Book staircase

This bookcase staircase makes the most use of space. But I think the books under the steps would get dusty very quickly.

Hat tipe to BookCrosser Aimlesst)

Books about Science vs. Religion

In the Chronicle of Higher Education, David P. Barash briefly reviews eleven recent books about the gulf, or conflict, between science and religion.
Caution: in transcription to a Web page, some of the words in the review were mashed together: appealto, authoras, theirsto, etc.

The books reviewed are these:

• Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon, by Daniel C. Dennett (Viking Press, 2006)
• The Creation: An Appeal to Save Life on Earth, by Edward O. Wilson (W.W. Norton, 2006)
• Darwin’s Cathedral: Evolution, Religion, and the Nature of Society, by David Sloan Wilson (University of Chicago Press, 2002)
• Evolution and Christian Faith: Reflections of an Evolutionary Biologist, by Joan Roughgarden (Island Press, 2006)
• Evolving God: A Provocative View of the Origins of Religion, by Barbara J. King (Doubleday, 2007)
• The God Delusion, by Richard Dawkins (Houghton Mifflin, 2006)
• The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief, by Francis S. Collins (The Free Press, 2006)
• Letter to a Christian Nation, by Sam Harris (Knopf, 2006)
• Religion Explained: The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought, by Pascal Boyer (Basic Books, 2002)
• Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast: The Evolutionary Origins of Belief, by Lewis Wolpert (W.W. Norton, 2007)
• The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God, by Carl Sagan (The Penguin Press, 2006)

Hat tip to PZ Myers at Pharyngula for the book reviews. As he rightly points out, these reviews are too brief; but if any of the books sound interesting, you can look them up.

Update: ChemBob mentions another book: Victor J. Stenger’s “God, the Failed Hypothesis. How Science Shows that God Does Not Exist” (2007).

"Why do you read so much?"

Here’s a wonderful cartoon from Wiley that, coincidentally, explains why I love to read.

Support the Books for Israel project

Support Nina’s Books4Israel Project. She is sending children’s books to poor schools in Israel, especially to Bedouin schools in the Negev Desert.

Donations are welcome–either books for the children or cash for postage and shipping.

Nina is a technical writer who likes to knit in her spare time. She’s the one who told me about BookCrossing.

Biblical scholarship

From the Truth Journal, “Modern Biblical Scholarship, Philosophy of Religion and Traditional Christianity” by Professor Eleonore Stump:

In recent decades biblical scholarship as practiced in secular universities has been dominated by a certain historical approach…. [W]ith the related disciplines of archaeology, classical languages, and near-Eastern studies, this approach has made significant contributions to our understanding of the historical context in which the biblical texts were composed. But to many outsiders what has been at least equally noteworthy about this approach is the havoc it has wreaked on traditional Christian and Jewish beliefs. In their effort to discover and present what is historically authentic in the Bible, the practitioners of this approach have in effect rewritten the Bible. They have cut the Old and New Testaments into a variety of snippets; some they have discarded entirely as not historically authentic, and others they have reassembled in new ways to form what these scholars consider the truly original historical documents or traditions. They have denied the traditional authorship of certain books of the Bible-for example, they tend to hold that the pastoral apostles (the one to Titus and the two to Timothy) were not really written by Paul-and they have claimed to find the sources for other biblical texts in such clearly human products as Hittite suzerainty treaties and Hellenistic philosophy.The general result of such scholarship is, for example, that a text which a church father such as Augustine may have used to support a particular theological doctrine on the grounds that the text was composed by a disciple of Jesus who was an eye-witness to the events recorded may now be classified as a much later document fabricated by certain anonymous Christians for theological motives and derived by them from identifiable pagan sources. But if the biblical passages on which traditional doctrines are based are truly of such a character, they provide no credible support for the doctrines. [Yes.] And so the general effect of this approach to biblical studies has been a powerful undermining of classical Christian doctrines and a powerful impetus to religious skepticism.

