The Oxford conference 11 Jun 2010 … audio podcasts are here. This is the Religion, tolerance and intolerance conference I recently attended. I particularly was wowed and provoked into thinking – a rare occurrence these days – by Ben Kaplan’s talk ‘A tale of two churches’, in which he noted that religions in Europe tolerated each other but still tended to hate each other; tolerance was not a virtue. Despite this, they found all kinds of mutual accommodations, like Catholics and Lutherans sharing village churches. History Religion History
Evolution Inherit the windbags 25 May 20084 Oct 2017 Peter Bebergal has a lovely, lyrical and wistful piece on Nextbook, on how scriptural literalism and creationism destroys what is best in religious imagination. Go read it. Read More
Evolution 150 years ago… 28 Feb 2008 Today marks the final day of the month in which, 150 years ago, a naturalist in what is now Indonesia wrote a letter to Charles Darwin in which he gave a theoretical account of how types can evolve by natural selection so that new species will arise. Give it up,… Read More
Creationism and Intelligent Design Genes – the language of God 5: God and genes 15 Jul 201410 Aug 2014 Genes – the language of God 0: Preface Genes – the language of God 1: Genes as Language Genes – the language of God 2: Other popular gene myths and metaphors Genes – the language of God 3: Why genes aren’t information Genes – the language of God 4: Why… Read More
This “fire and sword” belief not just with regard to religion but with culture and ethnicity in particular is so written in to popular notions of history and for so long was used by historians with regard to what are viewed as the ‘dark age’ ethnic origins of many modern European societies. Warfare and violence was always viewed as the cause of major shifts in culture and language. Its a view that held from the 8th cen. until nearly the end of the 20th cen with regard to British history. It’s just not that simple. As society was on a much smaller scale at this time you can find for example in the U.K. in the 6th century Celts and Saxons not just sharing the same village but living and sleeping in the same one room hut. But a Briton remained a Briton even if he wore a gold hilted sword, as a legal code put it. Not a popular period to study these days but a crucial one as it puts some rather old beliefs to bed.