Earlier this week I reviewed Bart Ehrman's new book, 'How Jesus Became God', and noted that there was already a response book to it. Now Ehrman has posted a response to that response on his blog. He posted it publicly (ie not paywalled). My publisher, HarperOne, asked me to write a 1000-word response to the … Continue reading Response to the Response: How God Became Jesus « Christianity in Antiquity (CIA): The Bart Ehrman Blog
Tag: God
What Astronomy Says About Religion | Seth Shostak
It's a recurrent experience that never fails to perplex me: Random people will seek my advice on questions of religion. Rather than posing queries about how the cosmos works, they want me to enlighten them on why. Bottom line: We were so ordinary as to be thoroughly invisible -- as would be any other worlds, … Continue reading What Astronomy Says About Religion | Seth Shostak
How Jesus became God
I think most of my readers know that I'm not religious. However, I am interested in both the history and anthropology of religion. This interest has led me to read a number of books by Bart D. Ehrman, a New Testament scholar. In the last decade or so, Ehrman has exposed the public to a … Continue reading How Jesus became God
The fine tuning “problem”
An interesting article byJonathan Borwein and David H. Bailey on why science needs philosophy. When renowned scientists now talk seriously about millions of multiverses, the old question “are we alone?” gets a whole new meaning. Our ever-expanding universe is incomprehensibly large – and its rate of growth is apparently accelerating – but if so it’s … Continue reading The fine tuning “problem”
How Jesus Became God | Bart D. Ehrman
Bart Ehrman has a new book out, looking at the historical development of Jesus becoming God. Although I'm not religious, I still find the history of religion interesting, and of the Judeo/Christian tradition in particular fascinating. I have his book on my reading list. Jesus was a lower-class preacher from Galilee, who, in good apocalyptic … Continue reading How Jesus Became God | Bart D. Ehrman
Did “Cosmos” Pick the Wrong Hero?
As I suspected, there's consternation about Cosmos's highlighting of Giordano Bruno, and not all of it is coming from religious apologists. In Cosmos, Tyson does carefully say that Bruno was not a scientist, and instead describes that picture of infinite worlds as a “guess.” But Bruno was not guessing. He was advancing his own, heretical … Continue reading Did “Cosmos” Pick the Wrong Hero?
Mystics and/or Atheists
James McGrath, a theologically progressive Christian, has a post up discussing the many varied conceptions of God: Mystics and/or Atheists. As I indicated on another post, the word 'God' can be used to refer to so many things, that it is accurate to say that we are all theists and all atheists in relation to some … Continue reading Mystics and/or Atheists
The Varieties Of Scientific Experience
There are currently a lot of books on the market which deal with the question of God. Most of them are either polemical, apologetic, or philosophically dense. One that often gets overlooked is Carl Sagan's book, The Variety of Scientific Experience. This book is a transcript of Sagan's Gifford lectures in the 80s, edited by Sagan's … Continue reading The Varieties Of Scientific Experience
Goldstein: The Vindication of Spinoza
Rebecca Goldstein has an interesting post on BigThink about Baruch Spinoza and how prescient many of his ideas were. Spinoza's conception of God was the one believed in by Einstein. This conception, often summarized as being equivalent to the laws of nature, is an example of the wide diversity of notions that the word 'God' … Continue reading Goldstein: The Vindication of Spinoza
Why science, philosophy, or religion cannot determine morality
There are some famous thinkers, Sam Harris and Michael Shermer, among others, who are currently attempting to sell the idea that we should have a "science of morality". They assert that moral propositions reduce to matters of fact about the wellbeing of conscious creatures. Many philosophers, such as Massimo Pigliuci, take umbrage at this, seeing … Continue reading Why science, philosophy, or religion cannot determine morality
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