Wrongness by two biblical criticism academics

 Both these come via r/AcademicBiblical, but it's the scholars that are at issue.

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My respect for Paula Fredriksen just went further in the toilet with this stupidity about what actually counts as monotheism. The convert to Judaism went high on my teh stupidz some time ago with this backdoor attempt to inject Zionism into Palestinian demographics, which led me to find other intellectual problems.

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And, my respect went down for a younger-generation scholar as well. Via a comment, on YouTube, Dan McClellan justifies a pre-70 Markan dating in part on Mark getting info from Peter before he was martyred in Rome. I dropped my piece on how Tacitus is almost certainly a Christian interpolation, "Christians" didn't exist then, there weren't enough Jesus followers to be on Nero's radar, etc. He goes on to claim Paul was also killed then, even though he was not a Roman citizen, the last one-quarter of Acts is highly non-historical and ergo he almost certainly never got to Rome.

McClellan is right on the issue, near the end of the piece, about how modern fundagelical colleges and seminaries dispute a strawman version of critical scholarship — if they engage even that.

 

Texas Mennonites: Combining antivaxxerism with Calvinist-like determinism

 Yes, I know that Anabaptist types like Mennonites aren't Calvinist per se, but many of them hold to the same rigid determinism, as do the parents of the child who was the first measles death in West Texas a few weeks ago.

The child's parents make that clear.

The Texas parents of an unvaccinated 6-year-old girl who died from measles Feb. 26 told the anti-vaccine organization Children’s Health Defense in a video released Monday that the experience did not convince them that vaccination against measles was necessary.

“She says they would still say ‘Don’t do the shots,’” an unidentified translator for the parents said. “They think it’s not as bad as the media is making it out to be.”

The West Texas measles outbreak, the biggest in the state in 30 years, has infected more than 270 people and hospitalizing dozens of them. Public health officials have repeatedly told Texans that studies have time and time again shown that the safest and most effective way to avoid contracting the very infectious, life-threatening disease is to vaccinate with the measles-mumps-rubella shot.

The couple, members of a Mennonite community in Gaines County with traditionally low vaccination rates, spoke on camera in both English and Low German to CHD Executive Director Polly Tommey and CHD Chief Scientific Officer Brian Hooker.

“It was her time on Earth,” the translator said the parents told her. “They believe she’s better off where she is now.”

What do you say in response to that?

It's hard.

First, once again, a reminder that there is NO "theology of the bible," contra these people and other literalists in general. On the issue in hand, in placed like Third Isaiah or Job, you bet I can find support for not just Calvinist-style double predestination on salvation vs damnation, but more specifically, on a broader general determinism. 

Martin Luther, despite his rejection of double predestination, or so he claimed to be doing in "The Enslaved Will" ("Bondage of the Will") actually really supported it in many ways himself.

I can find arguments against such determinism, though, starting with the Yahwist version of the creation story in Genesis 2-3.

Beyond that lurk other issues.

First, reading between the lines of Covenant Hospital's statement, these parents are willing to lie for their religion.

Lying in the name of religion? All-American! And yet another reason why secularists generally score better on issues of ethics than the religious do, especially the fundamentalist within religions. And, that's not limited to Christianity, nor to the United States.

And, with that sort of lying, they surely don't care about endangering others.

Health experts say it could take a full year to fully contain the West Texas measles outbreak:

That said, per that same piece, is this all about religion or not? One person says no:

Katherine Wells, director of public health for the City of Lubbock, during a Tuesday meeting of the Big Cities Health Coalition, a national organization for large metropolitan health departments ... said efforts to increase the vaccination rates in Gaines County, which is about 70 miles from Lubbock, and the surrounding region have been slow as trust in the government has seemingly reached an all-time low.

“We are seeing, just like the rest of Americans, this community has seen a lot of stories about vaccines causing autism, and that is leading to a lot of this vaccine hesitancy, not religion,” she said.

But, putting the cloak of religion on non-religious beliefs is an all-American pastime. And, that, too, is probably not limited to Christianity nor to the US. Nor is it limited to fundagelical forms of religion, whether Christianity or otherwise.

As for Mennonite distrust of government? That goes back, ultimately, to the Peasants' Revolt. But, we're not in the neither Holy, nor Roman, nor Empire today. Besides that? Romans 13.

More wrongness at r/AcademicBiblical

 I "couldn't help" but visit there again recently.

Here's a mix of errors there plus WTFs.

While Saul's 100 foreskins from David was seemingly bizarre, the fact that an "evil spirit" came on him the next day does NOT mean, contra this, that he was "possessed" at that time. And, in the context of 1 Samuel 18, with an assist from Paul Davidson, it's not actually bizarre. Rather, this is a "bounty marker," like ears of dead coyotes being sent to US Fish and Wildlife.

Also per that assist from Paul, much of 1 Samuel 18 is NOT in the LXX. Anybody who knows much about textual criticism of the Tanakh knows that the Former Prophets in general are the worst part of the Hebrew Bible. Missing? Among other things, the "evil" spirit in v. 10. 

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Disagree with Paul Davidson (Captain Haddock) and others, whether they're just citing largely continental academics or they actually agree, in answers on this piece, that Eden in Genesis 2-3 is at least partially metaphorical for the Temple and the Fall a metaphor for the Babylonian Exile. The problem is that this is J material, unless you're claiming VERY late editing for it, or else entirely throwing the documentary hypothesis out the window. I don't buy either one. Per this post, if we restrict ourselves to the first half, could Eden be metaphorical for the Temple? Yes. But, standing by Genesis 2-3 being J material, you have to find some other answer for what the Fall is then metaphorical of. If it's a general expulsion from the presence of (the) god(s), a la end of golden age myths in general? I'm OK with that.

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Here, a discussion of the origin of Yahweh which doesn't mention the Midianite hypothesis. 

And related, at another post? At least in my book, contra this commenter, the Midianite hypothesis is not the same as the Kenite hypothesis.

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That said, sometimes the post itself is the laugher, like this guy asking people to back him up on his claim that Adam and Eve got booted from Eden for having a three-way with a second male. This is also once again a failure of moderators for leaving this post up, including any that are left from two years ago when they ganged up to ban me.

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If you don't get the idea of puns, or don't get grammatical gender, then don't push back against the answers you get. 

