James F. McGrath

If you're an old-school Doctor Who fan, at least, then this new rumor is just beyond thrilling. Rich Johnston at Bleeding Cool claims reliable sources (plural) tell him that a ton of missing Doctor Who stories have been found. Stories. Not episodes.

Read more...

15^th European Conference on Science and Theology, Assisi, Italy

April 30^th – May 4^th, 2014

 

Do Emotions Shape the World?

 

All those attending the conference are invited to offer a paper on this conference theme for presentation in a short paper session. This issue can be approached from a number of perspectives. In addition to the main question, we might ask: What is emotion? What have we learnt about the biochemistry and psychophysiology of emotions? How has our understanding of emotions changed over time? What is the role of emotions in theology and religious experience? What is the role of emotions in scientific research? How should we describe emotions, rationality, subjectivity and objectivity in light of the best knowledge in science and theology? In the wake of “Descartes Error”, how do we re-conceptualize the understanding, pursuit and communication of science? How does theology feed cultural, spiritual and moral capital into the economy of global challenges? These are some of the issues we aim to pursue.

 

Papers related to these issues are welcome. Papers on other aspects of the interaction between science and theology may also be offered.

 

Those intending to present a paper should submit a provisional title, 5 to 10 keywords, and an outline of not more than 500 words which makes clear the relevance of the paper to the theme of the conference or other aspects of the interaction between science and theology. These single-sided outlines should also include: full name, academic position (if any), full postal and e-mail addresses. They must be received as e-mail attachments only before October 31^st, 2013 by the Scientific Programme Officer at the address below and must be sent in either .doc or .rtf file format. The conference language is English. For more information about the conference, visit the esssat-website: www.esssat.org.

 

Information about the acceptance of a paper will be given in December 2013 together with guidelines for the paper and its presentation at the conference. Complete papers must be received by March 15^th, 2014. Papers and the short paper session schedule will be made available to registered participants and members of esssat.

 

Each presenter will have 5-10 minutes to present the main ideas of the paper, followed by 20 minutes for discussion. PowerPoint facilities and overhead projectors will be available. Presenters are free to distribute their own handouts, but must provide copies for the audience. Some of the papers presented at the conference will be printed in forthcoming esssat publications. Information on submission and selection will be given later. Presentation of a paper at the conference does not guarantee publication.

 

Scientific Programme Officer:     Dr. Knut-Willy Sæther, E-mail: programme@esssat.org

By Eric Marrapodi, Co-Editor CNN Belief Blog
Follow @EricCNNBelief

Baltimore, Maryland (CNN) - As the new Superman movie takes flight this weekend, filmmakers are hoping the Man of Steel lands not only in theaters, but also in pulpits.

Warner Bros. Studios is aggressively marketing "Man of Steel" to Christian pastors, inviting them to early screenings, creating Father’s Day discussion guides and producing special film trailers that focus on the faith-friendly angles of the movie.

The movie studio even asked a theologian to provide sermon notes for pastors who want to preach about Superman on Sunday. Titled “Jesus: The Original Superhero,” the notes run nine pages.

“How might the story of Superman awaken our passion for the greatest hero who ever lived and died and rose again?” the sermon notes ask.

(Disclaimer: CNN, like Warner Bros., is owned by Time Warner.)

Similar campaigns to corral the country's large number of Christians into the movie theater have been used for "Les Miserables," "Soul Surfer" and "The Blind Side," all of which had at least some faith angle.

Baltimore pastor Quentin Scott is among dozens of ministers who received an e-mail invitation from Grace Hill Media, a Hollywood-based Christian marketing firm, to an early screening of “Man of Steel.”

“There was an actual push to say `We’re putting out something that speaks to your group,' ” said Scott, one of the pastors of Shiloh Christian Community Church in Baltimore.

At first, Scott said, he didn’t buy the religious pitch. Then he decided to attend a free midweek screening in Baltimore.

“When I sat and listened to the movie I actually saw it was the story of Christ, and the love of God was weaved into the story," said the pastor.

"It was something I was very excited about that with the consultation of our senior pastor, we could use in our congregation.”

CNN Entertainment: 'Man of Steel' director Zack Snyder on Superman's Christ-like parallels

Grace Hill’s sermon notes are specially designed for churches like Shiloh that integrate multimedia into their services.

“Let’s take a look at the trailer for `Man of Steel,’” the notes suggest after briefly introducing the movie’s history and themes.

The man behind the notes, Pepperdine University professor Craig Detweiler, has prepared similar material for films like 2009’s "The Blind Side" and "The Book of Eli" from 2010.

The spiritual themes in “Man of Steel” are abundant, Detweiler said, and his notes enable Christians to thoughtfully engage with pop culture instead of shunning it.

“All too often, religious communities have been defined by what they're against. With a movie like `Man of Steel,’ this is a chance to celebrate a movie that affirms faith, sacrifice and service,” Detweiler said.

It will be hard for even casual Christians to miss the messianic metaphors in "Man of Steel.”

The movie focuses on the origins of Superman, who was sent from the planet Krypton as an infant to save his species.

He is raised by surrogate parents who help him grapple with his special powers, even though they don’t fully understand the source of his extraordinary abilities.

When he turns 33, Superman must willingly sacrifice himself to save the human race.

Sound familiar?

If that’s not enough, as a boy Clark Kent is shown wrestling with his superpowers, and asks his earthly dad, Jonathan Kent, “Did God do this to me?”

“Somewhere out there you have another father and he sent you here for a reason,” says Jonathan Kent.

Even the visuals hammer home the messianic motifs.

During a fight with his archenemy, General Zod, Superman plunges down to Earth, his arms outstretched as if he were being crucified. Of course, he rises again.

Detweiler writes in the sermon notes, “What Jesus and Superman both give us, through their `hero’ actions but also their `human’ actions – is hope.”

“I think it’s a very good thing that Hollywood is paying attention to the Christian marketplace,” said Ted Baehr, who runs Movieguide, a website that reviews family friendly films from a Christian perspective.

“Where it gets sticky is when they try to manipulate the market and when Christians try to manipulate Hollywood. But here I think we have the right balance.”

But other Christians are heaving a supersized sigh at the movie marketing.

"Any pastor who thinks using `Man of Steel Ministry Resources' is a good Sunday morning strategy must have no concept of how high the stakes are, or very little confidence in the power of God’s word and God’s spirit," writes P.J. Wenzel, a deacon and Sunday School teacher at Dublin Baptist Church in Ohio.

"As they entertain their congregants with material pumped out from Hollywood’s sewers, lives are kept in bondage, and people’s souls are neglected," according to Wenzel, who said he was e-mailed information about the movie.

Scott, the Baltimore pastor, said he knows that Warner Bros. Studios has a financial incentive in pushing the film to pastors.

But he said that’s fine with him. “They’re using us but in fact we’re using them,” he said.

His church won't show clips from the movie this weekend because it had already planned out its service. But he plans to use them later, during meetings with the church’s men’s group.

“If you give me another opportunity to talk to someone about Jesus Christ, and I can do that because of your movie, that’s a win for me, because it is about spreading the Gospel.”

CNN's Erin McPike contributed to this report.

There is a nice review of Robert Alter's newest installment of his translation of the Hebrew Bible in the Tablet.

In Ancient Israel, Alter has reached the part of the Bible with the most to say about history. The Pentateuch begins in myth and ends in moral exhortation; its most famous legends are precisely that, legends, which can only be accepted as true by an act of faith. Adam eating the apple, Abraham sacrificing Isaac, Moses parting the Red Sea—these are not the kinds of things that can be corroborated with outside evidence. Starting with the Book of Joshua, however, Ancient Israel moves into a more recognizable world of power politics, in which the main events are wars between tribes, states, and empires, and the intrigues of kings and courtiers. Toward the end of Kings, when we read of the destruction of the northern kingdom of Israel by the Assyrian Empire and the sacking of Jerusalem by the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar, we are dealing with events that also appear in extra-biblical inscriptions and documents. Somewhere along the line, the Israelites have evolved from a holy family into a political entity, with all the compromises and disappointments that entails.

Be sure to read the rest of it here, especially the bit about David.

By: Amnon Ben-Tor, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Edited and abridged from NEA 76.2 (2013): 66–67 (see editorial note below)

Tel Hazor, “the head of all those kingdoms” (Joshua 11:10), is the largest tell in Israel and encompasses a total of approximately 800 dunams (200 acres). With the exception of two gaps in the settlement, one at the beginning of the Middle Bronze Age and the other following the destruction of the Canaanite city during the transition between the Late Bronze Age and the beginning of the Iron Age, Hazor was continuously occupied for approximately two millennia, from the first half of the third millennium BCE to the late eighth century BCE.

Following the Assyrian conquest of Hazor in the year 732 BCE along with several other important sites in the region (as referenced in 2 Kgs 15:29), a period of decline set in until the site was finally deserted. A short-lived Israelite (?) settlement (Stratum IV) was established on top of the ruins of the fortified Israelite city. Poor traces of occupation attributable to the Assyrian, Persian, Hellenistic, and Islamic periods (Strata III–0, respectively) were noted at different locations on Hazor’s acropolis.

In the 1950s and 1960s, extensive excavations were carried out by Professor Yigael Yadin in two parts of the site: the Upper City (the “acropolis”) and the Lower City (the “enclosure”). The excavations, conducted on behalf of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, were the largest conducted at any site in Israel at the time. Hazor’s selection for excavation was no doubt due to the biblical accounts in the books of Joshua and Judges of the settlement of Israelite tribes in Canaan.

