Heretical musings on religion and culture from a literary scholar
"You just gotta have faith," seems to be the motto of Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters (2013). It's repeated several times. Faith in what, we don't know - we're dealing with a pluralistic oligarchy of gods, only one of whom is Percy's father. Sure, Percy is the only son, the chosen one, the hero... Percy is the ONLY human son of all THREE of the main Gods (Poseidon, Zeus and Hades). Kind of like Jesus is the ...
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 ...
Seventh-Day Adventists in Loma Linda, California, are in a fight against fast food chain McDonalds. The reason: 50% of the town practices a form of Christianity that endorses a clean, healthy and vegetarian diet. In their defense, the town has statistically higher health than many places in the world. The conflict: should they be allowed to prohibit the other 50% of the people from eating garbage? The "opposition" chosen to represent the heathens is a fat, ...
There was an interesting article awhile ago by Stephanie Pappas at LiveScience.com about a study done at Harvard university on how/why people believe. They concluded that more religious people - those more likely to go to Church - are more intuitive thinkers, and more likely to trust their "gut" rather than stop and think about the questions. ResearcherAmitai Shenhav said in a statement, "Some say we believe in God because our intuitions about how and why things ...
If you're looking for a late-summer read, check out the book "Jesus Potter Harry Christ." It claims that both Harry and Jesus are spiritual metaphors told in the literary form of historical fiction. The paperback is selling well on amazon, but we'd like to print hardcover copies - so we've set up a page on kickstarter.com where you can get a better deal and some great freebies by supporting the project. Thanks! Click here for the ...
"Penn Jillette is a twenty-first-century Lord of Misrule: big, boisterously anarchic, funny, Rabelaisian, impossible and unique. There isn't--couldn't be--better not be--anybody like him." --RICHARD DAWKINS, bestselling author of The Greatest Show on Earth and The God Delusion So begins the hype over Penn Jillette's new book "God, no! Signs You May Already Be an Atheist and Other Magical Tales." I just saw Penn on a TV interview and the kindle version of his book will be delivered ...
Today's BBC "Doha Debate" was about the choice of British Muslims to wear veils. On the panel, there were four experts - a man and woman for the veil (or at least the unimpaired freedom of wearing it) and a man and woman against the veil (or at least certain that the veil limited the ability to fully integrate.) Of course, it's a complex subject. Any kind of a rule or law that governs what we ...
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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