What's New Archive ● 2019 ● January
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January 31, 2019
Added Religion and Cultural Cleansing (2019) by Michael Moore to the Psychology of Religion page under Theism in the Modern Documents section of the Secular Web Library.
Knowledge has traditionally been transmitted across generations through spoken and written words. Both mediums have disadvantages: spoken words get distorted, and written ones are often destroyed. In this essay Michael Moore discusses the willful, ideologically motivated destruction of religious and cultural heritage by representatives of competing religions. Illustrative cases exemplify violent religious intolerance in general.
New in the Kiosk: How the Early Followers of Jesus Dealt with the Unexpected Death of their Messiah (2019) by Robert Shaw
In this article, Robert Shaw explores the crucifixion of Jesus and how the Gospel narratives of this event were embellished with allusions to Old Testament passages. In addition, Shaw shows that early Christians developed an interpretation of Jesus' death as part of a premeditated divine plan that was at odds with contemporary Jewish expectations of the Messiah.
Recommended reading from the Bookstore: The End of Biblical Studies (2007) by Hector Avalos.
In this radical critique of his own academic specialty, biblical scholar Hector Avalos calls for an end to biblical studies as we know them. He outlines two main arguments for this surprising conclusion. First, academic biblical scholarship has clearly succeeded in showing that the ancient civilization that produced the Bible held beliefs about the origin, nature, and purpose of the world and humanity that are fundamentally opposed to the views of modern society. The Bible is thus largely irrelevant to the needs and concerns of contemporary human beings. Second, Avalos criticizes his colleagues for applying a variety of flawed and specious techniques aimed at maintaining the illusion that the Bible is still relevant in today's world. In effect, he accuses his profession of being more concerned about its self-preservation than about giving an honest account of its own findings to the general public and faith communities.