Over at The New York Review of Books, Peter Brown covers Alan Cameron’s recently published tome The Last Pagans of Rome. For those of us who are not classicists, it appears that an abridged volume would be useful sometime in the future. I suppose I will read it before then but it looks a bit [...]
Tags:Alan Cameron·Bernard Lewis·Faith and Power·Fred Donner·Islam·Islamic history·Malise Ruthven·Muhammad and the Believers·Peter Brown·The Last Pagans of Rome
Let’s start with the lengthy story of Oscar winning Apostate, Paul Haggis and his life in Scientology. It appears in The New Yorker and is yet another expose of Scientology that will leave you baffled. When science fiction becomes science religion would be a good title for it.
Next we have Neil Strauss’ humorous piece, God [...]
Tags:apostate·Billy Ray Cyrus·Buddhist Ecclesiastical Law·Christopher Beam·David Miscaviage·God at the Grammys·Miley Cyrus·Mormons·Neil Strauss·Paul Haggis·Rupert Murdoch·Satan·Scientology·South Park·Sri Lanka·Super Best Friends·Theravada·Tom Cruise·Wickrema Weerasooria
It was great to see Dana Carvey back on SNL last week — he has hardly aged and it was like he never left the show. In case you missed it, he opened with Mike Myers doing “Wayne’s World,” but his reprise of “Church Chat” was the highlight. Church Lady hosted the Kardashians, “the holy [...]
Tags:Church Chat·Church Lady·Dana Carvey·Jersey Shore·Justin Bieber·Kardashians·Satan·Saturday Night Live·SNL·Snookie
Until recently I had never heard of Francis Chan, who appears to be a rock star in evangelical or charismatic Christian circles. He certainly does not fit the mold, or stereotype, of other infamous Christians of that ilk. It sounds like he may have been reading Kierkegaard (Fear and Trembling) and decided to skip the [...]
Tags:charismatic·Cornerstone Church·Dave Chapelle·evangelical·Fear and Trembling·Francis Chan·Kierkegaard·Simi Valley
Google recently launched its Google Books Ngram Viewer, which promises to be a fantastic research tool. Although most of the reviews have focused on word or phrase searches and trending, the tool has a barely noted feature which is invaluable. Here are the basics provided by the WSJ:
[S]cientists at Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, [...]
Tags:database·evolution of religion·Google Books Ngram Viewer·historical research·history of ideas·history of science·phrase search·source search·word search
Anyone interested in the history of religions will inevitably become familiar with all manner of truly fantastic stories and beliefs. Whether we are talking about the soul flights and death duels of shamans, the avatars and exploits of Vishnu, or the appearance of Moroni and golden tablets of Joseph Smith, all religious traditions have their [...]
Tags:Adam·apple·avatars·bizarre theology·Christianity·Christians·Eve·golden tablets·Jesus·Jewish·Joseph Smith·Moroni·Satan·Scientology·shamans·sin·strange doctrine·thetans·Vishnu
Martin Gaskell is by all accounts an accomplished astronomer. He applied for a job as the director of the University of Kentucky’s observatory. On its face, his application was deemed to be the best of the bunch. He was, however, denied the job and is now suing for religious discrimination.
By all accounts, Gaskell is a [...]
Tags:astronomy·Christian·Creation Museum·creationism·creationist·discrimination·evolution·Genesis·Martin Gaskell·Pharyngula·pseudoscience·PZ Myers·Shelly Steiner·University of Kentucky
Anthropologists are at it again: engaged in fruitless and unproductive arguments about whether the discipline is a “science.” The furor revolves around proposed changes to the American Anthropological Association’s mission statement:
The purposes of the Association shall be to advance anthropology as the science that studies public understanding of humankind in all its aspects, through This [...]
Tags:AAA·American Anthropological Association·anthropology·archaeology·biological anthropology·cultural anthropology·four field anthropology·holistic anthropology·humanities·linguistics·science
After many years of meaning to do so, I finally came round to reading Barbara Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible. The reviews are uniformly favorable if not fantastic, and it is considered to be a modern classic. For good reason. Kingsolver hit a home run.
If you are like me and have been putting off this read [...]
Tags:Africa·Baptist·Barbara Kingsolver·Congo·missionaries·Oprah·post-colonial·The Poisonwood Bible
An intense forest fire in Israel has resulted in 41 tragic deaths. It was started by two teenagers who left a bonfire unattended. Although the real world causation and negligence is clear, one of Israel’s leading rabbis contends that God stoked the fire because many Israelis are not observing the sabbath. By this twisted reasoning, [...]
Tags:bonfire·causation·correlation·fire·Israel·Ovadia Yosef·Pat Robertson
