Category History

The Exodus from Egypt as Exceedingly Ridiculous

I have been kindly asked to give a talk to the Dorset Humanists next month, They seemed to enjoy my last few talks so much as to want me to create a talk to deliver. I am gratefully obliging.

I will be looking at arguments for and against God, starting off with the wide deistic arguments from philosophy, and then narrowing down to particular arguments concerning the historicity and probability of the Judeo-Christian God. Here is something I am working on with regards to the ridiculousness of the Exodus account.

Factfile: Hypatia of Alexandria

Due to the fact that wiki has some great starter articles, and I don’t necessarily have the time to write some of my own, but feel that there are some people who deserve greater notoriety. As a result, once in a while, I will randomly copy over an interesting wiki article and perhaps promote discussion on these people.

The first subject is someone important to our network here at SIN. Hypatia of Alexandria is our figurehead and is incorporated into our logos. She is an iconic role model for secular female intellects, and for all humanity. Here is a little more about her:

Nazism, Christianity and Atheism

You´ve all heard the standard lies about the third reich being an “Atheist regime” and Darwinian evolution being a foundation for the Nazi race ideology. The funny (“funny” in a tragic way) thing about this is, that these claims are not only wrong, but that the exact opposite happens to be true.

Moving the Stones of Baalbek–The Wonders of Roman Engineering

Previously I had talked about an amazing piece of computational engineering from the ancient world, the Antikythera mechanism, which was also posted up at A Tippling Philosopher. In the comments there, a discussion came up about another wonder of antiquity which has attracted all sorts of speculations among alternative thinkers. This is the construction of the temple complex at the city of Baalbek, also known as Heliopolis, in modern-day Lebanon, about 70 kilometers* north of Damascus. The site has considerable antiquity, but it is the large stones at the temple, especially the three known as the Trilithon, that have garnered the greatest attention, each weighing in around 800 tons.* And deservedly so, as they are some of the largest single objects ever moved in the pre-modern era.

The Ancient Computer–NOVA Special

I just learned from Jason Colavito that PBS NOVA the other day aired a documentary about the unraveling of one of the incredible enigmas of antiquity. And naming it after the German code machine isn’t a bad idea either, considering that this device is a marvel of gears and other mechanisms all working together.

Joseph of Arimathea – fact or fiction? Er, fiction.

Joseph of Arimathea used to be used by William Lane Craig as a pillar of his truth claims for the Resurrection, itself one of the four cornerstones of his apology. Richard Carrier, amongst others, has provided some very interesting viewpoints on the historicity of this figure (or lack thereof). Craig no longer seems to reference J of A, quite possibly the result of the weakness of any positive evidence and the strength of negative evidence for his historicity.

JP Holding and internet civility [miracles can happen! ;) ]

People seem to be talking about internet civility an awful lot at the moment. For example, Dan Fincke at Camels with Hammers has been asking people to sign up to a civility pledge. I have been involved in my own debate with a rather infamous apologist, JP Holding. For those who do not know JP Holding, he is an ex-prison librarian cum self-styled apologist who runs Tektonics.org (Tekton Apologetics Ministries) and Theology Web. He has a Masters Degree in Library Science, which will be important for a later point.

Did Jesus Exist?: An Historicist Defense of Mythicist Intelligence

There’s this damned of all sayings—‘a jack of all trades, the master of none’—which haunts me. It presents itself to me in moments of existential crisis. When I consider how so many fields feed into one another, I want to own them all; be the expert in philosophy, science, mathematics, history, theology, biblical exegesis, etc. But is it possible or even reasonable to assume that one can become at the least, say, ‘a master of most trades, a jack of few?’

The Puzzling Figure of Jesus – Man, Myth, Messiah? Our very own Aaron Adair on Jesus.

Recently for my local Secular Student Alliance (SSA) group I gave a talk about what we can know about the historical Jesus, and perhaps he was originally a non-historical figure made flesh. This proposition is not the least bit popular among academics, let alone Evangelicals, but it isn’t necessarily crazy either. You will find some comparing it to Holocaust denial or creationism, but the evidence that Jesus existed is nowhere near as strong as it is for evolution or the Nazi-led Holocaust. There is significant evidence for Jesus, prima facie, but things get hairy when you look again.

Breakthrough in world’s oldest undeciphered writing

Experts working on proto-Elamite hope they are on the point of ‘a breakthrough’

The world’s oldest undeciphered writing system, which has so far defied attempts to uncover its 5,000-year-old secrets, could be about to be decoded by Oxford University academics.

This international research project is already casting light on a lost bronze age middle eastern society where enslaved workers lived on rations close to the starvation level.

“I think we are finally on the point of making a breakthrough,” says Jacob Dahl, fellow ofWolfsonCollege,Oxfordand director of the Ancient World Research Cluster.