Sunday School

I've just posted a brief recap of what we covered today in my Sunday school class, as well as what we'll be doing next time. I tried to move forward in as open-ended a fashion as possible, and I think the topics we touched on ended up being a bit too scattered. Hopefully by looking at a familiar set of stories and asking historical as well as cultural and other kinds of questions, we'll be able to keep more focused next time. And at the pace we usually move in my classes, if we start talking about the infancy narratives in Matthew 1-2 and Luke 1-2 now, then we should still be in them at Christmas time...

Intelligent Design Can't Get Off The Ground

Yet another great illustration of the relationship between science such as evolution and pseudoscience such as intelligent design from Sneer Review (click through to see the full-sized version):

Evolution is at 2146 meters and rising. Intelligent Design can't get off the ground.

Creation/Evolution of a Vice-Presidential Candidate

Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, who will become vice president if John McCain is elected president, has spoken in the past about her views on creation, evolution and science education. Those interested in these issues will want to take a look!

LOST Body

As I've been finishing off the manuscript of my book on the burial of Jesus (which should be available from Booksurge in a few weeks if the process goes smoothly), I started thinking (as I often do) about LOST.

On LOST, Jack begins catching glimpses of his deceased father. Eventually he finds the empty casket. For a while, we wonder whether we are dealing with something "supernatural" or merely a combination of coincidences and hallucinations.

LOST clearly explores spiritual and religious themes. In this particular case, is LOST exploring the rise of faith in the resurrection? And if so, what more might it develop along these lines?

At any rate, seeing one's deceased father, or a doctor who had died, is not the same as seeing someone that had been identified as the Messiah and connected with the transition from the present evil-dominated age to the Messianic era. The latter more naturally has a particular interpretative framework, while the possible significance of the former is less obvious.

Does anyone know what the chronology of the survivors on the island is? When Jack finds the casket in the episode "White Rabbit", was it by any chance their third day on the island?

Keep Teaching The "Controversy"

Martin at Sneer Review has posted another installment in his "Teach Both Sides" series of posters. Don't miss the DNA code in the background!

Blog the Controversy

There may not be a genuine scientific dispute over evolution as such, but there certainly is dispute from those outside of the relevant natural science about whether there is a dispute. Here are just a few recent posts related to evolution on blogs I read:

Jason Rosenhouse continues his coverage of the Sixth International Conference on Creationism.
Mike the Mad Biologist asks if molecular evolution is a good way to teach this subject to high school students.
Mystical Seeker shares a personal experience of faith and science.
An Evangelical Dialogue on Evolution has a review by an Evangelical paleontology student of Lamoureux's Evolutionary Creation.
Doug Chaplin, Drew, Wade G., Nick Norelli and Jim West continue our multi-blog conversation on this subject.
Science and Religion Today has several relevant posts, including one on Judaism, Torah and science.

Classes Begin

Classes begin today here at Butler University. This semester I'll be teaching The Bible, South Asian Civilizations (a core curriculum Global and Historical Studies course), and Heresy (which is, in essence, a course about early Christian extracanonical literature and the debates about and development of doctrine in the early church, but that doesn't have quite the same appeal that "heresy" does).

150,000

Sometime yesterday I had my 150,000th visit to this blog, counting from the time I moved it to Blogger in June of last year.

Thanks to all visitors who've made this such a fun and interesting experience so far!

Teach the Controversy

Although I think the cartoon (actually it would be better to call it a poster) I'm about to share speaks for itself, it makes a key point that should not be missed about how Intelligent Design goes about its business and tries to achieve its aims. I can't imagine anyone taking seriously in any other discipline a demand that a viewpoint that has produced no genuine results, made no contributions to our understanding, and in so many other ways failed to pass scholarly muster. I hope that any educators who do mention ID will show the picture below. The only way to accurately "teach the controversy" is to explain to students why, among experts in biology, paleontology, genetics, and other relevant disciplines, there isn't one. This isn't to say that there aren't controversies in the natural sciences. There are plenty of them. But "ID vs. evolution" isn't one of them, because this is not a case of two viewpoints interpreting the same evidence in different ways, but of one viewpoint taking the evidence seriously and the other trying to spin it to promote an ideology. The painfully ironic part, of course, is that ID proponents use the same language to suggest that that is what mainstream scientists are doing. But the evidence demonstrates otherwise, if one takes the time to investigate the matter.

I've been trying to take a similar approach in my courses on the Bible. In the humanities there is certainly far more room for more than one interpretation of the data. But it is still crucial that students learn also to recognize where legitimate differences of interpretation end and ideologically-motivated spinning and selective quotation begin. Students (and people in general) need to understand both that experts can disagree, and that experts do not disagree all the time about everything.

OK, here's the picture:

(HT Sneer Review)

Evolution and Indoctrination

Many have blogged about the recent New York Times pieces on evolution and science education (see, among others, Science & Religion Today, A Blog Around the Clock, Thoughts in a Haystack and Antiquitopia). I was rather dismayed by Jim West's depiction of it as about "indoctrination" into evolutionary thinking.

I cannot be too critical, since I was once a loudmouth on the young-earth creationist bandwagon. I've addressed this subject countless times before on this blog. But let me address the issue on this occasion in terms that I think Jim will appreciate.

Is it "indoctrination" if we teach the history of the Holocaust and do not give equal time to the deniers of the Holocaust?

Is it indoctrination if we teach astronomy and make no mention of astrology?

Is it indoctrination if we teach the heliocentric view of the solar system without giving equal time to geocentrists?

Asking for equal time for "alternatives" to evolution is in exactly the same category. It is asking that a point of view with nothing but questions and complaints to offer be treated as the equal of a scientific field of research that has been remarkably productive and consistently confirmed by all sorts of evidence not available when the theory was first formulated. The media makes much of being "fair" in trying to always hear another side of the story, and there is something indeed laudable about checking to see if there is an opposing viewpoint. Too many of us forget to do that, and forget too often. But not every opposing viewpoint has merit, and the reason we have education standards is to ensure that educators do not waste time on nonsense to the detriment of things that are truly important, valuable, and (ultimately) true.

Jim knows that many would criticize mainstream Biblical studies, where we reach conclusions that some do not like, and there are plenty of fundamentalists around who will accuse us of being indoctrinated into a liberal approach, rather than having reached conclusions because of compelling evidence persuading us to reach conclusions we ourselves did not initially find appealing or even palatable. I hope Jim will investigate the subject of evolution with the same critical eye he often applies to historical and Biblical studies.

To relieve the stress this subject often causes, I offer this cartoon from PTET (and apologize for the language, but it was too amusing not to share it):

Only A Theory

I was thinking of calling this blog entry "Germ Warfare", because there are striking parallels between the science of evolution and the science of germs. For most of us living in the United States and Western Europe today, it is hard to imagine a time when people did not believe the germ theory of illness, and the fact that people not only did not understand that illnesses were caused by microbes of various sorts, but that they actively resisted the idea because it ran so contrary to what people had understood up until that point.

I am no expert on the history of our understanding of germs. But what little I know leads me to believe that it was one thing to persuade the scientific and medical experts, and something else to promote and publicize the understanding among the general populace so that it could benefit the health and well being of a whole society.

Evolution is in much the same situation. Among experts, the evidence is clear and overwhelming, and it comes not simply from an idea of Charles Darwin's published 150 years ago, but from the combined information from genetics, paleontology, biology and many other fields. New evidence is constantly pouring in, and it consistently supports an evolutionary understanding. Through genetics, we now can be as certain about the degree of relatedness between organisms as we can about anything in science. Evolution allows predictions to made not just about where fossils with certain features should be found, but also about where to look for precious commodities like oil. And without evolution, we would not be able to combat diseases as effectively. Evolution can be witnessed in the lab. Contrary to the claims that are sometimes made, there is probably no other theory that has been tested as rigorously and been confirmed so consistently.

One way antievolutionists give the impression that evolution is "a theory in crisis" is by quoting experts out of context. I thought of this as I was reading Kenneth Miller's wonderful book, Only a Theory: Evolution and the Battle for America's Soul (New York: Penguin/Viking, 2008). At one point the reader encounters the following sentence (p.15): "ID is gaining support because it's correct and because it provides a new explanation of life that supersedes Darwinian explanations." It probably won't be long until this quote is mined by supporters of ID. But to take it out of the context of a hypothetical "what if" line of argumentation turns it into a statement that runs counter to the argument of the book. But that is what proponents of ID do. They take bits and pieces and spin them in such a way that those who are unfamiliar with evolutionary theory get a very different impression than those who know and understand it and the overwhelming evidence that supports it.

Although some have suggested the book is a revision of his earlier Finding Darwin's God, this is certainly not the case. The book is more of a sequel, focusing far more attention on Intelligent Design, the most recent developments in biology and in science education, and seeks to get at the heart of why evolution, a fabulous scientific success story, is nonetheless viewed negatively by an astounding number of Americans. The answer is of course that evolution has been set for them in contrast to meaning, value and purpose. Faced with such a choice, humans will always choose the latter. But as Miller points out (and as I've said many times on this blog), if evolution is a threat to meaning and purpose, then so are genetics, and embryology, and all the domains of science in which natural explanations of aspects of our existence are provided. The solution is to realize that we can be material, biological entities and valuable. We do this in other areas, and once the popular imagination does the same with biology, the antipathy towards evolution will begin to dissipate (see pp.141-143).

Miller's book presents many examples of the evidence for evolution. The blood clotting mechanism in vertebrates is often cited as an example of a biological capacity that is "irreducibly complex" and thus "intelligently designed." Yet possible stages in its development have been identified. Moreover, if we could go back in time and look at the ancestor of the vertebrates that have the blood clotting mechanism, we'd expect to find it had the raw materials to make such a mechanism already scattered around its genome. If we examine the sea squirt, a chordate that is descended from a common ancestor with modern vertebrates, we find all but two of the relevant proteins in its genome (p.66).

One amusing example of how creationists themselves provide evidence for evolution is provided on pp.92-95. While young-earth creationists regularly assert that the intermediate fossils between modern humans and earlier primates are either clealy human or clearly ape, if you compare how various creationists assess specific fossils, they differ on all but one of six major hominid fossils (see the chart on p.95). In other words, these authors agree in claiming that these fossils are clearly human or clearly ape, and yet cannot agree on which are which, thus providing evidence that these fossils in fact do not fall in an obvious way into one classification or the other.

Other examples abound, and are powerfully persuasive. Our loss of the ability to produce our own vitamin C suggests we had an ancestor that lived in a place where citrus fruit was in abundance and was part of the diet, and thus the ability to produce vitamin C could be lost without natural selection eliminating the error. What we find as we dig deeper is that we share this inability not only as humans but with those primates most closely related to us, but not others. We also share the same exact pseudogene in the beta-globin gene cluster as other primates, and as Miller points out, agreeing on errors is a classic example of decisive evidence for plagiarism (pp.99-101).

Miller's book offers a passionate and persuasive vision of science as not incompatible with faith, while also showing how intelligent design is a danger to science. I highly recommend Miller's latest book, like his earlier ones, to anyone interested in understanding evolution, or why pseudoscientific religiously-inspired movement gain the appeal that they do, and what exactly is wrong with them. Both science and faith are the stronger for the coherent vision of both Miller offers.

