but in terms of influencing the public. Could intelligent design's vocal advocates potentially persuade a majority of people in this country or even the world? It is certainly possible. But I ask those Christians who have listened only to that side and have accepted it because they want it to be true: Are you really committed to "winning" at any cost? If honesty and "fair play" are sacrificed, can it really be called a victory?
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Mandaean Refugee Resources Project
Today I was made aware of the Mandaean Refugee Resources Project, an organization dedicated to addressing the humanitarian plight facing the Mandaeans in our time. I hope other readers of this blog will take an interest in this issue too, if they haven't already. Also of interest is the recent article, IRAQ: The Mandaeans: Another Casualty, by Marianne Barisonek.
Quote of the Day (Dietrich Bonhoeffer)
"So our coming of age leads us to a true recognition of our situation before God. God would have us know that we must live as men who manage our lives without him...Before God and with God we live without God" (Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison).
Would You Give Away Millions To A Stranger?
I doubt that anyone reading this would transfer millions of dollars to someone they did not know, for any reason. Yet people must fall for these scams, since otherwise they wouldn't keep occurring, would they? Please use your critical thinking skills. If the person sending this were really in the situation described, and was able to transfer money to you, why would they need your help? It doesn't make sense, because it isn't real. It is a scam, a hoax, so please don't fall for it?
Dr Mrs Fareeza Al-Karbouli
House 922,Halal-Babel
Masbah,Baghdad,
Rep. of Iraq
Hello dear,
PROPOSAL FOR URGENT BUSINESS RELATIONSHIP
I wish to apologize for any inconveniences this proposal may cause you
as we have never met or known each other before.I know this will surely
come to you as a big surprise.
I am Mrs Fareeza Al-Karbouli,an Iraqi National from the northen
Kurdish town of Qaradagh.I am the wife of Dr Jamal Al Karbouly,formerly
Consultant and Principal Accountant with Al-Bayji oil refinery, situated
125 miles (200km)north of Baghdad.
I am writing to solicit for your assistance to transfer the sum of
seven million five hundred thousand US dollars(US$7.5M) which my late
husband deposited with a finance and security company in Europe.Due to
the political crisis in my country,I am unable to secure entry visa to
travel to Europe to collect the funds.This is why I am soliciting for
your help to transfer the funds to your custody,until I can come and
meet you in your country.I intend using the funds for investment
purposes in your country.
I will offer you 25% of the funds as commission for your assistance.70%
of the money is for me, whereas 5% of it shall be used to take care
of overall expenses incured in the course of the transaction.Though
there are still rooms for more negotiations on this.
I am expecting your urgent response to enable me furnish you with
details and all the relevant documents covering the lodgement of the
funds.I will equally issue a Power of attorney on your behalf, empowering
you to receive the funds on my behalf as the trustee.
For security reasons,you should reply to my alternative
email:mrsfarza900@yahoo.com
Please treat with utmost urgency and confidentiality.
Kind Regards,
Dr Mrs Fareeza Al-Karbouli
---
Dr Mrs Fareeza Al-Karbouli
House 922,Halal-Babel
Masbah,Baghdad,
Rep. of Iraq
Hello dear,
PROPOSAL FOR URGENT BUSINESS RELATIONSHIP
I wish to apologize for any inconveniences this proposal may cause you
as we have never met or known each other before.I know this will surely
come to you as a big surprise.
I am Mrs Fareeza Al-Karbouli,an Iraqi National from the northen
Kurdish town of Qaradagh.I am the wife of Dr Jamal Al Karbouly,formerly
Consultant and Principal Accountant with Al-Bayji oil refinery, situated
125 miles (200km)north of Baghdad.
I am writing to solicit for your assistance to transfer the sum of
seven million five hundred thousand US dollars(US$7.5M) which my late
husband deposited with a finance and security company in Europe.Due to
the political crisis in my country,I am unable to secure entry visa to
travel to Europe to collect the funds.This is why I am soliciting for
your help to transfer the funds to your custody,until I can come and
meet you in your country.I intend using the funds for investment
purposes in your country.
I will offer you 25% of the funds as commission for your assistance.70%
of the money is for me, whereas 5% of it shall be used to take care
of overall expenses incured in the course of the transaction.Though
there are still rooms for more negotiations on this.
I am expecting your urgent response to enable me furnish you with
details and all the relevant documents covering the lodgement of the
funds.I will equally issue a Power of attorney on your behalf, empowering
you to receive the funds on my behalf as the trustee.
For security reasons,you should reply to my alternative
email:mrsfarza900@yahoo.com
Please treat with utmost urgency and confidentiality.
Kind Regards,
Dr Mrs Fareeza Al-Karbouli
Arthur C. Clarke Dies Between 2001 and 2010
The renowned science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke has passed away. He was 90 years old. Tributes around the blogosphere include: 3 Quarks Daily, Biology in Science Fiction, Tobias Buckell, Targuman, Thoughts in a Haystack, IO9, Pharyngula, SF Signal, The Evilutionary Biologist, Further Thoughts, Hyper-Textual Ontology, Paul Levinson's Infinite Regress, and The Bad Idea Blog. SF Signal also has links to works of his and video clips that are available online for free. It is also all over the news.
Since I first posted this, others have joined in offering tributes: Amused Muse, Remote Central, Paleojudaica, Gene Expression, The Sci-Fi Catholic, Old Testament Space Opera, Monkey Trials and Open Parachute. SF Signal has continued to add more.
Since I first posted this, others have joined in offering tributes: Amused Muse, Remote Central, Paleojudaica, Gene Expression, The Sci-Fi Catholic, Old Testament Space Opera, Monkey Trials and Open Parachute. SF Signal has continued to add more.
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Quote of the Day (Madeline L'Engle)
"Fiction…will teach me, teach me things I would never learn had I not opened myself to them in story" (Madeleine L'Engle, Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art (North Point Press, 1995) p.137).
Theology around the Blogosphere
As RJS (at Scot McKnight's Jesus Creed blog) continues his discussion of Francis Collins' The Language of God, he brings up what is the crux of the matter for many Christians: the relationship of "Adam and Eve" to the theological appropriation of those stories in the New Testament. I had a chance over the past three Sundays to give a series of talks about Religion and Science: Past, Present and Future at Northminster Presbyterian Church here in Indianapolis. It was a delightful opportunity to explore these issues. In a recent blog entry, Jim West notes that many today shift blame onto their DNA, in the same way others blame Adam and Eve. Science and religion are both misused for blame-shifting by those who inadequately understand them. (Michael Heller has an article in First Things about religion and science).
Parchment and Pen has a thoughtful post about not claiming that God will protect us in special ways when we know that Christianity does nothing to exempt one from suffering. But in light of this honesty, we do need to ask how we should think of God and God's relationship to the world. Does God only intervene on "special occasions"? Or does God work through the natural processes of the universe and history? One cannot acknowledge that Christians are not specially exempted from suffering without also realizing that this necessitates that we think differently about God than the Biblical authors and most Christians down the ages did.
