The Pokey Finger of God

The nature of death is tied to the structure of life: two concepts with which modern science continues to struggle. While we know ourselves to be alive and know that those who are dead are lost to us, we also know our knowledge is incomplete, if not suspect.
I have had the opportunity on a number [...]

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Does anyone have a comment or specific argument against Alvar Ellegard’s Jesus: One Hundred Years Before Christ? (Amazon) His argument is that Christianity developed from diasporaic Essene communities that had already developed a standing mythos about a “Teacher of Righteousness”, and that the later stories about a Jesus in Gallilee were much later accretions.
This [...]

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In the process of studying Biblical history, I’ve also studied a little bit of Greek, Hebrew, theology, philosophy, anthropology (physical and cultural), archeology, literary analysis, linguistics, economics, politics, military theory, and even (yes) basket weaving. The Bible, itself, is pretty sparse, so all these other techniques are used to illuminate this ancient and hoary document.
My [...]

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Religion is a foul bane to the ultra-rational, and lo, how it grinds their nerves to witness otherwise normal humans submit to fantasy. I’ve read many attempts to convince the faithful of their irrational error, and have noticed that people continue to go to churches and temples. Sam Harris is very entertaining in this interview [...]

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I shoulda styled my upcoming talk on heresies as having something to do with Da Vinci Code. I suppose I could still do that, but then I’d feel like I’d have to actually read that book.
I understand that there’s a whole genre of fiction based around a kind of modernized apocalyptic Sci Fi in which [...]

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In the time it took me to build this much, I probably could have found a really nice once somewhere else. I did a modicum of searching, but since I’ve been reading Burton Mack’s New Testament origins book, I’ve been really inspired to see a big map with all these different idealogical interconnections clearly shown. [...]

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