4400 Prophecies

In the first few episodes of season 4 of The 4400, a book comes to light that belonged to a religious sect that existed almost a century earlier. The book mentions a Messiah and contains a sketch that looks rather like Jordan Collier, mentions a special elixir, and as we find out in the season's 4th episode, "The Truth and Nothing But The Truth", it also has pages written in code, which when deciphered include names of people alive in the present.

If there were actual prophecies, whether in the Bible or elsewhere, that genuinely provided inspired information about the future, that is what we should expect. Lists of names in a scroll sealed or written in code and preserved for a long time.

Of course, even in the fictional world of The 4400, it would not be inappropriate to ask whether the book is not a fake, something created in the present in order to promote a religious view of promicin and the 4400 (or Scientology), rather than genuine prophecy.

The irony is that the Bible does provided coded but clear references to an individual and the empire he ruled, although of course the author was writing about his past or present. But most Christians ignore the matches and the meaning, treating the Book of Revelation instead as something that is far more vague, describing a world ruler that could be an African-American president or a fascist dictator or a Romanian head of the United Nations. Why is the latter embraced so readily as a preferable approach?

A better set of questions to ask is why we do not have genuine detailed predictions that come true with absolute precision in the Bible or elsewhere. There is a simple answer, and it isn't the simplistic answers skeptics might give, "The Bible is nonsense" or "there is no God". For a religious believer, one can affirm that the Bible fails to predict precisely and infallibly, and make theological sense of that fact. And the conclusion it leads us to can be shocking, refreshing, or terrifying, depending on one's assumptions and one's psychological needs:

The future isn't written in stone...or on paper.

What Lies Beneath

Plenty of people have had flashes of insight while in the bathroom. Others have them because they can't get into the bathroom. No, this isn't one of those stories.

We decided to get some tiles put into our bathroom, as well as a new sink and toilet. When the workmen started scraping up the linoleum, however, they were in for a surprise. Underneath, unexpectedly, were tiles. So the job expanded, as these needed to be removed (with tools like chisels and sledgehammers).

Once they were removed, what was beneath the tiles became clearer. Rotten decking. We needed a new floor.

I feel there is a parable in this. How often when you walk across a floor do you think about what is beneath it, what is holding it up, what could at any moment cease to do so? On the one hand, we live our lives in meaningful ways without having answers to all our questions, without being able to trace all our reasoning back to a sure foundation. (For those interested in this topic, I'll share a recommendation that a friend and colleague in philosophy made to me: read Thomas Nagel's famous article "The Absurd").

But there is also another message. We should investigate deeper than we do when we have opportunity to do so. Not to do so is reckless and irresponsible, but we often prefer ignorance to the realization that our mighty edifices are built on slim foundations. But it is better to engage in honest investigation and the necessary repair and rebuilding that may prove necessary, than to live in a house built on sand until it collapses around us and on top of us. One option that presented itself early on in our remodelling project was to simply place new tile on top of what was there, rather than digging down beneath the current surface. Had we done so, the added weight of another layer of tile might have had all sorts of undesirable effects. Having the courage to take action now is difficult, but the alternative is to simply risk waiting to see what consequences ensue, and the results of that can be far more painful. That's the message of the well-known passage in the Tao Te Ching, often quoted out of context:

That which is at rest is easily restrained, that which has not yet appeared is easily prevented. The weak is easily broken, the scanty is easily scattered.

Consider a difficulty before it arises, and administer affairs before they become disorganized. A tree that it takes both arms to encircle grew from a tiny rootlet. A pagoda of nine stories was erected by placing small bricks. A journey of three thousand miles begins with one step (Tao Te Ching 64:1-2, Goddard's translation).

So I hope you'll take this opportunity to reflect, and perhaps you will have a flash of insight in your bathroom (or in your faith, or in your worldview), if you have the courage to ask what lies beneath.

Evolution of the Marshmallow

There is a post quoting my on a blog called Toothface. The post's title alone would make it worth a visit: "Unidactyl Creates the Marshmallow".

The Howard Hughes Medical Institute has a piece on Francisco J. Ayala. You can also read the book Science, Evolution and Creationism online for free.

I'm presently reading Ken Miller's latest book, Only A Theory, which I hope to say more about soon, but I can already highly recommend it. The evidence for common descent provided by our need for Vitamin C is particularly striking.

Another IRS Hoax

If you get an e-mail that says something like the following, don't fall for it. If you check, the link in fact takes you to a site in Thailand that poses as the IRS web site, but isn't. Here's the text:

After the last annual calculations of your account activity we have determined thatyou are eligible to receive a tax refund of $279.30 .Please submit the tax refund request and allow us 3-6 days in order to process it.

A refund can be delayed for a variety of reasons.
For example submitting invalid records or applying after the deadline.

To access the form for your tax refund, please click here

Note: Deliberate wrong inputs will be prosecuted by law.

Regards,

Internal Revenue Service

© 2008, Internal Revenue Service United States Department of the Treasury.

Quote of the Day (Joel R. Primack and Nancy Ellen Abrams)

"The narrow, local kind of mythic explanation that sufficed when cultures rarely mixed will never work in the emerging global culture. We now need myths that are not only scientifically believable but allow us to participate - all of us. To experience the human meaning of modern scientific cosmology, and to turn it into a working cosmology - a meaningful universe - in which we feel like participants, our culture will gradually have to transform it into myth. However, mythmaking is no longer a purely imaginative, spiritual endeavor. Today, the leeway for speculation about the nature of time, space, and matter has narrowed. Now that we have data, whole classes of possibilities have been ruled out, and science is closing in on the class of myths that could actually be true" (Joel R. Primack and Nancy Ellen Abrams, The View from the Center of the Universe (New York: Riverhead/Penguin, 2006) p.36).

Ancient Journalism

Bill Heroman has been posting on the possibility of Matthew having taken notes about things that Jesus said and did during his public ministry. Since I've been thinking quite a bit about orality and the Jesus tradition, I joined in the conversation. The subject of how common it was for notes to be taken by individuals in various circumstances (e.g. serving in a royal court as scribe, becoming the disciple of a rabbi, philosopher or other teacher, and so on) is an important one, but I notice a lot of "possibly" and "could have" in the list. I know other readers of my blog are interested in these subjects, and so do take a look if you have a chance.

4400 Worshippers

Last night I watched the first episode of season 4 of The 4400, a show that parallels Heroes in certain respects, but also involves time travel and other elements that are popular on LOST, Doctor Who and a number of other shows. The first episode of the season is entitled "The Wrath of Graham" and is about a teenager who is a loner and unpopular, and thus injects himself with promycin, the chemical that gives the special abilities the 4400 have developed. His ability turns out to be that he turns those around him into his worshippers, devotees with blind allegiance that knows no limits.

This is probably every uncool, unpopular teenager's fantasy. But it got me thinking about the way we depict God. It is one thing to say that an attitude of reverance and worship before the ultimate is healthy and humbling. It is quite another to claim that God demands our worship, perhaps even our unquestioning allegiance. Isn't to do so merely a projection onto God of one of humanity's less mature traits? Before responding too quickly, keep in mind that Biblical monotheism doesn't automatically lead to God being portrayed in this way. I am reminded of the instances in the Rabbinic literature where God is said to look with pride at his children who manage to "defeat" him with their clever arguments. Such a view of God, while no more literally true, has the benefit of imagining God as a parent who wants his children to grow up and become mature, rather than remain in a state of infantile dependence forever.

This becomes an all the more pressing issue as the astronomical proof mounts that the Flying Spaghetti Monster exists, and may be stretching his noodly appendage our way...

LOST: Three Possible Endings

As we ponder the mysteries of LOST, one major question is how the series could end in a way that ties up the loose ends and resolves key questions, leaving fans satisfied. Here are three possible endings (one serious, two tongue in cheek):


Ending 1: Turning the wheel the other way

At the end of many generations of conflict between opposing forces that are vying for control of the island and through it of history, two individuals (one male, one female, and one from each opposing side, just for dramatic effect) decide that it has to end, that the island has to be taken out of the grasp of both.

The only way to do that is to turn the wheel the other way, to move the island back in time before the rise of human civilization. To accomplish that, however, it will take two people's efforts to be able to turn the wheel far enough. These two individuals (let's call them Adam and Eve) collaborate in turning the wheel and moving the island back in time. Each is transported to another part of the world and another time. Eventually, they find one another, and they tell their children stories about a mythical place where dreams came true and from which, because of selfish grasping for God-like power, humans were exiled.

One way or another, one day in the future, their descendants who find their way back to the island take the corpses of Adam and Eve and lay them to rest there.


Ending 2: Turning the wheel backwards a little less

This ending is almost like the other one, except that Adam and Eve don't turn the wheel quite as far. They are transported back to the 1970s, and through a space-time mishap, Eve is turned into a male midget. They find the island again and open a resort where one's dreams can come true.


Ending 3: Scooby Doo Ending

The Oceanic Six return to the island, track down Richard Alpert, and pull off his mask. It turns out he is really Charles Widmore. "I would have gotten away with it, if it weren't for you meddling survivors and your mangy dog." The last shot is of Vincent howling happily.

Around the Blogosphere

Mystical Seeker and is just one of many blogging about the recent statistics about doctors' belief in miracles. Science and Religion Today is another.

John Wilkins has been having fun with Christians and worldviews. Jason Rosenhouse is blogging about the Sixth International Conference on Creationism. Scientists may have replicated the evolution of RNA into DNA in the lab.

Iyov blogs about translating Genesis 1:1. Ken Schenck has been blogging about first-century Jewish monotheism (his posts are the next best thing to my book, The Only True God, due out in Spring of 2009, so if you can't wait until then...). Shuck and Jive has been blogging about Gnosticism, the Jesus Seminar, and other subjects of interest.

SF Signal points to a blog dedicated to Sci Fi Songs. IO9 has information on the next season of Battlestar Galactica, LOST and other shows. David Ker blogs about religion and Jon Bon Jovi (and he thinks I'm weird!)

Quote of the Day (A commenter named James)

"Obama is not the Messiah, but he may cast out some demons in November" (HT Revolution in Jesusland).

A New Semester

As we all get ready for (or in some cases have already begun trying to cope with) the start of a new semester, it is worth looking at the Chronicle's list of what "has always been the case" for this year's incoming college freshmen, born (in most cases) in 1990.

To cope with the experience of our encounter with them, most professors will listen to music our students have never heard of...

Nathan the LOST Prophet?

The character Nathan didn't last long on LOST. But having pondered the possibility that the Bible is a key influence on and substructure of the plot of LOST, it is worth noting that Nathan in the Bible was a prophet. Could the introduction of the character of Nathan in fact have provided clues about the future of LOST?

What we know is that he was in the tail section; he would go off into the jungle for hours at a time and no one knew where he was; Libby and Cindy didn't recall seeing him on the plane; Goodwin said "Nathan wasn't a good person".

So here's the question: Was Nathan someone sent by Charles Widmore, or more generally by the Dharma Initiative? Was the purpose of having a flight that was connected with the numbers an attempt to use the numbers to get someone to the island? Was Nathan hidden on the plane somewhere, rather than a passenger with a seat?