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Putting Hindu-Buddhist carts before consciousness horses

Big fail about 2/3 the way through on this Nautilus piece. Even if the no-self idea is true, the author admits that the appearance of a self may still be “real.”

A logical derivation from that is what Hume said to the lady who asked him how he could sleep at night with the “problem of causation,” not knowing if the sun would come up tomorrow or not. Hume simply said, he went to sleep.

In other words, he “acted as if.”

Likewise, the “no-self” view does not extinguish egoism.

And, the “shared self” view smoked too much Buddhism. (Or Hinduism, more likely, since she mentions “Atman.”

Of course, when you have the piece author having written a book, “Non-physicalist Theories of Consciousness,” you’ll get that.

LCMS President Matthew Harrison's latest hypocrisy — a deeper theological dive

About a month ago, I said at my main blog that President-for-Life of the LCMS Matthew Harrison was full of crap — hypocritical crap — in his response to Trump surrogate and general nutter Michael Flynn.

Flynn, per that link, attacked Lutheran Immigration Refugee Services for getting large federal grants for ... uh, helping immigrants. That's even though the LCMS, unlike Rome, can't see its way to doing social justice while remaining theologically conservative.

Flynn, one of Elmo Musk's DOGE-y minions, is of course peddling twaddle. 

So is Matty in his response.

Here, I'm going to expand on some theological issues that I didn't look at there.

Here's the start of that hypocrisy. Matty says:

We don’t say much to or about the government.

Then goes on to talk extensively about the government indeed.

We have suffered formal legal action and much more as we have watched as DEI philosophy (formally rejected by our church body along with white supremacy) has pervaded nearly every aspect of government activity, even as the U.S. government has burgeoned beyond all ethical and rational propriety, in effect stealing the future from our children.

Talking about the size of government in general is talking about government in general. The "taxation is theft" that appears to be in the background of that last line is bigger bullshit, as it's Trump who has run up large parts of the federal budget deficit, Reagan who started it, and Dick Cheney in between who said "deficits don't matter."

Matty doubles down later, while claiming it's "just me, not the LCMS":

Let me just note (and this is NOT an official position of the LCMS): I’m personally pleased with DOGE. The federal government is bloated beyond all rational limits. It can’t fund its activities without accumulating debt. And it’s failing in its basic tasks.

Please.

First, Federal spending ticked up during COVID, yes, but since then, has returned to close to its historic 60-year norm. See the St. Louis Fed. St. Louis, where you are, Matty. Let's add that, in 1998-2001, we actually ran budget surpluses. Gee (with carryover to fiscal 2001) what party controlled the presidency then, Matt? Arguably, you're violating the Eighth Commandment (Lutheran-Catholic-Anglican-Orthodox numbering) by bearing false witness against a political party.

In fact, Trump himself, on Super Bowl Sunday, just blathered to Bret Baier about $36 trillion in national debt without admitting his first term, he was responsible for one-quarter of that.

And again, this is talking about government.

And, because the devil supposedly loves a bible-quoting secularist, now would be the time for Romans 13, I believe:

Let every person be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except from God, and those authorities that exist have been instituted by God. 2 Therefore whoever resists authority resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment

There you are, Matt.

And, if that's not enough? Verse 7 says:

Give to everyone what you owe them: If you owe taxes, pay taxes; if revenue, then revenue.

(Harrison hasn't called for tax-refusal disobedience. But, somebody might take his ball and run.)

As Jesus said at the end of the tale of the Good Samaritan? Maybe you should "go and do likewise"? 

DEI? Most of it is a capitalist pile of junk. And, no, Matt, even if there is a god, he, she or it didn't invent capitalism. When done rightly, as Costco knows, it's good for business and its good ethics as well.

You didn't mention critical race theory, but I'll but you at least have personal, if not official, thoughts about it. Well, they would be wrong; of that I have no doubt. 

I can say that with confidence for two reasons. The first is that most White wingnuts blather about critical race theory without knowing what it is. The second is that I've read "Silent Covenants" by Derrick Bell, one of the developers of critical race theory, and found it informative and more good than bad.

Let's next do a gotcha call-out, Matt. You say at the end:

At the same time, a well-regulated border, sound immigration policy, and welcoming space for persecuted refugees are all fundamental parts of a God-pleasing answer to the question:

OK, what's your answer to the genocide in Gaza? I already know. Your denomination hasn't called it a genocide, AFAIK, and has basically ignored it and the countless refugees Israel has created. (The LCMS is fundamentalist in its own way, but not evangelical millennialists, so it has no reason to expect Israel to bring on Armageddon.)

For that matter, since we're talking primarily about Hispanics, and you ARE talking about the government, what's your personal — and denominational leadership — take on the United States' history of coups and other meddling in Latin America that destabilizes countries and creates refugees?

But, then let's get to the rhetorical question that follows.

Who will contribute to this marvelous and blessed American experiment?

THAT, my "dear sir," is clearly untheological. The "United States of America" is not in Christian scriptures, and to claim the "American experiment" is "blessed" as an implication that it is, and so is a theological lie. (Paul, in Romans, said that the Roman imperium was divinely established. He did NOT claim it was "marvelous" or "blessed.") It's about as much a lie as the drivel from the Gun Nuts for Luther group which out of thin air implies there's a biblical, god-given right to gunz. It also is a violation of at least the spirit of the First Amendment you claim to love.

Beyond that? As a riff on John Winthrop's city on a hill angle? It's Calvinist, for one thing, and a theological error that, per Augustine, is the religious version of a First Amendment error. It's a confusion and a conflation of the "two kingdoms."

Harrison knows that Zwingli died in battle, sword in hand, and Luther condemned him for that.

Parallel to that, to riff on pseudo-Paul in Ephesians? Christianity is supposed to be about neither Blacks nor Whites, and re Matt's statement, neither Russian nor American.

So, taking sides on sociological issues as a church denomination is itself problematic theologically, above and beyond other issues.

As for the German immigrants you say founded the LCMS?

I said on my original piece about the Lutefash that Harrison was enough of a political chameleon to largely stay above the fray. To the degree he thinks its too much heavy lifting, he'll ignore the underground network of pastors and congregations, of which I only scratched the surface in that initial piece.

That may or may not still be true. But, on secular politics, I guess he just can't help himself.

