Blogs that Make Me Think and Make My Day

Carmen Andres kindly chose me as one of her five blogs that make her think and make her day. Thanks Carmen! Now all I have to do is whittle down my own list to a mere five and pass on the honor...and that's not easy! But I will choose five, as I must...

Thoughts in a Haystack
Find and Ye Shall Seek
Forbidden Gospels
Ponderings on a Faith Journey
Metacatholic

And now, here are the runners up: Chrisendom, Abnormal Interests, A Guy In The Pew, Liberal Pastor in Burnsville, An Evangelical Dialogue on Evolution, Earliest Christian History, Faith and Theology, Mainstream Baptist, NT Gateway, Progression of Faith, Quadrilateral Thoughts, SF Gospel, SF Signal, The Bad Idea Blog, The Panda's Thumb, TheoFantastique, The Busybody, IO9, The Creation of an Evolutionist, Jim West, Notes From Off Center, Open Parachute, N. T. Wrong, Playing Chess With Pigeons, Quintessence of Dust, Threads from Henry's Web, and countless others that I have neglected to mention because either (1) they've already been nominated by someone else, or (2) they are sure to be nominated by someone else, or (3) they haven't posted in a while, or (4) they didn't blog about the LOST season finale, or (5) I forgot. So all you other bloggers out there, get to work nominating these other great blogs!

LOST Power

We had a bad thunderstorm pass through Indianapolis yesterday, and there's a power line down in my back yard. If I blog, it will be from the office (where I came this morning not first and foremost to blog, but to move the contents of our freezer into our nice new empty office fridge's freezer).

There's a lot of discussion of LOST around the blogosphere (and presumably in lots of places). Bob Cornwall has blogged about the rise and fall of Jeremy Bentham and more on LOST and Jeremy Bentham. The idea of a panopticon, a prison in which prisoners are observed without knowing they are being observed, ties in to something I realized after the season finale. The whispers that have been around since the show's beginning clearly in the finale preceded a stealth attack by the Others. Perhaps the best explanation of what is going on is that the Others (at least, the original inhabitants of the island who are among them) are able to go into the future and thus seem to appear out of nowhere, observing what people are doing and then suddenly showing up. The ghostly whispers are the sound of them moving through time into the present.

When the island vanished, it was not because it moved in space but because it moved ahead in time (remember the rabbit that was sent to the future in the Orchid Station video). It only appeared to vanish. Perhaps the original inhabitants of the island have the ability to do that too, and it is only to move the whole island that a more drastic procedure is involved.

Carmen Andres has been LOST in thoughts of community, while Ken Brown has been thinking about sacrifice and selfishness on LOST. The show must intend to raise these issues of ethics, morality, and interpersonal relationships, since the name John Locke, and his alias Jeremy Bentham, both are taken from historic moral philosophers (Evolving Thoughts discusses that other John Locke). See too Matthew Gilbert's piece in the Boston Globe about LOST (HT SF Signal). IO9 has other thoughts on the finale, and real fans will want to see the alternate endings that were shot to keep the actual ending a secret.

There's also a special report on the Singularity, and Ian McEwan on the end-times mentality (also here). John Pieret finds another instance of creationist reality that looks like a parody. Larry Moran comments on the AAAS statement that religion and science are compatible. Vridar continues discussing Craig Evans' Fabricating Jesus. And last but not least, Ken Schenck has a guest post on monotheism (oh how I wish my book on the subject was out already!).

LOST: The Shape Of Seasons To Come

Tonight's season finale certainly didn't disappoint - and now we have indeed found some spoilers to have been true. We also know a bit more about what will happen next season on LOST. But there are a lot of details in tonight's episode that we'll be pondering for the rest of the series, and perhaps longer.

John Locke is dead, but the action will take us back to before that happened, and Locke will be an important character off the island, using the fake name Jeremy Bentham. Jack will believe him, and eventually (as we learned at the end of tonight's episode) someone (presumably Widmore) will kill Locke and make it look like an accident. This doesn't mean Locke won't be in the final season. My guess is that they will all return to the island, and get there before Locke died, and thus change how things turn out. But it could also be that, as with the doctor on the freighter, Locke is still alive on the island even after he has died off it. It has even been suggested that when we see through Jack's eye in the pilot episode, he has returned to the island, as well as having crashed there. Presumably at some point the contact with their earlier selves will be what creates the island anomaly in the first place, or will cause some other interesting effect. Some are also speculating that Locke isn't really dead.

Charlotte had been born on the island. My guess is that it is only since the Dharma Initiative got there and caused the "incident" that released the electromagnetic energy, that women have been unable to conceive. Perhaps Charlotte was sent away from the island as a child, because of the dangers. Could Charlotte be Annie, Ben's long lost love from his childhood?

Ben wants to figure out a way for all of them to return. But Christian and Claire are opposed to that plan.

That chamber Ben entered that was cold, with a giant wheel that one turns to move the island. Who made it? Some ancient civilization? Aliens? Who first discovered the power of the "negatively charged exotic matter" there? While Dharma was "running silly experiments", the power of that place lay hidden behind the chamber.

Next season's finale will presumably be when we find out whether what Ben said was true, whether the one who moves the island can never return. Ben had certainly left the island and returned, but presumably that had been a more 'normal' use of the Orchid station's power. But Ben knew what to do. So who had left the island before? Perhaps Jacob did. Or perhaps it was Richard, and the result is that Ben, like Richard, will stop aging.

How did Locke leave the island? Was it via the Orchid station? Or did he not really blow up the submarine? Or does he have to move the island again himself eventually? What terrible things happened after (and because) Jack and the others left?

It was great to see Desmond and Penny reunited. It was also great to see Walt again - presumably he too will have a key role in what happens next. What will happen when Sayid gathers Hurley and the others? Will Desmond and Frank also have to return? How will that work if Ben still plans to kill Penny? So many questions, but as always the biggest is how to find the patience to wait until the next season begins.

Here's one way to pass the time, in case you missed it. There was a commercial during the show for Octagon Global Recruiting. They are recruiting volunteers in your area...to work for the Dharma Initiative! Apparently the DI is confident they'll be back on the island soon. The name "Octagon Global Recruiting" is an anagram for "clue: cabin a toggling rotor", but there are so many possibilities. If you find another anagram in the name, let me know.

There's No Place Like LOST

Tonight will be the season finale of LOST, when we are sure to be wowed once again and then left wondering and with a painful sense of withdrawal until the next season.

There have been multiple allusions to The Wizard Of Oz, and the fact that the finale is called "There's No Place Like Home" should make us wonder whether, for the survivors on the island, like Dorothy in Oz, the key to returning home was with them all along.

IO9 translates an interesting theory into language those who haven't watched Red Dwarf can understand. Buddy TV also has some speculations about tonight's two hour finale. You can also read John Locke's comic book online now. Would a show like LOST have worked in the pre-internet age?

I've been wondering ever since the episode "Not In Portland" aired about the producers' hint that there was an easter egg embedded in the episode that explained more about the island's timeline and the corpses found in season 1. Most have been content to assume that the easter egg in question is the fact that Mittelos was an anagram for "lost time". Others have noted that one sequence played backwards reveals the words "only fools are enslaved by time and space". But no one else seems to have noted that the latter phrase can be rearranged as well, and the results can included the words "Adam Eve corpses"!

I'd like to suggest that the corpses are Jack and Kate, and that their finding and touching their own remains is somehow responsible for the anomaly that is the island. LOST fans will recall how keeping the rabbit that has been brought through time from coming into contact with the one in the present.

Want a wild speculation? Jack is persuaded that he and Kate have to go back to the island because he has learned that Richard Alpert is in fact their son, and John Locke is their grandson. OK, so that probably won't happen. But on LOST, anything is possible.

And about last week's episode: "Jesus Christ is not a weapon" has to be one of the greatest lines on television, ever. By the way, did you know that Jorge Garcia (aka Hurley) has a blog?

Well, we last left the Oceanic Six in very different places. How will they all get together, and get off the island? I wonder whether they will, or whether they will simply have something in common at the moment Locke moves the island, that will move them someplace else. Only a few more hours until some of our questions are answered, and many more are raised, leaving us in suspense for the summer.

Collaborative Preaching

I probably should have included it in my last post, since it touches on the book of Job, but here's a link to an article in Worship Connection by Matt Kelley entitled "Collaborative Preaching: Teaching Others the Art of Holy Conversation". Matt was one of the very first religion majors I got to know at Butler University.

God: As Real as You or I

I was planning on posting on this subject anyway, but I then got tagged with a meme by Lingamish, and so the original idea will have a longer prelude and the post will have a slightly different form. The meme began at Elizaphanian. It poses the following questions:

1. if the nature of god is omnipotent, benevolent, and anthropomorphic (that god is a person, who sees suffering as wrong, and can change all of it), why does god not act to relieve all suffering, or at least the greatest amount of suffering for the greatest amount of people the greatest amount of time?
2. if you were god, and you were omnipotent and benevolent, how would you respond to suffering?
3. if this is not the nature of god, what is the nature of god, that allows suffering in the world?
4. if these are the wrong questions to ask, what are the right ones?

The ifs in the first question are BIG ifs. But the question itself illustrates a key point. Often the issue of theodicy is viewed as finding the best solution to the problem of undeserved suffering that preserves the concept of God we already have. But this assumes that we have received a unified, definitive understanding of God that must be preserved in this way, and anyone who has engaged in academic study of the Bible or religion in general will know that this is not the case. And so unless one has good reason for assuming a particular set of symbols and doctrines relating to God, the best approach is that set forth in the Book of Job: formulate and reformulate a view of God that does justice to the world as you experience, while also acknowledging how limited our understanding of the universe we are a part of really is.

If I were the sort of anthropomorphic God mentioned, I would like to hope that, if I asked my creations to be the sort of people that "go the extra mile" (literally or metaphorically), help those in need even if they are foreigners from a hated race, and hold them to these sorts of ideals, then I would live by those ideals myself. An anthropomorphic God is one who is very much like us, only bigger and more powerful and supposedly better in the sense of more kind and loving. If I asked my creations to forgive 70 times 7 times, and to turn the other cheek, I hope I would also do that myself. But this is one of the paradoxes of many forms of fundamentalism: it depicts God as setting a standard for human beings that the Scriptures, stories and doctrines of that tradition do not consistently show God living up to.

This is not to say that one cannot hold to some form of anthropomorphism and deal with the problem of evil in some way. The free will defense works to a certain extent for moral evil, even though it does nothing to mitigate the issues of cyclones and tsunamis. One simply has to acknowledge that God has placed constraints on his freedom by giving freedom to his creations. The analogy I used to use was of a chess grandmaster. If I play chess against a grandmaster, the expert can know for sure he or she will win even though I am free to make any legal move within the game. How is that possible? Simple: the grandmaster is better at it, and can see further ahead because of it. Apply this to an omniscience, omnipresent God, and his will reigns supreme even if we are free. Of course, sooner or later you have to explore the details of the analogy and that is when things get dicey. What are God's pieces in such a scenario, and how does God move them?