According to this narrative, Hazor was the site of a decisive battle, as a result of which “Joshua took all that land: the hill country and all the Negeb and all the land of Goshen and the lowland and the Arabah and the hill country of Israel and its lowland, from Mount Halak, which rises toward Seir, as far as Baal-gad in the valley of Lebanon below Mount Hermon” (Joshua 11:16–17). The book of Judges presents a different version: “So the Lord sold them into the hand of King Jabin of Canaan, who reigned in Hazor; the commander of his army was Sisera, who lived in Harosheth-ha-goiim. … So on that day God subdued King Jabin of Canaan before the Israelites. Then the hand of the Israelites bore harder and harder on King Jabin of Canaan, until they destroyed King Jabin of Canaan” (Judges 4:2, 23–24).

From the outset, the early excavators of Hazor disagreed regarding the credibility of these accounts and which of the two was a description of what had actually taken place. Yadin and Aharoni were the main protagonists: Yadin’s position, following William F. Albright, was that the narrative in the book of Joshua was more trustworthy than the version in the book of Judges, which Yohanan Aharoni, following Albrecht Alt and Martin Noth, preferred.

Yadin and Aharoni, faculty members of the Department of Archaeology at the Hebrew University, were the chief directors of the excavations. Joining them as area directors were Claire Epstein, Trude Dothan, Moshe Dothan, Ruth Amiran, Jean Perrot, and others. Immanuel Dunayevsky served as the chief architect.

It would be no exaggeration to say that these archaeologists were the “founding fathers” of biblical archaeology in Israel who taught excavation methods to generations of future archaeologists. Dunayevsky established new surveying and registration methods that, even after more than fifty years, are still in use today by archaeologists working at biblical sites. During the five seasons of excavations by the Yadin expedition (1955–1958, 1968), many students from the Hebrew University (the only university in Israel at that time) participated alongside a technical staff of surveyors, draftspersons, photographers, and others. The site of Hazor, in fact, served as the main school for teaching “field archaeology,” and many of its graduates have since then taught archaeology at universities in Israel and around the world or were employed by government institutions such as the Israel Antiquities Authority and various museums, where they passed on the “Israeli tradition” from one generation of archaeologists to another. Today students at the Institute of Archaeology at the Hebrew University are the fourth (!) generation receiving their initial training in field archaeology at Hazor.

The excavations of the Yadin expedition uncovered a rich and varied assortment of large finds, including fortifications, temples, dwellings, and water systems, and a wide variety of small finds, such as local and imported pottery, weapons, numerous art objects, statues of dignitaries and deities, cuneiform documents, and the like. These finds attest to the city’s importance and to the significant role it played in the economic and political scene in the ancient Near East, in both the neighboring regions and in far-off lands. The excavation results aroused great interest among scholars in many fields: historians, biblical scholars, specialists in ancient art and religion, and other diverse fields.

Some accepted the expedition’s conclusions; others challenged them. In the center of the controversy stood, and still stands, the Yadin expedition’s conclusions concerning the biblical narratives that refer to Hazor, especially the questions of the conquest and settlement of the Land of Israel (Joshua 11:10–17) and the attribution of the construction of Hazor’s fortifications (dated by Yadin to the tenth century BCE) to Solomon (1 Kings 9:15). Both the Yadin expedition and the current excavations established that the number of Iron Age strata dating from the eleventh century to the last third of the eighth century BCE (seven strata divided into numerous substrata) exceeds the number of contemporary strata discovered at any other site in Israel. It is, therefore, not surprising that Hazor stands at the forefront of the ongoing controversy over the reliability of biblical historiography. Despite the vast area explored by Yadin’s excavations and the immense contribution the resulting data gave to the study of the history of the southern Levant and neighboring countries, the excavations left many questions unanswered and others with unsatisfactory answers. Some of the conclusions reached by the Yadin excavations remain open to dispute, and they are tackled by members of the renewed excavations.

Editorial note: The Ancient Near East Today is pleased to feature several edited and abridged versions of articles on the renewed excavations at Hazor that are published by ASOR in the journal Near Eastern Archaeology 76.2 (2013). The above essay by Prof. Ben-Tor serves as an introduction to the issue. An abridged version is reproduced here together with a gallery of illustrations that give a flavor of what is found in whole issue. In July, August, and September, ANE Today will feature articles treating the Canaanite City (July), the United Monarchy (August), and the 8th and 9th centuries (September). Each essay will be accompanied by illustrations that demonstrate how important Hazor is to our understanding of the biblical world and the region in general.

Do you want read to these articles on Tel Hazor in their entirety? We are offering 30 days of free access to this issue of Near Eastern Archaeology! All you have to do is follow this link to sign up for free access through JSTOR: https://www.jstor.org/token/NEA76.2/mark.asor.org ! (If you already have a myJSTOR account, sign in before you click the link). As an added bonus, if you are not already a Friend of ASOR, we will register you as a Friend so that you receive The Ancient Near East Today each month for free.

Gallery of selected images from NEA 76.2 (2013)—Issue on Hazor:

---

If you liked this article please sign up to receive The Ancient Near East Today via email! It’s our FREE monthly email newsletter. The articles will be delivered straight to your inbox, along with links to news, discoveries, and resources about the Ancient Near East. Just go here to sign up.

All content provided on this blog is for informational purposes only. The American Schools of Oriental Research (ASOR) makes no representations as to the accuracy or completeness of any information on this blog or found by following any link on this blog. ASOR will not be liable for any errors or omissions in this information. ASOR will not be liable for any losses, injuries, or damages from the display or use of this information. The opinions expressed by Bloggers and those providing comments are theirs alone, and do not reflect the opinions of ASOR or any employee thereof.

When I saw Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory as a child, I had never heard of Roald Dahl. Although I enjoyed the movie, it was never a favorite. Like any kid I liked candy, but I’ve seldom been motivated by sweets. I discovered Roald Dahl when my daughter was young, and read for the first time his somewhat more disturbing original version of the story. Tim Burton has a reputation for going back to the roots of beloved childhood characters and revealing their darker sides. When his Charlie and the Chocolate Factory came out in 2005, the appeal went beyond sweets, for this was a modern, if sinister, morality play. While rewatching the movie recently a number of what should’ve been obvious religious motifs suggested themselves. The first came when Charlie Bucket is shown in the main chocolate processing room reaching for a candy apple. Violet Beauregarde steps in and snatches the apple from the tree in a defiantly Evesque move. She later receives her punishment by being transformed into a fruit.

Augustus Gloop receives a strange, chocolatey baptism is what might otherwise be the waters of life. After all, the Oompa-Loompas are shown bowing down in worship to a cocoa bean in a flashback. When Veruca Salt attempts to catch one of Willy Wonka’s nut-sorting squirrels, in a rather disturbing scene reminiscent of Ben, the squirrels pin her down and carry her to the garbage chute. She is carried in classic cruciform style, emphasizing the martyrdom she receives at the hands of her indulgent father. Even Mike Teavee undergoes a kind of resurrection after being atomized and projected into a television.

A friend once told me that the characters in the film represent various deadly sins. Augustus Gloop easily falls into gluttony, and Violet Beauregarde is an emblem of pride. Veruca Salt clearly represents greed, and Mike Teavee is full of wrath. Willy Wonka is part devil and part god in the film, doling out just punishment in a seemingly unfeeling way, while rewarding the few instances of virtue. Deprivation forges virtue in Charlie Bucket demonstrating how clearly the movie is in the realm of a morality play. With its horror film tropes and forays into the truly strange, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is an example of how morality persists even in the vision of those often considered completely secular. Without it the movie becomes just another excuse to overindulge in sweets.

Filed under: Books, Just for Fun, Literature, Movies, Popular Culture, Posts Tagged: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, morality play, Roald Dahl, seven deadly sins, Tim Burton, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory

Turkey in 10 Days
1. General Remarks
2. What to Bring
3. Day 1: Traveling There
4. Day 2: Troy
5. Day 3: Pergamum, Thyatira, Philadelphia, Sardis, Smyrna 
6. Day 4: Ephesus and Laodicea
7. Day 5: Colossae and Perga
8. Day 6: Galatia: Pisidian Antioch, Iconium, and Lystra
9. Day 7: Derbe and Tarsus
10. Day 8: Cappadocia and Nicaea

11. Day 9: Chalcedon and Constantinople (Istanbul)
When I told my daughter and step-daughter that I was flying into Istanbul, they independently started singing, "Istanbul was Constantinople, Now it's Istanbul, not Constantinople."  I had no idea what they were singing.  I guess it's a 1953 song that was in Mona Lisa Smile.  I'm still dumbfounded that a couple lines from a ditty could generate so much enthusiasm while "The Hittites ruled this whole region for over a 1000 years gets nothing." :-)

I was tasked to find something to bring home that said, "Istanbul, Constantinople" on it.  The shop keeper looked at me with a puzzled look.  "Istanbul is Constantinople."

"But do you have something that says both Istanbul and Constantinople on it."

"No, Constantinople is no longer.  It is only Istanbul.  Here is Constantinople."

"Thank you.  Never mind."

Chalcedon
Is Jesus half human?  Was he so divine that his humanity doesn't matter?  Does he have a split personality--divine on weekends but human during the week?  The Council of Chalcedon settled that debate in AD451. Just across the Bosphorus from Istanbul is Kadiköy (40-59-27.36N, 29-01-01.50E), where the council took place.

Looking toward Chalcedon from Istanbul

Constantinople
Of course it's not Constantinople any more.  "Even old New York was once New Amsterdam."  And it was Byzantium in between.  Constantine actually shifted the HQ of Rome here in the 300s and "Rome" lingered here long after Italy itself was no longer under Roman control.

With a visit to Aya Sofya (Hagia Sophia; 41-00-30.10N, 28-58-48.39), we finished our tour of the seven ecumenical councils, the first four of which made the full transition from the New Testament church to Christianity as we now know it.

