Heretical musings on religion and culture from a literary scholar
From Harry Potter to Terrorism – find it here.
Since it's been a couple years since I put out my own book on historical-mythical Jesus Christ research I haven't been paying much attention to what's going on in the field. But I just caught a bit of Chris Hayes' interview with Reza Aslan, the author of a new book on Jesus called "Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth." On an interview with the author a couple days ago, Fox News interviewer Lauren ...
There's always been a little bit of Jesus in Superman. The story of a man from one world going to another and finding himself with supernatural powers with which to lead a revolution against evil is ancient, but in 1912 with John Carter of Mars, elements of mythology, science fiction and technology begin to blend in new ways, eventually becoming the modern comic superhero. Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children describes the process of how a historical spiritual guru ...
I'm watching the movie version of Odd Thomas, directed by Stephen Sommers, based on the novel by Dean Koontz. Pretty exciting. Ghosts and demons, psychics and seers, Bodachs... evil spirits drawn to death and mayhem. But who are the mass-murdering evil-doers? Why, devil worshipers, of course. They have a tattoo that reads "POD" - Prince of Darkness. Neat. They kill lots and lots of people because they believe in Satan, and Satan is evil, and without God's righteous moral ...
I'm loving DaVinci's Demons - a new TV series about the life of the young Leonardo Da Vinci. From the first episode they managed to throw in a ton of intrigue and character twists. The only thing is, this brash and daring, charming and handsome, half-insane genius almost certainly didn't exist. It's hard to know what DaVinci believed, because he had to be secretive his whole life (hence his language codes and secret notebooks, etc.) This was ...
I'm watching Defiance, Episode 2 - a new SyFy channel production about a post-apocalyptic earth city filled with mixed alien races. One of the aliens communities is torturing one of its own for cowardice in battle. The new sheriff, a typical blonde American cowboy, stops the ceremony at gunpoint. The alien in question begs to let them finish his torture, which is necessarily to clean him of sins so that his soul will reach absolution, and ...
I'm watching the 2013 "Oz the Great and Powerful." I've been excited about the movie for a long time; what a rich theme to build a story into. Disappointingly it's mostly a kid's movie. Not the smart and mature kid's movie that the original Wizard of Oz was, but the cheesy and silly kid's movie that is aimed at the largely vapid youth of today. But nearing the end of the movie, I'm recognizing the classic pieces ...
I'm working on a paper for an Apocalypse conference in Romania the details are fuzzy, but I wanted to make some notes to come back to later. In short, the majority of contemporary post-apocalyptic YA novels are about Revolution. Unlike classic dystopian fiction like 1984 or even the more modern Never Let Me Go show a reality that can't be escaped from. Resistance is really futile, if not only because systems of bio-power have nullified any ...
I'm watching Utopia, Season One Episode 5. A small band of unlikely heroes are chasing down a conspiracy. They have one of the badguys tied up to a chair and are asking him questions about a dubious new super-vaccine called Janus, created along with a flu-epidemic panic. The gang thinks the bad guys are trying to eliminate a certain race. Not so. "We are now past 7 billion on this planet. When I was born it was ...
I got up early the second day of the conference, took a coffee and a pastry from the hotel lobby, and headed to the convention hall in Springfield Missouri. There was a large crowd outside today. I smiled, eager to meet new friends - until I realized they were Christian protesters. Skepticon describes itself as the "Largest Free Conference on Skepticism" in the nation, and it has been a well-known atheist convention for several years. I'd flown ...
I went to Skepticon 5 expecting a group of heretics that would get a kick out of my inversed reading of Milton's Paradise Lost, which claims that Satan is the hero of the story (which was actually the mainstream reading before it became the "mistaken reading", and is now coming into vogue again by top Milton scholars). I was surprised to find that Satan makes atheists uncomfortable. Atheists already have a huge image/perception problem, with the ...
Halloween is for everybody, but it seems like atheists and non-religious people would particularly enjoy dressing up as devils, monsters and witches (role-modelling their true heroes on the only socially acceptable day for it). It's also an opportunity, depending on your level of daring, to make a funny, obnoxious or controversial irreligious statement with a loud costume choice. But what are you going to wear? I searched for Atheist Halloween ideas for awhile but couldn't find ...
Is Kevin Costner an Atheist? This thought crossed my mind a few times while watching the History Channel's 3 part special "Hatfields and McCoys". While based on a historical family feud, a few key themes in the plot and dialogue seemed specifically focused on the relationship between violence and religion. So what exactly does the mini-series have to say about religious belief? Let's find out. Kevin Costner plays Anse Hatfield, opposite Bill Paxton who plays Randall McCoy. The ...
If you're interested in religious mythology, astrological symbolism, or supernatural folklore, grab my book Gods of Myth and Man. You can go buy it on Amazon.
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