[Note: This satirical article has also been posted at my home blog, 360 Degree Skeptic] Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. (1 John 2:15) While Christians are supposed to keep their eyes on the prize to come, …
Tag Archive: Bible
Jan
30
Jan
22
The Genesis of Dessert
[Note: This tongue-in-cheek article has also been posted at my home blog, 360 Degree Skeptic] Imagine you have walked over miles of desert sands. You discover a pecan pie. The nuts are spread across the top in an obvious pattern, and the crust has a perfectly crimped edge. It is beautiful. And it smells divine. …
Feb
18
Faith: Religion’s Achilles Heel
The word “faith” is short and appears innocuous. But it has caused much human misery in history and continues to do so presently. A good first step in addressing this problem is to appreciate that “faith,” like most words, has multiple meanings. The type of faith discussed in this essay will be confined to religious …
Jun
07
Book Review – Jesus Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (and Why We Don’t Know About Them)
Bart Ehrman is a bible scholar who started his career as a conservative evangelical, but eventually became an agnostic. Most of his students and colleagues are believers so he never ridicules Christianity. He just gives a clear, dispassionate account of its historical origins. For me, his polite tone made his critique even more devastating. For …
Jun
03
Defending Believers
In September of this year, I will have been practicing law in Orlando for twenty years. In the course of my career, I have gone from being single with no kids to married with two, from prosecuting to defending criminals, and from belief to unbelief. One consistent thread that runs throughout is my dealing with …
Jun
02
Biblical Bloopers: A Two-Dimensional God
If you ever want to blow your mind, I suggest attempting to read the Bible as an unbiased, critical thinker. My guess is that smoke will start pouring out your ears before you make it halfway through Leviticus. To save you some of the effort, and the risk to your sanity, I’ll periodically post some …
May
31
God, The Bible, and the Constitution
In the 2008 presidential campaign, Republican candidate Mike Huckabee, who is a Baptist minister, stated “I have opponents in this race who do not want to change the Constitution, but I believe it’s a lot easier to change the Constitution than it would be to change the word of the living God. And that’s what …
May
31
Was Jesus a Stone Mason?
When considering ancient stories of miracles, we have to keep in mind the problem of translation and revision. For instance, many scholars believe that the word people have translated through the ages as “carpenter” may have been mistranslated. “Laborer” is probably more accurate. (See, for one, Gospel Truth by Russell Shorto). For all we know, …