Thursday, January 28, 2021

Top blogging of 2020

Rankings are as of Sunday, Jan. 3. As I normally post once a week, and never more than twice a week, as this is not my primary blog, and I've already got material lined up for here, I pushed this back a couple of weeks. Not all are from this past year; they're simply the most popular of that time.

No. 1? People like to talk about the Antichrist and his/its "mark of the beast." Problem: Revelation never uses the word "Antichrist." Nor does it talk about "the man of lawlessness." So what's the diff between them, if any? I explored that in December 2019, just in time for Christmas then.

No. 2? Plato, meet Dr. Anthony Fauci. The hero of "The Resistance" in trying to keep federal government discussion of coronavirus control science-based, Fauci told a Platonic noble lie last March about not wearing masks, then doubled down on the alleged necessity of that last summer. I took him to the ethics woodshed and gave him a huge spanking. (He has since admitted engaging in a SECOND noble lie, this one over the percentage of Americans who need either vaccination or previous contraction of the disease to provide "herd immunity.")

No. 3? Sharon Hill in late 2018 said she was no longer a Skeptics™ card carrier. But, she didn't repent of her previous Brian Dunning fangrrlism. I tackled all of that.

No. 4? Speaking of Brian Dunning, this 2010 post, originally untitled, somehow went viral early last year and I eventually titled it as "Libertarian pseudoskeptical pseudoscience." Brian Dunning, the gift that never stops giving.

No. 5? Hobby Lobby-connected Museum of the Bible officially admitted last year it had bought a peck of forged Dead Sea Scrolls. Left to clean up the mess? Old seminary classmate of mine Jeff Kloha; I blogged about the work he faces, the possible pressures to play along with Hobby Lobby on some things, his wrongness on some exegetical and text-critical statements related to the DSS, and more. Read away.

No. 6? What do GIFs have to do with David Hume? More than you might think, as I discussed here last year.

No. 7? Beware the Ides of March and Indo-European cognates! This was a fun one to write, talking about Caesar as would-be rex, the German Reich and more.

No. 8? More problems for reincarnationists. I'm not a Gnu Atheist, but things that catch my eye that slap down either Western or Eastern religions on fundamental issues will start me to blogging. This one had two parts. First, per Thomas Nagel's famous piece, how could a reincarnated human soul, if it moved a ways "downward," map onto a bat? Second, what's with this idea of "progress" in reincarnation in general, and how its devotees define when a new life is progress and when it is regress?

No. 9? Me comparing my path with that of another Lutheran become atheist, Ed Suominen. An old one from 2013, updated last year.

No. 10? Inspired in part by two Jewish philosophers, the well-known Walter Kaufmann and online correspondent Dan Kaufman, I took their thought — and that of many others — of claiming that Christianity is all about orthodoxy while other religions, and above all, Judaism, are all about orthopraxis, to stern task. Just ain't so, I said.

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