C. Orthodoxy has a post on Holy Week without the death and resurrection, objecting to the removal of suffering and death from an Easter curriculum for small children. (Chris Salzman has a follow-up). I don't see the problem - not everything in the Bible is appropriate for small children. In the same post, the role of fantasy in communicating Christian ideas is also raised. Reading it, I found myself thinking that we must ask what the nature of the resurrection story is, and its power, when one can no more prove that Jesus rose as a physical, historical fact than that Gandalf or Harry Potter did. For the first Christians, as for us today, if "you ask me how I know he lives", the only honest answer we can give is "he lives within my heart". But that is not a claim about history but about a profoundly life-changing religious experience. Can pure fantasy challenge us the same way, and bring about changes in our lives, every bit as much as unprovable history can? At any rate, rather than water down stories, perhaps we should indeed leave the Bible, the Lord of the Rings, and Harry Potter until children are the appropriate age.
Codex has a post about not treating Proverbs as promises.
If you haven't been watching Battlestar Galactica, here's your chance to get caught up in time for the start of the new season.
Parchment and Pen has a thoughtful post about not claiming that God will protect us in special ways when we know that Christianity does nothing to exempt one from suffering. But in light of this honesty, we do need to ask how we should think of God and God's relationship to the world. Does God only intervene on "special occasions"? Or does God work through the natural processes of the universe and history? One cannot acknowledge that Christians are not specially exempted from suffering without also realizing that this necessitates that we think differently about God than the Biblical authors and most Christians down the ages did.
C. Orthodoxy has a post on Holy Week without the death and resurrection, objecting to the removal of suffering and death from an Easter curriculum for small children. (Chris Salzman has a follow-up). I don't see the problem - not everything in the Bible is appropriate for small children. In the same post, the role of fantasy in communicating Christian ideas is also raised. Reading it, I found myself thinking that we must ask what the nature of the resurrection story is, and its power, when one can no more prove that Jesus rose as a physical, historical fact than that Gandalf or Harry Potter did. For the first Christians, as for us today, if "you ask me how I know he lives", the only honest answer we can give is "he lives within my heart". But that is not a claim about history but about a profoundly life-changing religious experience. Can pure fantasy challenge us the same way, and bring about changes in our lives, every bit as much as unprovable history can? At any rate, rather than water down stories, perhaps we should indeed leave the Bible, the Lord of the Rings, and Harry Potter until children are the appropriate age.
Codex has a post about not treating Proverbs as promises.
If you haven't been watching Battlestar Galactica, here's your chance to get caught up in time for the start of the new season.
All The Riches Of West Africa
I can't imagine how anyone can fall for these phishing scams, but pretty much every day there are people who find their way to my blog through keyword searches related to them. On the one hand, I'm glad that they are at least looking for further information. On the other hand, one shouldn't need to check. No windfalls of cash are going to suddenly be offered to you out of nowhere. Get rich quick schemes are consistently get poor quick scams. Don't ever treat them as authentic. Even if you don't find clear confirmation, assume they aren't genuine. If an actual lawyer representing someone you actually knew wants to get their inheritance to you, they will not send a random generic e-mail. And of course, when the e-mail claims to come from one place, and the end of the e-mail shows it comes from another country and/or a free e-mail provider, that is a dead giveaway.
Compliments and Greetings,
This is an official notification of the availability of your full
entitlement valid $1.2 million which has not been affected due to
official
negligence, This transfer has been held pending and its original
account suspended pending when the benefactor provided the TAX
clearance
document, But the impostors who are operating in syndicates all over
the world today are misled and misguided you about the position of
your
fund with the sole aim of extorting money from you, that explain why
you have not receive the payment up-to-date.
However, you are advised to immediately reconfirm your telephone and
current contact/ payment receiving details to this e-mail address (
hanborha@mail.ru) .You will receive your payment by: (1) By wire
transfer direct to your nominated bank account. (2). Issuing you ATM
CARD
(3) Or by drawing a cashiers cheque payable in your name, with strict
procedures of the International funds transfer rules and regulations
in
avoidance of unhealthy intents and unnecessary delay.
So, let us know which of option you like to receive your monies, But
before we proceed, you are required to make a payment of the
Non-resident tax of $220 only as the authorities demand which is
described as
selective payment to enable us effect maximum clearance on your file
and
automate your full information on the transfer script text to ensure
that the payment reach your hand on time through a legal secure way
from the exact time frame we initiate our service if you accurately
furnished us with our requirement as instructed.
Note that we have no legal right to deduct or add to the value of your
funds because your payment has already been keyed into the system for
final transfer, thus the compliance with this condition this payment
will reach you within 48 banking hour or less.
Yours faithfully,
Hani Borha
International Clearing House West Africa- BENIN
Affiliate to the World Association of Debt Management.
Call me with the telephone number..+229 93797039
- - - - -
Compliments and Greetings,
This is an official notification of the availability of your full
entitlement valid $1.2 million which has not been affected due to
official
negligence, This transfer has been held pending and its original
account suspended pending when the benefactor provided the TAX
clearance
document, But the impostors who are operating in syndicates all over
the world today are misled and misguided you about the position of
your
fund with the sole aim of extorting money from you, that explain why
you have not receive the payment up-to-date.
However, you are advised to immediately reconfirm your telephone and
current contact/ payment receiving details to this e-mail address (
hanborha@mail.ru) .You will receive your payment by: (1) By wire
transfer direct to your nominated bank account. (2). Issuing you ATM
CARD
(3) Or by drawing a cashiers cheque payable in your name, with strict
procedures of the International funds transfer rules and regulations
in
avoidance of unhealthy intents and unnecessary delay.
So, let us know which of option you like to receive your monies, But
before we proceed, you are required to make a payment of the
Non-resident tax of $220 only as the authorities demand which is
described as
selective payment to enable us effect maximum clearance on your file
and
automate your full information on the transfer script text to ensure
that the payment reach your hand on time through a legal secure way
from the exact time frame we initiate our service if you accurately
furnished us with our requirement as instructed.
Note that we have no legal right to deduct or add to the value of your
funds because your payment has already been keyed into the system for
final transfer, thus the compliance with this condition this payment
will reach you within 48 banking hour or less.
Yours faithfully,
Hani Borha
International Clearing House West Africa- BENIN
Affiliate to the World Association of Debt Management.
Call me with the telephone number..+229 93797039
Extra Biblical Writings
I just came across a site that offers a number of Mandaean, Manicaean, other Iranian, Early Church and Jewish Pseudepigraphal texts in English translation. I've also added a link to my sidebar. Here's the address:
Last week was our Spring Break, and I still can't believe that I managed to finish off most of the projects I was hoping to during that period!
Last week was our Spring Break, and I still can't believe that I managed to finish off most of the projects I was hoping to during that period!
