Peter Kazmaier

C. John Sommerville, a professor emeritus of history at the University of Florida, has written an engaging book entitled Religious Ideas for Secular Universities. As he looked back on fifty years of university life as both a student and a professor, he wondered at how much the mission and role of the university had changed in that time period.

“I thought I was finally able to see our universities the way American society does, as a good way of preparing us for our jobs, but not where we look to answers for our important questions.” [Page 3]

Sommerville amplifies this view on page 7.

“It seems that some time in the 1980’s accountancy became the queen of sciences. Universities are about money in a whole new way. They are now measured in terms of money – the size of their endowments, how much they can charge for tuition, and the return on that investment in the starting salaries of new graduates.”

Sommerville’s views lead to three questions:

1. Are universities becoming corporations?
2. If they are, is this a good or a bad thing?
3. If it is a bad thing, what can be done to reverse this trend? (continue reading…)

I recently had an opportunity to visit a friend of mine to listen with him to a lecture on the provocative topic of whether or not the Bible is beneficial and therefore should be kept or  deleted. Having listened to the lecture and wishing to write about it, I find myself in a quandary. On the one hand I owe the speaker good language since she traveled a fair distance to present her talk and she delivered her presentation with an amiable demeanor. Still I will have little good to say about the lecture, so taking a cue from C. S. Lewis in The Abolition of Man, I propose to simply call the talk “The Lecture,” and I will call the speaker Docilla so that I can confine my comments to the content. So what was my reaction to the talk?

First let me deal with the provocative topic: should the Bible be kept or deleted? I suppose this statement may be provocative hyperbole for “is the Bible still relevant or is it irrelevant?” However I received no clear indication that the title was not meant literally so let me talk to the title from point of view that “delete” really means delete. There are many book ancient and modern which I do not think either edifying or helpful, but that does not mean I would like to see them deleted. Even a badly written book can serve as an example on how not to write. Books that I believe wrong-headed or advocate destructive behavior can still raise important questions. My love of books, my desire for freedom, and my personal commitment to try to find the truth about important questions make me hesitant to destroy any book. Given my perspective, it was a surprise to me that several in the audience (perhaps 3-4 out of 25) had voted for deletion of the Bible. It was a surprise because I had great difficulty reconciling their view that the Bible was such an extraordinarily dangerous book that it ought to be deleted with my own investigation of the contents.

So what about the lecture itself? Had I given the lecture, I would have discussed the history of the Biblical texts and the scholarship surrounding the early manuscripts, the use of the texts by the early Christians and the eventual collection of the sacred Christian writings into the New Testament canon. I would have then gone on to compare and contrast good and bad behaviors that have come out of the application of the principles in these writings from the earliest days to the present.

Docilla did very little of this. It was impossible for me to understand where she stood on these basic questions or even to glean the key facts about the archeological and textual evidence for the historicity of the Bible from her lecture. Furthermore she spent a disproportionate amount of time on extra-biblical writings such as the gospel of Thomas.

Much of the talk centered on the theme that one cannot interpret the Biblical text (or any text I suppose) unless one has the right metaphor to unlock the meaning. I don’t deny that metaphors can be useful in gaining understanding. A metaphor is useful because we can take something concrete and use it to help understand something that is abstract. Yet much of what she described extracted arcane conclusions out of New Testament writings while ignoring what seems plain and straight forward.

On reflection, The Lecture was not a lecture at all, but rather one long story. I’m not completely sure if the story was a work of fiction or non-fiction and perhaps in the mind of Docilla that distinction is not very clear. I suppose there are many benefits to Postmodern thinking that treats everything as a story. But if our passion for story makes us lose sight of what is true and false, I think we have lost a great deal.

Thanks for reading,

Peter

Timothy H. Lim is Professor of Hebrew Bible and Second Temple Judaism at the University of Edinburgh. Since the Royal Ontario Museum has been exhibiting the Dead Sea Scrolls, there are many excellent books such as this one available in their bookstore.