I also wonder what makes someone a "good person" from the perspective of the Others, and of the island. The smoke monster has been described as a security system to protect the island. But it seems to manifest itself as figures from one's past with whom one has unresolved issues. Does the monster protect the island from "bad people" by giving them therapy, as it were?

This might explain why the smoke monster killed Mr. Eko. He refused to repent of the things he had done to help his brother Yemi and others.

I'm not sure I'm entirely happy with where this line of inquiry into the show might lead, but there still might be something to it.

Colleague's CAPTCHA

I thought I'd take this opportunity both to congratulate my friend and colleague Gautam Rao on having some of his works chosen for display at the Athens (Georgia) Institute for Contemporary Art, and to share one of his works that has been honored, a painting entitled "Human Error":

Gautam says (in an article about this on the Butler University web site): “The idea that humans, on an almost daily basis, have to prove their very humanity via a test administered by a computer strikes me as both amusing and indicative of the information overload of our times. What's even more absurd is that CAPTCHA codes get cracked all the time, meaning that scientists have to constantly develop new tests for humans to prove their humanity.”

All bloggers and blog users are familiar with these "CAPTCHAs". But they are worth reflecting on, and can even become art!

LOST Book of the Law

In the episode "What Kate Did", Mr. Eko makes reference to the "Book of Law" that was found by Josiah in the temple in Jerusalem. He then reveals that he found a book, a Bible, in which was hidden what turned out to be the missing parts of the Dharma Initiative orientation video for the Swan station.

Since then, we've learned that Richard Alpert brought an old book with "Book of Laws" on the cover when he visited young John Locke. Are we to think of John as a Josiah-like figure, who will resbuild or restore something?

I wonder if the show's creators are aware that there are Biblical scholars who've suspected that the book of the law "found" in Josiah's time may have been created (or at least revised and edited) in order to support Josiah's "reforms", which were perhaps more like a revolution.

And of course, in The Matrix Neo kept software hidden in a copy of Baudrillard's Simulacra and Simulations (or a simulation in book form of that essay). Baudrillard in fact provided much of the subplot for the Matrix films. Is this a clue that the Bible, in some form or other, plays a similar role in underpinning LOST?

LOST Teddy Bear

One of the most striking images early in season 2 of LOST is when Mr. Eko and Jin hide from passing Others. As we see legs go by, all are barefoot, one has muddy bare legs, and one is carrying a teddy bear on a string.

Soon after, we learn that a teddy bear was in the possession of one of the children who were abducted by the Others.

What are we to make of this? It was a clue that these sinister Others that would be demonized in the minds of the tailies and then of everyone were not simply heartless savages (as the survivors of Flight 815 were themselves, at times). They took a child, for reasons we'd only come to understand partially even by the end of season 4. But they went back to recover one child's teddy bear, and one of them waded in the mud trying to find it.

One great trait of science fiction is that it seems to be able to deal well with the ambiguities of morality in real human beings. Whether one thinks of the Star Trek episode where Capt. Kirk's aggressive and gentler natures get separated into two separate individuals, or Star Trek's redemption of Darth Vader, or Battlestar Galactica's and the Matrix's exploration of whether the depersonalized "toasters" or "squiddies" are in fact "people", these shows, and now LOST, explore the ambiguity that what is right and wrong, and thus who is good and evil, may not be entirely relative, but it certainly is often complex.

Quote of the Day (Daniel Radosh)

"If science is the search for answers, creationism is the elimination of questions" (Daniel Radosh, Rapture Ready! (New York: Scribner, 2008) p.286).

LOST Whispers

I've now watched into season 2 of LOST, up to the first episode I ever saw, if I remember correctly: "The Other 48 Days". One of the mysteries that becomes more prominent in this season, but has been there from early on, is the whispers. They seem to accompany the movement of the Others, but also the manifestation of the island in the smoke monster or dead and missing individuals.

There have been several attempts to decipher the voices, and transcripts of the results have been posted.

The producers of LOST seem to know that die-hard fans will analyse, dissect, and disseminate information on the tiniest details of the show. And so one wonders whether the fact that the whispers consist of multiple overlapping tracks of voices is in fact significant, or just a means to produce the desired sound. Since the latter seems more likely, one explanation is that these are snippets of timelines and sounds of individuals moving through, around and outside of time. And the overlaps could suggest that, if it isn't possible to change the future, or the past, it is possible to create alternative, parallel universes where something different happens.

It is a possibility physicists have explored, and it was well overdue for it to be turned into a TV show...

Creationist Prophylactics

(From Gumby the Cat)

You Raise Me Up

Here's my son (age 8) playing "You Raise Me Up" (Selah's arrangement) on the violin, accompanied by me on the piano. The still image during the first 27 seconds is due to "technical difficulties" in that portion of the video, but the sound works throughout, and the video is fine from then on.

The Conference of Mark Goodacre's Dreams

Cardiff University has announced the following:

Whoniversal Appeal: An Interdisciplinary Postgraduate Conference on Doctor Who, and its Spin-Offs (14-15 November, 2008)

Visit the official conference page for more details.

(HT IO9)

Review of Stephen J. Nichols, Jesus Made in America

Review of Stephen J. Nichols, Jesus Made in America: A Cultural History from the Puritans to the Passion of the Christ (Downers Grove: IVP Academic [InterVarsity Press], 2008).


Criticisms from outside are easily dismissed. Those who criticize us in this way, we can reassure ourselves, simply don’t like us, or they are fundamentally opposed to our beliefs and values. Criticism from within a tradition or movement, for this reason, carries greater weight. And although Nichols’ book is described as a “cultural history”, like so many works of history, it is not an attempt to be comprehensive (although the small volume’s sweep is certainly broad), but to make use of the study of history to provide warnings and lessons for the present (p.14). “This survey of the American evangelical Jesus intends to do more than inform. It intends to raise significant questions about the state of Christology in American evangelicalism” (p.17).

Nichols’ criticisms of his own conservative Evangelical tradition are on the whole fair and balanced, as for the most part is his treatment of others in the broader picture of American Christianity. Nichols manages to offer insightful and relevant critiques of aspects of contemporary American Christology that seem to him at best shallow and at worst dangerously wrong, while not losing his sense of humor along the way. Although there are points at which I think Nichols’ criticisms of other viewpoints could have been applied to his own to a fuller extent that Nichols indicates, there is no author without blind spots and presuppositions. What Nichols offers in terms of a self-critical analysis is impressive, and I highly recommend his book for evangelicals interested in engaging their culture and examining their hidden assumptions in a deeper way than is commonly found. For those who are either outside of evangelicalism or are not on the conservative end of the evangelical spectrum, Nichols will make an engaging dialogue partner with whom there will inevitably be disagreement, but also much to appreciate.

The introduction sets up the book’s aims and key themes, and summarizes the points and arguments that will follow in subsequent chapters. The introduction opens with a reference to the famous American preacher Billy Sunday having once said in a sermon that if one turns hell upside down, one will find “Made in Germany” stamped on the bottom (p.9). While there is a connection between Germany and higher criticism on the one hand, and the erosion of confidence in the Bible during the course of America’s history on the other, Nichols points out that there have always been American equivalents to European critics, and that when one considers not only these but other distinctive aspects of American Christianity (whether liberal or conservative), the label “Made in America” clearly is also not to be ignored. On p.13, Nichols acknowledges several other recent studies of American Christianity and in particular American views of Jesus, and clarifies how his book differs on p.14, emphasizing that his focus is on American evangelicalism and its view of Jesus.

“Jesus, like most cultural heroes, is malleable,” writes Nichols. “And his given shape has much more to say about the shapers than it does of him” (p.10). American Christianity tends to be suspicious of tradition, often leading us to be forced to cover old ground again and again. If there is a tradition that American evangelicals do cling to, it is (ironically) the tradition of sola scriptura, a tradition of challenging tradition by emphasizing the Bible’s authority. Yet Nichols sees quite clearly the danger inherent in such an approach: “The mistaken conclusion is that because American evangelicals hold firmly and prize sola scriptura, it naturally follows that all of the beliefs of American evangelicals naturally flow from the pages of Scripture” (p.11). American ahistoricism leaves us more rather than less open to the influence of contemporary fads and trends, Nichols argues. His study wisely includes material culture, music and other facets besides merely textual sources.

Nichols ends his introduction with an explanation of why this subject is of such importance. “A rigorous and detailed and even fought-for Christology was the lifeblood of the early church. Early Christians recognized that Christianity would indeed stand or fall based on how it settled the question of Christ’s identity. So they debated” (p.17). In contrast, contemporary American Christianity has a tendency to ignore or deliberately set aside the questions and resulting creeds that were produced by the early church’s strenuous efforts (p.18). Although evangelicalism’s “devotion is commendable”, without attention to theology, the object of their devotion will be “made and remade and made again” (p.18).

Chapter 1 takes the reader to a convenient starting point for considering what will eventually develop into contemporary American evangelicalism, namely the Puritans. The Puritans are largely known today in stereotypes (except among that small group of evangelicals that has sought to preserve and promote their legacy). In terms of the assessment of their contribution to American Christology, opinions vary. Nichols seeks to complement the familiar stereotypes by highlighting the Puritans’ poetry and support for the arts. The Puritans combined heartfelt piety, something that remains an emphasis in much American Christianity, with a strong emphasis on theology rooted in the classic creeds of Nicaea and Chalcedon. Although it may be rather too simplistic to say that these creedal formulas “are drawn from various Biblical texts” (p.26; see also p.224), they certainly were an attempt to do justice to the Biblical data in relation to the questions and issues raised by those texts, when read in conjunction with one another and in relation to questions with which the later church wrestled. Sermons of the Puritan era might have to be categorized as lectures today (pp.29-30). Nichols applauds the Puritans’ efforts to not reduce tensions they found in the Biblical data, maintaining a “picture of Christ” that was “complex and multidimensional” (p.35).

The Puritans saw perils in the rise of deism and Arianism as alternatives to their historic orthodoxy. But an issue that must be addressed, and is left almost entirely to the side by Nichols, is why exploring such options does not follow naturally from the emphases of the Protestant Reformation (the already-mentioned sola scriptura). In returning to the Bible as the sole foundation, is it not appropriate to reexamine the claims of the creeds and other historic Christian beliefs? There is something ironic in the fact that, in a book focused on the ways in which Jesus has been molded and shaped for an American audience, so little attention is paid to the possibility that the later creeds did the same. And of course, part of the challenge from Biblical studies is that it raises the possibility that even the Gospel authors themselves were doing something similar, which in turn raises the question of whether we have access to a pure, culture-free Jesus, and if so how.

Be that as it may, Nichols does not accept the legacy of the Puritans uncritically or attempt to whitewash their failings with regard to issues like slavery, the treatment of Native Americans, and of course the infamous witch trials (pp.40-41). Nevertheless, it must be pointed out that their orthodox Christology did not prevent them from failing in these areas, and thus the Puritans serve as a warning that ‘right belief’ does not automatically lead to ‘right practice’. Nichols regards it as the legacy of the Puritans as well as of certain much earlier church fathers to have kept devotion and ‘right thinking’ together without sacrificing one or the other (p.43). But questions about how such ‘right thinking’ is to be identified are left largely unanswered.