Friday, March 14, 2008
Quote of the Day (Birger Pearson)
"Sethian or Classic Gnosticism developed as a result of the efforts of educated Jews interested in making sense of their traditions. They did this, not by rejecting their traditions wholesale, but by applying to them a new hermeneutic, whereby their ancestral traditions were given a radically new meaning. The result was, in effect, the creation of a new religion" (Birger Pearson, Ancient Gnosticism: Traditions And Literature
(Minneapolis: Fortress. 2007) p.132).
(Minneapolis: Fortress. 2007) p.132).Thursday, March 13, 2008
Sun LOST Jin
Tonight's episode had some "wow" moments, mostly in the flashback/flashforward (it was a clever idea to have the two running in parallel simultaneously) and in the events on the ship. Finally, Michael's presence on board is revealed to Sayid and Desmond. Where Walt is, we do not yet know. The discussion with Capt. Gault was fascinating, particularly given that Sayid and Desmond had been warned not to trust the captain, presumably by Michael, and yet the captain seemed far more believable - even though he works for Charles Widmore, whom we haven't learned to trust so far.
What was going on with Regina? She was reading Jules Verne, yet holding the book upside down. Then she wrapped herself in chains and jumped into the water. What had she seen or experienced that caused that?
The big shocker, of course, was the visit by Sun with her newborn baby daughter and Hurley to Jin's grave. The gravestone said he died in 2004, and the calendar on the freighter said it was Christmas eve 2004, if I recall correctly. And so putting that together with the commercial's claim that someone will die in the next episode, there is good reason to think it might be Jin. But Claire's number is presumably up soon too, and so all bets are off.
UPDATE: A commenter saw the full date on Jin's gravestone and it was the day of the crash, and so it may be that Jin is still alive on the island!
On this episode see further Carmen Andres' post "In love with 'Lost' again", and Paul Levinson's "Flash Both Ways".
What was going on with Regina? She was reading Jules Verne, yet holding the book upside down. Then she wrapped herself in chains and jumped into the water. What had she seen or experienced that caused that?
The big shocker, of course, was the visit by Sun with her newborn baby daughter and Hurley to Jin's grave. The gravestone said he died in 2004, and the calendar on the freighter said it was Christmas eve 2004, if I recall correctly. And so putting that together with the commercial's claim that someone will die in the next episode, there is good reason to think it might be Jin. But Claire's number is presumably up soon too, and so all bets are off.
UPDATE: A commenter saw the full date on Jin's gravestone and it was the day of the crash, and so it may be that Jin is still alive on the island!
On this episode see further Carmen Andres' post "In love with 'Lost' again", and Paul Levinson's "Flash Both Ways".
Quote of the Day (Richard G. Colling)
"Unless we are actively looking or listening for something, there is a real and distinct possibility it will simply fail to reach our conscious awareness, at least not at the levels that are desired" (Richard G. Colling, Random Designer: Created from Chaos to Connect with the Creator (Bourbonnais, IL: Browning, 2004).
Around the Blogosphere
Carmen Andres draws attention to the Biblical imagery in a Johnny Cash song used in the season finale of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. This is part of an ongoing series of blog entries about the show. The same Johnny Cash song will also be discussed in a paper at SBL.
Mystical Seeker discusses intercessory prayer and alternatives to it. Doug Chaplin points to a recent discussion of the Good Friday prayer by Jacob Neusner.
Iyov updates us on Free Rice, and provides links to quizzes that will test the consistency of our religious beliefs. One interesting thing to note as a possible result of the quiz: if you don't give your concept of God any attributes, it will be perfectly consistent!
Mark Goodacre has articles on the website of the new BBC film The Passion. Ruth Gledhill's articles are a good source for anyone interested in Christianity in the UK.
Deane tells you where to direct people who claim there are no transitional fossils. Scot McKnight continues his series on Francis Collins' book The Language of God. The Panda's Thumb reports that the Spanish seem to see through the lies and rhetoric of the Intelligent Design movement better than many Americans do. John Pieret just gives one great post after another, so don't choose, just go to his blog and read.
Drew discusses loving our neighbors with our minds/intelligence.
J. L. Hinman outlines his theology. Nick Norelli dares to disagree with Jim West about whether faith needs defending. Andrew notes the irony when modern authors look back at earlier theologians and criticize them with their 20/20 hindsight. Dan covers denominations getting greener.
Loren Rosson has an ongoing series on Paul and "fulfilling" the Law. The View From Jerusalem has a series on the Qumran caves.
Bob Cornwall mentions the election of Andre Carson, a Muslim, to Congress. Zack suggests that 43% of white evangelicals in Ohio voted Democrat in the primary. Street Prophets covers the same piece of news.
Mystical Seeker discusses intercessory prayer and alternatives to it. Doug Chaplin points to a recent discussion of the Good Friday prayer by Jacob Neusner.
Iyov updates us on Free Rice, and provides links to quizzes that will test the consistency of our religious beliefs. One interesting thing to note as a possible result of the quiz: if you don't give your concept of God any attributes, it will be perfectly consistent!
Mark Goodacre has articles on the website of the new BBC film The Passion. Ruth Gledhill's articles are a good source for anyone interested in Christianity in the UK.
Deane tells you where to direct people who claim there are no transitional fossils. Scot McKnight continues his series on Francis Collins' book The Language of God. The Panda's Thumb reports that the Spanish seem to see through the lies and rhetoric of the Intelligent Design movement better than many Americans do. John Pieret just gives one great post after another, so don't choose, just go to his blog and read.
Drew discusses loving our neighbors with our minds/intelligence.
J. L. Hinman outlines his theology. Nick Norelli dares to disagree with Jim West about whether faith needs defending. Andrew notes the irony when modern authors look back at earlier theologians and criticize them with their 20/20 hindsight. Dan covers denominations getting greener.
Loren Rosson has an ongoing series on Paul and "fulfilling" the Law. The View From Jerusalem has a series on the Qumran caves.
Bob Cornwall mentions the election of Andre Carson, a Muslim, to Congress. Zack suggests that 43% of white evangelicals in Ohio voted Democrat in the primary. Street Prophets covers the same piece of news.
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Baptist Congratulates Muslim Democrat Elected to Represent Red State
The latest news from my state is that we elected the second ever Muslim to a seat in Congress. Andre Carson, grandson of the late Julia Carson. The first state to elect a Muslim to congress was Minnesota. There go some stereotypes about the Midwest. What is more astonishing is when a "red state" like Indiana elects a Democrat!
On another subject, I have self-identified as a Christian and more specifically a Baptist on this blog on many occasions, because otherwise people get the impression that this is what Baptists think:
I find it hard to imagine that there is actually a congregation somewhere that is proud to display this, and people who are comfortable attending (and being seen attending) a church that boasts of ignorance and irrationality as one of its aims. But the least the rest of us can do is make our own affiliations explicit, in order to make clear that the Baptists, like Christians more generally, are diverse, and by no means generally characterized by opposition to reason.
On another subject, I have self-identified as a Christian and more specifically a Baptist on this blog on many occasions, because otherwise people get the impression that this is what Baptists think:
I find it hard to imagine that there is actually a congregation somewhere that is proud to display this, and people who are comfortable attending (and being seen attending) a church that boasts of ignorance and irrationality as one of its aims. But the least the rest of us can do is make our own affiliations explicit, in order to make clear that the Baptists, like Christians more generally, are diverse, and by no means generally characterized by opposition to reason.