At present, I tend to use panentheistic language, symbols and metaphors for God. For some progressive Christians, giving up theistic language has led to God being thought of as in some sense "less real" (in practice if not in theory). But such an outcome is not essential. We must think about God differently than people did in the past, but can one avoid objectifying God without making God seem less real?

In light of both a better understanding of the Biblical literature and an increasing scientific understanding of human nature, we've rethought the idea of human identity localized in an immaterial soul. But does this mean that there is no sense in which I exist? Not at all. What it means is that the personality and subjective experience I think of as me are emergent phenomena out of the material substances that make up my body. I am inseparable from all the cells, the chemicals, the molecules, the atoms, the subatomic particles that make up my person. Yet if you take each one and analyse it looking for "me", you may never find "me". I as a personality arise from the interconnectedness of these substances. I'm there in the relationships between them. I am the sum of their whole, and somehow (seemingly miraculously) I am greater than the sum of my parts.

I find it helpful to think of God in the same way. Is this not perhaps the reason why our experience of God centers around acts of kindness and self-sacrifice, the experience of love and being loved, the ensemble of musicians making harmonies? Is this not why the mystics so consistently speak of having a sense of the interconnectedness of all things? If we take apart our relationships, we will never find love as a separate substance. If we stop the orchestra and bring in scientific apparatuses of various sorts, we'll never find the music. These arise out of the interrelationships and actions of things and of persons.

If we think of God as the ultimate level of existence, that which or the one who emerges out of the interconnectedness of all things, then we won't find God in any of the places we look or the gaps between the things we understand. But that doesn't mean that God is less real than you or I. It means God exists in the same sense as you or I.

Let me conclude by pointing you to an interview with Bart Ehrman on "The Artist's Craft":

History and Fiction in the Acts of Thomas

An article of mine is now available (for those with subscriptions or access through libraries or institutions) in the most recent issue of the Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha. The article's title is "History and Fiction in the Acts of Thomas: The State of the Question".

Underverse and Izgad

I didn't know what else to call this post, which basically highlights two blogs that I've recently become aware of.

Underverse continues the conversation about theology that has spanned Larry Moran's blog, this one and several others (including most recently De-Conversion, C. Orthodoxy, another contribution by Anxious Mo-Fo, EvolutionBlog, Pharyngula, John Pieret, Ken Schenck and Kayology). Izgad has posts on humans battling mind-controlling aliens, formulating a Jewish view of Jesus, and a review of Expelled.

Delighting in our Differences

I've just started working on developing a curriculum for use in the Sunday School class I teach (or perhaps a midweek Bible study). The original title that I came up with in conversation with some other members of the congregation was "Dealing With Our Differences", but I'm becoming more inclined to go with "Delighting in our Differences". You'll see why in what follows. I intend to make the whole thing available online eventually, but I also want to post very rough drafts and make discussion and dialogue not only the intended end result in the actual series of studies, but also part of the process of creating the curriculum in the first place.

What follows is a rough first draft of the notes for the first session, written in a single sitting. I'd welcome (1) input on the content, and (2) suggestions for readings (whether online or in print format) that could be used, whether in whole or in part, to prepare for a discussion of this subject.

Topic One - Diversity: Dilemma or Delight?

It was the experience of a number of difficulties in our church that led to the production of this curriculum. On the one hand, my involvement in the search committee responsible for finding a new pastor provided opportunities I had not previously had to converse with other church members and to get a sense of the range of viewpoints there seemed to be on a variety of issues. On the other hand, the same period was one of decline in membership, and this led me to ask what our church had to offer that was distinctive. It was in reflecting on this question that I realized that our diversity of views was not a liability but a significant strength. Many churches tend towards or aim for the appearance of uniformity, whether along conservative or liberal lines. But in any given church there are likely to be those who don’t see things in quite the same way that they believe others in the church do, and who sit in silent frustration. Those of us who have been connected with the Christian faith for more than a few years will also most likely (indeed hopefully) have had the experience of having learned new things and even changed our minds about some topic or other. This being the case, why on earth would we expect there to be uniformity in the views held by members of the congregation? Aren’t churches to be places that foster the spiritual growth of Christians of many ages and at various levels of maturity? It is probably not going too far to state that if there is apparent uniformity (and the expectation that there should be uniformity) of views, then growth is most likely being stifled rather than promoted.

This is true for another reason. Personally, I know I’ve learned the most from conversations with those I’ve disagreed with. This has not in most cases resulted in my adopting the viewpoint of my conversation partner. But dialogue with those who see things differently allows one to have highlighted weaknesses in one’s arguments, alternative ideas one may not have considered, and in various ways stretches one to think and to evaluate why one believes as one does. At the end of the process, even if one holds the same opinions, they will ideally be conclusions reached after evaluating the evidence, rather than mere assumptions one held because one was not aware of alternatives. But for there to be this stimulating dialogue with those who see things differently, then we need to have a diversity of viewpoints represented in the church.

Our church is diverse, although I suspect there are many who are not fully aware of this diversity, and others who view it as a reason for dismay when they consider that there are people who think like that in the church. But if we have the courage to be honest about how we view things, and to listen to those who view things differently, then we can be a church that utilizes this strength for the benefit of all its members.

Questions and topics for discussion:
1) What have you changed your mind about?
2) Share an experience in which you learned from conversing with someone who had a different viewpoint.
3) How does openness to dialogue and humility about one’s opinions relate to having convictions and being willing to be outspoken about important matters?
4) Consider some instances of diversity in the Bible.

Suggestions for further reading:
James' Fowler's "Stages of Faith"
James D. G. Dunn, Unity and Diversity in the New Testament

Christianity and Education

In light of a recent discussion on this blog, and perhaps all discussions on this blog and everything I've done with my life for the past twenty years or so, I'm inclined to ask the question: What is the relationship between Christian faith and education?

The question arises for a number of reasons. First, Christianity has as a core (if not the core) component being a disciple of Jesus, and disciple is just an antiquated term for student. Second, if what the historical figure of Jesus has some importance in one's faith (as presumably it should, since otherwise one might as well give the made-up person one follows a different name), then it is hard to see how that can be the case without one at least educating oneself about historical study. Third, if the Bible is important, then how can one make sense of this translated collection of ancient texts without information (a key part of education) about history, culture, and other relevant issues that provide the context and background to these texts? Fourth, can one really do anything more than repeat words such as "Trinity" without some theological education, even if acquired informally?

Are Christianity and education therefore inextricably intertwined? If one asserts (as is perhaps appropriate) that none of the aforementioned forms of education is required to be a Christian, then does this imply that most Christians will inevitably be dependent on Christians educated in Biblical studies, theology, history, ethics and other relevant disciplines? Or does it mean that Christianity is something today that has nothing to do with the historical figure of Jesus, the probable meaning of the Biblical writings in their original context, theology or anything else of that sort?

What do you think?

Around the Blogosphere

Pew Forum has a lengthy interview with Andrew Newberg about religion and neuroscience. There are also articles by him available online.

Mystical Seeker ponders the universe in all its unfolding creativity. Scot McKnight wrestles with the impression one can get from the Bible that God is a bully. NT Wrong blogs about the God of the flood story.

Pharyngula points us to Josh Rosenau who points us to a poll at Coral Ridge Ministries. I'd like to suggest that the real challenge to America's spiritual health is (1) Christians shifting the blame onto everyone else, as this poll does; (2) people viewing the world through fundamentalist ministries like Coral Ridge and their online polls; and (3) Christians regarding education as a threat to faith, as the poll suggests. First Things has more on the Evangelical Manifesto.

The Panda's Thumb recognizes that antievolutionism is a cultural phenomenon, and asks how to address it as such. New Scientist lists characteristics we thought were unique to humans, but it now seems we share with other animals.

TheoFantastique discusses religion in I Am Legend. SF Gospel looks at ancient names and religion in Battlestar Galactica.

Geza Vermes is critical of the Pope's book about Jesus. And then there's Hans Küng.

101,000

Well, at some point when I wasn't looking, the number of hits on my blog passed 100,000 and even passed 101,000 before I noticed. This is the number of hits since I moved my blog from its old location to Blogger back in June of 2007.

Thanks to everyone who has visited, is visiting now, or will ever visit, always and forever, throughout endless ages!

[Sorry, I got carried away there...]

Clarity and Criticism

Some of my students this semester were unhappy that I made comments about the ways in which they expressed themselves in English. Here are some quotes from assignments I received this semester. I'd welcome input from anyone, but in particular other professors, about the standard of student English in our time, whether I'm too fussy in pointing out such instances, and so on.

Below are just a few sample quotes. What grades would you give to assignments typified by such writing?

"Genesis 1 is the true beginning of what life is known as today. But at the beginning the minor differences are being shown."

"This can be an easy interpretation for the sky, as it is very popular to look for the sky when looking ‘towards’ Heaven."

"The New Revised Standard Version has The Bible in a little different set up. It has Genesis one separate from Genesis two and three. It says right before Genesis two that Genesis two is “Another Account of the Creation”. This means that this version of The Bible is to have believed that Genesis one creation story is different then the Genesis two and three creation story."

"There is only one creation story that is seen in every translation, displayed by chapter two in every translation."

"Though man was created in the first chapter of Genesis, or the first story of creation, here woman is presented to accompany man on earth. The second story also brings upon another element of the Bible, sin, where the fruit from the middle tree of the Garden of Eden after God had strictly spoken against it. Because of consumption, the punishment is conceiving and giving birth to children, while the man’s punishment is the hardships of work."

"I think that the commandments should not be allowed into a government building because that would refute the freedom of religion for every citizen."

"There is a theory that Jesus was on Earth before his birth in Bethlehem. Some believe that he had been on Earth before as a great person and was reincarnated in order to re-live his wisdom. The other part of this theory is that until his birth as a human, he had lived on Earth in spirit. These theories are based off of a field of study called Christology."

"There are two distinctive sides with very strong opinions, and perhaps other groups of people who have opinions that are somewhere in between the beliefs of the other two groups. Valid statements can be found for any of the various sides, but some of the arguments are more prominent than others."

Sticking Up For The Sadducees

Sadducees get a bad rap. If one attended Sunday school, one probably learned that as they didn't believe in an afterlife, they were "sad you see" (which sounds like Sadducee). We only know about the Sadducees from their critics (or at the very least those who disagreed with them): Josephus is probably the least negative source, then there are the New Testament and Rabbinic literature, both of which are polemical.

It is interesting to note that the Sadducees' views, as described by Josephus, are similar to those held by the more progressive Christians of our time: a denial of "fate" (i.e. determinism), of supernatural beings such as angels, and the afterlife. It may seem ironic that the most progressive voices today sound like the most conservative from Jesus' time. But being "progressive" doesn't mean adopting the newest ideas. If it did, fundamentalism is relatively new, and so we'd all be clamouring to hop on that bandwagon. But in fact, being progressive means being willing to change and listen, even though sometimes that means being willing to return to views one once dismissed out of hand.