The first chapter concludes with a mention of the Brick Testament and contrasts that unusual use of a children’s toy with the censoring and taming of Biblical texts that is typical of children’s books and stories. “Liberating Jesus from his own complexity results in a distorted image of his person” (p.44). It is to the Puritans’ credit, says Nichols, that they did not simply discard one side of the traditional Christian viewpoint in order to emphasize the other.

As he moves into his second chapter, on Jesus in the early days of the United States, Nichols offers a balanced treatment of the faith of the founding fathers, without turning them either into atheists or into conservative Christians. Some were deists, some were Arians, and most espoused American “civil religion”, Rousseau’s definition of which is helpfully provided (p.51). Nichols is not content simply to avoid falling for the myth of a Christian nation himself. He goes further, exposing in detail how this viewpoint was intentionally invented in the 19th century (pp.48-51). Nichols provides quotations and commentary highlighting, for instance, that Thomas Jefferson, in the very same statement in which he emphasizes that he was a “real Christian”, he denies the deity of Christ (p.56). The importance of Reason as ultimate authority in this period is mentioned. More ought to have been said about the differences between the approach of Paine and Jefferson to the Bible, cutting out those parts that seemed to them contrary to reason, and a historian’s approach, which sets aside those passages that are of dubious historicity, irrespective of whether what remains seems rational by modern standards. In discussing the promotion and use of the Jefferson Bible in the 20th century, Nichols exposes his own fundamentalist assumptions when he describes it as “damning” that an advertisement promoting a reissue of Jefferson’s Bible describes its focus as on the “essence of Christianity” (the words of Jesus), when it omits the virgin birth, Christ’s claims to deity, and the empty tomb. Of course, the focus on these particular doctrines, often at the expense of the teaching of Jesus, is one of the hallmarks of fundamentalism, and if there is a blind spot in Nichols’ book, it relates to the fact that fundamentalism is itself a response to modernity and a reworking of Christianity and of Jesus that itself stands in contrast to earlier emphases and norms.

Nichols’ treatment of John Quincy Adams returns us once again to another unexamined presupposition mentioned earlier. It is simply assumed that Protestants should adhere to classical orthodoxy, but this is far from self-evident. Given Adams’ for the most part acceptance of traditional Christian belief and practice, it is remarkable that he is characterized as “less than 100 percent pure in his orthodoxy” (p.62) merely because he wrestled with and reexamined Christian doctrine for himself. If one is going to criticize those who do that, it seems that one has departed from Protestantism and adopted a different viewpoint.

Nichols’ treatment of the Baptists’ appeal to Jefferson for help in defense of religious liberty is also unsatisfactory. Nichols depicts the Baptists as a minority nervous about its place in society (pp.67-68), which they were, but he seems to suggest that if they had known how much they would flourish in the future, they might not have adopted the stances they did. In other words, the implication seems to be that the Baptists’ advocacy of religious liberty and their support for the “separation of church and state” were a matter of expediency rather than principle. This does not seem to have been the case, and certainly was not the case for all Baptists. Nor does Nichols do justice to the possibility that disestablishment may perhaps be precisely one reason for the later “triumphs” of the Baptists.

On the whole, however, Nichols manages to provide an impressively balanced portrait of the founding fathers. Religion was important for them, but not historic Christian orthodoxy (p.71). The founding fathers are thus said to have provided a different trajectory for America than the Puritans. After concluding with some critical thoughts about the attempts made by evangelicals to appropriate the founding fathers, Nichols mentions the pluralistic context that the founders’ work has led to. In mentioning figures from Thomas Paine to Marcus Borg who have seen points of parallel or comparison between Jesus or Christianity and other religious tradition, Nichols writes, “Evangelicals are not as susceptible to such traps” (p.73). This may or may not be true, but what remains at the level of the taken for granted is that recognizing such common ground is in fact a “trap”. The assumption is that the Jesus of conservative evangelicalism, who roams the land proclaiming his own divinity and inviting people to accept him as their personal Lord and Savior, is unproblematic and straightforwardly “Biblical”. Yet given the book’s focus on the ways in which Jesus is remade and adapted, these assumptions themselves warrant being subjected to more critical scrutiny.

Chapter 3 focuses on two diametrically opposed makeovers Jesus received in American Christianity in the 18th century: the meek and mild Victorian Jesus and the rough and rugged Jesus of the frontier. Here too we see Nichols’ assumption that somehow the classical understanding of Jesus escaped cultural influence: “During the nineteenth century, theologians began seeking the freer environs outside of the “theological canopy”…of the Puritans. Once outside of the canopy, Jesus and his interpreters became much more susceptible to the vicissitudes of the cultural climate. Consequently, in this tale of his American making and remaking, Jesus becomes increasingly culturally conditioned, eventually becoming merely ideological. Jesus is no longer the God above, the God-man who breaks into this world. Instead, he becomes interpreted by this world, conformed to cultural mores and ideological pressure” (p.76). As he goes on to discuss the popular understanding of Jesus as friend in this era of American history, Nichols suggests that relinquishing the creeds leaves one more open to cultural influences (p.79). Nichols’ stance reflects a tension deep in the heart of evangelicalism: its repudiation of sources of authority apart from the Bible (at least in theory - in practice, evangelical Christians give a great deal of authority to their favorite preachers and authors) and its commitment to historic orthodoxy as defined in the period after the Bible was written. Nowhere is this clearer than in his treatment of the Stone-Campbell movement that developed into the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). Campbell is said to have opted for a return to the Bible that ignores what the church developed thereafter, while Stone, taking a similar approach, eventually became a subordinationist in his Christology and also set aside the substitutionary view of the atonement, on the grounds that neither was Biblical (p.80). This emphasis on the priesthood of all believers, and not merely the right but the necessity for each to interpret the Bible for oneself, is central to evangelicalism, and if Nichols wishes to criticize it as leading to departures from orthodoxy, then he really needs to offer an alternative vision for what evangelicalism ought to be, and clarify whether his vision in any sense involves their remaining Protestant. It may be that he has done this in his other publications, but in the context of the present book, these issues are never addressed in a satisfying manner.

Although at times Nichols seems to assume that the Gospel authors never filled in missing details in the way those retelling the story of Jesus do today, his main point is that many contemporary portraits do not do justice to the breadth and variety of details provided by our earliest sources (p.88). And the danger he rightly identifies is that one can emphasize some facets of the person of Jesus while ignoring others and still make the claim and give the impression that one’s view of Jesus is “the Biblical one”. Nonetheless, Nichols regularly seems to assume that the Jesus of Christian orthodoxy is one whose humanity is completely submerged and overwhelmed in divinity, as when he writes that “In the broader popular culture [of the second half of the nineteenth century], Jesus had become all too human, overflowing with the milk of kindness” (p.91). As he proceeds to discuss Jesus in the Civil War era, there is little discussion of the Jesus of either the slave owners or of the enslaved (pp.91-95), which is all the more remarkable given that he makes statements such as that “it seems that Christ fared better in the Confederate camps” (p.92).

Chapter 4 looks at the time in the early 20th century when a theological dispute between a parishioner and a pastor could make the New York Times (p.98). He notes that the issues the would divide “liberals” and “conservatives” in the 20th century did not yet do so at the end of the 19th (p.100). Nichols seems at times determined to reject the representatives of liberalism at all costs. One example is on pp.102-3, when he seems unhappy with Van Dyke’s unwillingness to flatten the atonement to a single theory, even though Nichols himself argued against flattening the Biblical Jesus to a single aspect. But when it comes to the doctrinal tenets of evangelicalism, Nichols finds it hard to entertain the possibility that those emphases and formulations, like those he criticizes throughout his book, may represent not the teaching of the Bible but an interpretation determined by a particular age, one that skews the evidence rather than doing justice to its full breadth and depth. Such points, which will be painfully obvious to any reader who is either not conservative or not evangelical, detract from the many helpful and important observations Nichols makes. But the fact that Nichols advocates listening to one’s critics as a means to helping avoid blind spots makes it easier to forgive him for those he has failed to notice himself.

One of those subjected to Nichols’ criticisms, Harry Emerson Fosdick, clearly had a better grasp of the implications of Biblical scholarship than Nichols himself does. For Fosdick set forth plainly the fact that one does not peel away American culture to get back to an uninterpreted Jesus; rather, what we find in the New Testament are the earliest interpretations of Jesus. Fosdick rightly saw that this is “a perennial process” that “still goes on”. But since Nichols dislikes Fosdick’s view, he depicts it in Machiavellian terms: “Fosdick needed an interpreted Jesus by the disciples because he so wanted to reinterpret Jesus himself” (p.109). A more charitable reading of Fosdick would suggest that it was he, rather than Nichols, who was paying the most serious attention to both what the Bible says and what it is, and seeking to not merely repeat the words of the Gospel authors but emulate their model of how to engage in the task of Christological reflection. At times, Nichols’ criticisms of Fosdick border on the ridiculous, for instance when he says that “Fosdick looked himself from the moorings of the biblical teachings of Jesus. And once loosed, he was bound to drift”. But Fosdick refuses to allow John’s portrait to completely obliterate that of Luke and other New Testament authors from view, in the way contemporary evangelicalism does, which scarcely counts as evidence of ignoring the Bible. But this is the typical claim of conservative Christianity – picking and choosing, allowing some texts to trump others, and then claiming that one’s proof-texts prove one’s whole theological and ecclesiastical structure to be “Biblical”. But Nichols admits of Fosdick that “It was not, of course, the spirit of Scripture or the spirit of Christology for that matter that he was drifting away from; it was the letter” (p.111). If such language is anything to go by, St. Paul might well have approved of Fosdick’s approach.

Nichols proceeds to offer criticism of conservative Christian cartoons for children and their depiction of the “meaning of Christmas”. Few (from Charlie Brown to McGee and Me to VeggieTales) escape criticism altogether. It is true, as Nichols points out, that there is something ironic about shows that criticize materialistic desire for presents, but are then followed by advertisements for toys. Nevertheless, Nichols throughout the book criticizes those who call people to self sacrificial imitation of Jesus, since that, from his perspective, misses the true meaning of Jesus and his story. The chapter concludes by returning to its treatment of Machen and Fosdick, and there is some indication that Nichols shares Machen’s perplexity at how a view that “fails to take the Bible seriously” can be called “Christian” (p.119), but this characterization is of course biased. It is far from evident that Fosdick is “failing to take the Bible seriously” merely because he fails to regard it as presenting Christ in a uniform way that can simply be adopted by contemporary Christians. If anything, it is arguable that Fosdick’s viewpoint takes more seriously Nichols’ points about culture and bias, applying them to contemporary fundamentalism and to the Biblical authors and church fathers in a way that Nichols fails to. And in returning to criticism of Van Dyke’s emphasis on devotion over adherence to certain doctrines, Nichols’ focus on the virgin birth as a sine qua non of Christianity (p.120) not only is itself shaped by the context of modernity, but also fails to do justice to the fact that the stories of Jesus’ miraculous conception are not omnipresent in the New Testament, and nowhere are a part of the early Christian Gospel proclamation.

