Is God Dead?

 
I stumbled upon this while looking for something else. It's the cover from April 8, 1966. I remember it well. It didn't seem like such a big deal at the time. We all assumed the answer was "yes." Not a big deal in the '60s.

If I recall correctly, the inside article was about some dude named Friedrich Nietzsche. Weird name. Nobody cared. The cover said it all.

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The Essence of Christianity

Right now there's a conference going on in Oxford, United Kingdom—that hotbed of Christian apologetics (and Richard Dawkins). John Wilkins is there. One of the topics is defining religion [Ruminations in Oxford].

John's "ruminations" remind me of the ongoing debate over the conflict between science and religion. Everyone knows that the conflict exists but everyone has their own idea about how far it penetrates into religion. As you all know, various accommodationists are trying hard to wall off a protected area of religion that science cannot enter. That allows science and religion to co-exist peacefully.

In order to do this, the accommodationists have to define the essence of a religion. They agree that belief in a six thousand year old Earth conflicts with science but, according to them, that's not an essential belief in Christianity. The people who believe that sort of nonsense don't represent the serious "sophisticated" Christians (like the ones in theology at Oxford). So, what are the essential beliefs that don't conflict with the scientific way of acquiring knowledge?

Here's how Michael Ruse describes them in his latest book, Science and Spirituality: Making Room for Faith in the Age of Science (p. 182). I wonder how many of the people at the conference will agree with Ruse about the four items that are essential for Christians? I wonder how many of them agree with Ruse that none of these four conflict with the scientific way of thinking?

With an eye to the discussion of the previous chapters, I want to pick out four items or claims that are central to Christian belief—four items that the Christian takes on faith. If you do not believe in these, then you should not call yourself a Christian. First, that there is a God who is creator, "maker of heaven and earth." Second, we humans have duties, moral tasks here on earth, in the execution of which we are going to be judged. Hence, God stands behind morality. Third, Jesus Christ came to earth and suffered because we humans are special, we are worth the effort by God. The usual way of expressing this is to say that we are "made in the image of God." We have "souls." Fourth and finally, there is the promise of "life everlasting." We can go to heaven, what ever that means.

Let me spell out carefully what I see as the task in this and the next chapter. It is not to defend Christianity as a true or compelling belief system. I take it that you can enter these chapters as an agnostic or an atheist and depart in the same frame of mind. I do not want to dissuade people from Christianity, nor do I want to convince them of it. I want to explain in a fair manner what is meant by Christianity in terms of the four points introduced in the last paragraph. I also want to show that you could hold these, if you so wish, in the light of modern science—if you prefer, in the face of modern science. In other words, the Christian's claims are not refuted by modern science—or indeed threatened or made less probable by modern science.

Here's my quick take on the four items.

1. God the creator: It's possible to imagine a Deist God who starts off the known universe then goes off somewhere to watch perpetual reruns of The Lawrence Welk Show. (Where does he go?) This sort of God does not conflict directly with science, even if you define science as a way of knowing that requires evidence, skepticism, and rationality. It's an unnecessary God but a relatively harmless one compared to some others. Nobody I know believes in such a God, including Keith Ward, Ken Miller and Francis Collins.

2. God stands behind morality and He will judge us: There's no scientific evidence to support the notion that morality has anything to do with supernatural beings and plenty of evidence against it. There's no scientific evidence that you will be judged by anyone except other humans. This belief conflicts with science.

3. Jesus Christ is/was God: The idea that a supernatural being appeared on Earth in the form of a real human and lived among a group of primitive farmers in some obscure part of the world is not consistent with anything we know by applying scientific reasoning. It conflicts with science big time. So does the idea that we have something called a "soul" that no other animal possesses.

4. When you die you go to heaven: Totally inconsistent with a scientific way of thinking. In spite of several thousand years of tying, no evidence of heaven has ever been produced. Or hell, for that matter. There is nothing about this silly belief that's even remotely consistent with science.

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REVIEW of N Litinas, O.Cret.Chers.

Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2010.05.33

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Nikos Litinas, Greek Ostraca from Chersonesos, Crete: Ostraca Cretica Chersonesi (O.Cret.Chers.). Tyche. Supplementband; 6.   Wien:  Holzhausen, 2008.  Pp. 81, [3]; 45 p. of plates.  ISBN 9783854931645.  €39.00 (pb).   

