What's New Archive ● 2001 ● September
September 30, 2001
Added A Response to an Agnostic Baptist Minister's Advice by Mathew Goldstein to the Modern Library.This is in response to Advice from an Agnostic Baptist Minister by Anonymous.
September 28, 2001
Completely updated the Humor Section<In this tragic time, it is absolutely, as a matter of a priori fact, fantastically insensitive and totally wrong to delight in any sort of humor at region's expense. Those who do so shall never know Pinky's Utopia, for Tipler's Computer will choke on your program and spit your bits into the maximally enlarged depression where catastrophic oxidation never ceases and the man-eating nematodes never stop gustating on thy epidermis. Consequently, in order to damn everyone (that's right, all you bastards!), we have made sure all the links work in the humor section, deleted expired pieces, and moved to the top various external collections, including some religious parody magazines that will really screw you if you are so callous as to read them. As Jesus said (and we know, for, thanks to our recent purchase of a Tardis from some guy, we were there!), he who blasphemes the Holy Spirit shall never be forgiven! You were warned.
September 26, 2001
Added My Hour by Mark Howard to the Agora section of the Kiosk.These are neither ideal nor normal of times and so I feel the need to speak.Added The American Way: Preferring Violent Failure to Non-Violent Victory by Dale McGowan to the Opinions section of the Kiosk
Added Lawyer vs. Theologian: The Tabash-Craig Debate by Richard Carrier
Added new subject category Debates to the Video Store
Updated the web page for The Coalition for the Community of Reason
Edited The Date of the Nativity in Luke (3rd ed., 2001) by Richard Carrier
Added a missing source to Footnote 4.1 (Josephus attests to Titius as governor of Syria in 9 B.C.). And the following paragraph has replaced all the material about Herod's divorce in 27 A.D., since there is in fact no evidence that the divorce occurred in that year, and the relevant events clearly occurred after 34 A.D. anyway: This also fits the narrative of John the Baptist by Josephus, who reports that a military victory against Herod between 35 and 36 A.D. (Antiquities of the Jews 18.113-19; see also Bowersock's Roman Arabia, pp. 65-6, and Kasher's Jews, Idumaeans, and Ancient Arabs, pp. 177-80) was at the time hailed as God's revenge for executing John, and since people would be calling up the most recent crime of Herod as the cause of his military defeat, John's execution must not have been long before this, certainly some years after 28 A.D.Edited Section 3J: What Good are "Anonymous" Eye-Witnesses Anyway? of Why I Don't Buy the Resurrection Story (2000) by Richard Carrier
Several patrons who failed to do their homework have claimed several works in antiquity went unsigned, from those of Tacitus to Pausanias. That is complete nonsense and this section was expanded to prove it. It remains a fact: apart from fiction and forgery, no work in antiquity purporting to be factual was left anonymous except the Gospels (and similar examples of Christian literature). That casts suspicion on these works as historical documents.
September 24, 2001
Added The American Way: Preferring Violent Failure to Non-Violent Victory by Dale McGowan to the Opinions section of the Kiosk.Dr. McGowan argues for a non-violent response to the World Trade Center / Pentagon attack.
September 18, 2001
Added "'Evidence' That Demands a Refund" (2001) by Jeffery Jay LowderLowder reviews McDowell's New Evidence That Demands a Verdict.
September 17, 2001
Added "'With liberty and justice for all" (2001) by Mark I Vuletic to the Opinion section of the Kiosk.Vuletic reminds us not to villify Arabs or Muslims generally for the actions of fundamentalists.
September 16, 2001
Updated Advice from an Agnostic Baptist Minister by Anonymous to both the Christian Worldview and the Ex-Christians sections of the Modern Library.Two concepts few would ever find themselves coupling together are "Baptist minister" and "agnostic" unless of course one is describing a debate of some kind. Keep them separate and they make sense, bring them together into one person and the dissonance begins. And yet, an agnostic Baptist minister is exactly what I am.
September 15, 2001
Added events to The Secular Web's Calendar of Events.September 12, 2001
Added In Memorial of the Victims of Mass Murder by Richard Carrier to the Opinions section of the KioskIn the wake of the World Trade Center disaster, the Internet Infidels mourn the dead and call for a blood drive as a symbolic gesture: in contrast with those criminals, we give blood rather than spill it.Added We Need $100 from 100 People: Help Make the Secular Web State-of-the-Art! by the Internet Infidels
We have raised tens of thousands of dollars toward the purchase of a new Content Management System that will vastly improve the look and feel, and the utility, of the Secular Web. It will also allow us to get so much more done. It will be a blessing to our all-volunteer team. But we are ten thousand dollars short of our goal.
September 9, 2001
Added Plea of a Secular Student by Brandon Seger to the Agora section of the KioskHere we are, only a few months left of what is officially the first year of the new millennium.
September 8, 2001
Added a request for a guide to world religions to the Call for PapersSeptember 03, 2001
Added Advice from an Agnostic Baptist Minister: De-converting Converts? Some Practical Thoughts by Anonymous to both the Christian Worldview and the Ex-Christians sections of the Modern Library.Two concepts few would ever find themselves coupling together are "Baptist minister" and "agnostic"unless of course one is describing a debate of some kind. Keep them separate and they make sense, bring them together into one person and the dissonance begins. And yet, an agnostic Baptist minister is exactly what I am.
September 02, 2001
Added Separate Church & Medicine by Jan Brazill to the Opinions section of the Kiosk.The American public is being held hostage by religion -- by those who consider using fertilized human eggs for research to be wrong, even when the eggs are excess from fertility treatments.
September 01, 2001
Added What're You Gonna Do About It, Cry? by Mark I Vuletic to the Agora section of the Kiosk.Since popular religious apologists are in the job of saving souls, it is understandable that they use whatever tools are available to them to persuade their audiences. Torture having become unfashionable with the rise of humanism (religious and nonreligious alike), popular religious apologists now turn to the next best thing--arguments which play upon the audience's desires. One can still effectively terrorize without displaying the thumbscrews.
See "What's New? " for past months.