2009-05-14

posts and comments

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by Neil Godfrey

Notice some comments from way back that included urls did not get through — am belatedly correcting that now.

Have finished writing re Timothy Keller’s The Reason for God. He relies heavily on Richard Bauckham’s Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, and I have already addressed that in more than enough detail. He also draws on N.T. Wright often enough, and he has been, and will be addressed, enough in other posts. It is also too tedious to be reading Keller’s ignorant and arrogant insistence that there is no such person as a real “in their heart” atheist, and straw man insistence that nonbelievers are moral relativists, and that it is moral arrogance to think one can judge as inferior the cruder standards of the bible, including its endorsement of slavery. (He comes close to even writing a panegyric of biblical slavery, almost conveying the impression that apart from a few rotten apples it was the best thing that ever happened to any society.)

And I simply can’t bring myself to take the time to address his convoluted and frequently fatuous arguments that confuse metaphors with realities to rationalize the need for a spirit man in the sky to actually give his son over to be butchered for us to be forgiven and have a personal relationship with him. Not to mention his tortured assertion that by submitting totally to a book’s precepts we are engaging in a meaningful “two-way” personal relationship with a deity! (I have addressed a little of the damage all this has inflicted on too many in a few of my posts in my Fundamentalism category and in my notes on Marlene Winell’s Leaving the Fold.) His explanations of how faith changes lives is also a non-starter and reminded me of what I discovered when I began to think about my own faith — how faith is a mindgame, a very useful and positive one for many, but not one to judge others over.

Also want to finish off my Josephus section with a discussion of the James (brother of Jesus called the Christ) passage in Josephus’ Antiquities 20, but that involves a bit of organization work to prepare and edit.

Also I have fallen way behind in collating and editing my years old notes from earlier studies that I would like to revisit and think through again by posting here. — including my notes on Old Testament studies and archaeology. It’s all probably out of date by now and I’ll have to do more catch up reading before I can revisit those.

And I’m bemused by the fact that the most hit-on post on my blog (4000 in 9 months) is an incidental notice re the Venus of Willendorf.


2009-05-04

dead links resurrected (in another body of course)

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by Neil Godfrey

my dodo site with all my vridar links is dead (i knew i should have taken more notice of that ‘dodo’ name)

have begun work on restoring these, one by one, to a new domain, http://vridar.info/


2009-05-03

dead links

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by Neil Godfrey

Darnit, I just discovered that the website for my links to my old dodo web site (Justin Martyr, Gospel of Peter and comparisons with canonical gospels, archaeology of Israel, Mark and Homer) has died. What to do, what to do . . . . .


2009-03-09

New JOSEPHUS category

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by Neil Godfrey

Have added a new category headed JOSEPHUS in my Categories list on right hand column of this page.

Finally realized I have posted several articles on relationships between texts in Josephus and gospels and Acts that could be brought together in a tidy collection box here.

Would love to update blogroll and other links too — but having hard enough time just doing this much with demands of a new job I’ve taken up as an expat.


2008-10-22

Musings of Tom Verenna

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by Neil Godfrey

While I’ve been waylaid by real life from getting to my blog as often as I would like a new blog has since emerged covering in depth the sorts of issues I would have loved to have written up first, but it’s great to see them addressed as extensively as Tom has on his Musings blog.

Recent posts:

But Tom, if you are reading this, let me warn you of a  bitty bug with WordPress that it took me too long to discover — if your settings allow for smileys, then every time you type an 8 followed by a bracket, you will get a smiley instead of a page, issue or verse reference! i admit, though, that readers who like to browse quickly will find such little graphics throughout the posts easier on the eyes.


2008-07-13

old and new updates

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by Neil Godfrey

Have added a few more links that should have been added long ago I’m sure to my to rationalist-atheist and blogroll sections – – – –

Of special note is NT Wrong’s blog (“Hi, I’m NT Wrong, the Free Universalist Interfaith Bishop of Durham, North Carolina”) in the Blogroll


2008-07-02

Vridar makes it to the God Fearin’ Forum

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by Neil Godfrey

As an atheist and social-political activist I’ve long had a soft spot for Catholics when it comes to social justice causes, so it was a flattering surprise to see a nice commendation of my recent series on Luke-Acts in relation to Marcionism in the Patristic Carnival XIII section of The God Fearin’ Forum [scroll over the blog page to restore colour settings for a readable page], a blog for Catholic theology, philosophy and apologetics etc.

A companion recommendation listed with mine is Ben C. Smith’s commencement of “a thought provoking thread on the same subject: Which Came First, the Gospel of Luke or that of Marcion?” — The iidb/frdb discussion is attached below….. Continue reading “Vridar makes it to the God Fearin’ Forum”


2008-05-15

Creative Commons Licence

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by Neil Godfrey

Have recently noticed that some users have copied entire posts of mine without attribution and some partial posts in contexts I am not comfortable with. That’s the internet I guess, but I’d prefer anyone wishing to copy in whole or part to do so in accordance with the terms of the Creative Commons licence I have just taken out for this site.

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Vridar by Neil Godfrey is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at vridar.org.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at /permissions/.

Thanks



2006-12-06

absent with leave

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by Neil Godfrey

for a few days at a work retreat. Continuing to add the We-passages segments will have to wait for resumption till next week it seems.

It’s nice to be able to share a few of the things I’ve read and learned from others the last few years. A damn shame that so much of this sort of scholarship rarely reaches the mainstream. At least the new web can begin to make some inroads in that direction. Sad to see some of the prominent biblical scholars reacting to this with expressions of disgust, intellectual bullying and with one even asserting online that those not schooled in their ways should not even be allowed to read some of their books!


2006-12-03

Web 2.0 booklinks used in this blog

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by Neil Godfrey

I have added LibraryThing links to the books referred to in this blog. These links are not just links to Amazon, but will take you directly to my LibraryThing holding of the book, which will enable you to:

  • search for the book in a library (hopefully near you!)
  • followup Library of Congress subject headings linked to the book
  • consult library quality bibliographic details of the book
  • check web tags others have attached to this book
  • check for online discussions other readers of this book may have held
  • see who else owns this book and what they might have said about it
  • maybe even borrow it from them if you’re really lucky (I lend nuthin’ though!)
  • check its availability and cost across a range of online suppliers (not only Amazon)

LibraryThing is great! If you don’t already know about it check it out and add your own collection there too.

Neil Godfrey
Australia


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