What's New Archive ● 2004 ● April
What's New on the Secular Web?
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April 17, 2004
Added "A Door Ajar for Theocracy" by Stephen Cheng, to the Agora section of the Kiosk.
The Transitional Administrative Law of Iraq carries a grave flaw. It has no provision for a separation between religion and government. Given the instability of postwar Iraq, the loophole in the charter must be sealed. If not, Iraq will have a door ajar for theocracy.
April 9, 2004
Added "Passion and Pathology" by Arthur Stanley, to the Agora section of the Kiosk.
Just in time for the Easter weekend: a critique of the underlying themes and methodology of Mel Gibson's hit film The Passion of the Christ.
Time for the Easter Quiz once again.
Good Friday is here. Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday are just around the corner. Easter is, of course, the principal festival of the Christian church year, celebrating the alleged resurrection of Jesus on the third day following his crucifixion. Think you know the biblical details of the story? Test your knowledge with the Easter Quiz.
Want more on the Resurrection? Check the listings on the Resurrection page in the Secular Web Library.
April 3, 2004
Added "Is Allah Yahweh?" by Gary Sloan, to the Agora section of the Kiosk.
"Substantial evidence in the Koran and the Bible lends credibility to Allah's contention that he and Yahweh are the same god. A dispassionate examination of the evidence was conducted by an evidence technician and a forensic profiler affiliated with the International Institute for the Investigation of Fraudulent Deities."
April 1, 2004
Feature article: "By This Time He Stinketh: The Attempts of William Lane Craig to Exhume Jesus " by Robert M. Price.
How can we know that Christianity, and particularly the alleged Resurrection, are true if Craig and other Christian apologists cannot show that they are true? For anyone to ask us to accept such on faith would be like a vacuum-cleaner salesman demonstrating his product in your living room: when the machine fails to suck up any dust, he asks you not to think ill of the vacuum; it's just that he, the salesman, can't get straight how to operate it properly--but he tells you that you ought to buy it anyway!
[Editor's note: This article was previously published (1997) in the Secular Web Library. Although its focus is Christian philosopher, apologist, and evangelist William L. Craig, it applies quite well to Christian apologists and Christian apologetics, in general.]
Book-of-the-Month: American Jesus: How the Son of God Became a National Icon, by Stephen Prothero.
This is the Story of the transformation of Jesus from divinity to celebrity, an account of the ways Americans have cast the carpenter from Nazareth in their own image as folk hero and commercial icon. Prothero describes how Jesus was enlisted by abolitionists and Klansmen, by Teddy Roosevelt and Marcus Garvey. He explains how the proliferation of Jesus' image on Broadway stages and bumper stickers, on the cover of Time and on the Internet, in a Holy Land theme park and on a hot-air balloon, expresses the strange mix of the secular and the sacred in contemporary America.
Video-of-the-Month: Monty Python's Life of Brian.
"Blessed are the cheesemakers, and blessed are the Greek, for they shall inherit the earth"--or maybe not. This is a story of Brian, a first century Nazarene whose life strangely parallels that of Jesus. Life of Brian is a religious satire that pokes fun at the mindless and fanatical, at religious zealotry and hypocrisy. It is not only one of Monty Python's funniest achievements, it's a sharp and witty satire that is quite appropriate for the Easter season.
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