Chapter 5 on Contemporary Christian Music is much more satisfactory, and Nichols traces its historical roots to the “Jesus People” and offers critical analysis not only on the “Jesus as boyfriend” trend in many songs, but also the motivation underlying much evangelical Christian focus on CCM: it provides a “safe” alternative to secular music, allowing Christians to isolate themselves rather than take the risks involved in cultural engagement (p.135). Here too, however, one wonders whether Nichols fully appreciates the ways in which cultural engagement by Christians affects not only the culture, but also the Christians doing the engaging. At times, Nichols criticizes contemporary singers for vagueness, mentioning “all” that God or Jesus has done for them, but without specifics (p.141). Yet a survey of the Psalms shows that songs are often left vague, and understandably so, since then they can be applied by those who sing them, and those who sing along with them, to a variety of experiences and situations. There is some acknowledgment of this a little later (p.142), perhaps in response to criticisms on this point by those who read drafts of his book, but this fairer treatment should have been integrated into the whole and not merely stuck on at the end.

Remarkably, Nichols also (p.140) contrasts the experience of feeling Jesus near with “anything done in history”, thereby implicitly denying that God’s action is in fact connected with Christian experience! But as so often, after harsh and at times unbalanced criticisms, Nichols returns to make a more balanced and fairer assessment, as when he states that the issue is not so much anything that CCM singers and songwriters say, as all that is left unsaid (p.144). There is a need for songs with actual theological content, and it should be pointed out that when theology has been integrated into song, not only has this not undermined the popularity of the songs, but it has performed a service in making theological concepts known and familiar to a wider audience. But as the example of Arius illustrates, creating music with theological depth is no guarantee that the lyrics will match up with Nicene orthodoxy.

Chapter 6 looks at Jesus in movies, with particular focus on the Passion of the Christ. Evangelical enthusiasm for Gibson’s film is all the more noteworthy given the movie’s Roman Catholic sources and emphases. The movie was an opportunity to do evangelism, and because of this, little attempt was made to critically analyze the film (pp.146-149). Nichols levels a common criticism against the film, contrasting the movie’s graphic violence as it depicts the flagellation and crucifixion, with the minimalism of the Gospels (pp.149-150, 163). This, however, ignores a crucial matter of context. The earliest readers of the New Testament Gospels would have had opportunities to see crucified individuals, most likely more than once. They did not need the details spelled out for them. The difference between Gibson’s portrayal and the canonical Gospels thus nicely illustrates an important point to which Nichols does insufficient justice: to say the “same thing” in a different context, one may have to say something different. Other movies, from DeMille’s and Zeffirelli’s to Scorsese’s Last Temptation and Monty Python’s Life of Brian are also discussed, as is the use of Mary Magdalene to provide a “love interest”, as all modern movies seem to require.

Once again, when Nichols cites Humphries-Brooks’ observation that Jesus films tell us more about the time in which they were made than about Jesus himself, he fails to mention that something not altogether different is a commonplace of Biblical scholarship on the Gospels (p.151). All writings about Jesus, ancient or modern, tell us about their authors and context as well as (and in some cases rather than) the historical figure of Jesus. When Nichols notes that “Jesus films have difficulty, almost by definition, depicting the hypostatic union, Jesus as the God-man” (p.157, see also 167), he fails to note that the Synoptic Gospels likewise fail to depict Jesus in this way, assuming they even intended to. He also seems unaware that he is going beyond the text (and at the same time failing to go beyond the text where appropriate) in finding his own conservative evangelical view of the atonement in Mark’s Gospel (p.168). The words attributed to Jesus on the cross are a quotation from Psalm 22, which ends on a note of confidence in God. A failure to take this intertextual echo into consideration, and the likelihood that Jesus was thought of as reciting the entire psalm and not merely the first line, leads some to conclude that there was a break between Father and Son at this moment (something which, it might be added, the Gospel of John’s portrait of the uninterrupted unity of Father and Son seems to exclude). When Nichols refers to Jesus confronting the crowds with his true identity (by which Nichols means his deity), he fails to mention that this is something found only in John’s portrait of Jesus. If we judge the canonical Gospels by Nichols’ criteria, we will find that they are subject to the same criticisms: none gives full explicit expression to Nicene orthodoxy on its own, none depicts Jesus’ death in terms of penal substitution, while each Gospel does reflect its historical and cultural context.

One of the nicest features of this book is that Nichols never loses his sense of humor, even when dealing with critical issues - or meeting Charlton Heston. Nowhere does this come across as strongly as in chapter 7, which addresses American Christian culture’s obsession with Christian T-shirts and other Christianized commodities. Nichols regards Christian products which are merely about morality as wanting, since in his view, “a values-oriented message trivializes the most profound and significant message of all time” (p.178). He laments that “American evangelicals can’t even seem to realize that Christ has become a comic caricature” (p.181), as seen in their enthusiasm for products such as the “Buddy Christ”, not to mention Jesus bobbleheads and pencil-toppers. After discussing the theme of Jesus as “businessman”, Nichols shares a wonderful anecdote about a customer who, when she learned that her local Christian bookstore had sold out of fish bumper stickers, became exasperated and asked “How am I going to witness?” (p.186). Golf balls with verses on them are also considered a form of witnessing, since who knows who might find lost ones. Nichols in this chapter shows his impressively self-critical ability in diagnosing and addressing the problems in his own tradition, pointing out that evangelicals have become so wedded to consumer culture that they fail even to notice it, much less offer a remedy or an alternative (pp.192-193). There is a need for Christian scholars to turn their attention to the study of phenomena such as Christian T-shirts, and to provide critical analysis. As the chapter draws to a close, he mentions the remarkable fact that, in Cave City, Kentucky, there is a place called the Golgotha Fun Park, and he notes the dissonance of placing the “place of the skull” and “fun park” side by side (p.196). How can evangelicals complain that others treat their message as something trivial, when they themselves are trivializing it in these ways?

Chapter 8 turns to the subject of Jesus in politics, and analysis is given of the recent shift from generic God-talk to explicit mention of Jesus in American political discourse, on both the right and the left. Having made Robbie Burns’ famous words about “seeing ourselves as others see us” the motto of this chapter, Nichols makes the following recommendation: “Listening to the critics of evangelicalism, both sympathetic and not, may go a long way to helping see blind spots” (p.212). And he acknowledges openly that evangelicals have not avoided the pitfall of co-opting Jesus for some ideological aim or other. Moreover, he warns that, while it can be harder to put up with history’s messiness and ambiguity, taking the easier path of assuming “God is on our side” leads to arrogance and other perilous pitfalls (p.217). Nichols concludes by suggesting that Jesus does not fit comfortably either on the Right or on the Left (p.220).

The book ends with an epilogue, which brings in Martin Marty’s points about the fact that, sooner or later, any consideration of Jesus brings one back to address the issues raised at Chalcedon once again. Here, at long last, Nichols raises explicitly the possibility that the creeds are themselves historically-situated, culturally influenced expressions. But what is said on this subject seems like too little, too late. Although many would embrace his statement that “These creeds and the biblical texts they are fashioned from provide the church with its perennial theology, which the church in any country in any century simply cannot afford to live without” (p.224), it is not clear how this can be considered the Protestant viewpoint. If one allows even in theory the possibility that Scripture takes priority over creeds, then one must allow, perhaps ever require, the re-evaluation of the creeds in light of Scripture. But that ultimately leads to a replay of the same differences of viewpoint that were expressed by those who formulated the creeds, and by those the creeds aimed to exclude.

Be that as it may, Nichols’ call to American evangelicals to become aware of matters of (their own) history and theology is commendable. As he writes, “American evangelicals have sterling proficiency in the realm of the subjective and experiential. But not all of the answers to life’s questions come from within or come from our own time” (p.224). Nichols suggests that the creeds and the Bible serve to provide points of reference outside our own historical-cultural context that can “save us from our limited perspectives”. While many would dispute that they can entirely save us from our human limitations, being in dialogue with our own past can indeed challenge us. On the other hand, if we lose an emphasis on the foreignness of these ancient sources, in all likelihood we will find ways of domesticating them and understanding them as expressions of, rather than challenges to, the views we already hold. For, however laudable Nichols’ suggestion might seem in theory that we begin with Scripture, then tradition, and finally experience, rather than the reverse (p.225), it is unclear that anyone who reads Scripture can do so from a standpoint that is not already shaped by experiences and traditions of some sort.

Nichols concludes by noting that the shift to the dominance of the Southern hemisphere in Christianity that seems to be taking place may move those in the West from the position of teachers to that of students, and there is much we can learn in the process (p.226). And last of all, he concludes by noting that, as the ongoing remaking of Jesus seems inevitable, this tendency should lead us to “humility in our own understanding of Jesus” (p.227).

I certainly recommend Nichols’ book to those evangelicals who wish to be capable of critically evaluating their culture, who are open to the painful experience of realizing that not everything you have assumed even as part of your Christian world view deserves the label “Christian”. We all tend to find our own values confirmed in Jesus, and hearing his challenge to those who would be his disciples involves listening to our critics. The common evangelical viewpoint, “me and Jesus make a majority”, has allowed many streams of contemporary American Christianity to use Jesus as a weapon (Hurley’s mother would not approve) in support of our own views, utterly neutralizing all that is challenging in his life and teachings. For all those interested in American Christian culture, but in particular for those who participate in it, Nichols’ book provides a helpful perspective and much valuable insight.

Book Cover Photo

Thanks to everyone who provided feedback on my question about self publishing. If I go ahead with publishing in that format, I'd love to have a photo of a first century Jewish tomb or ossuary on the cover. Does anyone have any that they may have taken on a trip to Israel, and which they'd be willing to allow to be used on a book cover, in exchange for the prestige of having their name listed on the back with the words "Cover photo by"? :-)

Anyone who is artistically inclined and thinks they could draw something of this sort, that might also be an option.

I'd prefer not to use one that looks like the one below, for obvious reasons... :-)

Self-Publishing

There seem to be two trends in publishing at the moment. On the one hand, larger presses are making cutbacks. On the other hand, there is a proliferation of self-published books and the process of publishing your own book is becoming cheaper and more convenient.

Does anyone have thoughts on self-publishing? Has anyone done it and can recommend it (or recommend not to do it)? I have a very short book that I might try to publish that way if I can't secure a traditional publisher for it soon. Would you be less likely to buy a book that looked interesting if it were from a self-publishing source rather than a traditional press that has shown itself to be a publisher of reliable books? If you've used a particular service, which did you choose, and how did it go? If you've bought a self-published book, were you satisfied or disappointed with the product you received?

I'm also thinking about doing something like this when I have something I want to use in an adult Sunday school class, or perhaps even in classes at Butler.

I look forward to your input!

Comparing views of the Bible

I've made some links available on the Crooked Creek Baptist Church blog, allowing readers to compare different views Christians hold about the Bible, as well as get further information on the canon and other relevant issues. If anyone has suggestions about other resources (including your own blog posts - don't be shy!) or better ways to arrange the material, do let me know. Also let me know if you think I've miscategorized someone - I obviously didn't have time to look at every book and article in detail.