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
DaveScot's Unsolved Murder
Over at Uncommon Descent, DaveScot has given what must be an overwhelmingly satisfactory reply to the point I made about "Intelligent Design Criminology", since all of the comments have been favorable and none critical.
Oh that's right, they just ban their critics. That must be the sort of stifling of opposing viewpoints this new movie Expelled will be about...
[If your sarcasm detector was not activated while reading this post, please activate it now and begin again at the top. Thank you.]
More seriously, DaveScot's response is so utterly off target as to raise the question whether he is deliberately obfuscating. He admits that the trail has not gone cold as far as scientific exploration of evolution is concerned. He tries to make an analogy with claiming a person was killed by accident that actually hurts his point, for several reasons. First, in many cases, even where murder might seem likely, 'accidental death' is considered if there are other reasons for doing so, such as there being no explanation how any other person could have entered the room, for instance. Murder investigations occasionally lead to the conclusion 'bizarre accident'; they never lead us to supernatural or extraterrestrial murders, nor should they. Criminology, like most sciences and other disciplines that involve critical investigation, deals with matters as far as the surprising natural. It doesn't go further. Second, science is not committed to the view that life was an "accident". That is certainly possible, but it is also possible that the production of organic molecules and their eventual synthesis into living things is fundamentally rooted in the basic laws and functioning of the universe. If so, then this cannot be called an "accident" any more than rain can. We usually don't call rain an accident, because it occurs regularly and naturally according to explicable processes.
At least he was honest enough to say "the illusion of design hasn’t gone away." Give him credit when he gets it right.
At any rate, DaveScot thinks he has solved the murder case. That's just because the trial (and any 'trial' at Uncommon Descent) is rigged, since the lawyers for the other side are not allowed to cross-examine the witnesses.
Dare I note as well that the folks at Uncommon Descent still seem not to be getting any better at attributing the things they quote and materials they use to their rightful sources?
Oh that's right, they just ban their critics. That must be the sort of stifling of opposing viewpoints this new movie Expelled will be about...
[If your sarcasm detector was not activated while reading this post, please activate it now and begin again at the top. Thank you.]
More seriously, DaveScot's response is so utterly off target as to raise the question whether he is deliberately obfuscating. He admits that the trail has not gone cold as far as scientific exploration of evolution is concerned. He tries to make an analogy with claiming a person was killed by accident that actually hurts his point, for several reasons. First, in many cases, even where murder might seem likely, 'accidental death' is considered if there are other reasons for doing so, such as there being no explanation how any other person could have entered the room, for instance. Murder investigations occasionally lead to the conclusion 'bizarre accident'; they never lead us to supernatural or extraterrestrial murders, nor should they. Criminology, like most sciences and other disciplines that involve critical investigation, deals with matters as far as the surprising natural. It doesn't go further. Second, science is not committed to the view that life was an "accident". That is certainly possible, but it is also possible that the production of organic molecules and their eventual synthesis into living things is fundamentally rooted in the basic laws and functioning of the universe. If so, then this cannot be called an "accident" any more than rain can. We usually don't call rain an accident, because it occurs regularly and naturally according to explicable processes.
At least he was honest enough to say "the illusion of design hasn’t gone away." Give him credit when he gets it right.
At any rate, DaveScot thinks he has solved the murder case. That's just because the trial (and any 'trial' at Uncommon Descent) is rigged, since the lawyers for the other side are not allowed to cross-examine the witnesses.
Dare I note as well that the folks at Uncommon Descent still seem not to be getting any better at attributing the things they quote and materials they use to their rightful sources?
The Sally Kern Incident
As I had this awful stomach flu that's been going around, I wasn't able to check out the YouTube clips that many bloggers have shared over the past few days. It is just as well. I was already nauseous.
The above clip of Oklahoma representative Sally Kern speaking about homosexuality is disturbing for a number of reasons, and I will try to point them out in a calm, level-headed fashion.
Perhaps the most important point is that she is wrong. She says that no civilization that has embraced homosexuals has lasted more than a few decades. Apparently she has never heard of the Greek civilization, which not only lasted "more than a few decades", but profoundly influenced most of the major, powerful and successful civilizations that existed from then on, including our own. One doesn't have to know much about Greek history or literature to know that this civilization was in essence bisexual.
Second, I have yet to meet a homosexual who has tried to convert me to it. Perhaps her claim is an instance of fundamentalists projecting their own proselytizing tendencies onto others.
Third, the Bible has far more to say about injustice and its corrosive effects on society than about homosexuality, and speaks far more clearly about the former issue, but you'll never hear that from these fundamentalists. They talk about what 'God's word says' when it will get them votes or support their own views. Anyone who believes them when they claim they 'take the Bible literally' needs to get a new baloney-detection kit.
Finally, she seems not to realize that speech of this sort fosters a context in which violent actions can then be overlooked. Very few Muslims are involved in terrorism, but as long as not insignificant numbers of imams talk about the destruction of America, and chatrooms continue to be filled with hate-speech, the few that would actually act have a strong culture of support, which will turn a blind eye when they engage in terrorist acts. So, in short, if anyone should be accused of supporting terrorism, it is Kern. Views like hers have "deadly consequences".
I wish to put append to this entry a mention of the fact that I'm a Baptist, and share a link to a post by a representative of the Mainstream Baptists in Oklahoma on this subject. Not all of us think as Kern does.
The above clip of Oklahoma representative Sally Kern speaking about homosexuality is disturbing for a number of reasons, and I will try to point them out in a calm, level-headed fashion.
Perhaps the most important point is that she is wrong. She says that no civilization that has embraced homosexuals has lasted more than a few decades. Apparently she has never heard of the Greek civilization, which not only lasted "more than a few decades", but profoundly influenced most of the major, powerful and successful civilizations that existed from then on, including our own. One doesn't have to know much about Greek history or literature to know that this civilization was in essence bisexual.
Second, I have yet to meet a homosexual who has tried to convert me to it. Perhaps her claim is an instance of fundamentalists projecting their own proselytizing tendencies onto others.
Third, the Bible has far more to say about injustice and its corrosive effects on society than about homosexuality, and speaks far more clearly about the former issue, but you'll never hear that from these fundamentalists. They talk about what 'God's word says' when it will get them votes or support their own views. Anyone who believes them when they claim they 'take the Bible literally' needs to get a new baloney-detection kit.
Finally, she seems not to realize that speech of this sort fosters a context in which violent actions can then be overlooked. Very few Muslims are involved in terrorism, but as long as not insignificant numbers of imams talk about the destruction of America, and chatrooms continue to be filled with hate-speech, the few that would actually act have a strong culture of support, which will turn a blind eye when they engage in terrorist acts. So, in short, if anyone should be accused of supporting terrorism, it is Kern. Views like hers have "deadly consequences".
