The Secular Frontier

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gqCg5ZaSOI This was fun. I have a three-article series on this topic under review so hopefully they will see the light of day! ... Read Article

The "Q" source, a hypothetical document in historical Jesus studies, is thought to contain sayings of Jesus shared by Matthew and Luke but not Mark. Since Q is reconstructed from these shared texts, it primarily focuses on Jesus' teachings, such as parabl ... Read Article

As is the case with new scholarship like Nina Livesey's recent book on Paul's letters as pseudonymous, it sometimes involves for the reader a back and forth with implications trying to appropriate the new materials. I originally tried to challenge a late ... Read Article

PREVIOUSLY: Easter Post: Dating the Gospels Now, the conclusion: I've been looking at the New Testament literature dating issues considering a lot of it to be written post Bar Kokhba revolt, with the exception that Luke-Acts seems to stem fro ... Read Article

Here is my 2025 Easter Post! 33 When it was noon, darkness came over the whole land[g] until three in the afternoon. 34 At three o’clock Jesus cried out with a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” which means, “My Go ... Read Article

PHILOSOPHY (INDEX) How Johann Christian Friedrich Hölderlin Helped Us Rethink Ancient Thought RELIGION “The Next Quest for the Historical Jesus (2024)” Anthology by James Crossley (Editor), Chris Keith (Editor) – FINAL Updated Blogging ... Read Article

PREVIOUSLY: (Part 1) Martin Heidegger’s “Contributions to Philosophy (Of the Event)” As we continue with Heidegger's Contributions book, we note it is not a linear development of an argument. Heidegger never intended it for publication. What ... Read Article

SCORE 5/5 My thanks to Cambridge for providing me with a review copy of this book. PREAMBLE: LETTER TO PROFESSOR VINZENT Hi Prof Vinzent, My name is John MacDonald and I am president of the Secular Web. I recently posted ... Read Article

Given that we are coming to the Season of Passover, it is appropriate to meditate on how the story of Jesus was formed to reflect Jewish scripture and tradition, and so is often unhistorical, e.g., Mathew invents stories about Jesus to portray him as the ... Read Article

It might seem that the religion industry in its many brands continues to be a powerful force in human societies. And of course in some regards it remains so here and abroad, what with most Americans being divinity worshippers, and the religious right enjo ... Read Article

Martin Heidegger's Contributions to Philosophy reflects his famous philosophical "turning." In this work, Heidegger returns to the question of being from its inception in Being and Time to a new questioning of being as event. Heidegger opens up the essent ... Read Article

Do you think religion is in decline around much of the globe because of the advances of science and prosperity? True. But there is another factor that is being ignored. Ancient Aliens. Specifically the now wide spread belief in the ETs of olden days that f ... Read Article

“We ask: How long then?  So long that it even reaches beyond our present, godless age (Heidegger, Elucidations of Holderlin’s Poetry, 211)” We are looking at a poet from the lens of our secular age, Heidegger's and Hölderlin's theolog ... Read Article

Today on "X (Twitter)' Kant Specialist Prof Anita Leirfall posted about the nature of being religious and here is my response: Jesus is speaking here of how his teaching is an innovation of the Judaism of his time: 43 “You have heard that it was ... Read Article

It seems that a straightforward reading of our New Testament sources does not equate Jesus with God as we would later see with the gospel of John and even later with the doctrine of the Trinity. For example, Jesus in desperate prayer in Gethsemane doesn' ... Read Article

This is my final post on Heidegger's reading of Hölderlin's Hymn The Ister in the lecture course of 1942. The measure of truth in Hölderlin’s river poetry is not found in the actuality of the geographical river, Hölderlin saying “Is there a measur ... Read Article

I’ve been working to uncover the tragic insight into the human condition that Heidegger finds in Sophocles’ Antigone – in the tradition of Hölderlin’s translation and interpretation.  This is the arche tamechana, that against which nothing can a ... Read Article

*This post finishes up party 2 of Heidegger's lecture course. The Parable of Vengeance   Mr. X and Mr. Y were parents of a boyfriend and girlfriend who were killed by a drunk driver.  Mr. X showed up every day for the trial, demanded justi ... Read Article

Last time I did a standalone post on William Lane Craig and the Kalam Cosmological argument, but now back to Heidegger’s interpretation of Holderlin. Looking on to section 15, Heidegger draws a distinction between kalon and me kalon, “non beings / ... Read Article

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VeKavDdRVIg My former professor and friend, the late Canadian postmodern philosopher David Goicoechea, gave this assessment of philosophy since Kierkegaard and Nietzsche in the Continental (as opposed to Analytic) trad ... Read Article

One point that needs to be stressed is Heidegger's thought of man as transitionally historical. For example, in this lecture course that was delivered at the height of the Nazi movement in 1942, Heidegger notes the central concepts of polis and apolis in ... Read Article

Manifold is the uncanny, yet nothing more uncanny looms or stirs beyond the human being (Sophocles Antigone, Heidegger's translation) I’m now into part 2/3 of Heidegger’s lecture course on Holderlin’s Hymn The Ister and we find out one of the r ... Read Article

The modern scientific world picture is ever refining the mathematical technical projection of inanimate nature, order as calculable and ordered relationality posited in advance.  Heidegger comments Already in the last century, philosophy clearly ... Read Article

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bg1di8sGxWc We've been approaching Hölderlin's talk of gods and their abandoning in an essential way, not merely relying on Hölderlin's text nor secondary literature on Hölderlin. What is demanded, rather is orient ... Read Article

Parmenides famously said, "apprehension and Being are the same," and Heidegger quipped (I think in his Parmenides lecture course from the 40's) such a thought makes you lose the desire to write books if you really understand it, which becomes obvious when ... Read Article