Reflections on the ComicCon Dharma Video

I've posted the video below before, but haven't had the chance to watch it carefully and comment on it until now. Some of the most important elements are the following:

1) We learn that Dr. Marvin Candle is in face really an astrophysicist from Ann Arbor, Michigan whose name is Pierre Cheng or Chang.

2) A baby is there and crying. I doubt that detail is there for no purpose. Perhaps it is Cheng's own child, and we will meet the child as an adult. Perhaps we've already met that person.

3) The transmission is being sent through a "pinhole" in time, allowing the transmission to be sent from the past to the future.

4) Daniel Faraday, presumably unstuck in time, has been able to contact Cheng and help him make the video.

5) It is said to be imperative that the Dharma Initiative be reconstituted and continue its research. And there is that great line, "Time is not merely of the essence. It is the essence".

6) Finally, is it just me or does he at one point call it the "God-forsaken island"? That reminds me of how Ben said that God cannot see the island any more than anyone else can. Hmm...

Around the Blogosphere

Jim West pointed out this clip from "The Bible's Buried Secrets" on YouTube. The documentary is controversial among fundamentalists, since it dares to present information that is common knowledge among all people who bother reading what Biblical scholars write. [shock, horror]

Biblische Ausbildung has this great cartoon:

Shuck & Jive has a Q&A with Michael Dowd. Science and Religion Today talks about an astronaut's faith. LisaJ promots a scientific mind. Peggy suggests where to find cutting-edge information on the biosciences. John Pieret highlights creationist vs. science-supporting school board candidates in Texas.

Science Avenger suggests that some creationist claims are best dealt with through comedy and satire:

The Lead addresses tensions between the Anglican Church's stance on homosexuals and on human rights. Internet Monk points to a piece at The Ooze about leaving the institutional church. Kay at the Crowded Handbasket asks "Why Christian?" A state senator is suing God. Scot McKnight continues his series on good teachers and on heaven. Ken Schenck continues blogging through Hebrews. Sean highlights a book on Baptist spirituality. Loren Rosson offers the TULIP of the new perspective on Paul.

C.Orthodoxy is watching his back, as both the Dharma Initiative and Sayid are after him.

I went outside to see if I could spot a meteor early this morning. There was too much light pollution and some cloud cover, as well as trees obscuring my view. Maybe if it is clearer tonight. Will (biblio)bloggers be having any kind of get-together in Boston in November?

LOST Exodus from Season 1

I just finished watching season 1 of LOST. What a marvellous bit of television LOST is! Just like the Black Rock made us presume there was a rock rather than a boat out there in the "Dark Territory", the naming of Aaron and the naming of the three-hour, two-part season finale "Exodus" was a false clue, pointing to the expectation that those on the raft were leading the survivors across the waters to freedom.

But in this exodus, we find a ship of slaves left on the boat to die, rather than slaves set free. And the one potential escape hatch, as it were, leads down into the depths of the island, deeper into the mysteries rather than away from them.

The contrast between two Johns, between Jack Shepherd and John Locke, is drawn in terms of "man of science" and "man of faith". But anyone who watched the Matrix trilogy knows we need to be wary of the language of fate, destiny and prophecy. There it turned out to be just another method of control.

So who is in control, behind the scenes? If we say "the island", then perhaps we'll need to think in terms of the supernatural for the unravelling of the mysteries.

But so far, all the clues point in a different direction.

As we caught the first good glimpse of the smoke monster, we were told that it is a "security system" that protects the island. It has made mechanical sounds from the beginning, and resembles the nanobots from the cover of a Michael Crighton novel.

So more likely is that the island is the remnant of some superior technology, whether of human or alien origin. And so the question becomes who wields that power?

They left who carried the dynamite up to fate, drawing straws. But in the end, Jack determined the outcome, and the straws could have been manipulated. Just a couple of episodes earlier, Sayid's arrival in Sydney and meeting with his old friend (played, somewhat unfortunately, by an actor with a strong Scottish accent, although maybe we're supposed to notice that...) at the Mosque is attributed to "fate", but in fact it has been arranged as part of a CIA operation.

It may seem that there was an element of sheer luck involved in who ended up on the plane. And that may have been true of some passengers. But they are just the crewmembers in red shirts whose job it is to blow themselves up with dynamite to keep the mood tense.

In most cases, powerful individuals were involved in deciding who ended up where and when. So an important question is who was pulling the strings (and paying the Oceanic representatives around the airport) to get certain people on board?

Also, was there an intentional attempt to use the numbers in connection with the flight (815, departing from gate 23, etc.) so as to have it discover the location of the island?

There were enticing big questions left at the end of season 1 of LOST. Now that we've had several more seasons, we have some answers and many more questions. But it is helpful to go back and examine early clues, because this show keeps using sleight of hand to try to set up expectations that we can see were misguided if we go back and watch a second time. It isn't like Dan Brown's Angels and Demons or countless other mysteries, where the author simply chooses whoever seems least likely to have been the murderer at the end of the book and then creates a back story to provide motive. In LOST, the clues are there, but they mislead through double entendre and vagueness.

I think one big clue that sets us off on a false trail from the most recent season will be the message from Charlie for Jack, "You're not supposed to raise him". We are encouraged to think of Aaron, and the psychic's warning that he must not be raised by another. But Claire and Christian are trying to keep the baby away from the island, and the psychic's words may have simply been part of the plan to get the baby to the island in the first place.

So who isn't Jack supposed to raise? Given the way the last season ended, one possibility that needs to be considered is this: he's not supposed to raise John Locke...from the dead!

Reviews of the Fall of the Evangelical Nation

Christine Wicker has been kind enough to include a link to my post about her recent book, The Fall of the Evangelical Nation, on her own blog. Since she only links to my blog and not the specific post, here's a link to the relevant post for those who've come here from there looking for it. Welcome!

Christian Prophecy and the Words of Jesus

There has been some discussion in the biblioblogosphere in recent days about the possibility that words of Christian prophets, which would have been understood to be the words of the risen Christ, became intermingled in the oral (and eventually the written) traditions about Jesus in early Christianity. The conversation began at Singing in the Reign and continues at Metacatholic and Sean the Baptist.

The clearest evidence that I can think of for Christian prophecy being attributed to the figure of Jesus during his public ministry is the Gospel of John. The author is quite explicit that Jesus will continue to speak to and through the community by means of the Spirit (John 16:12-13). And the stylistic differences between John and the other Gospels provide clear indication that, whatever one may make of the other Gospels in terms of their historicity, the Fourth Gospel gives us a voice speaking on behalf of Jesus, as it were, or in terms that the author would have agreed with and which relate to the present discussion, the words of a Christian leader who believed that Christ spoke through him by means of the Spirit, the Paraclete.

The case of John is fairly clear, given the author's explicit statements and the ease of comparing the Synoptics to John. But I suspect that if we were to engage in a fair comparison, between the material that seems to be the historical bedrock of what Jesus actually said, shared between many sources, and the material that is unique in content and style to each Gospel, we might find that John simply has more material that is obviously created subsequently. It may also be the case that those who elaborated on the parables and created their own did not view themselves as engaging in prophecy in the way John did.

At any rate, it seems fair to emphasize that we are not dealing with a case of three against one agreement. Mark, Q and John are independent, and each has a certain uniqueness of style and content. And so it may be that none of the material we have gives us the style of Jesus, as it were.

In the case of all of the material we have in the earliest tradition, except for small snippets of words in Aramaic and a few poetic/rhyming sayings that could engrave themselves immediately on the memory almost verbatim, we have at best the gist of what Jesus said. And so it is crucial to ask not only whether Christian prophets created new sayings attributed to Jesus that became part of the oral tradition, but also how we distinguish such cases from the inevitable repetition in one's own style and free performance that inevitably occurred in this predominantly oral context as Jesus' deeds and teaching were remembered and repeated.

Another Quote for Tomorrow (Tony Campolo)

"In reality, conservatives and liberals need each other: Conservatives maintain many lines that should never be crossed, while liberals destroy many lines that should never have existed" (Tony Campolo, Red Letter Christians, p.36).

Quote of the Day (Tony Campolo)

"One of the main reasons I became a Christian was that I was told I would be joining an army that was doing battle with evil forces, powers that were all too evident and often in control of the world around me. I was told that I would be joining with other Christians and participating with God in revolutionizing society. Such a calling whetted my appetite to do something heroic with my life! But once recruited, I was told that my assignment in the army was to be a recruiting sergeant whose duty was to recruit other recruiting sergeants who, in turn, would recruit other recruiters...and so on! It wasn't long before I had a sense that this "army" I had joined was not much more than a battalion of recruiters who were recruited to recruit recruiters, ad infinitum. I was led to believe this was the only responsibility of Christians" (Tony Campolo, Red Letter Christians (Ventura: Regal, 2008) pp.34-45).

When Christians Disagree: Introduction

I've posted a summary of what we covered in my Sunday School class this morning, in the first introductory session on the subject "When Christians Disagree", on the church's blog.

Deus ex Machina LOST Boone

I just watched the LOST season 1 episode "Deus ex Machina". It was great to finally see the other end of the transmission I heard soon after I started watching the show, when the "tailies" heard a voice on the other end of a transmission, claiming to be survivors of Oceanic flight 815.

What is the reason for the title? What is the "machine" and what deity arises from it? The plane? The dialysis machine? Is the island itself a dialysis machine for the world, taking out the evil and enabling goodness to survive?

We witness John Locke having two crises of faith in this episode (one in 'real time' one in flashbacks), but how much light does the one shed on the other? On the one hand, John's unfortunate experiences with his mother and father ultimately result in his getting to the island, so we get to ask the same questions one might ask about religious ideas of providence: Is it worth it? Is the suffering justified as means to some end in the divine plan? Or is confidence in there being a plan, faith that everything happens for a reason, just a coping mechanism to deal with mishaps, or the guilt that accompanies survival or good fortune?

So why did the island kill Boone? To spare John, who needed to find the plane but would himself have died climbing into it himself had he been able to walk? Is this akin to the slaughter of the innocents in Matthew's Gospel, where a divine hand is said to place others in harm's way while in the process sparing the chosen one? Or was this to save Desmond, who would have killed himself had John not banged on the door because of what had happened - and if Desmond had killed himself rather than turning the key, who knows whether the whole island and perhaps the whole world might have been affected. Do the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one?

And which, ultimately, is preferable? A happy ending that comes about through a divine plan that determined that end be achieved through such a process? Or the same happy ending that comes at the end of the same series of unfortunate events, but with no purpose having ordained that it be so?

One thing seems clear. Often history will reach the same point no matter what any one individual among us does. And so we excuse ourselves for not being stronger, not being more courageous, not taking risks and paying a price that might not ultimately accomplish anything. But if we can make the arrival of the good happen faster, or make the path that gets us there less painful, is it worth it? When Christian Shepherd referred to himself as being too weak, what sort of weakness did he mean? Perhaps the strength to grab the wheel of history (to use a phrase made famous by Albert Schweitzer) and turn it, even though it will in all likelihood crush us in the process. Did the makers of LOST have Schweitzer in mind when they introduced the wheel which Ben turns at the end of last season?

