"We resolve to grant Christians and all other men freedom to observe whatever religion they think fit, so that the divinity, who has his abode in heaven, be propitious and benevolent as well for us as for any of those living under our rule. It seemed to us a very…
This annoys me. In 1971, Dick Van Dyke starred in a movie called Cold Turkey. It was a comedy about a dying town attempting to win a prize sponsored by a tobacco company that was betting against any town remaining "smoke free" for a certain length of time. Van Dyke…
My earlier post regarding Bart Ehrman was not meant to provoke in an outrageous way, although I suspected that it might distress some people. That post drew much more traffic than we are used to at the site, approximately 25,000 unique visitors in three days. It also pulled in more than 200 comments. I was intrigued by the nature of the comments, especially those comments written by people who ostensibly disapproved of Ehrman’s work or his conclusions. In fact, I did a small informal analysis based upon the comments posted by last night (I believe there were about 150 comments posted at that time).
I need to state at the outset that there were more than a few Believers among the commenters who appreciated and even applauded Ehrman’s work. Some of these Believers specifically stated that even if Ehrman was correct, they could still believe in God and Jesus, they could still be good Christians and they found that Ehrman’s work had enriched their understanding of the Bible. My criticism of the distressed commenters is not directed toward these people.
Approximately 35 of the comments were written by people who appeared to be distressed or dismayed by Ehrman’s work. Notably, only three of those commenters acknowledged the basic points made by Ehrman.
What were Ehrman’s basic points? That earlier manuscripts did not contain some information that was contained in some of the later manuscripts that were ultimately adopted part of “the Bible.” Therefore, the new material found in later writings …
Mark Johnson and George Lakoff have written several compelling books based on the premise that humans must use conceptual metaphors to understand abstract concepts. For example, we say "Things are looking up" to express optimism (i.e., good is up). Lakoff and Johnson actually go further. They argue that without metaphors,…
Okay, ladies too. But I was going for a "Sunday, Sun-nday Sunda-ay" feel with the headline. I've always liked this Watterson throwaway reply to Karl Marx from 1987-ish. But, after reading some of the firestorm of responses to Erich's post about Misquoting Jesus, maybe religion hasn't really lost any ground.…