As for the First Amendment, not Commandment? Contra a college friend of mine, it cuts both ways, per Jefferson. Beyond that, to divert back to theology? Good old Lutheran Richard John Neuhaus (slightly more liberal on biblical criticism than the LCMS brethren he left, but just as conservative as many politically) talked about the "public square." Yes, Keith, churches have every right to participate in the public square. And other participants have just as much right to critique and criticize them as any other participant.

I would say "Here I stand, I can do no other" as a bit of additional mocking, but of course (OF COURSE!) Luther never actually said that. It's just another part of 24-karat gilt Luther legend. FAR more of that legend is exposed here.

From that second link, this observation of mine:

The "yes I'm right" stance of Luther himself, not only vis-a-vis things where he clearly was, but other issues, such as versus the Reformed on the Eucharist, versus many Reformed and other Lutherans on the issue of adiophora and more, seems to still run strong in much of the conservative wing of Lutheranism. (Let's not forget that Luther thought he was competent to condemn Copernicus' heliocentric theory of the solar system, and rushed to do so when his book was published.)

Is quite pertinent to the situation at hand.

God's Ghostwriters: Semi-disappointing foul ball from Candida Moss

God's Ghostwriters: Enslaved Christians and the Making of the Bible by Candida R. Moss
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

As usual, this is an expanded version of my Goodreads review. I've removed the spoiler alert that hid about half of the review, as well as expanding around the corners on various bits.

God’s Ghostwriters? This had a fair amount of disappointment, especially given that Candida Moss’ book on the “Myth of Persecution” was pretty good. That said, one moderate level "issue," there, not an error, but an issue of historiography, became a larger-level issue here.

At about 35-40 percent through, I was thinking this can’t be more than 3 stars. By 60 percent or so, I’m thinking, it can’t be more than 2. But, at around the 75 percent mark, I’m thinking, well, it can be 3. But, I eventually went back to 2 stars.

Contra many low-star reviewers on Goodreads, my issue is not primarily with some of her conjectures, but with some godawful mistakes on biblical criticism — mistakes that people below her academic pay grade, and below mine, know are wrong, at least in the first case. (Some of those low-star reviewers appeared to me to view her conjectures as "wokeism." None used that term, but, clicking through to their profiles, it's clear they were of that mindset.)

With that? On to those biblical criticism errors.

First, she gives the appearance of thinking Paul was a Roman citizen. (I didn't put down a page number in my notes when and whee I first observed that.) Moss doesn't explicitly say "Paul was a Roman citizen," but she does express thoughts in that direction. WRONG! Roman citizenship was mentioned or claimed by Paul, of course. The "of course" isn't meant to be snarky, but if it's taken that way, so be it. (Bart Ehrman, or one of his hacks writing on Bart's site, also thinks Paul was a Roman citizen. God, so much biblical scholarship is in the shitter.)

Related?

Second, she thinks the last one-quarter of Acts, from Paul’s temple arrest on, is historical, or at least historical enough to have him getting to Rome. WRONG! Go here for the particularly "high" ahistoricity of the last one-quarter of Acts, as well as comments on Paul not being a Roman citizen, to tie back to the above. Beyond that, Paul almost certainly never got to Rome. Moss does, correctly, in "Myth" believe the Tacitus passage about Neronean persecution of Christians is an interpolation, so why she seems to think Paul got to Rome, or hints at thinking he was a Roman citizen, I don't know.

Third, she seems to give some credibility to the historicity of Papias. Not.Even.Wrong. Based on a scribal slave of Cicero’s, and his veneration, if you will, she claims that an enslaved Mark would have testified to the veracity of recording Peter. Well, beyond this being based on one enslaved scribe and anecdotal comments about him, rather than a collection of statements to that end from patrician Romans, it’s also of course dependent on giving credibility to the historicity of Papias. Sadly, she's not the only person I've come across recently to, in my opinion, give undue credibility to him.See here and here.

Fourth? I found her claim that Mark doesn't have screwed-up geography on Jesus' peregrinations around western Galilee and southwestern Syria to be laughable. (She said this was actually the Markan Jesus being dilatory on facing his death, in a slave-like passive-aggressive way. This in turn assumed, on a non-fundagelical reading of Mark, that the Markan Jesus knew his mission would result in his death. Also dubious, as this was before Mark 6, which is where John the Baptizer meets his end.) In reality, to pick up at Mark 5, first, neither Gerasa, Gergasa, or Gadara borders the See of Galilee, so Jesus could not have gone to "the other side" even if some manuscripts leave out "in the boat." Yes, it's Mark 7 where the geographic muddle is worse, but it starts before John's death. And, speaking of Mark 7, Sidon is NOT NOT NOT in the Decapolis, or "the area of the Decapolis," period and end of story. It is, of course (needed again for snark?) not even a Hellenistic city.

I think one could make half a case for Jesus' foreknowledge in a non-fundagelical reading of Mark's narrative, but no more. Maybe three-quarters in Matthew and Luke, and fully in John. But no more than a generous halfway in Mark and hold on to John.

OK, with that said? My thoughts about her explication on ancient Roman slavery, New Testament slave imagery and its literalness and more are long. Beyond the historiography issue mentioned above, there's also the issue of anecdotal takes. I don't mind a certain degree of speculative history, but when you're trying to move beyond the speculative, you also need to move beyond the anecdotal.

First, the general slavery issue in Imperial Rome? Best estimates outside of Italy are that 10-20 percent of the provincial Roman population was enslaved. That’s well below the 1860 US South’s 30 percent, despite slave importation having been banned (on paper, at least) for more than 50 years. (The 11 eventually seceding states were at 42 percent slave population; in all 15 non-Northern slave states [there were still a few up there in 1860] it was 32 percent.) The high side is probably no higher than the three non-Delaware border states, I had said in my original review, and my guess was close enough for jazz, at 14.3 percent. 

In other words, yes, there were a lot of slaves in ancient Rome; there weren’t THAT many, and many freemen who weren’t Roman citizens and weren’t agricultural landlords might well not have owned any. Even in Italy itself, they weren’t more than one-third of the population. Wiki’s article on Roman slavery also estimates that half of all slaves were owned by the “elite,” for which it offers a demographic determination — less than 1.5 percent of the Imperial population. In other words, the picture that Moss paints by insinuation — that most freeborns had at least a couple of household slaves? Taint so. Wikipedia's Slavery in ancient Rome piece has more. In the US, for all 15 slave states in 1860? About 5  percent of White folks were slave owners; putting it in family terms, it was about 30 percent. (Side note: Failure to dive more into demographics is one reason "Myth of Persecution" got 4 stars, not 5.)