M-Audio Session Keystudio

I recently bought the M-AUDIO Session KeyStudio. For less than a hundred dollars on Amazon.com, you get a 49-key keyboard MIDI controller and Session software. I already had Mixcraft installed, and so I tend to use that for recording. It also includes drum and other loops. The keyboard is just a MIDI controller - it doesn't have a built in synthesizer or speakers, so it needs to be connected to your computer's USB port (and your computer needs to have speakers) to work.

I've recorded a little improvized jazzy piece to demonstrate it. Just a bit of random music, each track recorded in a single take. Listen if you're interested.

Why the Red Sox Always LOST the World Series

In the episode of LOST from season 1 entitled "Outlaws", Sawyer meets Christian Shepherd in a bar in Australia. Christian tells Sawyer that he is too weak to do that which could fix everything - call his son and tell him that he loves him, and that he's grateful and proud because of what he did, rather than feeling betrayed. Christian talks about fate, and we learn that he had a saying, "That's why the Red Sox will never win the World Series".

As we've witnessed Christian Shepherd take on some rather startling qualities on the island since then, and become somehow interconnected with the island, we must ask the question: was Christian Shepherd somehow involved with the island, whether the "Others" or the Dharma Initiative? Was he involved in time travel? When he spoke of fate, did he really mean a future that he knew about and thus considered inevitable?

What was his role in getting not only Claire but also Jack and his own corpse on the plane that was "fated" to crash on the island?

What's most interesting is that Ben later shows Jack a video of the Red Sox winning the World Series. The most recent Dharma Initiative film suggests that some think the future can be changed. Perhaps the universe does indeed have a way of "course correcting", but if one makes a significant enough change at a significant enough juncture in history, then it produces an effect to large to be corrected for. Perhaps it is possible to change the past - and the future.

There's a nice summary of the episode on the Houston Chronicle's Tubular blog.

Two More Fans Needed

Thanks to everyone who helped identify my blog in its blog network on Facebook. It seems I need a mere two more fans of my blog's network in order for them to add my feed to it. If any two regular readers who are on Facebook could oblige, I'd be most grateful!

Extraterrestrial Visitors?

A friend of mine sent me links to a number of YouTube videos in which respectable individuals speak about extraterrestrials. I'll just reproduce them here, and invite comments on how convincing or unconvincing these testimonies seem. I know we have a community here interested in (among other things) distinguishing science from pseudoscience, and distinguishing scholarship from apologetics. What do you make of these?

General video about the Disclosure Project


Daniel Sheehan -Disclosure Project


Sgt. Karl Wolf - Disclosure Project


Dr. Steven Greer - Disclosure Project


Vice-Premier Paul Hellyer, Canada

A Survey of Public Understanding of Evolution

There is an online survey of how (and how well) people understand the scientific theory of evolution. It is probably worth contributing to, although the possible answers are constricting in places. The only type of God that is asked about is that of classical theism, and so they will inevitably have significant numbers who end up rated as very religious and yet unsure whether such a deity exists.

LOST Mothers of the Chosen

My viewing of season 1 of LOST continues. The episode "Not Raised By Another" shows again just how much of later developments were indeed in mind early on. We've already been told that the finding of "Adam and Eve" in the caves was an important clue intended to ensure that, whatever twists and turns might follow, some element of the originally-intended plot line could be shown to have been intended from the outset. In this episode, Claire has a dream in which Locke is playing cards at a table, and instead of eyes has one black stone and one white stone, like those found in the little sack that was on one of the corpses in the cave.

We know that the makers of LOST are Star Wars fans. I cannot imagine that, when they have the psychic warn that he senses grave danger surrounding the child (Aaron) and his upbringing, they were not thinking of the words Yoda says about young Anakin skywalker. And in both Star Wars and LOST, we see at least one figure who has lost his mother turn to the dark side, spurred on by that loss.


When Claire's pen and the lawyer's fail to work, it is just like what happens to Michael when he tries to kill himself in season 4. Already they had in mind the notion that the island could reach out and influence events.

The psychic got her on the plane, so she could get to the island. But what was supposed to happen there? If it is so crucial that Claire raise the baby, why in season 4 does she leave him and allow him to be taken off the island, even going so far as to warn Kate in a vision that she mustn't bring him back? It seems that since Christian is "speaking for" Jacob, perhaps the island is "under new management" and there is another side trying to influence things. We know that two sides are fighting for the island. What is the relationship between John Locke, another miracle child and "chosen one", and Aaron? If Ben's mantle has been passed to Locke, is it Christian's that has been passed to Aaron? How does Widmore relate to the latter? Is Walt another "miracle child"? If they keep adding to that list, this will turn into a prequel for Heroes!

So many questions still unanswered - but that's what makes this show so great! And it is great watching these early episodes I missed, and thinking what it must have been like to watch it while the menace was still a phantom...

The One

The One is the invisible Spirit. We should not think of it as a god or like a god. For it is greater than a god, because it has nothing over it and no lord above it. It does not exist within anything inferior to it, since everything exists within it, for it established itself...

The One is not corporeal and it is not incorporeal.
The One is not large and it is not small.
It is impossible to say,
How much is it?
What kind it is?
For no one can understand it.

The One is not among the things that exist, but is much greater...

(From The Secret Book of John 2-3, translated by Marvin Meyer)

LOST and Solitary

I have now got up to watching some episodes from season one of LOST that I had never seen until now. "Solitary" is familiar from flashbacks later on, but it was still interesting to watch it for the first time, and see how they set up viewers with ambiguities and false trails (as, for example, in the mention of Alex, Danielle Rousseau's child, whose gender is never specified and thus one would assume that Alex would be a boy).

The sickness, too, was set up intentionally, as the hypochondriac with his spreading rash and Rousseau's mention of a sickness. Presumably we are now to realize that what happened to the rest of Rousseau's team was what happened to Minkowski and to Desmond.

That leads us to the biggest question of all: Why did Rousseau not become unstuck in time? She dies just in time for us to realize the need to ask that question. It will be interesting to watch these early episodes with this later perspective in mind. Even those who've seen them before should do this, since later information causes them to take on interesting new meanings.

I'm also wondering about Christian Shepherd. His coffin ended up close to where "Adam and Eve" were found. Were these people laid to rest in that cave because it was believed it would restore them to life, or in some sense cause them to have an ongoing existence? Or is one of the corpses Christian Shepherd, restored to life through the island's power, but coming into contact with his own future self's body, he created some sort of temporal anomaly (as would have happened if the bunnies came into contact in the Dharma video).

Finally, I'm grateful to Jeremy Taylor for pointing out that the phrase "Only fools are enslaved by time and space" is an anagram for "Adam Eve Lost Colony Eden Pray is Fable". Try rearranging the words and see what you can come up with!

The Beatitudes Bloopers Reel

"Action," said the director.

"Blessed are the rich, for they have been blessed by God," Jesus spoke to the camera.

"Blessed are the poor, for through their donations in the hope of miracles, rich preachers can travel conveniently in their own jet plane.

Blessed are those who suffer not, for they are clearly blessed by God more than I am.
Blessed are the proud, for evidently they are omniscient.

Blessed are those who can persuade themselves that they are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for they can treat the criticisms of others as just more proof that they are right.

Blessed are..."

"CUT!" cried Peter, who was serving as the director.

"What's wrong?" asked Jesus. "That was just for the bloopers reel, as a joke. I'm ready to film the real version whenever you are".

"I thought I told you," replied Peter. "Today's broadcast was going out live".

Jesus, enraged, drove Peter and the other Apostles, the cameramen and stage crew, from the studio, using a whip made of microphone cords.

Unfortunately the televangelists and many others simply mistook Jesus' joke for Gospel truth. They failed to see Jesus' reaction to the whole incident, because it wasn't televised.

The God Samaritan

Here's a parable from unorthodoxology:

The old Baptist preacher had been around long enough to know a fraud when he saw one. And he had grown tired of listening to this one regaling audiences in the shade of a pecan grove with fanciful tales of God that lacked any proper exegesis and rational hermeneutical lens. So, he carefully picked his question and planned his attack like a biblical chessmaster.

"Teacher, I'm confused" he called out, his pleasant drawl lazily floating on the ripples of the humid, Georgia heat. "Christians can't seem to agree on just about anything. Sometimes it seems like they are worshiping completely different gods, to say nothing of the pagans and heathens who worship false gods. So, with all these gods running around in our heads, how do we know which god is the true God?"

The teacher finished his long pull on a Mason jar of sweet tea. "Well, what does it say in the Bible? What's your take?"

The Baptist preacher, pleased to have the stage and perhaps set some erring minds in the audience straight, cleared his throat. "'Well, God is good, just, loving and hates evil.'"

"Exactly, my friend," the teacher replied. "Worship this God and you will live."

But the man wanted to prove a point, that the teacher wasn't worshiping this God at all. "But everybody says this is the God they serve, but clearly they can't all be right, can they? There is only one God, as the Bible says, not many."

In reply, the teacher told another story.


"A man was going over to Atlanta from Birmingham, when he found himself in a deserted rest area on I-59. As he was getting out of his car to stretch his legs, a bunch of robbers approached him and pistol whipped him. They left him in his underwear, bloodied, bruised and unable to move. They left him half-dead, stripped of his money, credit cards and jewelry.

A few minutes later, a man arrived at the rest area and saw the poor beat up man lying in a pool of his own blood. He began to approach, but then noticed the multi-colored gay pride flag on his bumper. Instead of helping, he nodded in approval. The beaten man obviously was a heretical abomination and this beating was just, deserved punishment. So, he dragged the near-dead body into the bushes so no one else could help and continued to reign down righteous blows on him.

A little while later, another traveler stopped at the rest area and heard some rather painful moaning coming from the nearby bushes. He was shocked at the state of the beaten man, eyes swollen, blood-matted hair and the incoherent groaning in pain. He looked down in pity.

"Don't worry," he said to the beaten man. "You might be in excruciating pain now, but you won't be once you get to heaven, which from the looks of your general state, won't be too long from now. Rejoice in your suffering and count it a blessing! Soon you will be in paradise!"

On that happy note, he left, hoping the man's suffering would purify him and joyful that another person would die on earth but live forever in heaven.

A third person arrived at the rest area. He had darker skin than the others and spoke with in heavily accented English. He too heard the moans of the beaten man.

When he saw the state of the wounded, he immediately gathered the man's body into his arms and laid it in his back seat. After compressing the wounds, he sped to the nearby hospital where the nurse admitted the man but informed the kind traveler that without insurance they would stabilize him and send him home. The traveler pulled out a credit card and said to give the man the best care available. I'll come back and pay anything my credit limit won't cover."


Which of these three do you think is God, the one who condemned and continued to torture him with hellish assaults; the one who told him to look to the world beyond; or the one who cared for him?"

The preacher replied, "The one who had unconditional mercy on him."

"Go and serve this God, wherever you may find this God," Jesus said.

Ron Moore Lectures on Religion in Battlestar Galactica

Ron Moore lecturing on religion in Battlestar Galactica. Need I say more?