Aya Sofya

Here's the list:
1. Council of Nicaea (325) - decided on the Trinity
2. Council of Constantinople (381) - finalized details in the Nicene Creed
3. Council of Ephesus (431) - did Jesus have a split personality
4. Council of Chalcedon (451) - Jesus was one person with two natures

5. Council of Constantinople (553) - condemned certain authors
6. Council of Constantinople (680) - condemned the idea that Jesus only had one will
7. Council of Nicaea (787) - It's okay to have pictures of Jesus and others.

We left Iznik (Nicaea) after breakfast and drove 150 around the north side of the lake until we hit 575 going north through Orhangazi.  You can take this road all the way around the bay to save money on a ferry, but you'll add an hour or more to your time.  The traffic on 0-4 coming into Istanbul can be horrific.

We had two ferry options and took the second.  It was something like 50 lira.  In retrospect, since the traffic was so bad, we probably would have taken the first ferry option as 575 turned east coming north.  It would have been a longer ferry, but we would have cut off more travel on the north side.

You can't miss Istanbul, and the signs for Aya Sofya should be clear.  We passed a water cannon tank at a stadium on our way to Sofya.  We didn't know it at the time, but they were gearing up for one of the early riots over the park the conservative government wants to turn into a mall.  The riots have only increased since we left.

Istanbul
Aya Sofya is now a museum, and while it is full of Muslim art...

Aya Sofya Islamic caligraphy

Aya Sofya caligraphic chandelier

... they are also now restoring some of the underlying Christian mosaics.

Aya Sofya - Jesus, Mary, John

Directly across from Aya Sofya is the exquisite Blue Mosque:

Blue Mosque

It's insides are also exquisite:

Inside Dome of Blue Mosque

Next to the Blue Mosque are some plunderings of other ancient sites:

Serpent column celebrating the Greeks' victory over the Persians in 479BC

Obelisk of Thutmose III (1500s BC) brought here in AD390

Ross also went into the Grand Palace.  We missed the Grand Bazaar where the latest James Bond was partially filmed.

Finding parking and a hotel were first on the agenda once we got close to Aya Sofya. Ross found us a very nice one.

Istanbul Hotel Bali

It had exquisite views from the top, where breakfast was served the next morning.  It was a little more expensive than our usual fare, and there are no doubt much less expensive hotels down the hill behind Aya Sofya.  But you couldn't have beat the view.

We ended the night with our first and last Turkish pizza at this exquisite place, tucked in an alley off the  main road running up and down by the Blue Mosque and Aya Sofya.

exquisite Turkish Pizza

Thanks to a suggestion by a church member, I’ve been listening to the audiobook of World War Z, the 2006 novel by Max Brooks depicting the fictional aftermath of a worldwide struggle with zombies. It has a really creative format: each chapter is an interview with a survivor of the war told from their perspective with occasional comments by Brooks as the “interviewer” for the United Nations.

From Chinese submarine captains to American reality tv shows gone awry to air force crash survivors to Japanese computer geeks to underwater combat veterans to child survivors to army dog handlers, there’s a great breadth of accounts and each one is more gripping than the previous one. I doubt the upcoming movie will follow this lineup, sadly.

Close to the end, there’s an interview with Father Sergei Ryzhkov, a Russian military chaplain. You can imagine that I paid a lot of attention to that account, and I’m glad I did as it unearthed a fascinating ethical scenario.

The Problem of Bitten Soldiers

It seems that the critical problem facing the Russians wasn’t from decimation by the zombies themselves (they had massive Cold War militarization that was still available), but from the ethical conundrum of what to do with soldiers who had been bitten–and thus irreversibly infected–by the zombies. From the book:

The only way to deal with infection was a bullet. But who was going to pull the trigger? Certainly not the other soldiers. To kill your comrade, even in cases as merciful as infection, was too reminiscent of the decimations. That was the irony of it all.

The decimations had given our armed forces the strength and discipline to do anything we asked of them, anything but that. To ask, or even order, one soldier to kill another was crossing a line that might have sparked another mutiny.

For a while the responsibility rested with the leadership, the officers and senior sergeants. We couldn’t have made a more damaging decision. To have to look into the faces of these men, these boys whom you were responsible for, whom you fought with side by side, shared bread and blankets, saved his lite or have htm save yours. Who can focus on the monumental burden of leadership after having to commit such an act?

And so the decision was made that the bitten soldiers would end their life by their own hand.  Instead of forcing a fellow soldier or an officer to end your life mercifully, the soldiers would, sometimes in groups after an incident, commit suicide together.

The Military Chaplain’s Response

To this sort of ethical conundrum, what was a Chaplain to do? While having the soldiers kill themselves absolved other soldiers from the burden, to the deeply religious Orthodox, suicide was an unforgivable sin: “ The Church considers direct suicide, when a person destroys his or her life with his or her own hand, to be the most serious kind of murder, because there is no opportunity for repentance.” While the policy of self-removal due to a zombie bite solved a social dilemma, it created a spiritual dilemma.

Not that anyone cared about the spiritual issue besides the chaplains. The chaplain describes his role in the war as basically a glorified Friar Tuck from Robin Hood:

I was a religious man in a country that had long since lost its faith. Decades of communism followed by materialistic democracy had left this generation of Russians with little knowledge of, or need for, “the opium of the masses.” As a chaplain, my duties were mainly to collect letters from the condemned boys to their families, and to distribute any vodka I managed to find. It was a next-to-useless existence, I knew, and the way our country was headed, I doubted anything would occur to change that.

And yet after this policy became implemented, the Chaplain suddenly had a revelation while attending the group-suicide of some teenage soldiers in the hospital (warning: gruesome and violent prose)

I had come to the field hospital to give last rights to the infected. They had been set apart, some badly mauled, some still healthy and lucid. The first boy couldn’t have been older than seventeen…He was lying on a cot, bleeding from his belly, ashen-faced, rifle quivering in his hand. Next to him was a row of five other infected soldiers.

I went through the motions of telling them I would pray for their souls. They either shrugged or nodded politely. I took their letters, as I’d always done, gave them a drink, and even passed out a couple cigarettes from their commanding officer. Even though I’d done this many times, somehow I felt strangely different. Something was stirring within me, a tense, tingling sensation that began to work its way up through my heart and lungs.

I began to feel my whole body tremble as the soldiers all placed the muzzles of their weapons underneath their chins. “On three,” the oldest of them said. “One… two…” That was as far as they got. The seventeen-year-old flew backward and hit the ground. The others stared dumbfounded at the bullet hole in his forehead, then up to the smoking pistol in my hand, in God’s hand.

The Chaplain solved the social and spiritual dilemma by placing it upon himself to bear the burden of murder or of euthanasia or mercy killing, depending on one’s perspective. He elaborates on his rationale for what then became a movement where the Priests of an entire country began to do what no one else was willing to do and do it in the name of God: last rites with a bullet.

God was speaking to me, I could feel his words ringing in my head. “No more sinning,” he told me, “no more souls resigned to hell.” It was so clear, so simple. Officers killing soldiers had cost us too many good officers, and soldiers killing themselves had cost the Lord too many good souls. Suicide was a sin, and we, his servants-those who had chosen to be his shepherds upon the earth-were the only ones who should bear the cross of releasing trapped souls from infected bodies! That is what I told division commander after he discovered what I’d done, and that is the message that spread first to every chaplain in the field and then to every civilian priest throughout Mother Russia.

Parallels: Dumbledore and Bonhoeffer

While gruesome, the scene asks the question: “Is taking a life to save the soul an appropriate action?” While we don’t have to deal with zombies yet, is the rationale and faithfulness to the Gospel thought through?

The scene seems to remind me of Dumbledore’s request of Severus Snape. Dumbledore is irrevocably wounded and will die eventually and asks his longtime friend Snape to finish him off when the time is right. While using a killing curse tears one’s soul, Dumbledore says in The Deathly Hallows to put the request into perspective:

You alone know whether it will harm your soul to help an old man avoid pain and humiliation…. I ask this one great favor of you, Severus, because death is coming for me.

It also reminds me of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the theologian who justified attempting to kill Hitler. In a letter to his conspirators at Christmastime, he wrote the following:

The ultimate question for a responsible person to ask is not how he is to extricate himself heroically from the affair, but how the coming generation is to live.

By taking on the sin of the fallen human system on his shoulders, the Chaplain (and all those with convicted hearts after him) fill in the tragic gap between society and the church and believe they are serving a purpose that saves souls for God.

• Are they sacrificing themselves and their own souls to save souls?
• Or are they succumbing to their own sense of helplessness and doing “whatever it takes” to justify the church’s place on earth?

I don’t know. But it’s a fascinating mirror to turn back on us as to the line between a merciful death when there is no hope, and a “ends justify the means” mentality of those who have lost all hope.

Thoughts?

A new survey of LGBT adults by the Pew Research Center reveals a lot about the intersection of homosexuality and religion.

Let’s run through the data (PDF):

When it comes to the religious beliefs of LGBT adults, 48% are non-religious and as astonishing 17% of them are atheists or agnostics:

When it comes to religion, the LGBT population has a distinctly different profile than the general public. Fewer LGBT adults have a religious affiliation. About half of LGBT respondents describe themselves as atheist, agnostic or having no particular religion (48%) — more than double the portion of the general public that is religiously unaffiliated (20%).

What happens when you break it down by age? We know that, in general, younger Americans tend to be less religious. Does that trend hold true in the LGBT population?

Absolutely. In fact, 60% of 18=29-year-olds are not religious, nearly double what we typically see in the general population in that age group:

Young LGBT adults are particularly likely to have no religious affiliation, a pattern that is also found among the general
public. However, compared with the general public, a higher share of LGBT adults are unaffiliated across all age groups. For example, among adults ages 18 to 29 in the general public, 31% are religiously unaffiliated, while roughly double that share (60%) are unaffiliated among LGBT adults of the same age. And roughly one-in-eight adults ages 50 and older in the general public are unaffiliated (13%), compared with about four-in-ten (39%) of older LGBT adults.