Splitting this out per the above and applying back to Imperial Rome? Surely 5 percent, maybe 7-8 percent, of people in Italy owned slaves. We could say 10 percent in Rome. In the provinces? Probably no more than 3 percent. On families? Maybe 40 percent in Italy; no more than 20 percent in the provinces on average.

Also related to demographics, and related to the above? Moss presents an issue of Imperial Rome as towns and cities (and those humongous slave farms as assumed in the background). Well, in “Pagans and Christians” Robin Lane Fox reminds us that it ain't so. Not even close. Especially if you get away from Italy, Attica, and Alexandria-centered Egypt, the majority of the Roman population elsewhere probably lived more than 20 miles away from a town of 5,000 or more, and I'm being conservative with that guesstimate. These were SMALL artisans and small "freehold" farmers. In Fox's rural Anatolia, few people owned slaves.

Now, that said, it's a "commonplace" that Christianity was a religion of the towns and cities. Nonetheless, even there, not everybody owned slaves. So, would extreme focus on — pushing of — motifs of enslavement been a good selling point? Or was Paul, since he's the first New Testament "evangelist," legends of the disciples aside — have been pushing to the rich who owned those slaves? And, like the "Cuius regio, ejus religio" in states of the Holy Roman Empire after the Thirty Years War, slaves were along for the ride under the "neither slave nor free" rubric? This, too, Moss does not explore.

One other thing she does not do is explore John, vs. the Pauline corpus and Mark as the original of the synoptics. And, of course, John — in current form — opens with Jesus as pre-existent divine being. There is no Pauline kenosis. There is no idea of Jesus possibly being god's slave. So, Moss has to elide John, in essence, and yes, I think it's deliberate.

Scribal work by currently enslaved having deliberate errors as “an act of resistance,” as she claims with naming errors in the Old Latin Bobiensis? Tosh. That first makes the assumption we know the scribe was working for a particular owner, rather than being for hire. It secondly assumes we know the scribe was an ardent Christian-hating pagan. Third, it assumes he knew that he could get away with it. A pair of anecdotes about Aesop doing somewhat similar, taken from a biography written 600 years after his death, doesn’t really prove much. It’s also not clear how historical — or ahistorical — that bio is if Moss is referencing “The Aesop Romance.” Yes, parts of it may have been written “only” 200 years after his death, per Wiki, but 1st C CE for the final, and probably 3rd CE for current MSS? Oh, parts of it also borrowed from Ahiqar, at least in some versions. “Nice” of Moss not to mention any of this.

Also, no, Candida, Tyrannio was NOT a “manumitted … slave” other than in a purely technical sense. He was a prisoner of war. Your own description makes that clear. Ergo, we don’t know, if you don’t offer proof, how he was treated within Cicero’s late Republican Rome. Yes, he was technically “emancipated,” but per his Wiki page, Plutarch faults that as not the right action. Wiki also notes he reportedly became an acclaimed teacher, including of Strabo. (She mentions Strabo three or four pages later, but not in conjunction with Tyrannio!)

That said, Chapter 7, The Faithful Christian, was good. It set enslavement’s actuality within Christian language of being a slave to or of Christ, used many a time by Paul, of course. From there, Moss talks about pistis/fides, and how this faith, or faithfulness, which is a better translation of the famous Habakkuk passage, that the righteous, or just-living, man, or person, will be saved by their faithfulness (with “saved” also NOT meaning “eternal life” in that passage), is a relational issue, and that cuts both ways between enslaved and enslaver.. And, of course, and as she notes, Luther basically blew this, not just on “faith vs works” but the whole relational nature. On the both ways, she notes a little bit, but not as much as she could, how many Roman masters went “relatively” light on punishments and knew this usually produced slaves who were relationally better, or more faithful. She also discusses the idea of a spirit taking over a person, then the Holy Spirit. From this, she makes the claim (no, really!) that many Christian denominations today, because of this, still practice a “minor exorcism” before baptism. (No, really!)

One other interesting note? Moss references Jesus telling his hearers to forsake everything, in Mark 10, as the family details are omitted in Mt/Lk, interestingly, and that in turn they would get back mother and brothers and sisters, as well as other rewards, but NO father, perhaps because of the tyrannical nature of the paterfamilias, and no, not just because god is the father of all.

One other good thing I got? Whether Paul was tentmaker, tanner, or general leatherworker, in larger cities, there probably was a guild for that. Per a Jesus Seminar derived book of a few years ago, I had the light bulb go on that the ancient Greek mysteries in all likelihood were NOT the source of Paul’s creating the Lord’s Supper (create it he did, the “what I received” language is always an introduction to something he’s claiming to have by divine revelation) but rather, the Hellenistic Greek guilds’ monthly, or whenever, dinners, complete with invocations of their patron deity, as in Ephesian silversmiths and “Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!” (Insert blog link.) Well, Paul’s brainstorm would have been easier for him with a few such guild dinners being attended by him.

And, with all that?

The last tipping point down to 2 instead of up to 3 stars? This book could have been tighter, as well as less speculative, on its theme, as well as not having the errors in biblical criticism and the errors on demographics.

Related? There's too much food for thought for this to get the "meh" tag, let alone the "bs" one. But, Moss apparently is going to be headed more toward modernist sociology critiques of the New Testament and its world and I'll probably not ride that bus any more.

View all my reviews

Plague of Cyprian nearly ended the Roman Empire? No, really?

Apparently that's one of the claims of Kyle Harper in "The Fate of Rome," which I had never heard of before until going down some internet rabbit trails.

Did infectious diseases and even meso-level / meso-time climate change have more of an effect on the disintegration of the Roman Empire than older historians thought with fingering barbarian invasions, the rise of Christianity, etc? 

Certainly.

Were they decisive or nearly so?

Likely not.

So, the "No, really?" is rhetorical, in case that weren't already clear.

Was there a "Plague of Cyprian" and was it ebola or something similar, as Harper claims in the book and per that Wiki page? 

Almost certainly not. 

