Midnight Burger has been amazing. Classic radio drama style show.
Eugene and the Black Turkish pilot at the top of his wiki have fantastic nicknames - the Black Swallow of Death and the Black Steel Eagle of Izmir, respectively.
GeekNights should be back tomorrow. Holidays and hockey got in the way
We did upload one of our PAX panels though:
That was fantastic! And he definitely is the coolest man to ever live. Thanks for sharing it.
I should have posted about this last week, but better late than never:
LRR is finally releasing the third season of Qwerpline
I was just recommended In the Cards, a comedy about a man who has the worst luck in the world. When a psychic reads his tarot cards, he vows to turn around his misfortune.
The whole first season is already up.
A couple of months ago I talked about Lions Led By Donkeys. They recently did an episode on Doug Hegdahl whose story as a POW during the Vietnam war is in equal parts ridiculous and amazing.
Sweet! I missed this one. Now added to my “listen at work” queue.
DATA/DOGMA
Probably not a ton of ex-fundamentalist Christians or people who grew up in a Bible cult in this forum but, just in case this strikes anyone’s fancy, the Data Over Dogma podcast has been a joy to listen to for me.
I sometimes think it’s a bit weird being a Bible nerd who is also an athiest, but I just find it comforting. Like having your favorite food from when you were in middle school. It may not be good for you but goddamn if it doesn’t scratch an itch. And the Data over Dogma podcast is actually good while scratching that studying religious scripture itch that I was conditioned to enjoy since birth.
As a Bible college dropout who firmly left religion but never lost the taste for the study of religion, this podcast is right up my alley. No prosalytizing or any presumtion of Biblical truth, just a fairly straight forward accademic and critical review of common misconceptions and deliberate missuses concerning the Christian and Hebrew holy books. This show is really filling in a lot of the holes left from my hyper-religious Biblical education and I love it. The hosts being pretty funny and not openly religious helps a lot.
I highly recommend this show for anybody dealing with religious trauma or anyone who just wants a good accademic and historical perspective on the Christian Bible.
TL;DR: That’s not weird at all. Many, or possibly even most, biblical scholars are atheist, or have had their belief somewhat or entirely erased due to their studies.
A lot of people who intensely study the bible, and other religious texts, crossover into linguistics and archaeology. Inevitably they learn about the true origins of the text they are studying. They end up in situations where they learn facts they can not ignore.
From my exposure to those seriously seriously studying the new testament specifically, there seem to be mostly two camps. The first camp believe none of the new testament is literal historical truth. The second camp are biblical minimalists who must admit that most of the new testament is not historical truth, but some small parts possibly could be and they hold onto that last thread of possibility.
Both of the camps can not ignore what they have learned in their studies. They know well that the bible was not written until hundreds of years after the supposed life of Jesus. They know well everything that we can know about what happened at the council of Nicaea. They know well about the changes that were made in different editions and translations of the new testament by humans, even if some of them happened to be kings. Knowing and accepting those sorts of historical facts makes it very difficult to believe that the words in any edition of the book are accurate historical accounts or instructions from an omnipotent deity.
There are, of course, some big exceptions. Most familiar to me are the very observant Jews who spend their lives intensely studying the Torah. They have the same intellectual curiosity and intense inquiry of all academics. Some of them do see through to the truth and lose belief, but most appear not to.
The reason for this, I believe, is that they although they ask many questions, they do not ask the same kind of questions. They don’t ask where the books came from, or who wrote them. They don’t study archaeology or anything outside of the text of the books themselves.
It’s assumed the books are the word of God that was then written down by Moses and so on and so on. The questions they ask are more like “The Torah says this, what did God mean by that? Does that mean we can play backgammon on the Sabbath or not?” Their inquiry runs deep, but does not escape the context.
Can you imagine one person studying the Lord of the Rings, but the only evidence in their study are the three books plus The Hobbit. The Silmarillion and other works ignored as apocryphal. This person indeed can get deep into discussions about why eagles couldn’t fly Frodo to Mount Doom. They are not foolish. They just can not think outside the box they have erected for their own mind.
Now imagine a scholar who has not placed themselves in such a box. They consider not just the texts they are studying, but those texts within the context of the entire known universe. Not only does the Silmarillion come into play, but they dare to ask questions with much more serious consequences. Who was J.R.R. Tolkien? What was he like? What kind of ideas did he have? What was happening in the world when he wrote these books?
The first scholar could potentially believe Frodo once existed, but the latter would find it nearly impossible to do so.
I’ll echo Scott and say that most atheists that I know, including myself, grew up some flavor of Christian and have read a bit of the bible before.
One of the things that I’d also like to bring up, to reinforce Scott point more, is that deeply studying the bible is one of those things that has historically caused the most change and strife in the world. It is arguable that The Reformation was kicked off because some guy, Erasmus, was getting too much into studying the bible and went, “wait, the bible was originally written in greek, maybe I should read that … OMG GUYS DID YOU KNOW THAT TRANSLATIONS ARENT GREAT? EVERYTHING IS WRONG”
Completely agree. Which is why I like this show so much.
Just that sometimes I’ll be listening and think to myself, “Who the fuck cares! This is all irrelevant bullshit”. And then happily go back to listening to an in-depth discussion about social practices among ancient tribal cultures and modern translations of their orgin myths and legends. It’s a fun show.
Interesting interview with an economist proposing a 50% tax on digital advertising.