American software developer and philosophy enthusiast. Besides loving science, I enjoy theology, history, archaeology, technology, etc.
Aug 11 • 19 tweets • 3 min read
Bridges’ critique of Darwinian, neo-Darwinian, and post-Darwinian paradigms relies on selective framing, mischaracterization of scientific concepts, and speculative alternatives that lack evidential grounding. 🧵
His “mosaic with 85% missing” metaphor for the fossil record trades on the rarity of fossilization but ignores how evolutionary history is reconstructed through consilient and independent lines of evidence.
Nov 19, 2022 • 19 tweets • 6 min read
Many scholars believe that there was some influence from Iranian religion; it seems to have been an interaction of Persian influence (in possibly Hellenized form) and internal eschatological development.
Jon D. Levenson in Resurrection and the Restoration of Israel (Yale, 2008) says that Zoroastrian theology "has obvious and striking connections with Jewish apocalyptic in general"...
May 19, 2020 • 14 tweets • 3 min read
“Mythology” and “religion” are actually two completely different things.
What is mythology?
Mythology is the body of traditional stories and tales associated with a particular culture that have been passed down from generation to generation and have profound cultural and/or...
...religious significance to the members of that culture. Myths can sometimes be religious in nature, but they can also be important to other aspects of the culture. Ultimately, “myth” is a genre of folklore.
Mar 25, 2020 • 21 tweets • 4 min read
[Thread]
The New World Translation (NWT) is an English translation of the Bible published by the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society. It is the version of the Bible most often used by Jehovah’s Witnesses.
It is known for including a large number of passages that are translated quite differently from how those passages are normally translated. The NWT is especially controversial for its unusual translation of the Gospel of John 1:1.
Mar 22, 2020 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
There is literally zero scholarly validity to the approach of "undesigned coincidences". It is apologetics and just a version of harmonization that's driven by an interpretive approach that prefers "let's maintain the Bible's inerrancy" over ...
..."what does it look like to read these texts and historicize them accurately?" as a consideration for assessing interpretive options. Of note, McGrew's apologetics books do exemplify the importance of the prestige of the academic as a way of establishing legitimacy among ...
Mar 1, 2020 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
Not Surprising News: Tablet thought to have guarded tombs after Jesus’s death may not be what it seems (Science Magazine) sciencemag.org/news/2020/02/t…
tl;dr -
Feb 19, 2020 • 8 tweets • 3 min read
Technically speaking, ophanim/cherubim/seraphim aren’t angels (malakhim). Malakhim (“messengers”) are always depicted in anthropomorphic terms afaik, those other guys are divine beasts and mystical chariot wheels that often attend or uphold the throne. books.google.com/books?id=kE2k3…
Cherubim seem to be related to Mesopotamian chimeric beasts like lamassu, seraphim are winged serpents that may relate to Bronze Age serpent cults, and malakhim correspond to the fourth and lowest tier of deity at Ugarit, the messenger deities.
@MikeWingerii In Encyclopedia for Wars, authors Charles Phillips & Alan Axelrod document the history of recorded warfare. 1763 wars are listed of which 123 have been classified to primarily involve a religious cause, accounting for less than 7% of wars and less than 2% of war deaths.
@MikeWingerii In ‘War Audit’, Greg Austin (a research Fellow in the Department of Peace Studies at the University of Bradford) along with his colleagues Todd Kranock and Thom Oommen put together a list of 73 major wars that occurred in the last 3,500 years up to the 20th century.