Here's what Josephus tells us:

Sadducees...take away Fate, and say that there is no such thing, and that the events of human affairs are not at its disposal; but they suppose that all our actions are in our own power, so that we are ourselves the causes of what is good, and receive what is evil from our own folly. [Jewish Antiquities 13.172-173]

They also take away the belief of the immortal duration of the soul, and the punishments and rewards in the Underworld. [Jewish War 2.162-166]

Josephus also says that Sadducees viewed it as a virtue to dispute with one's teachers, to question authority, to not simply accept the answers given. Progressive Christians can say "Amen" to that. But do we have the courage to do something akin to what not only Reform but even traditional Rabbinic Judaism has done in arguing with God and with Moses? Do progressive Christians have the courage to point out clearly when they disagree with Jesus?

The Sadducees famously tried to stump Jesus with a question about levirate marriage and the resurrection. If a woman married all of seven brothers, but had no children, whose wife would she be in the resurrection? Although one may agree that the question presupposes a rather crude understanding of resurrection and the afterlife, popular piety has often held such views, and so the question is not an inappropriate one, even if there were surely people in that time who held to more sophisticated, less crassly physicalist sorts of views.

Jesus' reply is that the Sadducees have made a fundamental mistake in thinking that there will be marriage in the resurrection. Interpreters have long wrestled with this, probably because this answer potentially undermines the whole point of a doctrine of resurrection. The doctrine of resurrection affirms that there is a continuity between our bodily existence in the present and an afterlife. Our relationships make up a substantial part of our identity. If they are going to be essentially ignored, set aside or abolished in an afterlife, then that suggests significant discontinuity between our selves now and that which survives death.

Although the scenario posed by the Sadducees is somewhat farcical, it raises intelligent questions. Jesus' response cannot be regarded as entirely satisfactory, can it? Surely it simply raises the question of what the point is of this life if it contains so many aspects that will not be worth preserving for eternity, and the question of in what sense an eternally-existing "me" that does not share my relationships with others that I have now will in any sense be "me".

Jesus concludes his response with a clever reference to God as the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, which combined with the fact that God is the God of the living and not the dead (where does that idea come from?) is used to demonstrate from the Pentateuch (which the Sadducees accepted as authoritative) that Abraham, Isaac and Jacob are still around. But would anyone today find this sort of "exegetical trick" convincing?

I'm quite sure that there are plenty of places where I'd side with Jesus against the Sadducees. But at this particular moment, it doesn't seem like they received an entirely satisfactory answer to what was (and remains) a valid question. What do you think? Are we committed enough to the sort of self-critical learning and discipleship that Jesus challenged his followers to undertake, that we will even dare to question his statements and even critically analyse his arguments? Or does being a "follower" mean the religious equivalent of mindless nationalism: "My Lord, wrong or right"? Can one be a critical Christian? Why or why not?

Let me get the ball rolling by offering my own provocative answer to my own questions. Today there are only Christians who disagree at points with what Jesus thought and taught. It is inevitable. The only distinction is between Christians who acknowledge that this is the case, and Christians who pretend that it isn't.

Here's some of what's going on elsewhere around the web:

Jesus Creed talks about Scripture and reason. Vision has a video clip of Paula Fredriksen speaking about Paul. April DeConick continues her discussion of the diversity of early Christianity (and Mystical Seeker joins in). Loren Rosson talks about politics in Romans 13. Ken Schenck distills out the issues covered in his New Testament survey class. Scotteriology points out that God's name isn't "God". An und fuer sich has some controversial thoughts about Paul, Judaism and Christianity. Conrad Roth has an interesting post about magic and modernism, silence and speech. IO9 mentions a graphic novel about those left behind fighting back against the rapture and its paramilitary angel harbingers.

Keith Miller discusses whether the academic science community is a hostile environment for faith. Experimental Theology begins a series on Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. The Panda's Thumb discusses creationism's latest mutation. John Pieret discusses Intelligent Design and the "academic freedom" bills (Science Avenger also covers the latter). ERV points to online Rockerfeller lectures. Undeception talks about limits of science. There are science articles about a fossil of the missing link between salamanders and frogs (a 'frogamander'?), whether the sun is fine-tuned for life on Earth, and the recent disappointing statistics about high school biology teachers. Can you believe that Denyse O'Leary is inflicting yet another blog on cyberspace?

Greg Boyd reviews Ehrman's God's Problem, while Mystical Seeker also touches on theodicy. Richard Carrier draws attention to a web site connected to his book The Empty Tomb. There's also a post about Pagan Christianity. De-conversion discusses post-Christian ethics. Jon Birch has some new cartoons:

Random Acts Of Unkindness

Below is the text of an e-mail that made it through the spam filter of not one but two of my e-mail accounts. Anyone who thinks that someone they don't know will be contacting them to give them someone else they don't know's inheritance needs to have their head examined. Yes, this is a scam, and hopefully now you know. But what scares me is that we live in a world where people cannot tell just by reading the e-mail and thinking critically about it.

___________________________

Pls Reply Asap

I am Mr.Patrick chan Executive Director of the Hang Seng Bank Ltd, Hong Kong.

An Iraqi named Farouk Bassem,a business man made a numbered fixed deposit valued at Twelve million Five Hundred Thousand United States Dollars only in my branch. Upon maturity several notice was sent to him, We later found out that Farouk Bassem and his family had been killed during the war in bomb blast that hit their home at Mukaradeeb where his personal oil well was.

We later discovered that Farouk Bassem did not declare any next of kin in his official papers including the paper work of his bank deposit, my proposal is to put you as next of kin, should you be interested in executing this with me; indicate your interest, mail me at my personal email.

patrick_chan14x@yahoo.com.hk
Make sure you direct your response to my personal email patrick_chan14x@yahoo.com.hk

Sincerely,
Mr.Patrick Chan.

Conversations Around the Blogosphere

Dan was kind enough to share his skeptical account of his own religious experience. Iyov has joined in the conversation (indirectly). Chuck Blanchard has not only joined in our ongoing conversation about progressive Christianity and metaphor, but also directs readers to a blog I hadn't encountered before, which discusses Wright and Bultmann on the resurrection. Vridar has a series on the binding of Isaac and the death of Jesus, as well as pointing to Iranian bloggers' letters to Jesus.

Chris Tilling has a quote and a treatment of 1 Enoch in relation to Christian universalism. Ben Myers blogs about the divisiveness of universalism. Henry Neufeld shares four posts on Scripture from a moderate perspective. Tony Jones recommends A Christianity Worth Believing, of which some chapters are available in pdf format online. Progression of Faith recommends The Fidelity of Betrayal. Progressive Churchlady suggests that one blogger can make a difference.

Expelled Exposed has a new video about the evolution of creationism into intelligent design:

John Pieret looks at statistics about high school teachers and evolution, as does the Evilutionary Biologist. 16% of US science teachers are apparently creationists! Josh Rosenau talks about the KKK and Expelled. AIG Busted talks about pop science. John Wilkins blogs about evolution and cognition.

Gabriel McKee writes about loving the alien and whether God and aliens are compatible. Carmen Andres blogs about Firefly. Jesus Creed has posts on evolution and on whether "wrath" in the Bible is "impersonal". Internetmonk calls Christians to have the courage to acknowledge that Christians have been wrong.

Continuing the Conversation with Cylons

The conversation continues, drawing in more and more participants. Barefoot Bum is suspicious of the metaphorical interpretation of religion - he is an atheist who appreciates poetry and metaphor, and even psychological experiences that may be described as mystical, but wonders whether this is not just a "wedge" to get claims about traditional theistic concepts of God in the door.

Doug Chaplin emphasizes that there is no such thing as pure experience. We always interpret our experiences in light of beliefs we already have, and use mental and linguistic categories that are already in place to interpret, describe, and make sense of them.

Sometimes we need to speak plainly, without figures of speech. The Cylon #6 spoke of death not long before her own on this past week's episode of Battlestar Galactica, echoing the sentiment expressed in the Orson Scott Card short story "Mortal Gods": "To live meaningful lives, we must die and not return. The one human 'flaw' that you spend your lives distressing over - mortality - is the one thing...well, it's the one thing that makes you whole".

But sometimes metaphor, like fiction, allows us to explore things that are too mysterious, too obscure, or in some cases too painful to express in concrete terms, without anything to soften the blow.

I hope those who have had religious experiences will chime in and share what they think it does (and does not) tell them about the nature of reality, and how (if at all) one can express such experiences without metaphors or symbols, or at the very least in everyday language.

What Is Ultimate?

The conversation has been joined by Abnormal Interests, who views the language of religion as extra baggage that makes the trip less enjoyable. Now as someone who has lugged multiple pieces of very heavy luggage on trips from one country to another, I definitely don't want to drag along unnecessary dead weight - it does indeed spoil the trip.

So why not just do away with the metaphors and speak in plain language? Because I don't think we can speak about the ultimate except in metaphors.

I'd like to introduce into this bloggersation the question "What is ultimate?" For me, this question is in one sense unanswerable except in vague terms such as "mystery", but to say anything further, we will inevitably (1) give expression to our deepest concerns and highest values, and (2) use metaphor.

An atheist may say that "nothing" is ultimate. The universe, or the multiverse, simply is. But there is simply no evidence for that, nor is there any sense in which this claim solves logical problems, unravels the mystery of existence, explains anything at all, or does anything more than affirm a conviction: that there is no guiding hand supervising history, no supernatural interferences, no miracles, and (for many who follow this train of thought) no meaning, no purpose other than to pass on our genes, which may ultimately be meaningless too since we have no certainty that our species will survive its own tendency to self destruction, or the death of our sun, or the big crunch or endless expansion of our universe.

The conservative theist is no better off in terms of offering an explanation. A God who simply is does not have logical advantages over a universe that simply is.

But the liberal religious believer is different from both of the above. Such a person is aware that all we are doing when speaking about the ultimate is not explaining the origin of that which exists, but giving expression to our values and what is important to us.

Many such religious believers opt for other metaphors than classic theistic ones. They do so because they see that there is something deeply problematic about attributing good things that happen to God while just appealing to mystery or God's inscrutible will for all the bad that happens. They do so because they themselves often had such an anthropomorphic concept of God, and have as they matured come to realize that they projected onto this God their own sense of self-importance, their own sense of being the center of the universe, their own desire that their enemies "get what's coming to them".

But progressive religious believers of various sorts and various traditions find that if they try to cast aside metaphors and symbols altogether, their worldview is flattened and impoverished in the process. Their are things that are part of our experience, part of our values system, that cannot be expressed in reductionistic or mechanistic terms.