Per this Cambridge monograph by Sabine Huebner in response to him, Harper is almost certainly wrong on the dates of this plague and its origin, ergo wrong on its source. Independently of all that, the respondent says he's almost certainly wrong on this plague of non-Cyprian causing devastation in hinterlands Egypt. And derived from that, he's even more certainly wrong on claims that it nearly toppled the empire.

Roman historians know this period was the tail end of the famous crisis of the third century. Population loss from infectious diseases were a problem, but whatever this plague was and whenever its dates, it could not have nearly toppled the empire. Even at Harper's early date, this is 15 years after the end of the Severan dynasty and the instability that had already introduced.

And, it flat period could not have led to the Decian order for sacrifices and the Decian persecution, contra Harper. Per Huebner, the first mention of this plague did not occur until after Decius was dead.

With Huebner as co-author, here are parts one, two and three of a multi-academic response to Harper on various issues. (The first is 13 pages; the second and third are 10-pages, all easy reads.) Part two starts by noting his taking an extreme position on the Antonine plague and also flat-out ignoring a lot of modern research. The fact that no major invasions from the east happened in the first years after the Antonine plague and that, in the longer term, after the 192-93 coups, the Severan dynasty ruled 42 years, all undercut Harper. Beyond the Plague of Cyprian, part 1 is an overview critique of the whole book, much of it focused on problems with Harper's "maximalist" take on climate change. Part 3 looks to a fair degree at his take on the Justinian plauge.

And, with that, I'll take a pass on this book. And probably on Harper in general. (IIRC, I saw his "Plagues upon the Earth" at my library about a year ago and took a pass.) 

He's also writing a third book in this same general line, about problems with human overgrowth. It, too, may be interesting, but will likely run a narrow maximalist take on modern plagues.

Related to that? Per this person's thesis, Harper reportedly has professional problems related to his stridently pushing his thesis, and other personal issues as well. (Per other information, the intersection of professional and personal were student protests at Oklahoma University alleging that he didn't take seriously enough two cases of faculty reportedly using the N-word, and of blackface on campus, and that also questioned his dedication to diversity, equity and inclusion. This was when he was OU provost. When the OU student newspaper's header uses the "long-embattled" cliche, you've got problems.) The graduate also notes that Harper, and Amber Kearns, who has followed in his footsteps in some ways, also ignore the possible polemical value of writings from that general time about the plague's virulence, including overstating its death rate and its effect on the empire. And, on Harper's case, if conservative evangelical White Christianity accompanies the background to the student protests, I can see the background to him NOT discounting the polemical value of Christian letters overstating the death rate and calling it judgment on the empire. OTOH, lower-star reviews of his "Plagues upon the Earth" dinged him for beating evolution like a dead horse, as in people who are NOT fundagelicals were saying "we know evolution, you're beating a dead horse."

As for what this plague might have been? The Plague of Justinian has now been fairly well identified as the first incursion of the bubonic plague. Could this have been an earlier version? The "thesis" link suggests Lassa fever, which I also find unlikely, if nothing else as with Ebola on the grounds of where the plague originated, and tentatively suggests measles, which I could certainly accept.

Ode to a dead mouse

When I got home,

And opened the door, 

I heard the noise, 

And my first thought was, 

“I got you! 

The glue trap 

Worked.” 

 

Then, 

I went in the kitchen 

To open carefully 

A pantry door 

Carefully, was the plan, 

In case you were 

Agitated enough to bite. 

And then I saw you 

In the sink 

Trap-attached 

By your tail and a couple of feet. 

Powerful enough 

In your panic 

To push through 

A pantry door 

Trap and all. 

 

 I partially covered you 

With a large glass lid 

Until you quickly 

Went into panicked screeching. 

So, I pulled it off. 

 

 I went outside 

For my power walk 

Figuring you would be 

Closer to dead 

When I returned. 

 

Wrong! 

You were, rather, C

loser to escaped, 

Held only by part of your tail, 

Any feet previously trapped 

Now extricated. 

 

And so I acted. 

I first tried to trap you 

And the glue trap 

In a pot. 

But then saw 

That a 2-quart pot was too shallow 

To hold you in your frenzy. 

As you tried to scramble out. 

 

Tired of hearing you 

Scooting at night 

For days on end, 

I resolved. 

 

The pot I turned over 

And dropped you in the sink, 

Small bit of tail still trap-pinned 

And brought it down 

As best I could 

On your rodentine head 

Even as your black mouse eyes 

Stared back at me. 

 

A second shot 

Had more effect 

And a third 

Brought a trickle of blood 

From your mouth. 

Fuck you, Peter Singer. 

 

On the prose side, I reject Singer’s speciesism. I’ll kill wasps and hornets, and some bees. Flies are so-so. I’ll kill mosquitoes. Spiders stay alive, unless I know it’s a black widow or brown recluse. 

But a mouse inside the house? Or apartment in my case? Between it disturbing my sleep at times, and being a potential health hazard, it has to go. I thought I had caught it in a basket nearly a week ago. I took that outside and tossed all contents into the parking lot. It sure looked like a mouse running away. Maybe it was Might Mouse and returned. Maybe it had a partner, of the opposite sex; if it was a female left inside, it definitely needed to go. Maybe I was mistaken about what I dumped out late at night, but I don’t think so. 

I didn’t like the black mouse eyes staring at me, but it is what it is. I mulled through general animal tenderness, Singer’s speciesism and other things, after dumping dying mouse and glue trap in an apartment dumpster then walking to Walmart. 

On the way back, I thought of Keynes: 

“In the long run, we’re all dead.” 

Your long run just ended mouse-young. 

I’ll be there eventually. So will you, Peter Singer.

Leibniz: Man vs myth

The New Yorker has a full and fair look at German mathematician, philosopher, and well, polymath Gottfried Leibniz. Among other things, it argues that Voltaire took a number of liberties on his fictional portrait in Candide. The piece is a review of not just one but two new bios of him, by Audrey Borowski and Michael Kempe.

And, if either one at least half as good as the review, it's something I'll be looking out for.

In the article's telling, Leibniz comes off as a northern Leonardo da Vinci in many ways. Not an artist, but scientist, mathematician, philosopher, mix of actual and would-be inventor and more — and likc Leonardo, with an ADD-like lack of focus.

Goodreads: Borowski's "Leibniz in his World" and Kempe's "The Best of all Possible Worlds." 