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Reviewed by Patrick James, The Greek Lexicon Project, University of Cambridge (pj221@cam.ac.uk)
Table of Contents
Litinas presents an admirable edition of ninety Greek ostraca from Chersonesos on Crete and dated to the second or third century AD. Photographs for every ostracon are included. These texts are of interest not least because they represent the first archive of documents written in ink to be found within "today's Hellenic territory" (p. 5). The comprehensive introduction is particularly valuable for its thorough examination of the context of these ostraca, the questions that they raise, and the data that they contribute for the study of numismatics, palaeography and scribal practices, onomastics (and linguistics generally), and the economy of Roman Crete. Litinas' treatment of all of these subjects will be discussed in turn.
The texts themselves represent records, in two formats (Text-types A and B), of quantities of an unspecified commodity associated with nine individuals. As such, the texts are short to the point of obscurity and might seem of very little use. Type A contains only a Roman date (usually without a month), personal names in the nominative, a number of units of the commodity, an abbreviation for that quantity, the number repeated in alphanumeric form, and a total. The fifteen type B ostraca contain only a Roman date, the names of either or both of two persons in the nominative or (rarely) the dative (nos. 79-81), and then amounts of currency. Only no. 31 has a type A text on one side and a type B on the other. There is no clear socio-economic context and the internal evidence presents some puzzles, such as the abbreviations με() in type A and X (struck-through) and χ in type B, as well as the identity of the commodity itself. Also, short texts do not offer much evidence for the morphology or syntax of Koine Greek. Nevertheless, Litinas' examination of these ostraca is a thorough, cautious, and well-documented example of how such texts should be studied and the significant contributions they can offer. My few comments are intended to reinforce the value of this archive and the quality of Litinas' treatment.
Litinas plausibly dates the archive to the period from 150 to 250 AD (or to 300 or 350 AD, although he considers these later dates to be less likely) by drawing together the evidence of the archaeological context (inconclusive beyond 100-300 AD), the Roman dates and (imperial) names, numismatics (denominations and purchasing power), and palaeography. The discussion of letter forms makes up the bulk of this section and of the Introduction (five pages of a thirty-page introduction, with a further two on attributing the ostraca to different scribes).

Etc. at BMCR

G. BODARD, S. MAHONY, Digital Research in the Study of Classical Antiquity

Edited by Gabriel Bodard, King’s College, London, UK and Simon Mahony, University College London, UK

Series : Digital Research in the Arts and Humanities

This book explores the challenges and opportunities presented to Classical scholarship by digital practice and resources. Drawing on the expertise of a community of scholars who use innovative methods and technologies, it shows that traditionally rigorous scholarship is as central to digital research as it is to mainstream Classical Studies. The chapters in this edited collection cover many subjects, including text and data markup, data management, network analysis, pedagogical theory and the Social and Semantic Web, illustrating the range of methods that enrich the many facets of the study of the ancient world. This volume exemplifies the collaborative and interdisciplinary nature that is at the heart of Classical Studies.

Contents: Introduction, Simon Mahony and Gabriel Bodard;
Part I Archaeology and Geography:
Silchester Roman town: developing virtual research practice 1997–2008, Michael G. Fulford, Emma J. O'Riordan, Amanda Clarke and Michael Rains;

Diversity and reuse of digital resources for ancient Mediterranean material culture, Sebastian Heath;

Space as an artefact: a perspective on 'neogeography' from the digital humanities, Stuart Dunn.

Part II Text and Language:
Contextual epigraphy and XML: digital publication and its application to the study of inscribed funerary monuments, Charlotte Tupman;

A virtual research environment for the study of documents and manuscripts, Alan K. Bowman, Charles V. Crowther, Ruth Kirkham and John Pybus.

One era's nonsense, another's norm: diachronic study of Greek and the computer, Notis Toufexis.

Part III Infrastructure and Disciplinary Issues:
Digital infrastructure and the Homer multitext project, Neel Smith;

Ktêma es aiei: digital permanence from an ancient perspective, Hugh A. Cayless;

Creating a generative learning object (GLO): working in an 'ill-structured' environment and getting students to think, Eleanor O'Kell, Dejan Ljubojevic and Cary MacMahon;

The digital classicist: disciplinary focus and interdisciplinary vision, Melissa Terras;
Bibliography; Index.
About the Editor: Dr Gabriel Bodard is Research Associate at the Centre for Computing in the Humanities, KCL and Simon Mahony is at the University College London, UK

Source: http://www.stoa.org/?p=1136

Inscriptions of Israel/Palestine (Brown Unviersity)

Blurb: 

The Inscriptions of Israel/Palestine project seeks to collect and make accessible over the Web all of the previously published inscriptions (and their English translations) of Israel/Palestine from the Persian period through the Islamic conquest (ca. 500 BCE - 640 CE). There are about 15,000 of these inscriptions, written primarily in Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek and Latin, by Jews, Christians, Greeks, and Romans. They range from imperial declarations on monumental architecture to notices of donations in synagogues to humble names scratched on ossuaries, and include everything in between.

There are approximately 1,500 inscriptions currently in the database, with more added regularly. These inscriptions can be accessed via the "Search" Button on the left.

Inscriptions of Israel/Palestine is an ongoing project at Brown University. It has been generously supported by the Center of Digital Scholarship and the Office of the Vice President of Research at Brown University. We welcome your feedback

Announcement at Current Epigraphy

Visitors

 

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Clarity vs Obscurity

 
Richard Dawkins says, "There are people who are so in love with obscurity—a nice warm fuzzy feeling of obscurity and obscurantism—that, if you say something clearly, they feel threatened." See the video below.

For some reason this reminds me of a book I just read by Keith Ward called "The Big Questions in Science and Religion." Perhaps it's because of the blurb on the back cover that says,

Ward effortlessly flows from one fascinating insight to another about the often contentious relationship between diverse religious views and the new scientific knowledge. Writing with both passion and clarity, he masterfully converys the depth, the difficulty, and the importance of the greatest intellectual and existential questions of the modern age.

"Clarity"? Don't make me laugh. Keith Ward has never met an example of obscurantism that he doesn't embrace.

Ward is a colleague of Dawkins at Oxford. I wonder if Dawkins was thinking of him when he made his statement? Or, he may have been thinking of another colleague, Alister McGrath.

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[Hat Tip: Clarity - A very nice statement by Dawkins, at RichardDawkins.net.]