We also find that the emphasis on being encompassed by a reality greater than ourselves, it helps affirm the importance of humility and our committment to viewing ourselves as not ultimate, as not the end all and be all of existence. Abolish all notion of God and that truth seems to us to be too easily forgotten.

Neil de Grasse Tyson speaks of his own sense of being "called by the universe", the place of pilgrimage in astronomy, the happiness or otherwise of photons, how highly we think of ourselves, poetry, majesty, and the similarity of his language to that of people who have revelations of Jesus or make pilgrimages to Mecca. Can we really do without metaphor?


I'm happy to discuss what the best metaphors are, and how we assess them, and why we prefer some to others. But those who suggest that we can do without this sort of language, I would suggest, are missing something important in their lives.

For more that is relevant to this subject around the blogosphere, see Truth and Tradition and Mystical Seeker's latest contribution to the discussion, internetmonk on the God of Job's complaints. If you're looking for a more conservative Christian perspective, try Parchment and Pen, while Science Avenger affirms that atheists don't need religion. See also Science and Reason on morality and the brain, John Pieret on dumb fundamentalist comments on an article about a cosmologist-theologian, and Scotteriology on seminarians who deny being theologians. Henry Neufeld asks whether science education leads to atheism.

The Continuing Bloggersation

Larry Moran has said he gets what I'm saying, but it is just the old argument from experience. But I think there is a difference. I'm not claiming to have experienced aliens or other beings within the world that he's never seen and has no evidence of. I'm claiming to experience the universe we inhabit itself in a different way. How do we compare our different subjective experiences of existence? I'm not talking about dreams - I'm talking about how we experience waking existence.

Barefoot Bum has joined in the conversation with a post about explaining color to the blind.

Kayology has chimed in with a post about concepts of God.

I don't know where this bloggersation will take us, but I hope others are finding it as helpful, stimulating and thought provoking as I am!

Avant Garde Christianity

To some, the notion of "avant garde Christianity" sounds like a contradiction in terms. Isn't Christianity about "telling the old old story", they might ask. But this is really no different than those who respond to avant garde music by saying "You call that music?" and those who respond to a canvas filled with abstract shapes with "This is art?!" Such "music" and "art" is never where the majority of musicians and artists are "at", but it keeps these enterprises vibrant by pushing the envelope (and also helpfully enables the merely progressive to say "Well, at least I'm not as out there as [insert name here]". In Christianity, I presume that many Liberals would justify themselves to more conservative conversation partners by saying "Well, I'm no John Shelby Spong!"

Yet while there is much in the Christian avant garde that resonates with me, my tastes in music and in art also reflect my theology, which is not surprising since they reflect my personality. I'm not really avant garde when it comes down to it. Paul Tillich ranked second when I took an (admittedly silly online) test to see which theologian's views I most resemble. Top of the list...was Friedrich Schliermacher.

At heart, I'm not avant garde, I'm Romantic. Presumably this is because at its root my connection with Christianity as a personal faith is not about upbringing, nor about theology, but about experience, about emotion. Doctrines and language are at best symbolic pointers to that underlying experience, and at worst speculative distractions from it.

Many of the "avant garde" in Christian theology today are in fact the heirs of Schliermacher, mediated through Liberal Protestantism in its later manifestations. And they continue to give voice to a point that mystics in various traditions have made down the ages: "The experience of God is surely eternal, but the form in which this God-experience is understood in any age is always bound and warped by time" (John Shelby Spong, foreword to Gretta Vosper, With Or Without God (Toronto: Harper Collins, 2008) p.xv).

If you are interested in preserving tradition or making innovation for its own sake, I probably will have little interest. It is finding language, whether old or new, that expresses the experience of God that I and other Christians have had that interests me. I can very much relate to the statement of a "mostly lapsed Zen Buddhist" who wrote "what pulls me back in spite of my utter lack of belief in something outside of or separate from the physical world...is a set of practices, an admirable ethics, a set of rich metaphors and symbols and myths."

I don't know what the "spiritually challenged" will make of this "late Romantic Christianity". But it is not avant garde. If anything, it is decidedly old fashioned, precisely in its focus on the experience as important, and the words and concepts as pointers to and expressions of it. That is not a new idea, but one that has been expressed often down the millennia, and is an insight not limited to Christianity.

I suspect that in practice, the Romantic must resonate on some level with all those who are willing to use language to express experience at its own level and in its own terms, rather than attempt to analyse or reduce it. Those who do not fall into this category are those who give anniversary cards to their wives because they know this will improve the likelihood of a stable ongoing relationship with the chosen mate, ensuring the likelihood of their offspring surviving and promulgating their genes.

If you are willing to treat beauty and love as something more than an expression of biological impulses hard wired by evolution (without in any sense denying that as part of the story), then there is much more we can talk about. Because just as one can talk about the awe-inspiring mystery of our universe's "fine tuning" for life, we could just as well stand in awe of its fine-tuning for music, for beauty. Of course, such things are perceived by observers like ourselves, who have evolved to see certain things and not others.

But it may be that evolution has favored those perceptions that in fact correspond to a real world outside ourselves and thus enhance our survival in it. In that case, it may be that our perceptions of transcendent realities such as love, beauty, divinity correspond to something that is in fact the case about the universe.

Then again, you'll probably ask me to prove it...

Spirits in a Material World: A Multi-Blog Conversation

There is a conversation going on around the blogosphere. It includes Larry Moran's posts on "Sophisticated Religion", "Sophisticated Believers", and most recently "Clear as Mud". Drew Tatusko has contributed a post on "God and Supernaturalism"as well as "Dear Atheist". My own posts include "Does Being Exist?" and "Not Getting Through". Carlo posted on "How To Speak To Scientists" and Qalmlea posted "Dragon Winds Around the Pillar".

Would if be going too far to say that those who have had mystical experiences are in very much the position of sighted people trying to explain color to the blind, or music lovers trying to explain why a piece moves them so much to someone who is tone deaf? In this conversation, however, it is not clear that the other side of the conversation is "disabled". They simply have no interest in understanding the experience or appreciating the music. And there is no way I can introduce someone to the music or why it moves me just by talking in abstract terms about something that is deeply experiential.

On the other hand, part of the issue is that I have no interest in defending any particular doctrines about God, and so my "views" seem hard to pin down, because I hold them so loosely. I realized long ago that the life-changing experience I had when I cried out to God in surrender and felt a sense of peace wash over me does not prove that a tomb was empty 2,000 or so years ago, or that God is 3-in-one, or any other such claims. What seems to confuse some people is that I still can find Trinitarian language helpful and inspiring and meaningful, not as a statement about what God is "really like" (as though I had a means to study that scientifically or objectively), but as an image of how this God that we speak of only in inadequate symbols and metaphors can be eternal love (since love requires more than one person).

So I'm something of an unusual case. A born again Christian who is not going to try to claim more than he can demonstrate with evidence about history or doctrine. My experience does not allow me to bypass the scientific method for investigating matters of science, or the need for historical inquiry to settle matters of history. But my life and the universe as I experience it is much more than the language of biology or of history will do justice to.

I do not particularly mind if you explore spirituality via another path. But reductionism that leaves no room for the spiritual even as an emergent phenomenon of the material world simply cannot do justice to the world as I and many others perceive it. And so perhaps it does boil down to "art appreciation" - some love it, and some "don't get" why those others love it.

Does Being Exist?

If the title of this post seems odd, I agree. But it helpfully shows why adherents to panentheism, Sufi Islam, some branches of Buddhism, process theology, existentialist theology, linguistic theology and pantheism (and perhaps others such as "mystical atheists") find themselves frustrated by repeated questions such as "What sophisticated arguments can you offer for the existence of supernatural beings?"

Paul Tillich, one of the great and extremely influential theologians of the 20th century, spoke of God as Being itself rather than "a being". In other words, the discussion is not about a certain type of being (immoral, invisible, omniscient and omnipotent and presumably omnivorous as well) that exists in the universe, whether he be called Yahweh or Zeus or Ba'al Shamayim. The discussion is about the nature of Existence itself. Is reality deep? Does it have transcendence as one of its characteristics? Of course, we cannot answer that definitively from our perspective. Could the mitochondria in our bodies be expected to perceive the nature of the existence of the bodies of which they are a part? We have only metaphors and a perception that we are part of something greater than ourselves, which transcends us and embraces us. The language we use is symbolic of mystery and is not intended to be an explanation.

This concept is not a new one, although it is obvious that it is unfamiliar to fundamentalists and to those non-religious individuals who have only heard about religion from fundamentalists. The Sufi mystics of Islam have long interpreted the shahada, the Islamic statement of faith that "There is no God but God", to mean that "nothing but God exists". Everything exists within God - i.e. panentheism. This doesn't mean that God is thought of in "supernatural" terms in the sense that the soul was thought of in this way in Greek, Hindu and classic Western Enlightenment thought. What was referred to as "the soul" in these traditions is now viewed by many as an emergent phenomenon rather than a separate spiritual substance. In the same way God may be viewed not as a separate spiritual substance that permeates the universe, but as a higher level of organization of that which exists.

No one suggests that science isn't science because it doesn't hold the same conclusions that science did a few hundred years ago. But Christians are berated by atheists as not really being Christians because they don't hold precisely the beliefs Christians did almost two millenia ago. Am I the only one who can see the irony in this?

Theologians have been exploring understandings of God other than those of classic theism and contemporary fundamentalism for centuries. Yet those who are unfamiliar with this intellectual and spiritual enterprise continue to ask questions that are the theological equivalent of "If humans evolved from monkeys, why are there still monkeys?"

So if you are looking for evidence that ancient deities and angels exist, with or without wings, residing on Mt. Olympus or just beyond the moon, I don't believe that such entities exist. They were ancient explanations for what we today recognize as natural phenomena. But if you are asking about language that can give symbolic expression to the sense of awe many people feel about the "miracle" that anything exists at all, much less that we exist and can ponder the nature of our existence and wonder about these mysteries, then theology has a lot to offer. Not logical arguments for the existence of invisible persons, but metaphors that allow us to give voice to our limited and inadequate perception of life's inexpressable mystery, then theology has a lot to offer. That doesn't mean that amateurs can't do theology, or write poetry, or make music, or even make scientific discoveries. But in every field, there is a body of knowledge and wisdom that has accumulated that allows one to not repeat all the mistakes and positive groundwork done in the past and build on what has gone before, rather than reinventing the wheel. If one wishes to discuss theology at that sort of level of academic sophistication, it involves significant reading and research to inform oneself, and not simply a handful of conversations with fundamentalists.

LOST: A Theory On Time Travel

IO9 just shared a link to a web site that tries to explain what is going on on LOST in terms of time travel, time displacement and time loops. Fans will definitely want to take a look!