Both are just over 300 pages. Interestingly, though both came out at the same time, November 2024, Borowski has yet to have a single review on either Goodreads or Yellow Satan, while Kempe has more than a dozen reviews and more than 100 ratings. (Most the reviews are in German; Kempe is German and runs the Leibniz Research Center in Hannover.) The subtitle of his book is "A Life in Seven Pivotal Days," which may add to, or detract from, its value. He is a professor of early modern history as well. Borowski has an Oxford PhD (in what, I don't know) and is a research fellow with the Desireable Digital project. More here and here, which indicates her background is in philosophy and the history of philosophy. Based on this, and what might be limitations with the "seven days" concept, if I had to pick just one of the two books, it would be hers.

A baptismal anniversary is more important than a birthday?

 I normally don't go "snark" here, but, this has seriousness behind the snark.

The idea above was a comment at a family member's Facebook post talking about their baptismal anniversary.

Bottom line is that, you can't have a baptismal anniversary without a birthday. And, for fundagelical types, you can't need a baptism without being born into a world with Christian original sin. (Mormons with pre-existing souls on Kolob need not apply. Modern Anabaptist types can caveat on baptism as needed.)

And, beyond that, it's arguable that fundagelical Christians should hasten the eschaton by going down the antinatalist road and getting rid of both births and baptisms.

If you're REALLY honest, you'd say that a good Christian's death anniversary is more important than either birthday or baptism anniversary because that has them, at least the soul part of them, "sleeping in Jesus' arms" or whatever, until that eschaton is finally here.

Good luck!

The humaste version of the 12 Divarim

"Humaste," as written about before here and here, is my secularist equivalent of "Namaste."

"Divarim"? The Hebrew word for "sayings," plural of "dabar." In the Tanakh/Hebrew Bible, or Christian Old Testament, both Exodus and Deuteronomy record a list of them. Related to USofA church-state issues, Catholics/Orthodox/Lutherans/Anglicans have one version of 10, Calvinists have a second version, and Jews have a third.

So, we're combining all three into 12, and putting the Jewish first one at the end, as this ex-Lutheran learned it in his confirmation class salad days as "the close of the commandments." (That one is "I Yahweh your god am a jealous god, visiting the iniquities of the fathers upon the children, even unto the third and fourth generation, but showing mercy to the many who keep my injunctions" or similar translation.)

The 12 shall be edited as needed to fit the "humaste" and also to count a-theistic religions like those Buddhists.

1. You shall have no metaphysical principles before humanity. Per Martin Luther's Small Catechism explanations, this means that we should fear, love and trust humans to be human above all else.

2. You shall not make unto yourself any graven image. Obviously, no metaphysical principle should be elevated, but also no human being should be placed on a pedestal unduly. Neither should any material matter, especially one artificially elevated by an "influencer."

3. Do not invoke metaphysical principles in vain. This of course does not mean avoiding blasphemy, as it doesn't exist for secularists. This means not invoking for help, nor blaming for personal or larger failures, any metaphysical entity or principle. This obviously includes non-existent so-called deities, but also includes non-existent so-called karma, "luck" as anything metaphysical and so forth.

4. Remember a day of rest and keep it sacred. Sacred may not be the best word. Maybe tabu, in its original meaning, or herem, to go to the Hebrew — something separate. Americans in particular not only don't have good work-life balance, they don't have good work-life separation.

5. Remember your elders and other purveyors of wisdom; you will live better, and possibly live longer. This includes remembering that you're entitled to your own opinion, but not your own facts. Epistemic humility is the flip side of good skepticism.

6. Do not murder. Do not participate in societal systems that perpetuate murder. This includes a country's military forces, as almost any "defensive" war really is not, and is usually premeditated. This includes a country's policing forces, which are a necessary evil, but in reality are usually corrupted with class bias and race bias. Also, beyond this, do not murder the human spirit. This includes perpetuation of the soullessness of much of modern capitalistic life.

7. Be faithful sexually, relationally and more. This starts with being faithful to your own sexual self and desires as long as nobody else is harmed. Relational fidelity includes more than romantic and sexual fidelity; per Damian and Pythias, it includes being faithful to friendships. It includes being faithful to contracts and agreements freely entered into.

8. Do not steal. This includes not aiding and abetting theft whenever possible. It includes going beyond that to protecting individuals' employment rights, non-thieving ownership rights and more. In other words, it proactively means supporting strikes and other collective bargaining, doing one's best to buy food and products from companies that have good labor relations and more. It also includes supporting equitable progressive taxation — with notes that here in the US, sales taxes, goods and services taxes, and Social Security taxes are all generally inequitable in a regressive way.

9. Do not lie, perpetuate disinformation and more. Lying is more than false witness, and disinformation goes beyond that. But, claims of disinformation should not be used to suppress honest discussion, as in the origins of COVID-19.

10. Rather than not coveting your neighbor's wife, believe that personal relationships, whether yours or somebody else's, between two adults, are relations of equals and that one partner does not control the other. Beyond romantic relationships, per No. 7, this includes noting that employers do not control employees, and government regulations that try to promote that must be fought against.

11. Going beyond not coveting employees, per the 10th Commandment or the latter two thirds of the 9th and 10th combined, this includes noting that personal servants have rights just as much as any other employees. Beyond "servants," it means fighting against slavery globally and getting rid of the prison labor loophole in the US and 13th Amendment.

12. Gods do not exist, but in the cases of things like child sexual abuse, family iniquities often do perpetuate themselves across multiple generations. Taking this seriously and fighting back against sexual, physical, emotional, religious, or other abuse of vulnerable children is a serious humaste charge.

The Buddhist deceptions of Stephen Batchelor

Now I know why so many westerners tell such bullshit about Buddhism. Stephen Batchelor, in addition to his other lies, claims the Buddha rejected karma and reincarnation, per this review of his main book.

And? Wikipedia agrees.

Now, exactly what gets reincarnated, and how and why, the Buddha himself may not have detailed. I accept that it stems from him — and have accepted that for many years — that Buddhism rejects the idea of an individual soul. In that sense, then, Buddhist belief in reincarnation is even more offensive than the Vedic/Indian epic religion belief of reincarnation of a personal soul.

