The Secular Frontier

Religious dispositions are not so much viewed as one’s subjective set of beliefs for the faithful but rather the way they experience the world, like how the world might appear/present itself to a schizophrenic in a conspiracy saturated way.  The religious details seem woven into the fabric of reality itself for the believer. Young writes: Let’s say you prefer, benefit from, or just feel comfortable with a particular institution (e.g., your mosque, church, or synagogue), set of values (e.g., no sex outside of marriage), social hierarchy (e.g., men in authority over women), or even collection of categories for thinking about your world (e.g., everyone is either a man or a woman). You may then gravitate toward narratives in which these things are not your preferences because you inherited or benefit from them. No, instead they are universal and foundational, part of the fabric of reality from the beginning. For an example of such a narrative, “Men are more naturally leaders because God made men ... Read Article

One of the great underreported sins of New Testament scholarship is the problem that, unless we're told by the writers, there is no way to tell whether specific interpretive units like the lord's supper or the empty tomb have their origins as historical memory, lie, rumors, dreams, visions, hearsay, etc. We know in the case of Paul the Lord's Supper wasn't practiced until after Jesus' death because it has its origin in a vision Paul had, because Paul tells us. There are numerous explanations as to the origin of Mark's empty tomb story (which isn't in Paul), and Galbraith suggests it could have been a vision: Taking indigenous vision ontologies seriously leads us to reevaluate the formal characteristics of Mark 16:1–8 in their entirety. Form-critical analyses of Mark 16:1–8 seldom account for more than a few of its features. Holly Hearon for example offers a minimal structure, describing its form as a typical narrative with a beginning, middle and end. For David Catchpole, the angelus interpres and ... Read Article

WHERE WE ARE In my previous post, I analyzed eight definitions of the word "miracle" into seven different elements. I am not satisfied with any of these definitions, and in this post I will evaluate these definitions to make clear the problems I see with them. In a later post, I will attempt to construct a definition that avoids the various problems that I will point out with these existing definitions. MY ANALYSIS OF EIGHT DEFINITIONS OF THE WORD "MIRACLE" Here is the table that represents my analysis of eight definitions of "miracle": THE IMPACT ELEMENT The first element of definitions of "miracle" that I will examine is that the IMPACT element: IMPACT – the emotional or psychological effect of a miracle Only one out of the above eight definitions includes this element. The definition by the Christian philosophers Kreeft and Tacelli requires that something be "striking" in order for it to be considered a miracle. Although none of the other above definitions include such an elem ... Read Article

There are many different definitions for the word "miracle", and I am not happy with any of them. So, I'm going to examine a number of different definitions, analyze them, and then (in later posts) evaluate them, and try to come up with a definition that does not suffer from the problems that I see with the existing definitions. EIGHT DEFINITIONS OF THE WORD "MIRACLE" Richard Purtill (Christian philosopher): I propose to define a miracle as an event in which God temporarily makes an exception to the natural order of things, to show that God is acting.[1] Peter Kreeft & Ronald Tacelli (Christian philosophers): A miracle is: a striking and religiously significant intervention of God in the system of natural causes.[2] C. Stephen Evans (Christian philosopher): An event brought about by a special act of God.[3] Norman Geisler (Christian philosopher): A miracle is a special act of God that interrupts the natural course of events.[4] Richard Swinburne (Christian p ... Read Article

Some things mythicists point to is the lack of detail about Jesus in Paul, and Mark as allegorical literature. This, though, needs to be qualified in a way that favors historicity, not mythicism. Paul says he resolved to know nothing among you but Christ and him crucified (1 Cor 2:2), which suggest Paul knew far more details than he said but omitted them because of apocalyptic urgency. In the same way, the gospels indicate this selective process of choosing details, which while this problematizes the quest for the historical Jesus since much has been omitted, it does lend weight to the idea that the writers did have sources about Jesus and weren't just inventing out of whole cloth. Yes, there was mythmaking like haggadic midrash (and mimesis), but this technique at the time was done to historical figures like the Teacher of Righteousness by the Dead Sea Scrolls writers. Regarding the selectivity of the writing process, Goodacre notes: The reminder about absent data is constantly present in the earli ... Read Article

Keith gives an interesting example of how even if we consider something to be true of Jesus, there is so much that we still don't know. He writes: If I could indict atomistic approaches to the historical Jesus for one thing, it would be that their attempts to recover tradition out of the narrative frameworks of the Gospels treat those frameworks as ahistorical products, theological castles in the sky that appeared as miraculously as the Jesus they portray. Let us take the attribution of the title “Son of God” to Jesus as an example. Later followers of Jesus may have fabricated traditions about Jesus that describe him as the Son of God because they were already convinced that he was the Son of God, in which case their portrayal of the past amounts to a retrojective narrativization of their present theological convictions. But merely observing this dynamic of narrativization does not alleviate the historian from his or her task. This kind of thing happens all the time with narratives of the past, and ... Read Article

Bond stresses the difficulty in trying to distill historical information about Jesus from the gospels. She writes: Thus the many chreiai in the Gospels are not primarily repositories of oral tradition, but fundamentally literary creations, crafted to take their place in a larger biographical work... There is most likely some historical fact at the core of these stories, though extracting it from its present literary context would be next to impossible. Other chreiai may have no historical roots at all. Examples might be the so-called nature miracles, such as the accounts of Jesus feeding the multitude (appearing first in Mark 6:32–44). As the early Christ followers compared Jesus to great figures like Elisha and Moses, it would not have been a great leap to move from a belief in a Jesus who could supply sustenance once again to a story in which he actually did so. We might expect the story to draw on both the account of Elisha in 2 Kgs 4:42–44 and the manna in the wilderness (Exod 16:1–36; Num 11 ... Read Article

