The Pokey Finger of God

More speculations on history and the development of myth.
Gnostic Origins: The word ‘Gnostic’ is being phased out of my working vocabulary, as it fails to provide a consistent, definitive meaning. This word is frequently used as a wide brush to tar all manner of deviations from orthodoxy, yet the more I try to pin down [...]

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Another one of those questions that got me started as a child, was “How did Christianity get to be so popular?” The more I learned about it, the less I liked it, and I couldn’t get over the fact that the Roman persecution should have driven the whole thing out of existence very early on.
It [...]

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I haven’t given myself the time to really study anything in a while. Riding on airplanes provides a lot of time to read, and it’s really sparked a further round of heretical research better than anything I’ve really done in a while. I had to go back to my original notes, but now I’m hip [...]

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As part of my travel kit, I loaded a number of free text documents to my PDA. I’ve learned to really enjoy reading in this format.
One of the books I’m reading now is “A Short History of the Baptists”, by Henry Vedder, which turns out to be a remarkable overview of Christian history - from [...]

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As the hyper-rationalists like Dawkins are on the rise and old-school moralists like Robertson and Falwell are draining away, I find myself, unable to embrace either position, hoping for the mutual destruction of each in some dramatic, dying battle.
Selfish Gene was a mind-blowing read, and it allowed me a perspective that has significantly colored my [...]

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