I don't believe that Hinduism is the right word for the majority Indian religious belief at the time of Siddhartha Gautama, but I also reject Batchelor and others who claim Hinduism didn't start until the start of the British Raj. Some people even claim — and I think, but am not sure, that that includes Batchelor — that Hinduism was "invented" for the British. Rather, I think Hinduism begins with the Guptas, when Buddhism either faded out or was chased out of India. And, I think that it was probably some deliberate chasing out, at least to some degree, along with a conscious effort to organize beliefs and ideas of the Axial Age epics of the Mahabharata and Ramayana into something coherent and cohesive. The ending of the compilation of the Ramayana in the 3rd century CE gives us a terminus ad quem for the dating of something like Hinduism. And, it dovetails, as that century is when the Gupta Empire started. And, Chandragupta II, circa 375-415, did much to elevate Hinduism.

I assume, but don't know, that Batchelor's "moves" here, and his motive, are ultimately to claim that Buddhism is not a religion, like Robert Wright. Well, Wright was wrong, and wrong. And thus, so is Batchelor. It believes in metaphysical principles and teaches people how to, individually and collectively, through both praxis and doctrine, to "better orient themselves" to these metaphysical principles, and thus fits my personal philosophy of religion-based definition of what a religion is.

I actually tackled this a bit a decade ago, and noted there, with a quote from someone else, that an Owen Flanagan was more intellectually honest than a Batchelor or Wright, in part by consciously admitting that they were creating a project to de-metaphysicalize the Buddha, rather than claiming to exegetically prove that he was an anti-metaphysician. And, here's that quote, again:

I don’t think it’s an accident that there are so many first generation Buddhists in America claiming it’s a philosophy and not a religion. Only if your parents aren’t Buddhists can you claim that Buddhism will do, unlike other religions, all that it promises. The first gen acolytes do all sorts of backbends to get around the obvious malarky of the dogma. Whether it’s the three card monty move of saying “there are many Buddhisms” so that any BS version of the doctrine you point out can be quickly pushed onto the wrong sect, or whether it’s the annoying “ineffable” dodge, or whether it’s the putting off until other lives the need for any sort of freaking evidence.

Owan Flannagan [sic] did his best to come up with a naturalized Buddhism, and I find it unsatisfactory. Nagarjuna is no more a logician than Democritus and Leucippus were Physicists, which, with Massimo’s blessing, they were not. Still I’m going to read the book for the history of logic.

There you are.

Here's Flanagan's primary book on that. And shock me, per one 1-star reviewer, that Sam Harris recommends the book. That's because he's done the Batchelor/Wright type BS peddling himself.

So, contra Flanagan's deliberate project and Batchelor's bullshit? Once again, as I said long ago on these pages?

Buddhism is still a religion.

And, karma is still as offensive as hell, whether it's a personal soul being reincarnated or not. Oh, and per claims that Buddhism teaches rebirth, not reincarnation? 

Per Spock: A difference that makes no difference IS no difference.

Dan Dennett and Q/qualia, the manifest image and more

Tim Bayne has a very good retrospective on some of Dan Dennett's thought at Aeon.

Two main things jumped out at me. One is his claim that Gilbert Ryle wasn't the only major philosophical influence on Dennett. 

He says we should also look at Wilfrid Sellars:

As the contemporary Oxford philosopher Anil Gomes observed in the London Review of Books in 2023, the key to understanding Dennett lies with another 20th-century American philosopher, Wilfrid Sellars – something of a philosopher’s philosopher. Sellars distinguished between two images of reality, the manifest image and the scientific image. The manifest image is the ordinary, everyday conception of reality – the conception of reality that human beings have prior to science. The scientific image, of course, is the conception of reality delivered by science.

Everybody knows a big part of Dennett's schtick was folk psychology, and Bayne says this was Dennett's version of the manifest image.

The biggie is — where is Dennett at in trying to incorporate some ideas from folk psychology into real psychology as a philosophy of mind? And, Bayne eventually looks at Dennett's idea of the self as a center of narrative gravity. He says this, essentially, stays in the manifest image and not the scientific image, and is based on stories. From this, he goes back to Wittgenstein as ordinary language philosopher. Here's his take on storytelling in general.

Indeed, if Dennett’s analysis of the self was driven by anything, it was driven not by science but by stories – and by stories about stories. At the heart of his paper ‘The Self as a Centre of Narrative Gravity’ (1992) is a story about a story-writing machine

From this, he says Dennett's idea is that, based on Ryle, "we" aren't looking for a causal explanation of behavior but rather sense-making. And, that's where Bayne discusses "the intentional stance."

That said, Bayne says Dennett himself was retreating from his view of intentionality by the end of his life.

Beyond that, aren't "we" as professional and amateur philosophers looking for a causal explanation of mind, beyond but including behavior?

Here qualia pop up.

The Philosophers’ Lexicon – first published by Dennett a decade before ‘Quining Qualia’– defines ‘to quine’ as to deny ‘resolutely the existence or importance of something real or significant’. Dennett coined the term in homage to his undergraduate advisor W V O Quine, who had tried to construct a metaphysics with as few entities as possible. That’s ‘quining’; what about ‘qualia’? Dennett distinguished two senses of this term. In one sense, qualia (singular: quale) are simply the ways that things seem to us in perceptual experience. (To use Dennett’s example, consider how a glass of milk looks at sunset – that’s a quale.) To deny that there are ways the world appears to us in perceptual experience would indeed be in the running for ‘the silliest claim ever made’, but Dennett made no such claim. Instead, his eliminativism was directed towards a certain conception of perceptual experience – Qualia-with-a-capital-Q. To believe in Qualia is to think that the experiential character of consciousness (‘the ways things seem to us’) involves properties that are intrinsic, private, ineffable and directly available to introspection. It is Qualia – and not qualia – that Dennett quined.

As I told Massimo Pigliucci, assuming Bayne has a good interpretation of Dennett's thought, then Dennett comes off as essentially creating a fictive (sic) Platonic idea of Qualia capital Q, and then using that as a strawman to beat down opponents of his thoughts.

Dennett was good at other strawmanning, which leads me to endorse that Bayne IS at least in the right neighborhood. Further confirmation comes further down:

Note, in passing, the absence of science here. There is no mention of single-cell recordings; no appeal to computational models of brain activity; no measures of entropy. Instead, we’re asked to consider a purely fictional scenario. Dennett’s case against Qualia rests on a purely philosophical argument that would not have been out of place in the 1950s. (Indeed – as Dennett himself points out – it is a variation on a purely philosophical argument that was given in the 1950s: Ludwig Wittgenstein’s ‘beetle in the box’ argument.) Although there is background concern here with scientific methods – in effect, Dennett is challenging the Qualia-phile to explain how Qualia might be studied – nothing in the way of ‘brain learning’ is assumed.