Human Rights Around The Universe

Amused Muse points out that the Discovery Institute is closer to Hitler's view than those they accuse. For those who still know what "right wing" means, this is no surprise. Also at Pharyngula, which has another post on a University being taken to court because it dares to point out that some religious views are wrong about the facts. John Pieret also covers this topic. Ben Stein is still wrong in a way that can result in the loss of human life. Of the Discovery Institute's list of dissenters from Darwinism, 2% are confirmed as biologists who genuinely doubt evolution.

Mainstream Baptist notes the dangers of trying to challenge Christian nationalism, even though the latter is an oxymoron. Secher Nbiw shares a clip about Iran. N. T. Wrong blogs about American Empire. Ruth Gledhill has been blogging the persecution index. The Lead blogs about human dignity and scientific perspectives on spiritual states. Alan Lenzi reviews a book on cognition and religion.

Pisteuomen joins in drawing attention to the blog for human rights event.

SF Gospel mentions Beliefnet's top ten spiritual sci-fi characters.

David Ker recommends sites for Christian satire.

Also don't miss the cool photo of a young supernova at IO9, Scientific Blogging (which also touches on video games and violence) and New Scientist.

Christian Shepherd: Time Traveller?

Many fans of LOST have noticed how Christian Shepherd has appeared different, and dressed differently, than in previous appearances. There are two possible explanations for this, both of which would make sense in terms of the mytholology and worldview of LOST.

The first option is that Christian is himself involved with either Widmore or the Others and can travel through time. In that case, Christian as we have seen him in the last two episodes has travelled from some time in the past to this point in time.

The second option is that this is a manifestation of Christian in the same way he has been manifested to Jack, but these manifestations depend on a person's memories, and since Christian has been manifesting to (and in connection with) Claire, it shouldn't surprise us that he would look different. This is Christian as Claire remembers him.

The latter option seems less likely, however, when we consider that she would have known him as a suit-wearer too. Then again, memory is a funny thing...

One last thing to note. The Ottomans ruled North Africa at one point. When Ben appears in Tunisia and tries Turkish as well as Arabic, this doesn't indicate that he could have travelled to any place, but simply that he was trying languages that might have been spoken there at different times.

Not Getting Through

Is it just me wanting to ask questions that Larry Moran doesn't consider interesting, or am I genuinely having trouble getting through? Here's what he wrote in a recent comment on his blog, in response to my response to his response to...

The question that interests me is whether supernatural beings exist. If there are "religious believers" who are atheists then that's fine by me. Why would I want to have any further conversation with them?

This debate over "sophisticated" religion is always started by those who criticize atheists for not understanding modern religious thought. The clear implication is that the "sophisticated" believers are not atheists. Otherwise, why criticize the atheists?

James, I don't believe you would call yourself an atheist. What you are doing, I think, is quibbling over semantics. You want to define the word "supernatural being" in a way that permits you to believe in them while pretending that atheists like me don't understand your perception of reality.

Maybe you're right. Maybe I don't understand how you can believe in supernatural beings while pretending you don't. This is your chance to explain it to me. So far, you aren't doing a very good job.

Maybe it is just that I'm butting in on a conversation that is exclusively focused on "supernatural beings". But that isn't terminology that I find helpful for expressing what I mean by "God", and I know the same would be true for other theologians and educated Christians of various descriptions.

So why is this communication going so badly? Any suggestions on how to make it go better?

Around the Blogosphere

Amused Muse blogs about Hedges, Hot Dish and Hogwash. Or about Expelled, in case the title isn't self explanatory. Bad Idea Blog wonders if Expelled is running out of steam.

Duane Smith comments on Einstein's letter (see also Vridar). Larry Moran doesn't care.

Chuck Blanchard blogs about neuroscience and religion. Ancient Hebrew Poetry also touches on that same article, as well as the Vatican's recent statement about extraterrestrials (on which see also A Freethinker From Oz and Pharyngula).

Steve Martin invites evangelicals who are persuaded by the evidence for evolution to contribute to his blog.

AIG Busted blogs about transitional fossils. Chris Heard blogs about functions and structures in Genesis 1. The Panda's Thumb introduced me to a new blog, ID Exposed.

Ed Brayton revisits evolution and atheism (HT Jason Rosenhouse, who apparently was kidding).

C. Orthodoxy blogs about the Evangelical Manifesto. Also at On Faith.

Ben Myers reviews Rapture Ready! Mystical Seeker blogs about idolatry. Metacatholic has the historical Jesus dating game. Judy joins in the conversation about orality and literacy. N. T. Wrong blogs about Bill Dever and other amusing topics. Progressive Churchlady struggles with prayer. Jim West doesn't, in German.

Apprehending Jesus' Apprehension

There are a few intriguing details about the arrest of Jesus that are given insufficient attention in scholarly as well as more popular studies.

Jerome Murphy-O'Connor makes much of the fact that Jesus could have seen those coming to arrest him making their way with torches from Jerusalem across the Kidron Valley towards the place where he was on the Mount of Olives. Had he wanted to, he could have headed the other way, stopped in Bethany to pick up provisions, and disappeared untraceable into the wilderness. Thus, Murphy-O'Connor concludes, Jesus must have willingly allowed himself to be arrested.

I found this argument quite plausible and even persuasive, until I recalled the detail in the Gospels that there were disciples who were supposed to keep watch, but fell asleep. This at the very least undermines the certainty Murphy-O'Connor felt it was possible to have about this matter.

Then we must consider the reaction of the disciples. At least one drew a sword and struck a member of the party that had come to apprehend Jesus, cutting off his ear. This incident has not been given adequate attention. Had this not occurred, might the treatment of Jesus by the high priest and Sanhedrin potentially have been different?

It is the asking of such questions that distinguishes a historical approach to the person of Jesus, and not the specific answers one gives to the questions.

Science and Religion Around the Blogosphere

(Or "Einstein the Atheist Wraps Anti-Evolutionists in Poison Ivy Flagella")

Those who claim evolution makes no predictions need to go roll around in poison ivy. For some, experiential learning works best.

Mark Perrakh talks about what bacterial flagella really look like. Doppelganger asks if what is good for the Haeckel is also good for the Dembski. AIG Busted points to an NPR essay entitled "I am Evolution". Open Parachute has been looking at the "Dissent from Darwinism" list.

Is ERV right that Einstein was an atheist after all? That conclusion seems unlikely in view of his other statements on the subject, so either his views need to be nuanced more precisely, or they developped over the course of his life. Personally, I think ERV mistakes rejection of religion and even theism for rejection of any possible meaningful concept of, and use of the term, God. See the article about Einstein's letter that brought this up. Plenty of people reject the Bible and specific religious ideas without being "atheists". The term "atheist" is itself confusing, since it is often unclear whether those who use the label understand it to mean a rejection of every notion of God, or a rejection of theism. Depending on one's definition, pantheism may be a tertium quid left out of consideration, or a "sexed-up" form of atheism. At any rate, Einstein's view of the term "god" as impoverished and human is one that plenty of mystics and theologians would share! [My only reason for using the Latin "tertium quid" is I think it would be a cool name for a blog, for someone who is as concerned about identifying middle ground and more than two options in various debates and discussions].

I hate when fundamentalists quote scientists - or the Bible - out of context. Supporters of evolution and science in general, please let's lead by example and not treat short quotations as definitive proof of someone's views on a topic! Go to Pharyngula for what seems to me to be a better treatment of this piece of news.

Mark Goodacre, April DeConick and Loren Rosson have been discussing oral tradition.

There are reviews of "Faith", the latest episode of Battlestar Galactica (which I have yet to watch).

Has Science Made Belief In God Obsolete?

Metanexus has made a lengthy excerpt from Keith Ward's latest book, Big Questions in Science and Religion, available online. Although it may be less than persuasive as an argument for theism, it certainly shows the limitations of materialism and the continued viability of religious worldviews.

Who's in charge on LOST? The Producers!

Here's the latest from LOST's bosses about the mysteries of the show (HT SF Signal). If it reveals nothing else, is shows Plenty of Nothing to be wrong about LOST. And if you don't know what LOST's J. J. Abrams' latest project is, you definitely need to pay a visit to IO9.

There's also a review of Daniel Radosh's book Rapture Ready! which surveys Christian popular culture. Sounds interesting! (HT Bob Patterson).

In other news, the United Methodist Church has endorsed the Clergy Letter Project. And the Archbishop of Canterbury (Rowan Williams) had the following to say at his Holy Week Lecture on Faith and Science (17 March 2008): "[R]eligious faith can and ought to support and encourage science: science as a practice, with an impressive morality and spirituality, a commendation of attention and humility, the setting aside of self very frequently in the context of addressing the most painful vulnerabilities of the human world; a practice that trains selfless, even contemplative approaches to the world. The quarrel is not with that, the quarrel is with a culture confused about how it values different kinds of organism, whether you're talking about animal research or embryo research. The problem lies with our lack of clarity in that area, and I don't suggest for a moment that that is a difficulty we shall solve overnight or even that there is any one, compelling religious or moral framework which will answer all those questions straight away. I note simply that those are the issues that religious faith has an obligation to keep in the public sphere."

Job Announcement for Science-Lovers

The National Center for Science Education, a non-profit organization that defends the teaching of evolution in the public schools, seeks candidates for a position in its Public Information Project.

Staff members in the Public Information Project provide advice and support to local activists faced with threats to evolution education in their communities. They also provide information on evolution, evolution education, and related issues to the general public, the press, and allied organizations, and contribute as needed to NCSE's publications, both in print and on-line. Excellent communication skills, both written and oral, are necessary, as are a high degree of computer literacy and the ability to work cooperatively.

Candidates must have at least a college degree; advanced degrees in the sciences, particularly biology and geology, or in the history and/or philosophy of science, and/or science education, are pluses. A record of involvement in or understanding of the creationism/evolution controversy, or church/state separation issues in general, is also a plus.

This is a full-time permanent position with medical, dental, and retirement benefits in Oakland, California, to start as soon as possible. Telecommuting is not an option. Travel and public speaking may be required. Salary in the 40s, depending on qualification and experience.

Send c.v., brief writing sample, and the names of three references to NCSE, either by mail to NCSE, 420 40th Street, Suite 2, Oakland CA 94609-2509, by fax to (510) 601-7204, or by e-mail to pip@ncseweb.org. No calls, please. Materials must arrive by June 1, 2008, to be considered. NCSE is an equal opportunity employer.

For the same posting on NCSE's website, visit: http://www.ncseweb.org/resources/news/2008/ZZ/382_help_wanted_5_8_2008.asp

Of the line of David?

After church today, someone asked me why we say that Jesus is "of the line of David" when Joseph was his step-father. It was an insightful question, one that inattentive readers of the Bible often fail to even raise.

The irony, I replied, is that two incompatible genealogies for Jesus are preserved in precisely those Gospels that make Joseph's lineage irrelevant. In both, it is explicitly Joseph's lineage that is given, and never Mary's. Once again, fundamentalist sometimes claim that one of the genealogies belongs to Mary because it is more important to be able to say that the Bible is right than to actually pay attention to what the Bible says.