I wish to put append to this entry a mention of the fact that I'm a Baptist, and share a link to a post by a representative of the Mainstream Baptists in Oklahoma on this subject. Not all of us think as Kern does.
Monday, March 10, 2008
Plagiarism Tutorial
No, I don't mean a tutorial to teach students how to plagiarize. They clearly seem to know that instinctively. I mean a tutorial to help students grasp, through specific examples and questions they have to answer, what plagiarism is.
Butler University's library has made just such a tutorial available online. I share it here in the hope that other professors and teachers may find it useful and perhaps direct their own students to it. It won't stop plagiarism, but at least hopefully it will stop the whining complaints that they "didn't realize" they were plagiarizing, which professors hear so often that we start to wonder whether such pleas are themselves plagiarized, too!
In other news, the T&T Clark Blog today highlighted a new release in which I've contribributed a chapter. The title is Who Do My Opponents Say That I Am?: An Investigation of the Accusations Against Jesus (Library of New Testament Studies)
. At a mere $130, I'm sure you'll want to run out and grab your copy as soon as it is available...
Butler University's library has made just such a tutorial available online. I share it here in the hope that other professors and teachers may find it useful and perhaps direct their own students to it. It won't stop plagiarism, but at least hopefully it will stop the whining complaints that they "didn't realize" they were plagiarizing, which professors hear so often that we start to wonder whether such pleas are themselves plagiarized, too!
In other news, the T&T Clark Blog today highlighted a new release in which I've contribributed a chapter. The title is Who Do My Opponents Say That I Am?: An Investigation of the Accusations Against Jesus (Library of New Testament Studies)
. At a mere $130, I'm sure you'll want to run out and grab your copy as soon as it is available...
Quote of the Day (Jonathan Merritt)
"I learned that God reveals himself through Scripture and in general through his creation, and when we destroy God’s creation, it’s similar to ripping pages from the Bible" (Jonathan Merritt, spokesman for the Southern Baptist Environment and Climate Initiative, quoted in today's New York Times).
Sunday, March 9, 2008
Intelligent Design Criminology
The question to ask proponents of intelligent design is this: At what point the police should stop investigating an unsolved murder and close the case, declaring that God must have simply wanted the victim dead? It is the same point at which it is appropriate to tell scientists to stop looking for explanations and simply conclude "God did it".
Intelligent design isn't just bad news for science. As an overarching approach to evidence and investigative reasoning, it can have a detrimental affect even on the safety of your neighborhood.
Intelligent design isn't just bad news for science. As an overarching approach to evidence and investigative reasoning, it can have a detrimental affect even on the safety of your neighborhood.
Saturday, March 8, 2008
Quote of the Day (The Gospel of Philip)
"A donkey turning a millstone did a hundred miles walking. When it was loosed, it found that it was still at the same place. There are men who make many journeys, but make no progress towards any destination" (The Gospel of Philip 56).
Thursday, March 6, 2008
The OTHER Woman: LOST as Metaphysical Soap Opera
I didn't watch much of the 'enhanced' version of "The Constant" (last week's episode), but I did catch a glimpse of one important point: the name of the military base where Desmond was stationed is a real place north of the Arctic Circle, and it appears in Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy as a gateway to parallel universes.
Did anyone else notice that, at the end, Desmond is in both times simultaneously? That is what becomes possible when one has a "constant".
This episode introduced the character of Harper Stanhope, who we learn was Goodwin's wife. I must say that the pun in the title of tonight's episode of LOST is a good one. Juliet is a woman who is one of the Others, and tonight we learn that she also played the role of 'the other woman'.
Harper features most intriguingly, however, as a manifestation of the island, accompanied by the ghostly voices, delivering a message supposedly from Ben. The message is that Daniel and Charlotte must be prevented from releasing the gas from the Tempest power station, which would kill everyone on the island. When Juliet asks how Ben could send a message when he's a prisoner, Harper replies that Ben is "exactly where he wants to be".
It turns out that Daniel and Charlotte are trying to neutralize the gas, not unleash it. But do they want to make it safe to prevent Ben from using it? Or to make it available for use by someone else?
We learn, at long last, who sent the freighter: Charles Widmore. And Ben tells John Locke that he'll tell him who his man on the freighter is, but he had better sit down first. [The combination of the safe that contained the video tape was 36-15-28]. Widmore, Ben claims, wants to exploit the island, and Ben's biggest fear is the people who would flock to the island if they knew about it.
Harper says at one point in the episode that Ben's crush on Juliet is unsurprising, since she looks "just like her". Who is Harper referring to? I'd guess Ben's mother. Ben brought Juliet to the island specifically for this reason, and so Ben is himself exploiting the island. He thinks Juliet is his. My guess is that he is even causing the women to die in childbirth, as his mother did. How much of this is done by him consciously, and how much is simply the island translating his desires and deepest dreads into reality, I don't feel I can say yet.
The trick as the story develops from here on will be to keep it from degenerating into a soap opera. But Ben always has a plan, and I can only hope that the makers of LOST do to.
The funniest line in the show was when Ben asked whether the rabbit that Locke cooked for dinner had a number on it...
Did anyone else notice that, at the end, Desmond is in both times simultaneously? That is what becomes possible when one has a "constant".
This episode introduced the character of Harper Stanhope, who we learn was Goodwin's wife. I must say that the pun in the title of tonight's episode of LOST is a good one. Juliet is a woman who is one of the Others, and tonight we learn that she also played the role of 'the other woman'.
Harper features most intriguingly, however, as a manifestation of the island, accompanied by the ghostly voices, delivering a message supposedly from Ben. The message is that Daniel and Charlotte must be prevented from releasing the gas from the Tempest power station, which would kill everyone on the island. When Juliet asks how Ben could send a message when he's a prisoner, Harper replies that Ben is "exactly where he wants to be".
It turns out that Daniel and Charlotte are trying to neutralize the gas, not unleash it. But do they want to make it safe to prevent Ben from using it? Or to make it available for use by someone else?
We learn, at long last, who sent the freighter: Charles Widmore. And Ben tells John Locke that he'll tell him who his man on the freighter is, but he had better sit down first. [The combination of the safe that contained the video tape was 36-15-28]. Widmore, Ben claims, wants to exploit the island, and Ben's biggest fear is the people who would flock to the island if they knew about it.
Harper says at one point in the episode that Ben's crush on Juliet is unsurprising, since she looks "just like her". Who is Harper referring to? I'd guess Ben's mother. Ben brought Juliet to the island specifically for this reason, and so Ben is himself exploiting the island. He thinks Juliet is his. My guess is that he is even causing the women to die in childbirth, as his mother did. How much of this is done by him consciously, and how much is simply the island translating his desires and deepest dreads into reality, I don't feel I can say yet.
The trick as the story develops from here on will be to keep it from degenerating into a soap opera. But Ben always has a plan, and I can only hope that the makers of LOST do to.
The funniest line in the show was when Ben asked whether the rabbit that Locke cooked for dinner had a number on it...