The survey also asks about perceptions of what different religious groups think about LGBT individuals. It asks whether the six popular religious institutions — Evangelical, Catholic, Jewish, Muslim, Mormon, and non-evangelical Protestant — are friendly, neutral, or unfriendly toward LGBT people.

No surprisingly, Unfriendly scored higher than Friendly every time:

Pew also grouped the responses a different way. As it turns out, 93% of LGBT adults think at least one religious institution is unfriendly toward them and 71% think at least four religious institutions are unfriendly toward them. (No word on how many view all six as pretty awful.)

Perceptions of these religious institutions among LGBT adults loosely correspond with survey findings on attitudes toward homosexuality within each of the religious groups. Members of the U.S. general public who identify as white evangelical Protestant, black Protestant, Mormon and Muslim are less accepting of homosexuality than the general public as whole. Each of these groups is more likely to say that homosexuality should be discouraged by society rather than accepted by society, according to Pew Research surveys, with the exception of U.S. Muslims, who are about equally likely to say that homosexuality should be accepted as discouraged by society. White mainline Protestants and Jews (along with the unaffiliated) are more accepting of homosexuality than the general public as a whole. Catholics are also more accepting of homosexuality than the general public as whole, although the Catholic Church officially teaches that homosexual behavior is a sinful act.

So what’s the takeaway from all this? We don’t really learn anything new, but the survey confirms that treatment and attitude toward the LGBT community is going to be a problem in the religious world for years to come. Young people are going to have to decide whether or not to support an institution that thinks gay and lesbian relationships are inferior to straight ones. Given the trends for young people and the LGBT population, the more the religious world speaks out against homosexuality, the faster they push young people out of the fold.

We, as atheists, can help hasten the trends by making our communities as welcoming of the LGBT crowd as we can. Not that we’ve been doing a bad job, but we can always make a concerted effort to let disaffected individuals know that, even if their church doesn’t approve of them, we do.

(Thanks to Erp for the link!)

It seems to me it’s unchristian to claim, or even aim, to know all the answers about God.

Think a moment with me.  We Christians claim to believe in a God who created the entire universe from nothingness.  How many of us could do that?  What if we really tried?  What if we formed a group and worked together on it?  It’s a crazy thought, isn’t it?  We are part of the creation, created with complex minds but minds that cannot begin to fathom creating a universe or even understanding how God could do it.

We claim to believe in a God who is everywhere at once, a God who knows every thought, every motive, and every action, at every given second, of 7 billion people scattered across the earth.  How many of us can read the thoughts, dreams, and motives, every moment, of even the one person we know best?  If we really tried hard, could we learn to know the heart, soul, and mind of every person in the world? No, because we are part of the creation, created with minds that cannot fathom knowing 7 billion people inside and out, or even understanding how God could know everyone so intimately.

Related: The Reason: Answering the Question, “What Am I Meant to be Doing?” by Andy Flannagan

Yet, we forget our place before God.  We twist our religion to be about knowledge.  We contrive and memorize “facts” about God, dividing ourselves from those who understand differently, making God into our image rather than us in God’s, because our image is all we are humanly capable of understanding.  What if we devote our whole life to trying to understand God?  Our knowledge will still be but an infinitesimal dot on the infinite picture of who God really is. We are part of creation, not designed for that kind of comprehension.

We can gain from listening with discernment to others’ attempts to describe and explain God.  We can gain much from reading the writings of Christians through the ages.  We have a priceless gift of testimony in the Bible.  And the more broadly we read, from the broadest scope of human cultures, from the broadest scope of history, the broader insight we can gain into this God we worship and how this God interacts with humanity.  Still we are capable of only one grain of knowledge on a never ending sandy beach.  And it seems to me the more I “learn,” rather than gaining more answers, I gain more questions, questions that lead me to seek God more deeply, questions that seem to say that the answers are not inside the human brain or capturable by human language.  Perhaps to live truly Christian is to live comfortably and humbly amidst the questions?

Could it be perhaps that our spiritual response is not meant to be that we know everything about God, since by design, we cannot?  Perhaps if we can see our place in creation, our spiritual reaction is more one of awe and worship, amazement and wonder.

Fortunately for us though, God gave us in Jesus a living picture we could relate to.  Jesus who had feet like ours, and eyes and emotions, hungers and longings.  And we have several written accounts of his life – multiple stories, multiple accounts of his actual teachings.  What a treasure!

Alongside the awe and worship, it is in this touchable picture of Jesus that we can best understand our place with God.  “If you have seen me, you have seen the Father,” he told those who followed him (John 14:9).

Also by Kathy: Refocusing the Great Commission

And every time we read the accounts of Jesus’ life and teachings, from Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, we meet an amazing man whose purpose was to show, teach, and make a way for us to find God, even in our infinitesimally small human understanding.  Jesus’ life was not about politics.  Jesus’ teachings were not about church doctrine.  His life and teachings were consistent and simple, yet far from easy to live out.  Live together in unity, he asked of his followers.  Care for one another, and love one another.  God and everybody.  All the time.  With all our wealth, with all our hearts, with all our passion.

Are we, are our Christian churches, attempting to relate to God the Jesus way, or our own?  If we have fallen off track, Jesus has provided the path back home.

“A religion that is small enough for our understanding would not be big enough for our needs.”  -Corrie Ten Boom

—
Kathy Vestal is a college educator in Salisbury, NC. She has a Master’s of Divinity from Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary and a Master’s of Education from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. An avid writer, gifted teacher, and occasional public speaker/preacher, her passions include civil rights, social justice, church reform, and education. She has traveled to Mexico, Honduras, Argentina, Ecuador, and The Gambia, Africa, and enjoys reading, nature, and history.You can follow her personal blog at http://kathyon.blogspot.com/ or follow her on Twitter @VestalKathy

Amazon.com Widgets

Ads by Google

The post Christianity Means Not Knowing All the Answers appeared first on Red Letter Christians.

I am unsure as where to start.

This movie is everything one could hope for a Superman movie in today’s current cinematic sphere. It has the naturalness of “realistic,” as much as realism is attached to a story about aliens and a man who can fly. Several key story elements are re-worked, not so that this is simply an update or re-imagination. No, instead what this movie does is to fix certain elements of the story long expired but capture the hope and dream of the Superman arc, to refocus it back to where many of us have known it to always be.

Warning — Minimal Spoilers.

Superman will always contain the messiah myth(os) as told by Christians. This is not surprising given the context of creation of the character or of the ethnicity of the creators. Indeed, the key to writing good fiction is to use the myths of the cultures so as to steal, pardon the pun, the emotional attachment. While fanboys and critics may joke about Bryan Singer’s Superman Returns and the overindulgence of this particular handing of the Superman storyline, Singer had it correct — the world does need a savior and this is the void filled by Superman.

Zach Synder, director of The Watchmen and 300, has delivered a sublime retention of the ‘Superman as Jesus’ imagery without following in Singer’s footsteps of the “Superman on the Cross in Space” scene. There are other connections beyond the “only begotten son” aspect. In Man of Steel, Kal-El/Clark/Superman is 33 years old. He faces a choice to sacrifice himself for the fate of humankind — only one of these character traits is introduced by Synder. But there is something more, something liberal Christianity may rather enjoy. Kal-El is born so that his entire planet may break free of the rigidness of the patriarchal-imposed determinism but in doing so equally offers the people of Earth the same nature of free will — to be whomever they desire to be, without sovereign control or fear of punishment. Kal-El is the sacrifice offered so that we might be free to finally flourish as humans.

There is more. There is the topic of faith in Man of Steel. At one point, Jonathan Kent (played by Kevin Costner) tells the young Clark that when people find out about him, everything will change — even their beliefs. We are left to assume Kent means religious beliefs. Yet, when General Zod demands the lone Kryptonian who is hiding on Earth, Clark’s first stop is what looks like a Catholic or perhaps an Episcopal Church (although, I pretend it’s United Methodist) where he speaks to the bewildered priest about who he is. Synder shoots the scene with the backdrop of the stained-glass painting of Jesus praying in the Garden of Gethsemane the night before he was betrayed. This is the Garden for Clark. This is where he has to decide if he will have himself delivered up or turn and run. The priests gives him his answer and Clark disappears. Clark must take a leap of faith and trust humanity. On the same token, at the end of the movie, Martha Kent (Diane Lane) tells Clark she knows the long-dead Jonathan saw the entire thing, implying (the belief in) heaven still exists even after the introduction of alien races and information of an ancient universe. Faith is not mocked in Man of Steel but upheld as one of the greatest things about humanity.

Equally represented, and perhaps for the first time better than John Schneider’s portrayal of Pa Kent in the CW’s Smallville, is the willing step-father of a boy mysteriously sent to him. I am unsure if there has or ever will be a better actor given to the role of Jonathan Kent than Kevin Costner. This role is not the one usually played, as the adoptive father only there for a few minutes on film. Instead, we see the continued impacting role the elder Kent has on Clark. There is one particular scene, after a teenage Clark saves several school children, where Pa Kent suggests a possible — better — outcome was to let the children die. Or another scene where young adult Clark spouts the familiar “You aren’t my father!” line. It is not merely Superman who has his character drawn from Jewish and Christian tradition, but so too the adoptive father who must endure even the temperamental tantrums of a son he knows was sent to him for a purpose yet unfulfilled.

Finally, there is the symbol of Superman’s chest — hope.

The sublimity of the Messiah Myth(os) is not the only aspect of the story brought to better light. Lois Lane is no longer the most naive Pulitzer Prize winning reporter on the planet, but as portrayed by Amy Adams, actually does her job. This is a welcomed update for fathers who get tired of having their daughters watch the only female in the show turn out to be the constant damsel in distress. Without revealing too much, Lois Lane is every bit the hero Superman is. Another welcomed update is Kryptonite, but I will not spoil this either.

