61 degrees

My family is keeping our thermostat at 61 degrees this winter. We decided to bring it down from our traditional 65 degrees in order to save energy. [Note: Late at night at my house, the temperature automatically drops down to 55]. I've put a thermometer in various rooms to check the accuracy of the thermostat. The actual daytime temperature ranges from 59 to 62 in the various rooms. When we are all gone for the day, we manually set the temperature down to 55. When I mention "61 degrees" to people, most of them are surprised; some of them are aghast. Apparently, at least among Americans, 61 degrees is an usually "cold" temperature for the interior of a house in the winter. Over the past couple of weeks, I even heard from several people who keep their thermostats above 70. When you browse the Internet, you will find numerous "authorities" advising you to set the thermostat down to 65 to save energy (e.g., here). Here's an informal survey of quite a few folks. Apparently, even our new energy-conscious President likes it toasty indoors.

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Post on Bart Ehrman’s Misquoting Jesus is open for more comments

About two years ago, I read a terrific book by Bart Ehrman: "Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why." Ehrman is a bible scholar who concluded that in the past 2,000 years, the New Testament has been changed in thousands of minor ways and dozens of major ways. He therefore put up a caution sign to all of those believers who claim that the Bible is inerrant. "Which version of the Bible?" is always an important clarifying question. Here's the link to my post, which I titled: "Who changed the Bible and why? Bart Ehrman’s startling answers." More than 540 comments were quickly contributed to this post, making this page too long to download and display. The phenomenon of the passionate flood of comments confounded me. Many of the comments were irrational, in that the writers had clearly not even read my post (or the book). They argued about things that Ehrman (and I) did not claim and they failed to address Ehrman's meticulous scholarship. For technical reasons I closed off new comments back in March 2007. Last night, I discovered a WordPress plugin that allows me to paginate comments, thereby protecting this website from the sudden and repeated load of 540 comments displayed on one page. Here's the good news, then. Anyone who has not yet had his or her chance to comment on Bart Ehrman's book may now jump in at the original post and post a comment. That's right! If the 540 comments that came before you didn't address an important aspect of Bart Ehrman's book, you may now remedy that omission in the comments to the original post. Godspeed.

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The American war against telephone poles

In a short article entitled, “The War on Telephone Poles,” the February 2009 edition of Harper's Magazine includes a fascinating excerpt from an essay by Eula Biss, which was originally titled "Time and Distance Overcome” as it appeared in the Spring issue of Iowa Review. Biss's article is a terrific example of the human tendency to resist long-range change that would substantially improve the community as a whole. As she clearly documents in her essay, many people ferociously opposed the erection of telephone poles back in the 1880’s. Whatever their stated reasons (aesthetics and defense of private property were often argued), the real reasons for resisting telephone poles were timeless: fear of change combined with a warped sense of the importance the individual in relation to his or her community. The Biss essay reminds us that Americans have long been quite capable of harpooning critical community-building endeavors in the name of individual freedom. We don’t fight telephone poles anymore, but this destructive tendency is one we still see in modern day America. Only a small bit of Biss's essay is available online. The basic idea presented by her essay is that in the 1880s, numerous people (including elected officials and newspapers) ferociously opposed the erection of telephone poles. They argued that telephone poles were ugly. They characterized telephones to be considered playthings of the rich.

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I ask; will the apologists answer?

Following from this post, which describes questions assembled by apparent atheist-to-theist convert Lee Strobel, posed to Hemant Mehta (and destroyed by Greta Christina and Ebonmuse) I decided I'd ask one or two questions of my own of theologists/apologists. Obviously I have my own thoughts on these questions but I really want to see answers from believers on these matters (even from non-believers who are playing Devil's Advocate!). Also, I realise my questions may be in some ways incomplete or even naive, both to theists and non-theists alike, however the following are what occurred to me after reading Strobel's questions (and the ensuing dismemberment of them), and I present them more or less how they appeared in my mind. Without further ado, let us begin.

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Strobel asks; atheists answer and ask “is that the best you’ve got?”

Two of my favourite heathens: Ebonmuse and Greta Christina recently answered what were assumed (before they were read) to be atheist-stumping questions, assembled by some bloke called Lee Strobel. The questions, summarised, were of this calibre: (1) Assuming that events of Jesus' life are accepted historical facts, please provide a naturalistic explanation of the events following the crucifixion. (2) The universe is remarkably fine-tuned for life, doesn't this suggest involvement by a higher entity? (3) Explain how something can come from nothing. (4) Do you ever doubt your atheism? (5) Can we trust our minds to be relaying to us an accurate picture of the universe? Both Greta's and Ebonmuses's responses, while more or less echoing my own thoughts on each topic, are of a succintness and calibre that for now escapes me

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