Reminding You That All Religions Were Once New
I've long wanted to paraphrase the slogan from Composers Datebook to apply it to another interest of mine:
Certainly one approach is to judge them by their "fruits". But then why aren't more people flocking to Jainism? And why haven't blemished in Christianity's history led to the revocation of its "classical" status?
I decided to post on this because of a recent article by Michael Shermer about Scientology, which some of my colleagues have been discussing. Is there anything different about mocking or threatening a new religion, as opposed to doing the same towards a well-established older one?
At the very least, in terms of U. S. democracy, the answer is no. If the first amendment is to be meaningful, it cannot just apply to religions that began before a certain date. Our 'free market' approach to spirituality also suggests that the new and the old must compete on a level playing field, and there is some evidence that might suggest that the older traditions are the better for it. The John Templeton Foundation is a big supporter of this 'free market' approach to religion and spirituality. Of course, that isn't too surprising...
Then again, there may be a tension worth noting within our own capitalist democracy. Has anyone else noticed that, while we emphasize democratic government, most corporations in the U.S. are structured like mini dictatorships?
"Reminding you that all religions were once new"The original phrase is applied to music, and the point is that all the music we label "classical" today was once simply "music". Classical is what has stood the test of time, but just because it is old, or because it has remained popular, doesn't automatically mean it is 'better'. Indeed, it doesn't seem clear that there is any objective way of assessing 'betterness' in music. Is religion much different? If so, how?
Certainly one approach is to judge them by their "fruits". But then why aren't more people flocking to Jainism? And why haven't blemished in Christianity's history led to the revocation of its "classical" status?
I decided to post on this because of a recent article by Michael Shermer about Scientology, which some of my colleagues have been discussing. Is there anything different about mocking or threatening a new religion, as opposed to doing the same towards a well-established older one?
At the very least, in terms of U. S. democracy, the answer is no. If the first amendment is to be meaningful, it cannot just apply to religions that began before a certain date. Our 'free market' approach to spirituality also suggests that the new and the old must compete on a level playing field, and there is some evidence that might suggest that the older traditions are the better for it. The John Templeton Foundation is a big supporter of this 'free market' approach to religion and spirituality. Of course, that isn't too surprising...
Then again, there may be a tension worth noting within our own capitalist democracy. Has anyone else noticed that, while we emphasize democratic government, most corporations in the U.S. are structured like mini dictatorships?
The Lord’s Prayer of the Lingering Tillichian
Charles Allen shared this with me, and presumably those who would appreciate it, and those who read this blog, are overlapping circles. Let us pray...
The Lord’s Prayer of the Lingering Tillichian
The same prayer and others can also be found here.
The Lord’s Prayer of the Lingering Tillichian
Ground of Being, No object among other objects,
Aahhh.
Be.
In history as well as beyond history.
Support our finite freedom,
And sustain us when our dreaming innocence
Becomes Zeitgebund.
For with you alone
Are autonomy
And heteronomy
Eternally theonomous.
The same prayer and others can also be found here.
Wednesday, March 5, 2008
Divine Patrons and Capitalist Democracies
When a North American reads the description of the cultural values of the Greco-Roman social world into which Christianity was born, they get the sense that they are dealing with a world closer to The Sopranos than the ideals that the United States, for instance, tends to view favorably. The analogy is appropriate, since the Italian Mafia's values certainly do derive from the Mediterranean world and from a culture whose traditional values are closer to those of the New Testament world than are those prevailing in North America. Patronage (and patronizing), loyalty, "it's not what you know, it's who you know", nepotism, favoritism - all of these things that were considered normative and (on the whole) appropriate in the New Testament world are viewed with (at best) suspicion in ours.
What is particularly ironic, but not always recognized as such, is that many Christians seek to emulate such Mediterranean elements in the pattern the New Testament presents regarding how to relate to God. Yet these same Christians would often regard behaving in the same way towards their clients as God was expected to behave towards his as immoral or at least problematic.
In a society in which we consider it appropriate to reward people based on merit rather than relationship, and sanction rewarding those with whom one has a relationship as a conflict of interests, ought we to rethink religion in such terms as well? Or should Christians, conversely, be seeking to oppose the impersonal pattern of North American society and defending the prioritizing of relationships over merit on religious grounds? One or the other would make sense, but to be counter-cultural by accident in one's conception of the divine-human relationship, and utterly follow one's culture in interpersonal human relationships, seems like a rather odd hodge-podge indeed.
In Paul's letter to the Romans, he hints at a possible Jewish and Christian challenge to ways of thinking about God based on the culture of patronage. Indeed, he goes so far as to offer instead a merit-based model that had a certain currency in Judaism. "God will give to each person according to what he has done...For God does not show favoritism" (Romans 2:6,11).
This marks an interesting contrast to the "It's not what you know, it's who you know" approach that not only prevailed in Paul's day, but is very popular in certain circles in ours.
What is particularly ironic, but not always recognized as such, is that many Christians seek to emulate such Mediterranean elements in the pattern the New Testament presents regarding how to relate to God. Yet these same Christians would often regard behaving in the same way towards their clients as God was expected to behave towards his as immoral or at least problematic.
In a society in which we consider it appropriate to reward people based on merit rather than relationship, and sanction rewarding those with whom one has a relationship as a conflict of interests, ought we to rethink religion in such terms as well? Or should Christians, conversely, be seeking to oppose the impersonal pattern of North American society and defending the prioritizing of relationships over merit on religious grounds? One or the other would make sense, but to be counter-cultural by accident in one's conception of the divine-human relationship, and utterly follow one's culture in interpersonal human relationships, seems like a rather odd hodge-podge indeed.
In Paul's letter to the Romans, he hints at a possible Jewish and Christian challenge to ways of thinking about God based on the culture of patronage. Indeed, he goes so far as to offer instead a merit-based model that had a certain currency in Judaism. "God will give to each person according to what he has done...For God does not show favoritism" (Romans 2:6,11).
This marks an interesting contrast to the "It's not what you know, it's who you know" approach that not only prevailed in Paul's day, but is very popular in certain circles in ours.
Tuesday, March 4, 2008
Thinking about God
Questions Unlimited (a campus organization I am involved in) hosted a lunchtime discussion entitled “More Than One Way to Look at God?: Why the God Who’s Not There Might Not Be God”. I was one of the panelists; another was Rev. Charles Allen, who has a website with interesting pieces he has written on various topics. It would be hard to summarize, but there is much I agree with in the piece by John Hick that I quoted in my last post, and our discussion touched on those points and many others. It was particularly nice to have students and faculty from Christian Theological Seminary join with those of us from Butler for this event.
One point that I made I will share here. In the Bible, studied critically, we can see some steps in the process of the shift from a polytheistic view, which personified the forces of nature, to a monotheistic (or proto-monotheistic) one that explained these various forces of nature in terms of a single personified agent behind them. We see the results of this as the Biblical authors rewrote the traditional flood story in light of their revised thinking about God, and the result is perplexing yet represents progress in perceiving an underlying unity to all things and helping to get us to the scientific approach that built upon this foundation. They had no other way of making sense of such stories than to assume the flood happened and assume God had a moral reason for inflicting it on humans.
