by Carl Howard | Apr 19, 2011 | Atheism and Religion, Biases and Fallacies, Blog Topics, Science and Skepticism
Video Link By now you’re probably familiar with the tide-goes-in-tide-goes-out memes. If so, skip to “What you might not know”. If you’ve been under a rock, here’s a quick description. So, David Silverman (the president of the American Atheists) is appearing on...
by Carl Howard | Mar 29, 2011 | Atheism and Religion, Blog Topics, Blogging the Bible
[EDIT: Argh! Yet another posting schedule wardrobe malfunction. Apologies if you saw the half-baked version of this] A month ago someone I know emailed me to ask my interpretation of the Tower of Babel story for a freelance job that required some interpretation of...
by Carl Howard | Feb 28, 2011 | Atheism and Religion, Blog Topics, Blogging Jewish Law
Final part of the series, previous parts here and here. Area: Non-observance Torah Problem: There are a large number of transgressions for which a Jew is to be excluded from the Jewish community. This could be problematic since it’s very divisive and there are so many...
by Carl Howard | Feb 23, 2011 | Atheism and Religion, Blog Topics, Blogging Jewish Law
A continuation from Monday’s post. Area: The Sotah (woman suspected of adultery, Num 5:11-31) Torah Problem: I’ve posted on this here and here), but basically the ritual is particularly misogynistic, allowing husbands free reign to bully and humiliate their wives in...
by Carl Howard | Feb 21, 2011 | Atheism and Religion, Blog Topics, Blogging Jewish Law
As I’ve posted before, I see a large part of Jewish law (at least when it was formed) as reconciling the Torah, with its barbaric and tribal mentality, with a more modern and (mostly) more humane outlook. When I was looking at the Torah for abridgement, I noticed this...
by Carl Howard | Feb 10, 2011 | Atheism and Religion, Blog Topics, Super-Abridged Bible
Chapters 1-11: Retelling and warnings The whole book is almost entirely a first-person speech by Moses that he imparts to prepare the Israelites to enter Israel and begin conquering it.(There is also some repetition of laws given before, I’ve omitted these giving only...
