As you can see from Texas A&M’s anthropology aggregating site (which is one of my favorite places on the net), at least a dozen stories have appeared in the past week about new archaeological finds near Stonehenge. Using ground penetrating radar and other non-invasive technology, archaeologists have discovered another henge — which was wooden, approximately [...]
Tags:Aztecs·Babylon·barrows·burial grounds·chieftains·city-states·cosmology·Druids·Egypt·elites·empires·ground penetrating radar·materialism·Mayans·megalithic·megalithic architecture·megalithic structures·pagan·pyramids·royal family·Stonehenge·Sumeria·symbolism·temples·unilineal evolution·Woodhenge·ziggurats
In the New York Times Science section, Rachel Donadio reports on a museum in Florence that treats Galileo as both a “secular” and “religious” saint; the curators thus commingle two concepts (the secular/religious) that were being developed during the Renaissance and which reached fruition during the Enlightenment:
The Galileo case is often seen starkly as science’s [...]
Tags:beatification·Catholic Church·Christianity·cosmology·enlightenment·essentializing·excommunication·Florence·Formations of the Secular·Galileo·Gallileo Museum·Genealogies of Religion·heretic·Islam·Naturalization·Rachel Donadio·relics·religious·Renaissance·saint·secular·Talal Asad·William Conolly
Over at HuffPo Religion, Pete Enns wonders whether God speaks to him and others through fiction. Although Enns is discussing “a non-literal interpretation of the bible,” which raises critical and unresolved issues of reader-responses and interpretive communities, my guess would be that if he did write, evidence for it can be found in J.R.R. Tolkien’s [...]
Tags:bible·cosmology·fiction·Gandalf·interpretive communities·J.R.R. Tolkien·L. Ron Hubbard·literalism·Pete Enns·reader response theory·Roland Barthes·Scientology·Stanley Fish·The Lord of the Rings·The Silmarillion·Tolkienism
Over at HuffPo Religion, Dr. Rustum Roy — a geochemist — accuses the media of criminal conduct in its reporting of the non-existent war between science and religion. In the course of doing so, Roy tilts at several windmills and claims special authority for “hard” or “classical” science.
Roy begins by touting his credentials as a [...]
Tags:Christopher Hitchens·classical science·cosmology·Daniel Dennett·Darwin·experimental science·facts lab science·geochemistry·hard science·Harvey Whitehouse·Ian Stevenson·Jeanne Achterberg·Jesse Bering·Justin Barrett·Larry Dossey·Nietzsche·Pascal Boyer·placebo·positivism·Richard Dawkins·Rustum Roy·Sam Harris·Scott Atran·shamanic healing·Stephen Hawkins·Stephen Weinberg
It was with great sadness that I read a recent article in the New York Times documenting the pillaging and destruction of Mesopotamian archaeological sites in Iraq. Although these Sumerian, Akkadian, and Babylonian sites — and previous excavations — receive scant attention outside small groups of antiquities scholars, they are of critical importance to our [...]
Tags:Akkad·Akkadian·anthropomorphic deities·anthropomorphism·Babylon·Babylonian·Christianity·city-states·cosmology·earliest religion·Enlil·heavenly order·Iraq·Islam·Judaic·Judaism·Mesopotamia·Mesopotamian·monotheism·Muslim·polytheism·Samuel Noah Kramer·Sumer·Sumerian·Sumerian pantheon·temples·The Sumerians·Ubaid·Ubaidian·Ur·ziggurats