One of the interesting things about this essay is some of the anti-Jewish overtones in the gospels may stem from literary need born out of the attempt to present universal saving by Jesus. Reinhartz writes: (1) Although the Four Gospels vary with respect to some of the details, they all portray some level of animosity between Jesus and other Jews, they all assign responsibility to the high priests and other leaders, albeit in different ways and to different degrees, and they all portray the crowds—presumably composed of Jews who, like Jesus, are in Jerusalem for the Passover—as shouting for Barabbas to be released and Jesus to be crucified (Matt 27:21; Mark 15:11; Luke 23:18; John 18:40). Crossley, James; Keith, Chris. The Next Quest for the Historical Jesus (pp. 103-104). Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.. Kindle Edition. (2) A shift in perspective would lead us away from a search for facts and toward Jesus’s broader context and the questions of how and why the historical Jesus came to be seen ... Read Article

Blogging my way through the anthology, Moxnes has the first essay. One tidbit I'd like to highlight is how Jesus challenges societal norms. Moxnes writes: Jesus is calling young men to follow him and leave the patriarchal household and their father (Mark 1:16–20). The new household that Jesus establishes is one without a father (10:28–30); the relations between men are expressed with the term “brothers” (3:35). (Halvor Moxnes "Reception History" in Crossley, James; Keith, Chris. The Next Quest for the Historical Jesus (p. 55). Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.. Kindle Edition.) It is interesting to question whether stories of Jesus breaking with tradition reflects historical truth, or whether it is just a revolutionary literary theme Jesus was clothed in? In this case it seems historical because Paul called Jesus the firstborn of many brothers. ... Read Article

My new Philosophy for Kids book is out today. Please pick up a copy! ... Read Article

I just got my copy with a whopping 32 essays in it so I will be blogging about the volume for a while. (2) The Next Quest For The Historical Jesus: Reception History by Halvor Moxnes (3) The Next Quest For The Historical Jesus: Beyond The Jewish Jesus Debate by Adele Reinhartz (4) The Next Quest For The Historical Jesus: Biography by Helen K. Bond (5) The Next Quest For The Historical Jesus: Beyond What is Behind by Chris Keith (6) The Next Quest For The Historical Jesus: Missing Pieces by Mark Goodacre (7) The Next Quest For The Historical Jesus: RELIGION, VISIONS, AND ALTERNATIVE HISTORICITY by Deane Galbraith (8) The Next Quest For The Historical Jesus: Myth and Mythmaking by Stephen Young (9) The Next Quest For The Historical Jesus: The Late Latin Quest by Paula Fredriksen (10) The Next Quest For The Historical Jesus: Chartism and the Forgotten Quests by James Crossley (11) The Next Quest For The Historical Jesus: Fame and Aura by Matthew G. Whitlock (12) Th ... Read Article

I am going to resurrect my old blog, called Let's Bring Democracy to the USA. So, I will now try to confine my political commentary to that blog and stay more focused on theism vs. atheism, religion vs. secularism, faith vs. skepticism, and Christianity vs. humanism here at The Secular Frontier. Here is my first post on my revived political blog: https://democracy2usa.blogspot.com/2024/11/why-are-americans-so-freaking-stupid.html ... Read Article

I am, once again, ashamed to be an American. We had a clear choice between a pair of decent, intelligent, democracy-loving, competent leaders (Harris and Walz) and a pair of racist, sexist, fascists who are incompetent (Trump and Vance), and yet we Americans made the wrong choice. There are two main possible reasons for this unbelievable and shameful outcome. First, most Americans are either racists, sexists, and/or fascists, or else most Americans are incredibly stupid and ignorant. Most likely, both of these reasons work together to yield the result that we are witnessing today. There are some Americans who are intelligent and well-informed, but who are racists, sexists, and/or fascists. There are some Americans who are stupid and ignorant, but who are not racists, sexists, and/or fascists. And, of course, there are some Americans who are stupid, ignorant, and also racists, sexists, and/or fascists. These three or four different kinds of Americans now constitute the majority in most states. ... Read Article

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qTwBn4vh1o If you're intellectually impatient like me, just start watching at 47:00 when they start to stretch out their hands to cast a magic spell. That the faith community is backing Trump is wonderful. If Trump loses, it will be a powerful argument for the futility of prayer. There are reasons hospitals don't have faith-healer departments. ... Read Article

The most important point made in the debate between Biden and Trump back in June was this point made by President Joe Biden: Donald Trump was the worst president in the history of the United States. Biden provided two good reasons in support of this strong claim: 1. Presidential historians ranked Donald Trump as the worst president in the history of the United States. Biden: Presidential historians "voted who was the worst president in American history. From best to worst. They said (Trump) was the worst in all of American history." True. The 2024 Presidential Greatness Project Expert Survey, released in February, collected responses from 154 presidential historians, which included current and recent members of the American Political Science Association. The survey ranked Biden as the 14th best president in U.S. history, and put Trump last. The historians were asked to give every president a score, from zero to 100. Abraham Lincoln topped the list with an average score ... Read Article