This movie will be a great one for fanboys and fangirls, but so too theologians and other socio-religious critics. Man of Steel delivers not just great action, fantastic special effects, warm and original dialogue, but the chance to explore our theology as told and re-told by the many who surround us in the cloud of witnesses or has holographic projections of our consciousness.

I think St. Mark would be proud.

---

My books are now available on Amazon. Mimetic Criticism and the Gospel of Mark: Introduction and Commentary and From Fear to Faith: Stories of Hitting Spiritual Walls is in paperback or Kindle

In Our Time: Prophecy

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the meaning and significance of prophecy in the Abrahamic religions. Prophets, those with the ability to convey divinely-inspired revelation, are significant figures in the Hebrew Bible and later became important not just to Judaism but also to Christianity and Islam. Although these three religions share many of the same prophets, their interpretation of the nature of prophecy often differs.
With:

Mona Siddiqui
Professor of Islamic and Interreligious Studies at the University of Edinburgh

Justin Meggitt
University Senior Lecturer in the Study of Religion and the Origins of Christianity at the University of Cambridge

Jonathan Stökl
Post-Doctoral Researcher at Leiden University.
Producer: Thomas Morris

You can listen online on get the podcast.  It's nice to see the NT Gateway featuring on its recommended reading list too.

[It's not the elitist idiocy that it sounds like.]
James McGrath rightly points out that no modern English speaker has access to the Bible without the prior work of scholars:

Do you need a PhD to understand the Bible?
Short answer: yes.
But a longer answer is called for. And the longer answer includes the fact that you need more than one PhD to understand the Bible.
When I say you need a PhD, I don’t necessarily mean that you yourself need to earn a PhD, much less several. But you will need multiple people with PhDs involved in the process. You will not understand the entire Bible without people who have expertise in Hebrew and expertise in Greek. Not just a smattering, not just a copy of Strong’s concordance or an interlinear. In order to get from the Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek text to an understanding in English, you need linguists, experienced translators, and also scholars of history who can clarify cultural and historical references, all involved in the process.
When these individuals have done their job well, you can pick up an English translation, read it, and it will not seem hard to understand at all. Indeed, it may be so deceptively easy that you manage to ignore the hard work that went into producing the text you hold in your hands.

See the whole post here.
McGrath goes on to note how galling it is when anti-intellectualist folks quote the Bible – in English – to show how they don’t need scholars.

I would suggest that a closely related ecclesiological point follows from McGrath’s discussion. Just as Bible-wielding folks who say they don’t need scholars conveniently ignore where their translation came from in the first place, those who say they don’t need Church tradition conveniently ignore where the canon of Scripture came from. It did not slide off a rainbow sometime in the first century. For a helpful discussion of the formation of the NT canon, see Harry Y. Gamble, The New Testament Canon: Its Making and Meaning.

For a discussion of why many of us are frustrated by the fact that we don’t have unmediated access to the Bible, see David B. Hart at his ornery best: “Religion in America: Ancient and Modern” in The New Criterion March 2004.

The 12 June 2013 edition of the syndicated column by Gary Clothier, “Ask Mr. Know-It-All”, included the following question and answer:

Question: How tall was Goliath, the giant that David slew with a sling shot? — B.K., Portland, Maine

Answer: The Philistine giant was big. According to the Bible (I Samuel 17:4), he was six cubits and a span. A cubit is determined by the distance from the elbow to the end of the middle finger, which would be anywhere between 17 to 22 inches. The distance of a span is the length between the thumb and the little finger when extended, or about 9 inches. So Goliath stood anywhere from 9 feet, 3 inches to 11 feet, 9 inches. Some modern interpretations suggest Goliath was just more than 6 feet, which was still considered “giant” in those days.

Gary Clothier is basically right in providing the equivalent of “six cubits and a span” in feet and inches. Yet the usual estimate of an ordinary cubit (not a royal cubit, which was larger) is on the lower end of the range he gives above.

However, it is misleading to suggest that it is only “some modern interpretations” which make Goliath a little more than six feet tall, in comparison to ”the Bible” which measures Goliath as 9 to 11 feet tall. In fact, the Septuagint version of the Bible  - which likely reflects an older version in 1 Samuel 17 – puts Goliath’s height at just over 6 feet. It is the later Masoretic Text of 1 Samuel 17 which exaggerates Goliath’s height to over 9-feet tall. This is not a matter of modern interpretation versus the Bible. This is a matter of an earlier ‘Bible’ versus a later ‘Bible’.

See:
How tall were the biblical giants? Comparative height chart

A discussion of the Septuagint and Masoretic Text versions of 1 Samuel 17

The height of your average Philistine compared to Goliath

The etymological fallacy is one of the most well known fallacies in biblical exegesis. In fact, many people “know” it who don’t understand it.

I was reminded of why etymological explanations are attractive this morning as I was reading Isaiah in the LXX. I came to the word “toparcos” in Isaiah 36:9. Now I couldn’t remember seeing this word before, though I know I have seen it, since I’ve read this very passage before. Almost instantly the etymology of the word struck me, “topos” and “arc-” (in its various forms), thus “rule of a place,” possibly district governor.

Of course, I looked it up. And that is indeed the definition provided.

Those who work with languages will not be at all surprised by any of this. My point is simply that the reason people tend to be attracted to the etymological fallacy is simply the general value of etymology. It solves a few problems for you, and then you try to make it solve everything else. To someone with a hammer, everything is a nail.

Which has led me to use the term “anti-etymological fallacy” by which I mean the fallacy of accusing everyone who appeals to etymology at any point in their argument of the etymological fallacy.

Etymology is useful. It’s sometimes a helpful pointer to meaning. It can help one discover the options when one is deciphering an ancient document. It doesn’t determine meaning.

A few years ago I set out to write a blog on applying statistical methods to NT scholarship. It was something I was experimenting with. One of the previous diagrams that I have linked to on this blog came from that effort.

The great quarry for this was a statistical analysis of the synoptic problem.

The synoptic problem comes from the observation that the gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke are very similar, even down to using identical wording in many places. It is the similarity of exact phrases that means that they can’t be just connected by events: they aren’t similar because they are all describing the same story. They are more than that. They must have a literary dependency. There must be copying going on.

So the question scholars want to answer is: what order were they written, and who was copying from what?

Grizel linked me to some work online that applies simple statistical tests to this question. There was some similar work done on the authorship of Isaiah, out of BYU. That study wasn’t controlled at all well, statistically. The study in the link above is a little better designed. As part of my NT Math project, I also ran a statistical analysis of the synoptic problem, using a slightly different method that looked at larger phrases (a wider n-gram), but was basically the same. My results were very much the same as Dave Gentile’s.

The results show that, statistically, there’s almost nothing one can say about the synoptic problem beyond some minimal statistical evidence for Markan priority: i.e. it confirms that Mark came first and was used by Luke and Matthew.

His study shows that the bits that are shared between Mark and the others are a fraction more similar, linguistically, to the bits that are unique to Mark, than to the bits unique to either of the others. So the bits that Mark shares with the others are much more likely to have been written by Mark. Good result.

But Markan priority has long-since been settled in the academy anyway, so the rather weak statistical result is unlikely to set the world on fire.

The interesting question is whether Luke used Matthew, or whether both used a lost source. (The ‘Farrer’ hypothesis says the former, the ‘Q’ hypothesis the latter). And Dave Gentile, and I, both found that the error in our statistical analysis was far too great to make any conclusion on that. The experiment neither confirmed or denied either hypotheses. And, as Dave points out in his analysis, there are many many other possible situations with intermediate forms of the gospels which the statistics are also consistent with.

So one of those (very common) statistical experiments where the results tell you nothing of interest. Which is a shame.

I came to the conclusion that the decisive arguments were likely to arise out of close analysis of textual patterns, like Mark Goodacre’s beautiful fatigue argument for Markan priority, rather than from coarse aggregate statistics.

This is a guest post by Kiel Christianson.

***

Once there was an extremely wealthy man who had one son. This man’s wealth was seemingly without limits, and his love for his son was said to be boundless. The son’s mother had died in childbirth, so the father was the sole parent and guardian of his son.

The wealthy man promised all his wealth would be endowed to his son, as long as the boy did what he was instructed to do throughout his life. He told the boy to take care of his home, to keep it clean and tidy. The father told him to watch over their neighborhood and help protect his neighbors. He told him to work hard and maintain the integrity and profitability of the family business, from which all their immense wealth derived.

Most of all, he said, the boy must love him, and love him without question, no matter what the son saw, heard, or thought about the world around him.

As the boy grew, he followed his father’s rules meticulously. He kept the family home immaculately clean, inside and out. The son helped all of his neighbors in times of need, from assisting with yard work to comforting them in times of their own personal loss. His largess and kindness spread far beyond his immediate neighbors and friends, throughout the city, state, and nation; he set up food banks and soup kitchens to feed the poor, assured financing for schools and housing for the poor, and fought for justice and peace among people and nations. The family business thrived under the son’s watchful eye and active involvement.

In short, the son did every single thing that his father had demanded of him beyond anyone’s wildest expectations. Every single thing except for one, that is: In his heart of hearts, he did not love his father. He did not like the way his father would allow his employees to suffer, how he would turn a blind eye on hungry mothers, children in need of medical care, and people who worked under the father’s auspices who wore ignorance as if it were a badge of honor. These people were the worst of all, for they worked actively to block advances in medicine, in social programs, in environmental stewardship, all of which would benefit hundreds of millions of people, and they did so in the name of the boy’s father. They misrepresented the man’s wishes, whether they did so on purpose or not. Either way it did not matter to the son. As far as he was concerned, his father might not be able to ease all of the world’s hardships, even with his immense wealth and power. But the man could have, at least, set his craven employees straight — or even better, fire them all — yet he did not.

