What makes people pay large sums of money for apparently mundane objects such as JFK’s golf clubs ($772,500 at auction) and rocking chair ($453,500)? Although a portion of the price is related to investment value, this cannot account for the exorbitant amounts paid for these items. Something else is at work. According to a recent [...]
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The world of biblical archaeology and Christendom is all atwitter over the alleged discovery of John the Baptist’s remains, or at least a few of them. As reported by Teresa Shipley at Discovery, the sparse remains consist of skull and hand fragments and a tooth. They were found buried beneath the floor of a 5th [...]
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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
One of the great ironies — and paradoxes — of history is that religionists claim on the one hand that spiritual belief is ineffable, non-material, and not subject to empirical verification, yet on the other hand they are always seeking — sometimes desperately — for material confirmation of their beliefs. This contradictory thinking supposes that [...]
Tags:materialism·Nina Burleigh·relics·skepticism·William Bouwsma