The easiest explanation (and just one of the ones I mentioned in response to this question) is that Jesus was Joseph's son, and born into a family with the reputation of being descended from David. The later stories of miraculous conceptions were expressions in the appropriate way for that time of the importance of Jesus, and the conviction that he must be the Son of God in a sense that no one else was.

This is not to say that the conservative explanation, that Joseph's acceptance of Jesus as his son would have made him legally of the line of David, is necessarily untrue. But it remains the case that Paul did not require such convoluted explanations. He didn't know stories of Jesus' miraculous conception. He believed Jesus was descended from David according to the flesh.

My own main point in answering was that the very notion that such questions have a single, simple answer is itself wide of the mark. How would you have answered this question?

LOST: Who's in charge here?

In last week's episode, Ben seemed to be resigned to destiny having passed the baton from him to John Locke. But hopefully all fans have learned not to take anything Benjamin Linus says at face value. He might well be playing Locke, and still doing what Jacob wants. We'll have to wait and see.

If Locke is indeed "chosen" (Christian Shepherd said "That's exactly right"), then by whom was he chosen? Anakin Skywalker was the "chosen one" - he was created by Darth Plagueis to fulfill a prophecy. By whom has Locke been chosen?

Richard Alpert was around soon after he was born, but was he observing or on the side of the choosers? Since Locke had already done things on the island in the future before those then connected with the island became aware of him, neither side could go back and eliminate him. All they could do is observe and seek to influence.

Alpert, we assume, is one of those representing the island's "original inhabitants". He is on the side of Ben and the Others. Or is he? We should not assume anything about anyone's true allegiances on this show. Matthew Abbadon seemed to work for Charles Widmore, hiring Naomi and the team that goes to find Ben Linus and the island, yet they seem to be at odds at times with the aims of Keamy and the troops whose aim is also to find Ben Linus, but with different means and a different agenda.

Could it be that behind both Charles Widmore and Ben Linus there is a single power pulling the strings? If so, who? Ms. Hawking? Jacob? Someone we haven't yet met? The island itself? God?

If Locke's destiny is really to replace Ben as leader of the Others, then we must think about what this means: when Sayid later finds himself working for Ben, he's in fact working for Locke.

Since Mother's Day is almost here, let's consider the possibility that behind the scenes, pulling the strings, directing history, is one of the main characters' mother. We already know that fathers like Christian Shepherd have a key role...somehow.

No One Believes That The God Of The Bible Exists Anymore

The title of this post is not a complaint; it is merely an observation. No one confronts the representatives of another tradition with a contest to see which one's deity will send fire from heaven as Elijah did. No Christian blogger claims that those who comment negatively will be struck with blindness for doing so, as apostles did. God is depicted in many parts of the Bible as knocking down city walls, parting seas and so on. Yet no Christian dominionists are likely to march around Washington D.C. and see it fall into their hands.

Those who claim they "believe the whole Bible" and "take it literally" are being dishonest. Their pastor may have preached recently on the story of the fall of Jericho, but it was applied to God "making the strongholds of sin in your come life crumbling down", not to a battle plan to take a city.

To be fair, not all Biblical authors view God in the same way. And so there is no single "Biblical view of God". But certainly God as depicted in some parts of the Bible is not the concept of the deity served by Christians today.

The question a Christian needs to ask is whether they have the courage to admit that their view of God is not the same as that of many depicitions in the Bible. Do you have the courage to take the Bible's actual words completely seriously, even when the result is that you are forced to acknowledge that you do not accept their literal truthfulness?

Let me end with a couple of thought-provoking quotes from Don Cupitt's book, which I just finished reading:

"The Virgin Mary may cure many people in Portugal but she is much less active in Libya, whereas vaccination and inoculation are observably beneficial - and equally beneficial - in both cultures, the local religion in the end making no difference at all" (Don Cupitt, Taking Leave of God, p.123).

"To put it bluntly, classical Christianity is itself now our Old Testament...We have to use traditional Christianity in the same way as Christianity itself has always used the Old Testament. In both cases there is a great gulf but there is also continuity of spirit and religious values...When a Christian sings a psalm he knows there is a religion-gap and a culture-gap, but it does not worry him because he believes his faith to be the legitimate successor of the faith of the psalmist. Similarly, since the Enlightenment there has developed a religion-gap and a culture-gap between us and traditional Christianity, but we may still be justified in using the old words if we can plausibly argue that our present faith and spiritual values are the legitimate heirs of the old" (Don Cupitt, Taking Leave of God, p.135).

Who LOST The Temporal Cold War?

As this season of LOST progresses, we are having more and more revealed to us about the nature of the show. It seems that it is, in essence, about two opposing forces for whom time is not an issue.

The title of this post alludes to Star Trek: Enterprise, which had as a major theme the idea that there is a "temporal cold war" going on. If one side goes back in time, it can prevent the other civilization from ever existing. Doctor Who has also explored this theme. But no show has taken it down to the day by day level and introduced it to us inductively, so that we slowly realize what is going on. Likewise no other show dealt with the fact that, if an action determines a particular future, it is known to those who are not bound by time and can be dealt with. That's why this is a war with rules.

John Locke is the focus of this episode, and its flashbacks. Richard Alpert, always looking the same, is there throughout John's story, visiting the hospital when he is born, then doing a test when he is a child to see if he knows which items in Richard's bag already belong to him. In other words, John Locke is unstuck in time! The young Locke drew a man being killed by the smoke monster. He also was already fond of backgammon. Locke identifies two items correctly (a vial of dust or sand and a compass), but chooses a knife and Richard departs, disappointed. Among the other items was a book with the title Book of Laws.

Later, Mittelos (an anagram for "lost time") labs tries to recruit John when he's in school. Finally, Matthew Abbadon visits John when he is in the hospital and unable to walk, and recommends that he go on an Australian walkabout as a spiritual journey. Abbadon's last words to John are that later they will meet again and John, having followed his advice, will owe him one.

Locke has a dream in which he sees Horace building a cabin. That will be the cabin in which Jacob is to be found. Jacob has been waiting for Locke for a long time. When Locke reaches the cabin he finds someone who says he isn't Jacob but can speak for him - Christian! Christian Shepherd says he knows why Locke is there, but wonders if Locke himself knows. When Locke says it is because he has been chosen, Christian is pleased and says that is exactly right. Locke then discovers that Claire is there too. Locke is then prompted to ask the one question that matters: "How do I save the island?" The answer: move the island!

Meanwhile, Keamy is aborting the initial plan to torch the island, since Ben Linus knows that's their plan and will have gone somewhere safe. Keamy thus opens a safe with a secondary protocol, a file with a Dharma Initiative logo on the front, telling where Ben Linus will go.

These are the complexities of a time war that other shows have never explored in such detail. It is incredible, enthralling television at its best.

Scientists' Responses Solicited

I received the following e-mail from someone who is certain that I have "faith" in evolution, as opposed to being persuaded by the evidence, as well as by the evidence of the fact that those who study the evidence in depth are persuaded by the evidence. Rather than engage in a futile discussion, I invite biologists, biochemists, and other scientists to tackle this if they are so inclined. Here's the text of the e-mail I received:

Dr. McGrath:

In visiting PZ's blog I found your name and checked out your blog. As a
graduate of Wabash College with a major in Chemistry and reading your vitae
it occurs to me in reading your opinions that you have no basis to know if
any idea if evolution is true or not. Butler and Indiana is not well
served with what you are putting out about Expelled and evolution.
Methodists (progressive Christianity) supported eugenics and have
apologized for it --
http://calms.umc.org/2008/Text.aspx?mode=Petition&Number=1175.

You spoke that people should not form opinions about Jesus without the
tools to do so.

You need to apply that same standard to your faith in evolution (where you
are totally clueless).

To wit ... you have no idea why life is largely based in L amino acids when
nature forms amino acids in racemic mixtures (50% D and L ... starlight
will not polarize enough to alter the mix to permit life). Or why sugars
are soley in the D form. You have no idea how Shannon Information
increases in species ... mutuations being a loss of genetic information.

To paraphrase a line from Tom Cruise to Dustin Hoffman in the movie
"Rainman" -- evolution is not your game.

Scientists, please give him a more detailed treatment than I have the time or interest to at the moment, if you are so inclined!

Intelligent Design Research Identifies Designer

Recent research on the flergeller componentry of bacteria has succeeded in spotting the designer at work. Take a look!

I assume this is also a parody...but then again, reality and parody are sometimes hard to distinguish when dealing with many popular forms of creationism...

Grades are in, let summer begin!

Now that grades are in there is time to read...



John Pieret today highlights some apocalyptic exegesis. Anyone remember the booklet 88 Reasons Why The Rapture Will Be In 1988? If not, don't worry, this generation is going to have its own version.
First Things reflects on theodicy and yet more natural disasters.
Vridar continues responding to Wright on the resurrection.
The Bad Idea Blog points out Ken Miller's response to Expelled.

There's also time to watch LOST, and Battlestar Galactica, and catch up with Doctor Who!

Time Immortal interacts with a post of mine about theology and Battlestar Galactica.

Quotes of the Day (Don Cupitt)

"If faith in divine providence were the empirical belief that at least the great majority of good people have happy endings, and at least the great majority of bad people come to sticky ends, then one can only say that such a belief is too absurd for anyone to hold and too absurd for anyone to think it worth checking by systematic counting. Faith in divine providence is not a factual belief from which we cand deduce predictions about the future course of human history...Faith in God is itself a way of overcoming evil and not a theory that evil will be overcome quite apart from faith" (Don Cupitt, Taking Leave of God, New York: Crossroad, 1980, p.55).

Other provocative quotes from the book include:

"And what is God? The Christian doctrine of God just is Christian spirituality in coded form, for God is a symbol that represents to us everything that spirituality requires of us and promises to us" (p.14).

"Religion is not metaphysics but salvation, and salvation is a state of the self...There is no such thing as objective religious truth and there cannot be. The view that religious truth consists in ideological correctness or in the objective correspondence of doctrinal statement with historical and metaphysical fact is a modern aberration, and a product of the decline of religious seriousness" (p.43).

"A purely historical exegesis of the New Testament would be of no religious value to us today whatever, because the barriers to its appropriation by us are too great. That is why fundamentalist and ultra-conservative styles of religion are now so completely bankrupt. They require so much self-deception as to corrupt the soul" (p.43).

Cupitt has been accused of "atheism", as has John A. T. Robinson, and some have even wondered about yours truly. But is this not merely symptomatic of the way those on or closer to the extreme ends of the spectrum have limited truth and existence to the objective? Cupitt seems (I'm less than half way through the book) to emphasize that there are things that deserve to be considered real which are not simply objective, observable realities - such as beauty, and love, and the number three. And for progressive Christians, the focus is not on proving that such things are real, but on living them as realities in our own lives.