So the son could not bring himself to love his father without question, and wondered, quite often, whether he was able to love him at all.

Nevertheless, he obeyed every other commandment from his father, and did so with deeper devotion than any other relative, employee, or toady. As a reward for this profound level of filial piety, the father one day called his son to him, and said this:

“Son, you have done everything I have asked of you, and you have done it all better than I could ever have expected of you or any other person. Yet I know that you do not love me.”

The son replied, “Father, you can make people do things, but you cannot make them feel things. Surely you, in all your wisdom and acumen, realize this.”

The father said, “I require love. Because you do not love me, I am sending you away. I will never speak to you again, nor will any of my employees, friends, or others from our family speak to you or acknowledge your presence. You are persona non grata from now on as long as any of us may live. I am only doing this because I love you so much.”

The son left the opulent mansion that had been his home. The father claimed to feel great sadness, but he had demanded love, and that love had not been forthcoming. That was that, and the son died poor, sick, and alone after intense, prolonged, and abject suffering. The father, although he knew this would happen, never once softened his stance, and neither did any of his operatives.

Thus ends the parable of The Terrible Father.

***

Kiel Christianson is an associate professor of cognitive psychology at the University of Illinois. Along with scientific articles, he publishes poetry, essays, political commentary, travel features, and restaurant reviews, and he is also a senior writer for GolfChannel.com.

Dale Allison is on the way to Princeton!  The news is in this press release:

World-Class New Testament Scholar Joins Princeton Theological Seminary Faculty

—Dale C. Allison will teach in Princeton beginning fall 2013—

Princeton, NJ, June 12, 2013–Princeton Theological Seminary is pleased to announce the appointment of Dr. Dale C. Allison Jr. as the Richard J. Dearborn Professor of New Testament Studies, effective July 1, 2013. Allison joins the faculty in the Department of Biblical Studies.

“When we were looking for a world-class scholar, we surveyed 45 academic leaders in the field of New Testament,” said Seminary president Craig Barnes. “Professor Allison’s name was consistently at the top of everyone’s list. Not only is he at the cutting edge of his field of scholarship, he is also a fabulous teacher, and clearly devoted to the service of Jesus Christ.”

More at the link above.  Great news for PTS.

Optional headline: A significant temperature decrease in Hades has been reported.

Click on image for a larger view.

What you're seeing above is an internal beta for Accordance 10.x for Windows, running in Windows 8. Yes, Accordance, which has been exclusively on Apple platforms since it was launched in 1994, is coming to Windows. This is the second internal beta released in as many weeks. Although an exact release date (beyond simply 2013) has not yet been announced, the build I have is already starting to impress. 

If you've been wanting to run Accordance--with all its speed and power--but didn't want to leave Microsoft Windows to do so, you won't have to wait much longer.

For what it's worth, I would suggest that the beta of Accordance for Windows is already faster than similar programs on the same platform.

Stay tuned. More details to come. 

 

The image above has been posted with permission. Your questions, thoughts, comments and rebuttals are welcome below.

By: Amnon Ben-Tor, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Edited and abridged from NEA 76.2 (2013): 66–67 (see editorial note below)

Tel Hazor, “the head of all those kingdoms” (Joshua 11:10), is the largest tell in Israel and encompasses a total of approximately 800 dunams (200 acres). With the exception of two gaps in the settlement, one at the beginning of the Middle Bronze Age and the other following the destruction of the Canaanite city during the transition between the Late Bronze Age and the beginning of the Iron Age, Hazor was continuously occupied for approximately two millennia, from the first half of the third millennium BCE to the late eighth century BCE.

Following the Assyrian conquest of Hazor in the year 732 BCE along with several other important sites in the region (as referenced in 2 Kgs 15:29), a period of decline set in until the site was finally deserted. A short-lived Israelite (?) settlement (Stratum IV) was established on top of the ruins of the fortified Israelite city. Poor traces of occupation attributable to the Assyrian, Persian, Hellenistic, and Islamic periods (Strata III–0, respectively) were noted at different locations on Hazor’s acropolis.

In the 1950s and 1960s, extensive excavations were carried out by Professor Yigael Yadin in two parts of the site: the Upper City (the “acropolis”) and the Lower City (the “enclosure”). The excavations, conducted on behalf of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, were the largest conducted at any site in Israel at the time. Hazor’s selection for excavation was no doubt due to the biblical accounts in the books of Joshua and Judges of the settlement of Israelite tribes in Canaan.

According to this narrative, Hazor was the site of a decisive battle, as a result of which “Joshua took all that land: the hill country and all the Negeb and all the land of Goshen and the lowland and the Arabah and the hill country of Israel and its lowland, from Mount Halak, which rises toward Seir, as far as Baal-gad in the valley of Lebanon below Mount Hermon” (Joshua 11:16–17). The book of Judges presents a different version: “So the Lord sold them into the hand of King Jabin of Canaan, who reigned in Hazor; the commander of his army was Sisera, who lived in Harosheth-ha-goiim. … So on that day God subdued King Jabin of Canaan before the Israelites. Then the hand of the Israelites bore harder and harder on King Jabin of Canaan, until they destroyed King Jabin of Canaan” (Judges 4:2, 23–24).

From the outset, the early excavators of Hazor disagreed regarding the credibility of these accounts and which of the two was a description of what had actually taken place. Yadin and Aharoni were the main protagonists: Yadin’s position, following William F. Albright, was that the narrative in the book of Joshua was more trustworthy than the version in the book of Judges, which Yohanan Aharoni, following Albrecht Alt and Martin Noth, preferred.

Yadin and Aharoni, faculty members of the Department of Archaeology at the Hebrew University, were the chief directors of the excavations. Joining them as area directors were Claire Epstein, Trude Dothan, Moshe Dothan, Ruth Amiran, Jean Perrot, and others. Immanuel Dunayevsky served as the chief architect.

It would be no exaggeration to say that these archaeologists were the “founding fathers” of biblical archaeology in Israel who taught excavation methods to generations of future archaeologists. Dunayevsky established new surveying and registration methods that, even after more than fifty years, are still in use today by archaeologists working at biblical sites. During the five seasons of excavations by the Yadin expedition (1955–1958, 1968), many students from the Hebrew University (the only university in Israel at that time) participated alongside a technical staff of surveyors, draftspersons, photographers, and others. The site of Hazor, in fact, served as the main school for teaching “field archaeology,” and many of its graduates have since then taught archaeology at universities in Israel and around the world or were employed by government institutions such as the Israel Antiquities Authority and various museums, where they passed on the “Israeli tradition” from one generation of archaeologists to another. Today students at the Institute of Archaeology at the Hebrew University are the fourth (!) generation receiving their initial training in field archaeology at Hazor.

The excavations of the Yadin expedition uncovered a rich and varied assortment of large finds, including fortifications, temples, dwellings, and water systems, and a wide variety of small finds, such as local and imported pottery, weapons, numerous art objects, statues of dignitaries and deities, cuneiform documents, and the like. These finds attest to the city’s importance and to the significant role it played in the economic and political scene in the ancient Near East, in both the neighboring regions and in far-off lands. The excavation results aroused great interest among scholars in many fields: historians, biblical scholars, specialists in ancient art and religion, and other diverse fields.

Some accepted the expedition’s conclusions; others challenged them. In the center of the controversy stood, and still stands, the Yadin expedition’s conclusions concerning the biblical narratives that refer to Hazor, especially the questions of the conquest and settlement of the Land of Israel (Joshua 11:10–17) and the attribution of the construction of Hazor’s fortifications (dated by Yadin to the tenth century BCE) to Solomon (1 Kings 9:15). Both the Yadin expedition and the current excavations established that the number of Iron Age strata dating from the eleventh century to the last third of the eighth century BCE (seven strata divided into numerous substrata) exceeds the number of contemporary strata discovered at any other site in Israel. It is, therefore, not surprising that Hazor stands at the forefront of the ongoing controversy over the reliability of biblical historiography. Despite the vast area explored by Yadin’s excavations and the immense contribution the resulting data gave to the study of the history of the southern Levant and neighboring countries, the excavations left many questions unanswered and others with unsatisfactory answers. Some of the conclusions reached by the Yadin excavations remain open to dispute, and they are tackled by members of the renewed excavations.

Editorial note: The Ancient Near East Today is pleased to feature several edited and abridged versions of articles on the renewed excavations at Hazor that are published by ASOR in the journal Near Eastern Archaeology 76.2 (2013). The above essay by Prof. Ben-Tor serves as an introduction to the issue. An abridged version is reproduced here together with a gallery of illustrations that give a flavor of what is found in whole issue. In July, August, and September, ANE Today will feature articles treating the Canaanite City (July), the United Monarchy (August), and the 8th and 9th centuries (September). Each essay will be accompanied by illustrations that demonstrate how important Hazor is to our understanding of the biblical world and the region in general.

Do you want read to these articles on Tel Hazor in their entirety? We are offering 30 days of free access to this issue of Near Eastern Archaeology! All you have to do is follow this link to sign up for free access through JSTOR: https://www.jstor.org/token/NEA76.2/mark.asor.org ! (If you already have a myJSTOR account, sign in before you click the link). As an added bonus, if you are not already a Friend of ASOR, we will register you as a Friend so that you receive The Ancient Near East Today each month for free.

Gallery of selected images from NEA 76.2 (2013)—Issue on Hazor:

---

If you liked this article please sign up to receive The Ancient Near East Today via email! It’s our FREE monthly email newsletter. The articles will be delivered straight to your inbox, along with links to news, discoveries, and resources about the Ancient Near East. Just go here to sign up.

All content provided on this blog is for informational purposes only. The American Schools of Oriental Research (ASOR) makes no representations as to the accuracy or completeness of any information on this blog or found by following any link on this blog. ASOR will not be liable for any errors or omissions in this information. ASOR will not be liable for any losses, injuries, or damages from the display or use of this information. The opinions expressed by Bloggers and those providing comments are theirs alone, and do not reflect the opinions of ASOR or any employee thereof.