Today we have more information and to stop our thinking about God at the stage of the Biblical authors would represent a really bizarre decision on our part. Thanks to our better (although far from perfect) understanding of the universe we inhabit, we do not need either to personify forces of nature, or blame "acts of God" on God. Unless we seriously rethink our concept of God in light of such new data, we end up with a very troubling view, as one blogger I read insightfully points out. It makes little sense to argue that God wants us to not seek our own glory, to not repay those who dishonor and harm us in kind, and yet to depict God as the ultimate glory-seeker who beats up (or one day in the future will torture) those who refuse to respect him. If we realize that the Biblical literature indicates points on a trajectory rather than a static God-concept, then we are free to avoid such troubling inconsistencies and think of God in ways that are in accordance with our highest moral standards.
Charles Allen pointed out that we can pay metaphysical compliments to God without thinking about what they really mean. For instance, if we say that God is omniscient, are we willing to maximize that at the expense of God's freedom? If God foreknows everything, we end up with what I call the 'bored view of God', where God spends eternity doing what God knew that God would do, powerless to change anything since that would cause God's foreknowledge to be in error.
If we unthinkingly attribute to God the maximal attributes in all areas, we just end up with a God who is omnipotent, omniscience, omnipresent and omnivorous...
One point that I made I will share here. In the Bible, studied critically, we can see some steps in the process of the shift from a polytheistic view, which personified the forces of nature, to a monotheistic (or proto-monotheistic) one that explained these various forces of nature in terms of a single personified agent behind them. We see the results of this as the Biblical authors rewrote the traditional flood story in light of their revised thinking about God, and the result is perplexing yet represents progress in perceiving an underlying unity to all things and helping to get us to the scientific approach that built upon this foundation. They had no other way of making sense of such stories than to assume the flood happened and assume God had a moral reason for inflicting it on humans.
Today we have more information and to stop our thinking about God at the stage of the Biblical authors would represent a really bizarre decision on our part. Thanks to our better (although far from perfect) understanding of the universe we inhabit, we do not need either to personify forces of nature, or blame "acts of God" on God. Unless we seriously rethink our concept of God in light of such new data, we end up with a very troubling view, as one blogger I read insightfully points out. It makes little sense to argue that God wants us to not seek our own glory, to not repay those who dishonor and harm us in kind, and yet to depict God as the ultimate glory-seeker who beats up (or one day in the future will torture) those who refuse to respect him. If we realize that the Biblical literature indicates points on a trajectory rather than a static God-concept, then we are free to avoid such troubling inconsistencies and think of God in ways that are in accordance with our highest moral standards.
Charles Allen pointed out that we can pay metaphysical compliments to God without thinking about what they really mean. For instance, if we say that God is omniscient, are we willing to maximize that at the expense of God's freedom? If God foreknows everything, we end up with what I call the 'bored view of God', where God spends eternity doing what God knew that God would do, powerless to change anything since that would cause God's foreknowledge to be in error.
If we unthinkingly attribute to God the maximal attributes in all areas, we just end up with a God who is omnipotent, omniscience, omnipresent and omnivorous...
Quote of the Day (John Hick)
"Applying a kind of philosophical Golden Rule, it would be unreasonable not to grant to religious experience within other traditions what I affirm of it within my own tradition" (John Hick, "Who or What is God?" p.6).
Monday, March 3, 2008
Review of Jorunn Jacobsen Buckley, The Great Stem of Souls
Review of Jorunn Jacobsen Buckley, The Great Stem of Souls
(Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2005). 388 + xv pp. Reviewed by Dr. James F. McGrath, Associate Professor of Religion, Butler University, Indianapolis, USA.
Buckley’s book The Great Stem of Souls derives its title from a phrase used to designate the Mandaean community. It is found in the colophons of Mandaean manuscripts, which not only list the scribes who copied the manuscript, but at times also refer to contemporary events and concerns affecting the Mandaeans in the time and place in which the copying occurred. It is these colophons, often not translated together with the Mandaean texts with which they are connected, that are the focus of Buckley's study. She is to be thanked for making more information about such materials, and in some cases translations and/or summaries of their contents at length, available to a wider scholarly community.Copying manuscripts is viewed as a meritorious act in Mandaism, and the person for whom a particular copy is made, as well as the scribe who made it, are mentioned. Towards the end of the book, we learn that the Mandaeans did not, until recently, use gravestones or other such tomb markers, and it is suggested that perhaps the recording of names at the ends of manuscripts in this way substituted for tombs, as a way of remembering earlier generations (p.343).
Buckley’s book is largely grouped by manuscripts, with a discussion of the colophon (or in the case of composite works that seem to have resulted from the combination of works that were once separate, colophons in the plural) of each. This makes the book very difficult to summarize, as does not, for the most part, attempt to achieve what the book’s subtitle might lead the reader to believe, namely “reconstructing Mandaean history”. There is much more in the way of raw data than an attempt to integrate that data into a chronological historical narrative. In one sense, this is not surprising. There are numerous individuals with the same name mentioned in the colophons, and anyone who has done family history research will know the impossibility, without other relevant evidence, of being certain that two people with the same name are the same person. And so this book might be said to provide the raw materials for any future attempt to write a history of the Mandaeans, rather than attempting to do that itself.
Given the neglect from which the Mandaeans in general, and the colophons in their manuscripts in particular, have suffered, Buckley has thus done an enormous service for historians. Nevertheless, it remains the case that information about specific individuals and specific time periods is spread throughout the book, rather than integrated. The provision of an index of priests (pp.379-385) is thus not merely useful but essential for anyone investigating a specific person or time. This should not be taken as a criticism: it is necessary to have the evidence from individual colophons presented separately. It is for others trying to write a history of the Mandaean people and religion (or perhaps, at some point, Buckley herself, in a rather different book) to use this data in so doing.
This is not to say that there are not sections which focus on specific times and individuals. Part 2, entitled “Priests and Scholars”, sits somewhat awkwardly between parts 1 and 3, which approach and organize the material by manuscripts/texts. But it provides a refreshingly integrated approach, focused on specific cases about which relatively more information is available: Lady Drower (and her interaction and correspondence with Sheikh Negm), Heinrich Petermann’s work, Yahia Bihram, and then finally a chapter on women priests. Yahia Bihram is arguably one of the most important subjects in Mandaean studies. In 1831, a cholera epidemic decimated the Mandaean community in general and the priesthood in particular. Yahia Bihram had a key role in preserving Mandaeans’ cultural and religious heritage (which is particularly at peril in such cases, given the importance of esoteric knowledge) and ensuring the continuation of the priesthood and of the Mandaean community as a whole. His story, known from colophons, is all the more interesting because he knew Petermann and yet seems not to mention him in the colophons, while Petermann gives little indication that he is fully aware of the significance of the role Yahia played in the preservation of the Mandaeans. In this part of the book, we learn a great deal about another important aspect of the subject: how some of these (in some instances esoteric and thus, at least in theory, secret) Mandaean texts came to be in the possession of Western libraries, through the personal connection forged between scholars and representatives of the Mandaean people.