HT Galactica Sitrep

Mandaic Dictionary Preview

There is a free preview on Google books of the Mandaic dictionary by Majid Fandi Al-Mubaraki et. al. It is extremely limited compared to the out-of-print Drower and Macuch Mandaic dictionary, but at least there are other ways of getting access to this one than inter-library loan!

I must say that am extremely grateful to Mr. Mubaraki for sending me a copy of his dictionary and other Mandaic text and transliterations that he has made available. I would not have been able to make the progress that I have either in studying the Mandaic language, or in my study of Mandaean origins, without these resources.

For those interested in Syriac studies, Brigham Young University has online collections of texts at the Syriac Studies Reference Library and the Center for the Preservation of Ancient Religious Texts. Add those to the ones at Archive.org and it has to be said that it is rather impressive how much one can find available electronically.

Now if only there were audiobooks in Syriac and Mandaic, so that we could learn and study in the car and on the go...

A True Story vs. The Whole Story

It is well known that the best lies are true ones. That's why fundamentalists, like the Devil in the temptation story in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, pepper their claims liberally (if you'll excuse the pun) with Bible verses.

A great example of this is the e-mail currently circulating about how Barack Obama removed an American flag from his plane, and perhaps worse still, replaced it with a logo representing himself.

As Snopes.com indicates, this is indeed "true" - as are most things, from "a certain point of view", to quote Obi-Wan Kenobi. And many people who are at least smart enough to visit Snopes.com nonetheless fail to look at the rest of the story. I saw this recently in an e-mail about a supposed virus threat, which likewise claimed Snopes "true" status. But if one actually read the linked information at Snopes, one learned that the e-mail in question was one that made false, exaggerated claims about a real virus.

The important question is not just whether something is true but whether it is the whole story. And so here's some more of the story about the Obama plane. He removed an airline logo that included an American flag in the logo the airline in question. His plane still bears the same standard U.S. Flag that all American planes do. John McCain's plane doesn't have an American flag on its tail.

Everyone loves a good story. And we love a nasty bit of gossip about someone we love to hate. The challenge for those who are seeking to hold themselves to some sort of moral standard or other is to dig a little deeper and seek as much of the story as we can come by. Is there anyone reading this who has no recollection of ever making a snap judgment based on insufficient information and regretting what ensued as a result? Why do people drop all critical thinking skills in relation to people they don't like, for whatever reason?

How Gods Are Made

Who speaks of god and conceptualizes an idol, which can profit him nothing? He and his kind will be put to shame; eloquent speakers are nothing but men.

Let them all come together and take their stand; they will be brought down to terror and infamy.



The preacher takes a texts and works it into a sermon; he shapes an idol with words, he forges it with the might of his gesticulating arm. He gets hungry and loses his strength; he drinks no water and grows faint.



The theologian highlights with lines and makes an outline with a marker; he roughs it out with technical terms and writes it with letters. He shapes it in the description of man, of man in all his glory, that it may dwell in a concept.


He harvested words, or perhaps took a noun or verb. He let it grow among the words of the dictionary, or planted a neologism on his web page, and the internet made it grow in familiarity.



It is humanity's tool for communication; some of it he takes and expresses himself, he talks about fires and baking bread. But he also fashions a god and worships it; he makes an idol and bows down to it. Half of the words he speaks by the fire, in idle chatter as he prepares his meal, he roasts his meat and eats his fill.



He also warms himself and says, "Ah! I am warm; I see the fire." From the rest of his vocabulary he makes a god, his idol; he bows down to it and worships. He prays to it and says, "Save me; you are my god."



They know nothing, they understand nothing; their eyes are plastered over so they cannot see, and their minds closed so they cannot understand. No one stops to think, no one has the knowledge or understanding to say, "Half of it I used for conversation; I even baked bread following words in a recipe, and I roasted meat and I ate according to another recipe. Shall I make a detestable thing from the words that are left? Shall I bow down to a verbal concept?"



He feeds on ashes, a deluded heart misleads him; he cannot save himself, or say, "Is not this thing in my mind and my speech a lie?"

- (Isaiah 44:10-20, NIV, with some updating to correspond to materials used nowadays for making gods/idols).

Hidden Agenda?

At a business meeting at church recently, the agenda for the meeting was distributed, together with other papers and documents. I put mine out of sight under a table, and quipped "Now it's a hidden agenda".

OK, so it wasn't funny. But a commenter on the _awakening blog, where my post about fundamentalism being fundamentally unbiblical is being discussed, asked what the agenda is behind pointing out the Bible's errancy. Here's what I left as a comment in answer to that question:

I'll chime in with what my agenda is. I want Christians to accept the Bible for what it is, not impose on it claims about the Bible that are inaccurate.

This is important for multiple reasons:

First, when people are told "Either the Bible is the inerrant Word of God or a bunch of garbage that you can simply throw out", and then discover the difficulties and discrepancies in the Bible, guess what they do? It's a self-fulfilling prophecy, you might say. Fundamentalism's false claims about the Bible have driven many people away from faith altogether, because it not only lies about what the Bible is, but also lies about there being only one other option.

Second, it is important because, if we ask why people believe the Bible is inerrant, in most cases it is because they don't know any better. They have never studied the Bible in sufficient depth or detail to know better. And so what ends up happening is that they believe what a particular preacher or author says that the Bible says (and says inerrantly). That puts too much power into those preachers' hands.

Third, attributing inerrancy to the Bible is idolatry. It takes an attribute of God and attributes it to something that is clearly part of the created order.

Fourth, and most basic, is honesty. Unless one thinks it is appropriate to lie, cheat, steal and deceive in order to win people to Christianity, then being honest about what the Bible is is nothing more than living according to the commandment not to bear false witness.

I'd also like to thank Scot McKnight at Jesus Creed for posting a link and sending some readers this way!

When Christians Disagree

Tomorrow the Sunday School class I teach at Crooked Creek Baptist Church will finish working through the Gospel of John. A week from then we'll begin a new series for which the title is "When Christians Disagree: Dealing with and delighting in our differences". I posted a draft of the idea a while back here on the blog. I'm planning on perhaps recommending those who attend tomorrow to read Galatians 1-2 (a great part of the Bible for talking about Christians disagreeing) and doing a survey through some instances in which authors seem not to have seen eye to eye. I expect that will lead quite naturally into our first main topic about which Christians disagree, namely different view Christians have of what the Bible is and how it should be approached.

I'd love to make some video clips to go along with the series, as well as some handouts, links and other materials, and make them available here (as well as on the church's blog/site, which I recently created and still need to expand on and develop). In practice, I think I'll be lucky if I have an outline ready beforehand! :-)

Quote of the Day (Benjamin Franklin)

"I think vital Religion has always suffer’d, when Orthodoxy is more regarded than Virtue. And the Scripture assures me, that at the last Day, we shall not be examin’d what we thought, but what we did; and our Recommendation will not be that we said Lord, Lord, but that we did Good to our Fellow Creatures" (Benjamin Franklin, Letter to Josiah and Abiah Franklin, April 13th, 1738).

LOST Tabula Rasa

I've begun watching LOST Season 1 on DVD. There are actually episodes I have never seen, since I started watching LOST somewhat late, and so while I've caught up on all episodes from season 2 onward, there are a few in season 1 I will finally watch for the first time.

The first episode after the pilot is "Tabula Rasa", Latin for "blank slate". From the very beginning the series intended to explore the notion of people getting a "fresh start", who they were before the plane crash and what they did then not mattering. But of course, as the flashbacks always demonstrated, the idea that moving to a new place allows one to make a clean break from the past is nonsense. We carry our pasts around with us. We are not static beings, but who we are now is the sum of who we've been. This doesn't mean that change isn't possible. But as the survivors discover, change comes not by pretending the past doesn't exist, but by dealing with the past.

The fact that who we are now is a continuation of who we've been up until now has relevance for reflecting on the idea of an afterlife. Since I've just read Peter Rollins' recent book The Fidelity of Betrayal and have found that once again telling stories (even though some of them are old jokes) can be more meaningful than merely analysing an issue in prose, let me offer a pearly gates story for you to consider.

A man finds himself before the pearly gates of heaven, having just died quite suddenly and unexpectedly. St. Peter meets him. "Welcome, friend!" he says, "Would you like to come in?" The man says that he doesn't yet feel any different, and asks what will change when he goes through the gates. St. Peter explains to him, "You'll be given a fresh start. Since your past would inevitably influence your ongoing existence in countless negative ways, we will erase all your memories. Since the form in which you existed as a human being was frail and fallible, your body will be replaced by a glorious one incapable of sin or error."

The man looked at St. Peter puzzled. "If you do all that to me," he asked, "in what sense will I still me me?"

"Good question," answered St. Peter. "This new self will still have your name and will incorporate those few elements in your prior existence that were in no way, shape or form entangled with the sin, suffering, and other miseries of human existence."

"You know what," the man replied, looking around at the clouds and seeing that there were other people who were outside the pearly gates, "I think I'll pass. What you are offering would negate the value of everything I've ever learned, everything I've suffered, everything I've done - in short, everything I am!" And at that, he walked away.

St. Peter watched the man until he was out of sight. Then he looked up and said to God "Still no takers."

"They make me so proud of them, sometimes," came the cheerful booming voice of God from above.

St. Peter then went away too, to watch Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind...

THX 1138: You Can't Survive Outside The City

I just recently watched THX 1138 for the first time, the movie George Lucas wrote and directed before he made Star Wars. Like all good science fiction, it is thought provoking, especially once one gets to the ending. If you've never seen it and plan to, consider this a spoiler warning. Go watch it. This post will still be here when you get back.

The movie depicts a future in which life is strictly controlled. Everyone takes drugs in prescribed doses to control their libido, their sleep and their work efficiency. There is further technology to meet sexual needs, and simply having sex with another human being is considered perversion. It is considered a drug offense to not take one's drugs.

It would be easy to consider such a future implausible - why would anyone accept it, why would any society develop into something like this? The answer comes at the end, when Robert Duvall's character THX 1138 escapes the city, and we glimpse the barren wasteland of Earth in the light of the setting sun which is expanding and on its way to becoming a red giant. Suddenly the low budget robot police and the concern about how much it will cost to apprehend a renegade make sense, and their statements "We're only trying to help you" become plausible with hindsight.

Society's rules, in a best case scenario, are for the "greater good". As Spock said, "The needs of the many outweight the needs of the few". When making the most of dwindling resources, and thus cost and work efficiency are crucial, and willy nilly procreation could lead to disaster, what, if anything, would make it wrong for society to move in this sort of direction? Wouldn't reckless procreation (bringing into existence more mouths to feed than the society can accomodate) become the equivalent of theft? What will morality be as the sun expands and threatens to engulf the Earth? Will right and wrong be defined in the same way by any living things still around as the universe approaches heat death?

Sci-fi is great because it helps us think about big questions, about the nature of right and wrong, cultural relativity, and context. Human beings have always made trade-offs, accepting restriction of freedoms for the sake of our collective survival, by means of law, custom and/or culture. Science fiction allows us to take such aspects of real life to their utmost extreme, and to explore them in future or far-away settings that somehow make them seem less threatening, even if at the same time often all the more shocking and provocative.

And of course, we all knew already that in the future we'll all be bald and wear white jump suits. Somehow that's just a given.