(The second in a series of posts about little-known Christian Apocrypha that could not be included in my recent book, Secret Scriptures Revealed: A New Introduction to the the Christian Apocrypha, to be released later this month)

While reading Bart Ehrman's latest book, Forgery and Counterforgery: The Use of Literary Deceit in Early Christian Polemics (Oxford 2013), I came across a reference to, apparently, lost letters of Jesus to Peter and Paul. These letters are not typically mentioned in studies of the Christian Apocrypha, though they should be part of the discussion of apocryphal letters of Jesus (particularly the Abgar Correspondence).

The reference is found in Augustine's  Harmony of the Gospels (De cons. Evang.). Augustine is refuting claims that Jesus composed texts of magic. It's interesting that Augustine's method of refutation is to point out that Jesus could not have written to Paul since Paul was not a Christian until after Jesus' death. Here is the relevant  excerpt (1.14-16; translated by S.D.F. Salmond, from Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, Vol. 6. Edited by Philip Schaff. Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1888):

14. But, indeed, these persons rise to such a pitch of folly as to allege that the books which they consider to have been written by Him contain the arts by which they think He wrought those miracles, the fame of which has become prevalent in all quarters. And this fancy of theirs betrays what they really love, and what their aims really are. For thus, indeed, they show us how they entertain this opinion that Christ was the wisest of men only for the reason that He possessed the knowledge of I know not what illicit arts, which are justly condemned, not merely by Christian discipline, but even by the administration of earthly government itself. And, in good truth, if there are people who affirm that they have read books of this nature composed by Christ, then why do they not perform with their own hand some such works as those which so greatly excite their wonder when wrought by Him, by taking advantage of the information which they have derived from these books?

15. Nay more, as by divine judgment, some of those who either believe, or wish to have it believed, that Christ wrote matter of that description, have even wandered so far into error as to allege that these same books bore on their front, in the form of epistolary superscription, a designation addressed to Peter and Paul. And it is quite possible that either the enemies of the name of Christ, or certain parties who thought that they might impart to this kind of execrable arts the weight of authority drawn from so glorious a name, may have written things of that nature under the name of Christ and the apostles. But in such most deceitful audacity they have been so utterly blinded as simply to have made themselves fitting objects for laughter, even with young people who as yet know Christian literature only in boyish fashion, and rank merely in the grade of readers.

16. For when they made up their minds to represent Christ to have written in such strain as that to His disciples, they bethought themselves of those of His followers who might best be taken for the persons to whom Christ might most readily be believed to have written, as the individuals who had kept by Him on the most familiar terms of friendship. And so Peter and Paul occurred to them, I believe, just because in many places they chanced to see these two apostles represented in pictures as both in company with Him. For Rome, in a specially honourable and solemn manner, commends the merits of Peter and of Paul, for this reason among others, namely, that they suffered [martyrdom] on the same day. Thus to fall most completely into error was the due desert of men who sought for Christ and His apostles not in the holy writings, but on painted walls. Neither is it to be wondered at, that these fiction-limners were misled by the painters. For throughout the whole period during which Christ lived in our mortal flesh in fellowship with His disciples, Paul had never become His disciple. Only after His passion, after His resurrection, after His ascension, after the mission of the Holy Spirit from heaven, after many Jews had been converted and had shown marvellous faith, after the stoning of Stephen the deacon and martyr, and when Paul still bore the name Saul, and was grievously persecuting those who had become believers in Christ, did Christ call that man [by a voice] from heaven, and made him His disciple and apostle. How, then, is it possible that Christ could have written those books which they wish to have it believed that He did write before His death, and which were addressed to Peter and Paul, as those among His disciples who had been most intimate with Him, seeing that up to that date Paul had not yet become a disciple of His at all?

When it comes to writing about attacks on science, there’s rarely good news to report, so I’m savoring this: Once again, the Kansas state Board of Education (BoE) approved solid science standards for students in the Sunflower State.

Science standards are a set of guidelines used by teachers to help them educate students; they list recommendations and goals for what the students should understand by a certain grade level. For example, by eighth grade, they should know that visible light is only a small part of the electromagnetic spectrum, which also includes radio waves, infrared, ultraviolet, and so on. Each state has its own standards, and there’s a national set as well.

There are standards for quite a few fields of science, like chemistry, physics, astronomy … and biology. Of course, fundamentalists went ballistic about this and a few years back sneakily got creationists elected to the BoE. They twice voted to severely weaken the teaching of evolution. This—rightly—made Kansas the laughingstock of the planet.

In 2006, more moderate folks were elected to the board, and sure enough, soon thereafter, years of far-right religious damage was undone in Kansas when the BoE voted to put evolution back in the science standards where it belonged. And now, in 2013, it’s happened again—the BoE approved science standards that support evolution and its wonderfully coherent and cohesive explanations of biology. I looked over the old (2007) standards and the new ones where they discuss evolution, and they look pretty good to me. Creationists have also attacked such things as the Big Bang and, of course, global warming, but I see those are in the science standards as well.

Hooray!

Of course, not everyone agrees with me. In the SFGate.com article linked in the first paragraph, I got some grim amusement by the quoted comment of Ken Willard, a conservative (and creationist) representing Kansas District 7 on the BoE. He said:

Both evolution and human cause of global climate change are presented in these standards dogmatically. This nonobjective, unscientific approach to education standards amounts to little more than indoctrination in political correctness.

Oh, those wacky truth twisters. As I’ve pointed out before, loud voices of anti-science commonly accuse those of us in the reality-based community of doing what they themselves do. Contrary to what Willard is saying, evolution and global warming are indeed represented quite fairly in the standards. Denying them, as Willard would have us do, is what would be dogmatic and unscientific.

I’ll note that Willard’s district includes the city of Hutchison, which is home to the Kansas Cosmosphere and Space Center, an extraordinary museum devoted to science and space exploration. There may be some irony in that.

There were other objections to the new standards, but those were, happily, in the minority. In the end, the BoE voted 8-2 to approve the standards and keep real science in the classroom.

I congratulate the BoE and hope that they serve as an exemplar for other, less enlightened states.

Louisiana, I’m looking at you.

Yesterday, in a rant against scholastic investigation into Scripture, Ken Ham makes the startling statement:

Now, there is not a single statement in Scripture affirming polygamy…

Hold up there, Kenny. I don’t think you know what you’re talking about. Unless, of course, you are going to redefine words.

Are statements affirming polygamy found in Scripture?

I mean, we have 2 Samuel 12.1-11 where God chastises David through the Prophet Nathan about the incident with Bathsheba. Several statements affirm polygamy is God’s gift to David (2 Samuel 12.8) and that the removal of polygamy from David is a sign of God’s anger (2 Samuel 12.11).

Then, you have the book of Hosea wherein God commands the prophet to marry two women with no mention of divorce.

Finally, God is pictured in Jeremiah 3.8 as married to Israel (the Northern Tribes) and Judah (the Southern Tribes).

Of course, maybe Ken is right. There is no single statement affirming polygamy, only a few.

(Also, by the time you get to the New Testament, polygamy was more than frowned upon, but the point of the post is to slightly mock the guy who doesn’t read Scripture, phd or not. In a previous offering, N.T. Wright shows how we understand polygamy as a biblical practice but how monogamy is the ideal — Scripture and the Authority of God: How to Read the Bible Today)

---

My books are now available on Amazon. Mimetic Criticism and the Gospel of Mark: Introduction and Commentary and From Fear to Faith: Stories of Hitting Spiritual Walls is in paperback or Kindle

The Houston Atheists have a challenge for you. Aron Ra and I are willing to lower ourselves to engage you in debate. This is a very rare exception to my policy of refusing to debate clowns — you should take advantage of it. Houston. 1 August. You’re going to be there anyway. We’ll meet you to discuss your belief that the earth is only roughly 6000 years old, and that common descent is false. Imagine the prestige you’ll acquire when you rout the scientists with your logic and evidence! Imagine real hard! If you don’t show up, Houston Atheists will be putting on a series of talks that directly refute the nonsense Answers in Genesis peddles, without you there to challenge it.

Collectanea Christiana Orientalia (CCO)
ISSN: 1697-2104

Collectanea Christiana Orientalia is an International Journal related to Christian Studies (Arabic, Coptic, Syriac, Ethiopic, Greek, Armenian, Georgian, etc.), which includes articles in English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish.

 [First posted in AWOL 15 September 2011. Updated 13 June 2013]

Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium (CSCO): Scriptores Coptici (From the Oriental Institute Research Archives)

• vol. 1 = series secunda, tomus II, textus: Iohannes Leipoldt, W. Crum (eds.), Sinuthii archimandritae vita et opera omnia, I, Paris, 1906.
• vol. 2 = series secunda, tomus IV, textus: Iohannes Leipoldt, W. Crum (eds.), Sinuthii archimandritae vita et opera omnia, III, Paris, 1908.
• vol. 3 = series tertia, tomus I, textus: I. Balestri, H. Hyvernat (eds.), Acta martyrum, I, Paris, 1907.
• vol. 4 = series tertia, tomus I, versio: I. Balestri, H. Hyvernat (eds.), Acta martyrum, I, Paris, 1908 (Reprint: Louvain, 1960).
• vol. 5 = series secunda, tomus V, textus: Iohannes Leipoldt, W. Crum (eds.), Sinuthii archimandritae vita et opera omnia, IV, Paris, 1913.
• vol. 6 = series tertia, tomus II, textus: I. Balestri, H. Hyvernat (eds.), Acta martyrum, II, Paris, 1924
• vol. 7 = series tertia, tomus VII, textus: L. Th. Lefort (ed.), S. Pachomii vita bohairice scripta, Paris, 1925.
• vols. 9-10 = series tertia, tomus VIII, textus: L. Th. Lefort (ed.), S. Pachomii vitae sahidice scriptae, Paris, 1933.

