The Secular Frontier

Hypatia was an ancient female philosopher who taught neoplatonism. Though she saw rationality in the universe that was in some sense divine, she did not ascribe to any particular god and welcomed students of all backgrounds to her school. See the 5 ... Read Article

Check out this week's Misquoting Jesus podcast to see why Bart thinks Jesus was left on the cross to be food for the birds! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BXmyB6OT30 ... Read Article

I come from the Continental Philosophy tradition and this professor's sentiments are mine as well: ... Read Article

In this video, a sociologist shows that on issue after issue (eg Racism), secular people take a more ethical stance than strongly religious people. For example, the more religious someone is, the less likely they are to believe climate change science or ... Read Article

I come to the end of blogging through the first half of "Lamb of the Free" which looks at OT sacrifices. We saw that while the day of atonement/decontamination was basically a factory reboot of the sanctuary. However, major moral sin couldn't be address ... Read Article

One of the key takeaways from Rillera is that kipper is about the individual doing their part to help decontaminate the holy place from contamination, not an animal substituting for the individual. We read as an analogy to a child taking care of a pet: ... Read Article

We lost philosopher and major secular activist Daniel Dennett today. RIP https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGrRf1wD320 ... Read Article

As I've been reading along the author's study of sacrifice in the old testament, both of purification and atonement, what is clear with atoning sacrifices the issue isn't the salvation of the individual who sinned, but rather sin was a aerial miasma thoug ... Read Article

As long as there have been Jesus followers the apocalypse warning alarm has been sounding. Jesus thought the end of the age was coming in the lifetime of his disciples, and Paul thought the end had already started. Skip forward a few thousand years, a ... Read Article

Rillaro points our that Jesus is most basically seen in one sense as the passover lamb. In the chapter currently under consideration, we see in detail passover is not an atonement ritual. He summarizes: the Passover does not have an atoning function ... Read Article

In this section, we finnish up Rillera's thoughts on what the Levitical sacrifices are not. There is no connection between the suffering of the animal and the sacrifice, because an animal is killed quickly and humanely, because if an animal is blemis ... Read Article

Previously, Heidegger’s Hegelian Phenomenological Method (Part 1/2) Heidegger’s Hegelian Phenomenological Method (Part 2/2) Dr. Carlo Alvaro and Dr. Richard Carrier Debate the Kalam Cosmological Argument The Joy of Philosophy (4/4) On t ... Read Article

My previous 3 posts in this mini-series were: Heidegger’s Hegelian Phenomenological Method (Part 1/2) Heidegger’s Hegelian Phenomenological Method (Part 2/2) Dr. Carlo Alvaro and Dr. Richard Carrier Debate the Kalam Cosmological Argument P ... Read Article

Human blood in the OT defiled rather than purified, and God viewed human sacrifice as false worship. Laying on of hands doesn't imply substitution, as some non atoning sacrifices require laying on hands, while other atoning ones do not. Rillera cites ... Read Article

So, as I said, there may in fact be a problem of applying Old Testament animal substitutionary logic to Jesus. In fact, our author Andrew Remington Rillera points out there is no such animal substitution sacrifice logic in the Old Testament, such as an a ... Read Article

Rillera is going to argue 4 theses regarding OT sacrifice as not being substitutionary. He outlines these as follows: ( 1 ) There is no such thing as a “ substitutionary death " sacrifice in the Torah . ( 2 ) The hand - laying ritual is not saying ... Read Article

Rillera provides some helpful foreshadowing of what we will see in the book: But Tyndale then used the noun “ atonement , ” and the verb form " to atone , " to translate the Hebrew root word k - p - r in the Torah ( Genesis - Deuteronomy ) . But t ... Read Article

From Campbell's preface to Rillera's book we read regarding sacrifice: The set of equations at the heart of the PSA model is , quite simply , untrue . The practice and logic of OT sacrifice has nothing to do with substitution , retribution , or punish ... Read Article

I'll be reviewing Rillera's Lamb of the Free which is trending right now as a critique and alternative to the substitutionary atonement interpretation of Jesus's death (that Jesus suffered the death we deserved). Here is the blurb from the publisher: ... Read Article

(via https://www.facebook.com/scientistsforeu/posts/3030750643693591) Have you ever wondered why brilliant people can also hold some pretty bizarre beliefs? Part of the reason is the mis-idea of intelligence in general, for instance if someone is ... Read Article

Trump spent a manic Eastern posting in volume, but some posts getting the most attention are when Trump reposted the opinion that he was the special chosen one of God. For instance: See the Trump critiquing article by Ron Filipkowski HERE ... Read Article

Professor Philip Goff is one of the world’s leading proponents of a new theory that claims the universe itself is conscious and set the conditions for the emergence of intelligent life. Could people soon be praying to this godlike cosmos? SEE ARTICLE ... Read Article

Never missing an opportunity to blow things way out of proportion, Fox News has doubled down on their "celebrating transgenderism on Easter is an existential threat to God" narrative: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QjyAqWDEcj4 Now, Easter basical ... Read Article

Friend of Infidels Richard Carrier recently debated Carlo Alvaro on the Cosmological Argument. Alvaro apparently had a less than pleasing experience, claiming: "It is regrettably clear that Dr. Carrier was never interested in having a fair-minded exc ... Read Article

The complain and whine first, fact check later (if at all) conservative religious fundamentalists are in an uproar about Biden recognizing LGBTQ+ individuals on the Christian holy day of Easter this year. Has Biden become wokeness incarnate? Well, n ... Read Article