In addition to what the colophons tell us about the scribes mentioned therein, they can also provide evidence regarding the age of the texts in question, and by extension of Mandaism in general. Particularly interesting is the evidence from the colophons of those writings which can be categorized as “esoteric ritual commentaries and exegeses” (p.223), and which previous generations of scholars have at times derided as late or degenerate (p.295). Yet even if they presuppose the existence of the liturgy and the “classical” texts, the scribal pedigree indicates that the commentaries are themselves very ancient, and thus arguably far more central to Mandaism than might have seemed at first glance to be the case (see further pp.283-4, 300-301).
The subject of women priests is also given much attention throughout the book, with focused discussions of the subject concentrated in certain areas (such as chapter 8, which is specifically dedicated to this subject). The lack of female priests in the present day has often led scholars to assume that apparent mentions of such figures in the colophons and elsewhere cannot in fact refer to women priests. At the end of chapter 8, a list is given, showing that the existence of female priests and scribes down the ages is essentially beyond doubt.
The amount of detail provided means that this book is far more like a dissertation than anything else. It will thus be of the most use to scholars working on the Mandaeans. One particularly useful feature for this audience are the references to the large number of manuscripts that remain unpublished and/or untranslated, plus useful suggestions on topics that likewise remain insufficiently studied. Even one of the most important Mandaean texts, the “Book of John” (also called “The Teaching of Kings”), has not been translated into English. Buckley also provides details of personal experiences that will be useful to scholars seeking to take up studies of Mandaic texts. For instance, her fourth chapter, “Mandaic Adventures in the British Library”, recounts at the start how much was involved when she attempted merely to locate the relevant manuscripts, as they were filed under the heading Syriac. In addition to much time spent studying the manuscripts in the possession of libraries, Buckley has had unprecedented access to the correspondence of Lady Drower, whose contribution to Mandaean studies is unequalled, as well as manuscripts in the possession of private individuals, and input from the Mandaeans themselves.
I am inclined to describe Buckley’s approach to the colophons as anthropological, indeed ethnographic. It is as though she is seeking to observe them carefully, and preserve a record of what she has observed, in a way that respects the autonomy even of the long-departed scribes whose names are mentioned in the colophons. A modest attempt at synthesis finally comes at the very end of the book, when Buckley at long last engages several key scholars on the question of Mandaean origins and the age of their beliefs, traditions and writings. Over the course of the book, of course, Buckley attempts to determine wherever possible the date of the various scribes mentioned in the colophons. One of the earliest mentioned, Zazai of Gawazta, is said to have flourished around 270 CE (p.27). Often, however, the precise basis for the dates given is not explained, or is only given significantly later in the book (p.192). It would have been much more helpful if the material were ordered in such a way that the evidence for dates, if not presented at length the first time an assertion is made about the date of a particular scribe, at the very least was linked by a footnote or in some other way to the relevant later discussion.
In the end, however, one eventually encounters all the necessary arguments and discussions, if one reads through the book in its entirety. Some colophons mention specific dates and events, and occasionally even precise time periods between named figures (p.192). Other evidence likewise demonstrates the antiquity of some manuscripts – for instance, those which lack any trace of the Arabic vocabulary that clearly becomes an integrated part of the Mandaic language in the period after the arrival of Islam in the regions inhabited by the Mandaeans (p.286). Alphabetic features in some manuscripts likewise point back to an early date (p.302). Buckley tackles some of the most difficult questions towards the end of her book, including whether there might be a historical connection to John the Baptist, where Haran Gawaita might be, and which Ardban might be the king referred to in that text (pp.315-326). Also discussed, albeit briefly, are indications that elements of Mandaean stories may show an awareness of the Christian apocrypha (pp.330-341). Yet if Buckley is right about the early date of Mandaism, then we need to consider whether the direction of dependence may not be in the other direction, and whether there is any way we might ever hope to be able to determine if that were so.
The only element I found genuinely frustrating was when Buckley changed her mind between an earlier chapter and a later one (p.276). It is good that, at the very least, she did so explicitly. Nevertheless, given the degree of detail in the book, and the impression one can get that many dates for scribes mentioned in the colophons are profoundly uncertain (and perhaps even mere guesswork), it would have made more sense for her to go back and rework earlier material to reflect her final conclusions, rather than to allow us to witness the development and subsequent revision thereof as it unfolds.
In her conclusion, Buckley calls for a re-evaluation of early Mandaism that is not simply “a reawakening of the long-discredited theories of Richard Reitzenstein and Rudolf Bultmann” (p.341). There is indeed a need for much more scholarly attention to be devoted to the Mandaeans and their literature. Given their distinctiveness, the fact that they have survived to this day, and the amount of scholarly interest devoted to other Gnostic texts such as those from Nag Hammadi, the paucity of scholarly attention devoted to the Mandaeans is hard to understand. On the other hand, the current state of interest in Gnosticism in general, as well as the fact that Iraq and Iran are in thoughts of people in Europe and America for multiple reasons, bodes well that an increasing amount of scholarly attention may be paid to the Mandaeans in years to come.
I am grateful to Gorgias Press for providing me with a copy of this book to review, and in spite of specific minor criticisms, I recommend the book enthusiastically to anyone who is beginning or continuing research on the Mandaeans, or plans to do so in the near future.
See also April DeConick’s “Book Note” on the book: http://forbiddengospels.blogspot.com/2007/08/book-note-great-stem-of-souls.html
Saturday, March 1, 2008
LOST of the Time Lords
One thing we learned on the most recent episode of LOST ("The Constant") is that Desmond was not simply recollecting his past in a vivid hallucination, nor simply seeing the future, but going to the past and future (or, at least, his consciousness was doing so.
It was stated at one point in the episode is that the future cannot be changed. This seems, in terms of the show's outlook, to be both true and untrue. Desmond managed to make changes, but "the universe has a way of course correcting", and so in the longer-term, things follow their "destiny".
The big question now is who the woman (Ms. Hawking) was who met Desmond in his past in the earlier episode "Flashes Before Your Eyes", and knew that he was "unstuck in time". Who are the "time lords" in this show? What is their connection to the Others, to the island, and to the mysteries of the show? At the very least, her name makes the importance of physics in recent developments not unexpected!
It was stated at one point in the episode is that the future cannot be changed. This seems, in terms of the show's outlook, to be both true and untrue. Desmond managed to make changes, but "the universe has a way of course correcting", and so in the longer-term, things follow their "destiny".
The big question now is who the woman (Ms. Hawking) was who met Desmond in his past in the earlier episode "Flashes Before Your Eyes", and knew that he was "unstuck in time". Who are the "time lords" in this show? What is their connection to the Others, to the island, and to the mysteries of the show? At the very least, her name makes the importance of physics in recent developments not unexpected!
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