• G. Garitte, S. Antonii vitae. Versio sahidica (CSCO, 117. Scriptores coptici, 13; Paris: E typographeo reipublicae, 1949).
• L. Th. Lefort, S. Athanase. Lettres festales et pastorales en copte (CSCO, 150, Scriptores coptici, 19; Louvain: L. Durbecq, 1955) – Coptic text.
• L. Th. Lefort, S. Athanase. Lettres festales et pastorales en copte (CSCO, 151, Scriptores coptici, 20; Louvain: L. Durbecq, 1955) – French translation.
• C. D. G. Müller, Die Bücher der Einsetzung der Erzengel Michael und Gabriel (CSCO, 225, Scriptores coptici, 31; Louvain: Secrétariat du CorpusSCO, 1962) – Coptic text.
• C. D. G. Müller, Die Bücher der Einsetzung der Erzengel Michael und Gabriel (CSCO, 226, Scriptores coptici, 32; Louvain: Secrétariat du CorpusSCO, 1962) – German translation.

Francisco Arriaga posted a comment below, drawing our attention to this collection:

CSCO Collection (39)

Adam Laats is an assistant professor of education and history at SUNY Binghamton, and he is the author of Fundamentalism and Education in the Scopes Era: God, Darwin, and the Roots of America’s Culture Wars. Over at his blog, he has posted a review of Among the Creationists. So, what did he think?

Rosenhouse’s book is required reading for any outsider who hopes to understand the world of American creationism in the twenty-first century. Rosenhouse deliberately eschews the simple, satisfying approach of most outsiders. He does not belittle or deride these ideas or their adherents, though he does forcefully argue against them.

Score! Anything else?

So stop reading this tripe and go get yourself a copy of Rosenhouse’s book. For those of you who are creationists or recovering creationists, the volume will give you a sense of how the movement appears to a socially pleasant but intellectually hostile outsider. To us outsiders—liberals, scientists, and others who have only tangential knowledge about American creationism—this book is an absolute must read. It joins other indispensable books in this field, such as Ron Numbers’ The Creationists, George Marsden’s Fundamentalism and American Culture, and Edward Larson’s Summer for the Gods as starting places to understand this durable culture war battlefield.

Double score!

The comments thread makes for some interesting reading as well. A creationist troll calling himself ChazIng showed up to spew some venom in my general direction. Normally I would ignore such a thing, but in this case his criticisms are so amusingly demented that I thought it might be worth providing a few counterpoints.

He seems to have based his opinion of the book on a few pages he found at Google Preview. That leads him to say things like this:

Ch 2 contains the term “superficial sophistication” without explanation of the specifics and he seems to conflate ID with YEC and then YEC with fundamentalism.

Actually, Chapter 15, which bears the subtle title “Intelligent Design vs. Young-Earth Creationism,” is all about the distinctions between the two. Even taking Chapter 2 in isolation, however, shows that ChazIng is making stuff up. I describe ID as a softer form of creationism, which it is. Later I imply, but do not explicitly state, that YEC is one part of “the strongest forms of fundamentalist beliefs,” which, again, it is. There are no false conflations to be found here.

Here’s something else that made me smile:

Ch 5 shows Rosenhouse relishing in gross theological ignorance. He makes no attempt to obtain more first-hand information about the views he disparages or to engage the wealth of scholarly theological books and articles which he can easily source from his library.

Chapter 5 addresses a few general problems I have with religion. It is from the book’s introductory section, in which I was merely setting the stage for the rest of the book. Just so that there could be no reasonable misunderstanding of what I was doing, the chapter includes the following paragraph:

Let me stress at the outset that it is not my intention here to develop a comprehensive philosophical argument for the views I profess. Some of the issues I raise shall be dealt with more carefully elsewhere in the book, but this chapter’s main purposes are simply to tell you what I believe and to give some indication of why I believe it.

Since Chapters 14, 18, 24, 26 and 27 are all specifically about the scholarly theological and philosophical literature on science and religion, I’d say ChazIng’s criticism falls a bit flat. My book of barely 200 pages has more than 300 items in its bibliography. A quick perusal of my references will show that I discuss every major theologian and philosopher of religion that has discussed the evolution issue, and quite a few minor ones as well.

But ChazIng is especially incensed by my lack of respect for Werner Gitt, a prominent YEC who has made some very dubious claims about the concept of information. ChazIng writes:

Rosenhouse’s chapter on Gitt is a rehash from a 2005 post here (is that legal?): [ http://www.pandasthumb.org/archives/2005/07/report_on_the_2_4.html]. He claims that Gitt stated that (1.) “mutations ALWAYS degrade information” and (2.) he would be refuted if someone were to “produce a single natural mechanism that could increase the information content of the genome” and (3.) that a main creationist argument was the same as point (1.).

First, point 3 is incorrect unless he is talking about pop-creationism [ http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/nab2/mutations-engine-of-evolution]. Second, Gitt (2000) states: “This idea is central in representations of evolution, but mutations can only cause changes in existing information. There can be no increase in information, and IN GENERAL the results are injurious.” He said this in the year 2000, some 5 years BEFORE meeting Rosenhouse. Third, I have sent an email to creation.com for a response from Gitt. I hope he responds.

Now, even if a duplicated gene mutates, that shows a statistical increase in information (as Gitt himself has stated). However, does the mutation (or accumulations thereof) add novel function? If Rosenhouse has examples of this, that would be great. He states that there are “several well-known mechanisms which can lead to an increase in information content” but only lists one: “duplication and divergence.” His argument that if A mutates to B and then mutates back to A “must represent a gain of information” is a macro-evolutionary non-sequitur as A was originally coded and there is no new functionality despite informational `increase.’ This is just too silly coming from an academic and confirms (for me at least) that one should not trust a mathematician on practical science.

Gitt, W. 2000. In the Beginning was Information. CLV: Bielefeld, Germany: 127. [http://www.clv-server.de/pdf/255255.pdf‎]

ChazIng later went on to say:

I am confused by your answer. First off, this is about Gitt, not larger creationist claims. Second, it is unbelievable (to me) that Gitt would make the statements Rosenhouse asserts he did. Third, there is no groundbreaking notion proposed by Gitt. What gaping hole in mainstream genetics are you referring to exactly?

That’s all completely unhinged. Shall we begin?

First, yes, it’s legal to use material in a book that you previously posted at a blog (for heaven’s sake). As it happens though, if you compare Chapter 12 of the book to my earlier blog post, I think you will find that the book contains far more detail than I included in the post. My presentation of the basic facts of what happened is the same in both, for what I trust are obvious reasons. But my discussion of the scientific issues is more comprehensive in the book. Does anyone else think I behaved improperly?

Next, Gitt claimed in his talk to have discovered ten new laws of nature about information, and then used these laws to suggest that he had proved the existence of God and the soul, among other things. So, yes, I’d call that a groundbreaking notion. It’s also a ludicrous notion, which is why no one outside the creationist subculture has paid any attention to it.

Moving on, I accurately described what Gitt said during the talk and during the Q and A. He was completely unambiguous. Moreover, that little quote from Gitt is only trivially different from what I reported. (It is also completely false. Mutations are not generally injurious. They are generally neutral, meaning they have no discernible effect on the organism’s fitness.) The statement that mutations cannot increase the information content of the genome is precisely what we were arguing about. Nothing in my argument hinged on the difference between “always degrade information,” and “are generally injurious.”

The one example I gave of a genetic mechanism that can increase the information content of the genome, duplication with subsequent divergence, is both easy to understand and probably the most important such mechanism in evolution. And it is more than enough to refute Gitt’s claims, which is what I was discussing in the book. If you’re curious for more, here’s a helpful primer.

His incomprehensible discussion of my simple point about mutations reversing themselves, that if the mutation from A to B represents a loss of information then the mutation from B back to A would have to represent a gain, had nothing to do with macroevolution. The point was that as a matter of logic it is impossible for all mutations to degrade information.

Finally, ChazIng is right that I didn’t provide any examples of mutations accumulating to provide novel functionalities. That is because such examples would have been entirely irrelevant to the subject of that chapter, which had to do with information growth. But if you would care to have a look at Chapter 21, I think you will find that I provide scholarly references to several such examples.

Believe it or not, ChazIng makes a variety of other claims, all of them silly. Go have a look for yourself. He’s plainly just an idiot trolling for attention. So let me end by calling attention to a far more sensible comment, from an anonymous commenter to the same thread:

Former Creationist here… I was a homeschooled kid who was so into apologetics that I donated money for the building of the Creation Museum. I knew a few Christians who believed in evolution, but they were pretty quiet about it. I did not run into ANY “out” atheists until I was over 20, but I wish I had met some sooner. It would have done me good. I was so, so curious about why people would believe crazy things like evolution, and thought that believing in evolution naturally should lead to despair and nihilism, so it took some major crises in my life before I actually decided what the heck, I’m going to face these questions head-on.

It sucked to realize just how much I’d been lied to in all that Creationist literature over the years, but I’m really glad I did do the research. However, it took a LOT of pain to force me to do that. There is a great deal of fear driving Creationist beliefs, so if you are polite and casual in conversation with believers, while not letting them get away with fallacies, you can over time deconstruct some of the angst blocking the facts from being heard. Really, for eager young teens like myself, presenting oneself as an actual atheist (or theistic evolutionist) and simply being available for questions would go a long, long way. Nothing more needed.

Well said!

The Bible calls early Christians “people of the Way.” I’ve always loved that because it forces me to think about the ways of Jesus. It is such a cliché to ask, “What would Jesus do?” but that doesn’t make the question any less important. When questions arise we all have quick, and often firm, opinions, [Read More...]