Evolution of the Eye

Henry Neufeld is one of many drawing attention to the video on the evolution of the eye at Expelled Exposed...



Hyphoid Logic spotted a news item about good science education near to me here in Indiana.
Mystical Seeker has been following a conversation in which the atheists seem (as so often is the case) to share many of the same presuppositions as religious fundamentalists. The Lead features Peter Berger between relativism and fundamentalism.
Don't miss an excellent assignment that it was a pleasure to read and grade, about Paul's theology and the movie Fight Club.

Quotes to make you Question...

Here are two quotes from around the blogosphere. The first was posted by Liberal Pastor in a discussion that I've also been involved in on a biochemist's blog:

Joining this debate late. I am one of those liberal Christians. I do not in any way believe in a supernatural God. Am I an atheist? Perhaps I will take a crack at addressing the issue in another reply.

I wanted to comment more specifically on how it is possible to call oneself a Christian and not believe in a supernatural God. It is simple; I find the way of life and the vision of the human Jesus compelling. I seek as much as possible to pattern my life after him. That makes me a Christian.

For the last two hundred years there has been a serious effort in the field of biblical scholarship to discover who was the real Jesus - as a human. This scholarship has always recognized that the gospel accounts are not historical works on the life of Jesus - they are theological reflections on the significance of Jesus which also happen to contain bits of remembered history about him. The scholarship has sought to separate the man from the myth.

For many of us, the question is: what was it about him that caused those who were with him to look at him and say: this is God among us. Since they lived in a world that believed in a supernatural deity, miracles, virgin births of great leaders, etc., it is not surprising to realize that they used that language to talk about him. (Just as Seutonius did in writing the Lives of the Twelve Caesars - in fact it has long been recognized in scholarship that the gospel writers were also writing "lives" as a counter-story to this kind of writing.)

But why write about the peasant Jesus? Was it all a fraud? Or was there something about the way he lived and died that made people talk about him with God language?

I think there was something about him. Just as there was something about the Buddha that made his followers reflect on his significance in the language of their culture and become followers. They were, Jesus and Buddha, in their day, transformational figures.

For me, it is the way of Jesus that matters: peace, simplicity, inclusive community that ignores cultural barriers, taking a stand against injustice to the point of being willing to pay the price (there are some things that are worth living and dying for), etc.

Was Jesus also wrong about some things? Almost certainly. He was a man. It is quite possible that he shared the end-times views of many people in his day and believed that God was about to intervene. He may have even believed that his actions were going to help usher in that moment. If so, he was wrong, just as countless humans have been through the ages.

It is not a deal-breaker for me, because I don't believe in supernatural deities or humans who can do supernatural miracles or be dead and then come to life again. It is what he got right that matters to me. And I am not alone among Christians. I am where (or in the neighborhood of where) most liberal Christians are, which is why the God argument for us is a bogeyman. It sells books for some scientists and I guess makes them rich, and it fires up the fundies and gives them another excuse to keep the fires of fear raging, but it misses the point. We live in a real world with real problems, and addressing those problems and making the world a better place is what liberal Christians care about.

The second, from Philip Blosser, is shared by Michael Samson on the blog Rome Is Where The Heart Is, is about the Protestant approach to Scripture the canon of which was defined by the Church:

The honest Protestant Bible student has little ground for easily presuming that his private interpretation of the issues that divide the Protestant denominations is necessarily the right one, or that the 2000 year-old consensus of millions of Catholics on every inhabited continent is necessarily wrong. It would be untoward ignorance to assume that he is the first person in history to have carefully examined Scripture; and presumptuous arrogance to assume that he is the first to have understood it. Where was the Holy Spirit for these two thousand years? What about the centuries upon centuries through which the Christian faith was preserved, passed down from generation to generation, and carried by missionary monks to our barbarian ancestors in Europe? What about the millenia of godly champions of the faith, such as St. Augustine, St. Jerome, Pope Leo, Pope Gregory, St. Benedict, St. Anselm, St. Bonaventure, St. Bernard, St. Francis of Assisi, St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Francis Xavier (the first missionary to Japan), and John Henry Newman, for starters? What about the early bishops who personally knew the apostles, like Ignatius of Antioch (the third successive bishop of that city), and who claimed to have had passed on to them the delegated authority of the apostles to stand in their place as divinely commissioned guardians and interpreters of the apostolic faith, and passed on this conviction (together with this claim of authority) from generation to generation through the laying on of hands? What about the popes and bishops who settled the Trinitarian and Christological controversies of the early Ecumenical Councils, who declared "This is orthodox" and "That is heterodox," "This is canonical" and "That is not," and preserved and passed down the Bible and the the meaning of its message to us? Were they all mistaken in their "Romish" beliefs? Were these all partially confused, partially misinformed, partially benighted unfortunates who lost their way under the bondage of Rome, until, at last, with the advent of the modern Protestant Bible student, with his NIV Study Bible and Zondervan Concordance and CD-ROM Bible Dictionary, the light of truth has finally dawned?

One quote from a Conservative Catholic, the other from a Liberal Protestant. Presumably there'll be something here that is thought-provoking for just about everyone!

Religion and Science Fiction

SF Signal shares (in addition to an interview with the producers of LOST and a clip from next week's episode) links to posts about theology and Battlestar Galactica on Time Immemortal and BeliefNet. Galactica Sitrep has a recap. The Lead talks about the Church of England and Doctor Who.

Leaving God Behind

I was going to call this blog entry "Taking Leave Of God", but since I've actually never read Don Cupitt's book by that title, I decided not to allude to it. The inspiration for this entry in fact comes from some verses in Exodus 33 - a story tucked away between the better-known stories of the golden calf and of the theophany in which Moses gets to see God's "rear end" (and then provides new tablets with the "ten commandments" which don't match those originally given in Exodus 20).

There are three possibilities with respect to the interpretation of the story in Exodus 33:1-3. One is that it was written with no intention that it be taken literally. A second is that God said things in this story that accomodated the Israelites' understanding. Finally, one can suggest that it was indeed meant literally as written, but we cannot accept its literal meaning today. The second option seems to be merely an attempt to 'have our cake and eat it too', to recognize the humanness of the passage but assert its divine origin nonetheless. Of the three, the latter option seems the best fit to me.

In the story, the God who dwells on Sinai offers to send an angel to accompany the people. But Yahweh himself will not accompany them, since he'd probably just get fed up and destroy them on the way. Not only is God anthropomorphized in the story. God is localized in a manner typical of the time. God dwells on Sinai, and in order to dwell in the tabernacle and accompany the people, he would have to depart his historic dwelling place on the mountain, presumably. When things need to be done in his absence, he empowers a person and gives their staff powerful "magical" abilities.

In an ongoing discussion on another blog, I've been told once again that there are really only two options: theism (= belief in localized, anthropomorphized, supernatural deities, as expressed in the Exodus story) and atheism (= the denial of the existence of such beings). If this were correct, presumably that would make me and many others "Christian atheists". But unless one wants to narrow the definition of atheism to "the denial of theism", then I absolutely reject this dichotomy. Christian theology of the past hundred years or so has focused on thinking of God as greater than the image in this Exodus story, not less. The alternative for those who find religious language still a key part in doing justice to the wider and deeper world that science has made known to us do not simply cast aside all notions of God, but rethink the meaning of such language in light of our increased knowledge and our new perspective.

Exodus offers a God that can be left behind. Atheism recommends doing just that. Progressive Christianity, Liberal Christianity, and many other forms of sophisticated theology recommend leaving behind the image of a God that can be left behind, and adopting instead the language of God as all-encompassing transcendence. This is not "shifting the goal post" or being slippery. It is about redefining our concepts and reformulating our metaphors for the ultimate as our knowledge about the non-ultimate expands and grows. This process will only seem inappropriate to those who share the fundamentalist notion of theology as offering timeless truths and certainties untainted by culture or human limitations. To those who have studied enough theology and/or enough of the Bible and/or enough other subjects will realize that this is a natural process that occurs in all human endeavors. Music must become more daring and dissonant as familiar harmonies become boring. Language must be pushed to its limits as metaphors die. Concepts of God must be rethought and revisioned as symbols that once pointed beyond what we know now compete with science and other domains of knowledge, and lose.

Science tells us things that we can feel confident we "know" with as much certainty as is possible, using carefully defined tools and methods appropriate to its investigation and analysis. Religion (as I perceive and practice it) is more of a poetic, artistic work of the imagination, attempting to integrate as many aspects of our experience as possible in a way that allows us to think about the unthinkable and relate to the unknowables, in a way that allows us to perceive the world not merely reductionistically but in ways that take transcendence and meaning seriously.

Quote of the Day (Henry Neufeld)

"The ID movement is the noisiest bunch of “suppressed” people in history. If their voices are cut off, there sure is no evidence of the fact" (From the blog Threads From Henry's Web),

Butler Children's Orchestra

Rite at Stonehenge (composed by Elliot Del Borgo)


Kabuki Dance (composed by Richard Meyer)


Classical Bash


Allegro (composed by Shinichi Suzuki)

Around the Blogosphere

Doug Chaplin highlights a news article about a study which shows that fundamentalists don't know the Bible better than others, and that reading the Bible more doesn't lead one to vote for a particular party. Is anyone surprised...apart from fundamentalists?
Liberal Pastor discusses what it means to be a Progressive Christian. I hope Mystical Seeker and Pluralist won't stop exploring the cutting edge of such a faith. Pluralism Sunday has been scheduled.
Sam Harris needs Christian volunteers. Vridar has been continuing a series on Wright and the resurrection, and also talks about why science is not a faith. Quixie discusses the Pastoral Epistles. James Tabor discusses Barrie Wilson's How Jesus Became Christian. Ehrman and Wright continue their conversation. April DeConick asks about religious freedom.
Andrew can't help laughing that someone finds Jesus' view of discipleship an inadequate definition of Christianity. Michael Halcomb calls bloggers to unite for human rights.
Chuck Blanchard asks whether Jesus was wrong about Genesis. John Pieret continues to discuss what the Discovery-free Institute says and does. Steve Martin asks people to share their stories about shifting to an evolutionary creationist perspective. Ancient Hebrew Poetry also has a post on a Genesis creation story. Francisco Ayala spoke recently about the problem of evil. John M. Lilley, president of Baylor University, has written a letter addressing the issue of Expelled. Elliot highlights some moderate voices on religion and science.

YouTube has videos related to evolution by:

Barbara Forrest


and many others

Don't Click, Just Wait For The Check

Don't fall for the following hoax/scam/phishing attempt. The IRS will send you your check, you don't need to click on the link in this e-mail if you received it. The link goes to http://203.231.156.252:7722/refundsx/irfofgetstatus.htm Clearly that isn't the IRS web site.

Be patient. Your check will come. If you fall for this hoax, however, you might lose more than you get from the IRS...