Dennett’s rejection of Qualia wasn’t a rejection of consciousness – it was a rejection of a certain conception of consciousness. But if Dennett didn’t reject consciousness, what explanation did he provide of it?

None, of course. Hence wags noting that the proper title for a mid-1990s book of his was "Dan Dennett's Ideas of Consciousness Explained."

There you are. That's our Danny boy!

And hence, while I noted his passing, and followed up on that, I wasn't philosophically crushed. Per that first link, I agreed with John Horgan that Dennett's rejection of at least capital-Q Qualia was a back door to Chalmers' p-zombies. Horgan's piece has a section on this. Second, I also agreed with John that Dennett was a practitioner of scientism, namely in his philosophy. His lack of actual science in his ideas on consciousness is one example. His claiming that evolution was algorithmic and a universal acid beyond biology is another.

In fact, Dennett deserves some Horgan pull quotes. I know Horgan actually deserves them:

Like many philosophers, Dennett clearly gets a kick out of defending positions that defy common sense. But his primary agenda is defending science against religion and other irrational belief systems. Dennett, an outspoken atheist, fears that creationism and other superstitious nonsense will persist as long as mysteries do. He thus insists that science can untangle even the knottiest conundrums, including the origin of life (which he asserts that recent “breakthroughs” are helping to solve) and consciousness.

Followed by:

Dennett accuses those who question science’s power of bad faith; these doubters don’t want their “beloved mysteries” explained. Dennett can’t accept that anyone might have legitimate, rational reasons for resisting his reductionist vision.

Some people surely have an unhealthy attachment to mysteries, but Dennett has an unhealthy aversion to them, which compels him to stake out unsound positions. His belief that consciousness is an illusion is nuttier than the belief that God is real. Science has real enemies—some in positions of great power--but Dennett doesn’t do science any favors by shilling for it so aggressively.

There you are.

That last paragraph may seem a bit harsh, but I would at least halfway accept it, including Horgan's "nuttier."

Too bad I wasn't famous enough to know Dennett while he was still alive and call him a Platonist, too.

Top blogging of 2024

 As usual, these are the most read pieces from last year, whether or not written in 2024. "Evergreen" ones will be noted by approximate date of publication.

At No. 10, a piece on a mishmash of problems at r/AcademicBiblical (which seems to continue to head downhill) and other biblical criticism subreddits.

At No. 9, since 2017, I have continued to say "Goodbye to 'History for Atheists'" and Tim O'Neill's Samuel Huntington-like Catholic Chistianism.

At No. 8, an exemplum of what's wrong with r/AB, "The Unbearable Lightness of Chris(sy) Hanson," who is independent, and arguably a researcher but most certainly not a scholar.

No. 7 goes to the world of aesthetics, which is part of philosophy, and specifically, to the world of classical music. That's my savage critiquing on how what could have been a good book about 20th century American classical music got butchered.

No. 6? Yes, until proven otherwise, Morton Smith is still the forger of Secret Mark.

No. 5? It's from five years ago, but trending because I posted it at the ex-Lutheran subreddit. The idea of "Gun Nuts in the Name of Luther" and its lies by omission on biblical interpretation will probably jump up more in Trump 2.0.

At No. 4, from early 2024? Contra philosophy of religion prof, it's not fundagelicals vs other Christians, and it's not even literal vs liberal religious believers in general. It's secularists vs everybody else on treating climate change as a climate crisis.

No. 3? Riffing on Rolling Stone et al, in 2023, I wrote about "Fascism in the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod." I expect a resurgence in Trump 2.0.

No. 2 was also from 2023, and riffed on Paul Davidson of "Is That in the Bible," as well as, via him, my reading of Idan Dershowitz's then-new monograph on what Moses Wilhelm Shapira may actually have found. "Standing Josiah and Deuteronomy on their heads" tied together a number of threads in biblical criticism.

And at No. 1?

A very evergreen, 2007, "More proof the Buddha was no Buddha." (I have a new piece about Stephen Batchelor coming up in a week.) For more on my thoughts in general, click the Buddhism tag.

Language is not a game, it's a leap of faith!

This piece makes the argument that the interactions in speech, which of course came eons before written communication, involve an act of faith, so to speak, not only between people in a group or duo, but by the speaker themselves, basically an act of faith and faith in memory that "they know where they're headed" with their string of morphemes.

In turn, I can see this related to the sometimes stilted language of people with autism. It's another spin on theory of mind issues.

Top blogging, fourth quarter of 2024

As is normally the case, these may not all have been written in late 2024, but they were the most-read pieces of mine in that quarter.

At No. 10, a 2009 oldie but goodie, reposted recently on a subreddit. "Paul, Passover, Jesus, Gnosticism"; the title should lead you in.

At No. 9, from early 2024, "It's secularists vs all others on taking climate seriously" is an important issue in addressing the climate crisis as crisis.

At No. 8, from in this past quarter, my thoughts on the idea that changing from pen to typewriter changed Nietzsche's philosophy and philosophizing.

No. 7? A semi-oldie from 2020, how a Lutheran college myth, from my now-closed alma mater, about Paul Hill, wound up biting the dust.

No. 6? My crushing review of a bad book about language origins issues, including crushing its claims of massive modularity in the brain.

No. 5? Another callout of teh stupidz at Reddit's r/AcademicBiblical, stupidity over Luke-Acts, mod hypocrisy over theological beliefs and more, among other things.

No. 4? It's from five years ago, but trending because I posted it at the ex-Lutheran subreddit. The idea of "Gun Nuts in the Name of Luther" and its lies by omission on biblical interpretation will probably jump up more in Trump 2.0.

No. 3 was my spoofing and mocking of — complete with Monty Python angle — Francis the Talking Pope's pending "patron saint of the internet," with the Sacred Heart of would be St. Acutis and all!

No. 2 was my mocking review of seeming Gnu Atheist bad history in the book "Nature's God."

And, at No. 1?

Just a couple of weeks after No. 5, it was about more problems at r/AcademicBiblical, which seems to be going downhill in general.