And that’s a bad thing because…?
The author uses rhetorical innuendo to make research into the sources and history of biblical text seem questionable (”a certain approach, “as practiced,” even “But”–where’s the contrast? And why should outsiders care? I should think church insiders would take more note.)

She says they’ve rewritten the bible–why not restored it, or un-re-written it?

The researchers have cut the bible into “snippets” and “discarded” parts of it–how callous and disrespectful of them! Discarding suspect texts is a fine old Biblical tradition: that’s where we got the Apocrypha–books of the bible that were discarded because they were unreliable or contained unpalatable teachings, such as stories of heroic women.

They have “denied the traditional authorship”–or should we say “disproved folklore attribution?

They “tend to hold” opinions — not “they’ve spent years analyzing and now believe that the balance of probabilities is strongly…”

They have “claimed to find” that some epistles weren’t written by the purported author, Paul, but composed later. As someone once said, “Do you claim to have had breakfast this morning or did you have breakfast?”

And an eye-witness texts “may now be classified as”–how about “has been revealed as” a much later document? (Although it’s odd that anyone thinks we have eye-witness reports at all–who are these Biblical naifs?) I’m sure I’ve read that the first mention of Mary and Joseph was in 107 A.D., in a letter from a Bishop.

See also “Christ’s ascent into heaven” or “Dates for early Christian writings“.

Tags: blog against theocracy

Biblical alterations: Christ’s ascent into Heaven

Again, careful comparisons of manuscripts shows that many familiar parts of the New Testament, including much of the evidence for Christ’s resurrection, was added later. The tale of Philip running to the tomb and finding the grave cloths, is a later addition. So is the whole extended tale in Mark 16, 9-20, of the apostles meeting Jesus after the Crucifixion, speaking with him, and watching him ascend into Heaven.

Source: Misquoting Jesus by Bart Ehrman
See also “Women should keep silent” or “Biblical scholarship“

Tags: blog against theocracy

Biblical alterations: women should be silent

Textual analysis and other evidence of Paul’s attitude towards indicate that the whole “women should learn in silence and subjection” snippet was added later, possibly as part of a successful attempt to minimize the influence of women in the early Christian church:

Source: Misquoting Jesus by Bart Ehrman
See also “Divinity of Christ” or “Christ’s ascent into heaven“.

Tags: blog against theocracy

Biblical alterations: divinity of Christ

As the controversies of the second and third centuries raged on, scribes altered the texts that they copied to support their positions or to deny arguing points to their opponents. In many, many places a reference to Christ was changed to refer to God. That was done to support the position that Christ was an embodiment of God and not just a good person, a prophet, or an inspired teacher — or even just the son of God but a different person. Here’s an example, where the text was modified in the Codex Alexandrinus (and onward by common descent of manuscript alterations):

Source: Misquoting Jesus by Bart Ehrman
See also “Women should keep silent” or “Christ’s passion“.

Tags: blog against theocracy

Biblical alterations: Christ’s passion in the garden

The very calm Christ of Luke was altered to insert a tale of suffering and passion to emphasize his human nature:

Source: Misquoting Jesus by Bart Ehrman
See also “Divinity of Christ“.

Tags: blog against theocracy

Book: Misquoting Jesus by Bart Ehrman

The historicity of Jesus is a sacred cow in the West. Consequently, the facts of texual criticism of the bible are under-reported. It should be common knowledge that 30,000 textual variations on the bible were identified 250 years ago and that certain common biblical quotations were made up or added later — everything from “Let him who is without sin cast the first stone” to unambigious statements of Mary’s virginity, the divinity of Jesus, the nature of the Trinity, and Jesus appearing to the disciples after the crucifixion and ascending into Heaven. They just aren’t in the oldest manuscripts.

Interestingly, Ehrman describes as “brilliant” the realization that common phrasing, arrangement, errors, additions, spelling mistakes and so on in manuscripts are a product of descent with modification by the copyists and indicate a common source manuscript.

See also Christ’s passion or The Science Notes Book Review.

Tags: blog against theocracy