Over 130 million Americans will receive refunds as
part of President Bush program to jumpstart the economy.

Our records indicate that you are qualified to receive the
2008 Economic Stimulus Refund.

The fastest and easiest way to receive your refund is by
direct deposit to your checking/savings account.

Please follow the link and fill out the form and submit
before May 10th, 2008 to ensure that your refund will be
processed as soon as possible.

Submitting your form on May 10th, 2008 or later means that
your refund will be delayed due to the volume of requests we
anticipate for the Economic Stimulus Refund.

To access Economic Stimulus Refund, please click here.

LOST Appendix

This past week's episode of LOST may not have had as startlingly obvious revelations as the episode immediately before it, but what it did reveal, and the hints that were subtly placed, are worth noting.


Someone has said rather woefully that this might be the happiest we'll ever see Kate and Jack. Presumably we witnessed the start of Jack's downward spiral into medication and alcohol before the episode was over, but seeing Jack and Kate together, striving for a bit of normalcy, and even getting engaged was delightful, although I think we all knew from the very earliest flash-forward that it wouldn't last.


Hurley at one point suggested that they never got off the island. Perhaps in an ironic allusion to the early speculation that the "survivors" on the island weren't survivors at all but were in fact dead. In this episode, Hurley speculates that they were not really alive since everything was working out so perfectly for Jack and Kate. Jack's response is worth pondering further: Just because we're happy doesn't mean it isn't real.

Charlie apparently had a message for Jack: "You're not supposed to raise him." Given that Hurley specifically asks whether this refers to Aaron, my guess is that we're not supposed to understand it in that obvious way. But whom else could Jack raise, and in what sense? Raise in poker? Raise someone (perhaps his dad) from the dead? Any other possibilities? Then again, perhaps the hint that the reference might be to something less obvious is intended to make us wonder. Jack's feelings about Aaron (which apparently changed after Kate's trial) are still shrouded in mystery, and so perhaps Jack already has a sense that he is not supposed to raise him. And what if anything does this have to do with Claire's disappearance? Will we ever see her again on the show, and if so under what circumstances?


Charlie also said that Jack would have a visitor of his own. Before the episode is over, Jack will see his father. In the scene from next week, Locke is shown encountering someone who has been dead for more than a decade. Encountering the deceased is a key theme. Christian Shepherd, Ben's mother, Eko's brother Yemi, Libby - the only exception to the rule that it is as the dead that the island manifests itself is Walt, but we've already learned that Walt is "special" and so perhaps when people see Walt, they are indeed seeing Walt; or perhaps his specialness explains why he is seen when other living people are not.


Other clues and hints from this episode include Sawyer having chosen to stay on the island while Jack chose to leave and saved Kate. Sawyer, however, asked Kate to do something for him. My guess is he asked her to contact the woman he pretended to love and left pregnant after swindling her out of money. The island leads people to make amends.


Jack isn't the only one who saw his dad. So did Claire. Miles apparently witnessed it too, but that doesn't tell us whether Christian Shepherd is alive or dead, and presumably it was intentional that Miles be the one to see Claire leave with her dad, since Miles can sense the presence of the dead. This ability laid to rest any hope that Rousseau and Karl had somehow survived. Of course, being dead on the island, we may see more of them than before!



Finally, we are led to ask why Jack has appendicitis. Rose draws attention to the oddness of the situation - the island makes people well, as a rule. Ben's cancer and Jack's appendix raise questions. Theologically, we can think about this in terms of providence. If these things happen to these individuals to serve a higher purpose, a greater good, does that justify these things being caused?

Reflecting on providence, we remember Ms. Hawking's statement that the universe has a way of course-correcting. But Charlie was supposed to die earlier, before switching off the jammer. And so are there two forces providentially at work here, one opposing the other?

Challenge to Anti-Intellectual Christian Fundamentalists

Here's a challenge to those Christians who denigrate scholarship as causing confusion and inappropriately asking questions and raising issues. Just read the Bible for yourself, without the aid of scholarship.

Sounds simple, right? Sounds like just what you wanted to do? Not so fast...

• If you are going to do what I've challenged you to, then you cannot read an English translation of the Bible. Translations rely on all sorts of scholars and experts in both the original languages, the Biblical literature, and the theory of translation.

• You cannot simply read a critical edition of the Greek or Hebrew text. Those critical editions are also produced by scholars, who painstakingly compile the readings in manuscripts so as to give translators and other scholars convenient access to the text.

• You cannot use an original Greek or Hebrew manuscript that is held in a library or museum. Libraries and museums are likewise places of academic research and scholarship.

When you've done that, do get back to me. Or, alternatively, just acknowledge that you are entirely dependent on scholars for your access to the Bible throughout the process: study of original manuscripts, collation of readings in critical editions, translations into your native language, and the commentaries and other such helps that hopefully your pastor uses even if you do not.

PC Advisor Features My Solution

The UK Magazine PC Advisor has featured a solution I came up with to Vista's infamous problem of a black screen after login. Although I like to think this blog is mainly about religion, theology, Biblical studies, evolution, creationism, LOST and Battlestar Galactica, on most days the vast majority of visitors come looking for solution to this particular problem. Apparently the "black screen of death" is a widespread issue with Vista.

If you are here looking for a solution to that problem, I hope this helps. But I do hope once your computer is working again, you'll come back and browse some of the other posts and topics on this blog!

The Gospel According to Gaius

This is the message Gaius Baltar proclaimed to adoring followers at the end of last week's episode of Battlestar Galactica: God loves only that which is perfect, and thus "you are perfect, just as you are".

There would seem to be at least some truth in what Gaius proclaimed. If we cannot come face to face with our faults, and accept who we are, then we can hardly expect to accept the faults we find in others. But there is a difference between regarding ourselves as perfect and accepting ourselves - and others. The challenge is to love even as we strive to improve - whether ourselves or the world we live in.

Yet there is in many forms of religion an inherent negativity about various aspects of human life, and rather than live with the guilt, we focus on the sins of others and create convenient blind spots with respect to our own. Or we focus on those sins that others do as the real sins.

The danger if we cannot embrace our own humanity is that we will not be able to embrace that of Jesus either. Perhaps we will embrace an imagined doctrinal humanity, a Jesus who sweats and bleeds in key stories that we've become accustomed to, but normally strides an inch above the ground, never needing a break, or a moment's privacy for a bowel movement. And then we proceed to hide our own worst sins from ourselves. Condemning others for that which we have not committed ourselves - murder, or adultery, or whatever else - we become blind to our own arrogance and pride.

Perhaps there is something to the Gospel of Gaius Baltar. Then again, perhaps it is a Cylon deception.

I presume that conservative Christians will be the first to dismiss the "Gospel of Gaius" as either New Age claptrap (pantheism, after all, leads naturally to the affirmation of the perfection of all just as it is) or a feel-good pseudogospel. But the irony is that, if you truly believe Gaius is wrong, then that should lead to a self-critical introspective look at the ways in which you may have been accepting your own perfection uncritically.

Here are some of the ways that, in fact, brands of conservative Christianity have been proclaiming a form of the "Gospel of Gaius":

• Your wealth is the result of divine blessing and has nothing to do with how much you keep for yourself vs. how much you pay your employees. You and your business are perfect - just as you are!



• You don't need to read scholarly books to understand the Bible, or educate yourself, or know things about the historical and cultural context. You understand the Bible perfectly - just as you are!



• God has predestined you to salvation, and all things are as they were determined to be by God's perfect sovereign will. You can only change if God wills it, and you aren't changing, and so that means (you guessed it) you're perfect - just as you are!



• The book of Revelation (as you premillenial dispensationalists understand it) says that everything will get worse before the end, so there is no point in trying to help the environment, change policies, or be a good Samaritan towards our neighbors and the world. How convenient that your self-serving policies and gas-guzzling SUVs are perfect - just as they are!



• The way you interpret and express your faith most likely suggests you are suffering from mental illness, but rather than try to get you help, but we'll blame demons, or praise you for your exuberant faith as a "spiritual warrior", because you're perfect - just as you are!

If you reject the Gospel of Gaius Baltar, you had better make sure you aren't hypocritically adhering to it yourself at the same time.

Everyone Can Be The Next Of Kin

If you are reading this, and are not a regular reader, you've presumably come here hoping that you may in fact be the next in line to a fortune. You aren't. Lots of people get the same e-mail, which is an attempt to scam you out of personal information and eventually money.

Think about it, please. What banker offers to split the money with you? What banker contacts you from a generic gmail address (ray.wells60@gmail.com)? What banker has tracked you down as the "next of kin" but doesn't address you by name?

Please do not be so gullible in the future. Sooner or later it will cost you money!

_________________________________

FROM:RAY WELLS
INTER-SECURETRUST & PRIVATE BANKING PLC,
LONDON,UNITED-KINGDOM.
30/4/08.

Your Attn,

I am Ray Wells, the system director at the INTER-SECURETRUST & PRIVATE
BANKING PLC,i wish to solicit for support and assistance from you to
carry out this business opportunity in my bank.

Lying in an inactive account is the sum of Twenty Five Million
USDollars(25,000,000:00$) belonging to a foreign customer(Hopcraft
Lawrence) who was a gas consultant here in UK,he happened to be
deceased
during a business trip with his wife(Hopcraft Pauline) on board the
Swissair Flight 111 , which crashed into the Atlantic off Nova Scotia
in
september 2nd 1998,info of this crash was on the news which we have
tried
to notify his relatives but to no avail,see link below for more
detailed
information:

www.cnn.com/WORLD/9809/swissair.victims.list/index.html
www.cnn.com/WORLD/americas/9809/08/swissair.02/index.html

Ever since he died the bank has been expecting his next of kin to come
and
claim these funds which they cannot release unless someone applies for
it
as next of kin, as indicated in our banking guidelines,unfortunately he
has no family member in UK or Over-sea who are aware of the existence
of
the money,at this junction, i have decided to do business with you by
soliciting your assistance in applying as the next of kin to the bank
then
the money will be released to you as i do not want the money to go into
the bank treasury as an unclaimed bill,because the banking laws and
guidelines stipulates that if such money(s) remains unclaimed for a
period of ten years(10yrs),the money will be transferred into the bank
treasury as an unclaimed bill.My request for a foreigner as next of kin
is
occasioned by the fact that the customer was a foreigner and a British
cannot stand as next of kin.

50% of the money will be your share as a foreign partner and your
assistance to actualise this deal while the rest 50% will go to
me,thereafter i will visit your country with your help once the money
hits
your account for disbursement according to the percentage indicated.To
effect the immediate transfer of the funds to you as agreed,you must
apply
first to the bank as the next of kin to the deceased,then we will
follow
up all formalities for the transaction.

Upon receipt of your reply, i will send to you, the text of application
you are to send to the bank,and further clearify you in other issues as
to
effect this deal.
Awaiting your speedy response.

Best Regards
Ray Wells.