As Lim points out, the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls is regarded as the greatest manuscript discovery of the 20th century. What does that mean?  Why is that the case? (continue reading…)

It was about a year ago when a friend of mine asked what I thought of Peter Joseph’s movie, Zeitgeist . Zeitgeist is a movie that has been viewed by more than 50 M viewers and has propagated by viral marketing (i.e. one viewer after another emails the link to their friends because of its startling and controversial message). The movie itself is divided into three sections. The first part claims that Jesus and his life is a “recent” version of an astro-theological myth that has been replayed many, many times in the past. The second part claims that the 9/11 catastrophe was orchestrated by the United States, and the final portion makes claims about an international banking conspiracy.

Now let me say at the outset that I watched part 2 only once and never watched part 3, so I have no comments to make on these. So what are my thoughts on part 1?

(continue reading…)

Now I know what I hope to get for Christmas! Wayne Eyre wrote a masterful review in the National Post of David Berlinkski’s new book, The Devil’s Delusion. Atheism and It’s Scientific Pretensions . In his review Eyre provides a wonderful context for the book’s subject and provides enough insight into the author’s credentials and the book’s’ content to let the reader decide if it’s worth spending one’s hard earned dollars (or in my case, perhaps someone else’s hard earned cash) on the purchase. (continue reading…)

Every generation asks "how do I oppose injustice, tyranny, and oppression?" The answer to this question was the topic of a lecture called "Winning the Culture War " given to the Harvard Law Society on February 16, 1999. The speaker, the source of the oppression, and his solution may surprise you. (continue reading…)

In 1633 Galileo was tried for heresy for publishing a book which argued against Aristotelian Geocentricity and for Heliocentricity (i.e. the Copernican theory that the sun is the central body of the solar system and the all planets revolve around the sun).

In a previous post, I investigated the limitations of scientific inquiry . There I explored how science’s central focus on experimentation inherently limits the kinds of questions that are accessible to scientific investigation. Now I would like to turn to another kind of limitation – one imposed on science by the environment in which scientific investigations are conducted. Galileo’s heresy trial represented a suppression of free inquiry and free expression, so essential to advancement in science (and other endeavors also). I would like to begin by looking at the power structure and motivations for scientific interference in our society today. It is therefore important to ask: in 2008 who, if any, are the "inquisitors" and who are the "Galileos?" (continue reading…)

As you saw from my previous post, Sid Meier’s Civilization and it’s progeny are among my all time favorite video games. Interestingly enough, religion plays a role in these games and it is a role that mirrors our modern secular outlook. That is to say religion is portrayed as a superstition that was useful at one time to government in controlling populations and is superseded as knowledge and democracy make it obsolete. It is fascinating to me that in Civilization II, Fundamentalism became a persistent political form that makes all citizens “contented,” but halves science output. In the game Civilization religion shows a progression from primitive religion to polytheism, monotheism, and finally nothing (secularism). Is this consistent with the history of religion? (continue reading…)

It is curious that while Christians are remembering the death of Jesus on the Cross and celebrating His resurrection, this solemn Christian celebration inevitably coincides with a series of book launches and popular magazine articles attacking the very heart of the Christian celebration. Setting aside the observation that this calculated timing conflicts with our views of tolerance and respect that we as a society espouse toward people’s religious beliefs (Christian have long known that in western society these principles apply to other religious beliefs but not to Christianity) one still can’t help wondering at the irony inherent in the timing. While denigrating the world view of millions, this very timing depends on the Christian world view for its impact. This year was no exception. Brian Bethune wrote an article entitled The Jesus Problem in the Easter edition of MacLeans. (continue reading…)

Alan Millard is Rankin Professor of Hebrew and Ancient Semitic Languages in the School of Archeology, Classics and Oriental Studies at the University of Liverpool in England. In his wonderfully referenced and illustrated book that I have had the pleasure to read, he examines the commonly held belief that since many of Jesus’ closest followers were from the working classes, Jesus’ words circulated orally for some time before they were recorded. This view has not really been a problem for those who seek to follow Jesus since the written accounts were recorded in Greek while eye witnesses were still alive, but this explanation has sometimes been used by those who are trying to debunk or invalidate the gospel descriptions since they claim that this process allows for the introduction of error or personal interpretation. Is this view of an oral tradition consistent with Millard’s evidence? (continue reading…)