When it comes to solving the mysteries of science, religion, philosophy, or history, it is all a matter of best evidence, but, it remains the case that when you have the truth everything fits. Tabor
Quintessential JZ Smith…if you never had the pleasure of hearing him…his Plenary Address to the American Academy of Religion in 2010.
You can read an informal fascinating interview with Mr. Smith (as Chicago professors are called–no titles please!) published in The Chicago Maroon in 2008 here. Don’t miss this one!
Mr. Smith’s published books are available on Amazon, with an author’s page here. Each is a collection of essays gathered around a theme or stage in his unfolding thinking about “Religion” over four decades.
A collection of essays on Smith’s work and contributions to the field: Introducing Religion: Essays in Honor of Jonathan Z. Smith, edited by by Willi Braun andRussell T. McCutcheon.
Here is a segment from my various interviews with Dr. Robert Kuhn on his award-winning PBS program Closer to Truth. I am asked to address here the question “Can Different Religions All Be True?” You can view this and other interviews with me and a host of other historians, theologians, philosophers, physicists, psychologists, mathematicians, and biologists on the “Big Questions” of Cosmos, Mind, and God.
Why compare terrorists to “animals”? It seems to me to be quite an insult to our furry friends, even the predators, who hunt for food but never approach our crazy human carnage, racism, cultural biases, baseless hatred, corruption and mendacity. Homo Sapiens are the shameful species, now bent on destroying our very planet, much less one another. Who could count the suffering and senseless deaths human against human? It is incalculable. And we have just about wiped out those predator “animals” we like to use as an example of “evil,” to boot. I think our species could better be named Home Stultus.
I am teaching a course this semester called “The End of the World as We Know It” after the REM song of that name. We are examining ideas associated with Biblical prophecy and the Apocalypse, both Jewish and Christian (and towards the end, a bit of Islam), in the West for the past 2500 years.
Little did I realize, when I planned this course last year, that September 23, 2017 would become the focus of such a wide-spread wave of apocalyptic hysteria in the evangelical prophecy world. If you have not heard of this just try a YouTube search for “September 23, 2017” and you will see what I mean–with multiple thousands of videos uploaded that focus on this date. Yes, I am talking about this week–just five days from now! It all has to do with a rare “Sign” in the heavens involving a configuration of the constellation Virgo, with the sun, moon, four of our planets, and a group of stars. This event is supposed to echo the signs in the heavens at the birth of Jesus and precisely fulfill the vision in Revelation 12:1:
And a great portent appeared in heaven, a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars; she was with child and she cried out in her pangs of birth, in anguish for delivery.
