Monday Casserole

Catching up on a few items in the news:

Truthdig did an interview with Linda Segar, author of Jesus Rode a Donkey.

"Linda Seger explains why Jesus’ teachings have more in common with Democrats than Republicans, how Christians have been manipulated into compromising their values and what the Bible really says about homosexuality."

You can read the transcript of the interview here.


I saw an interview on CNN last night with Dennis Kucinich. I vote Dennis our new messiah. The only candidate who opposed the war from the beginning and has consistently been outspoken about it and the military-industrial complex.


Kudos to ETSU students for voting down football. ETSU has been taking the right path toward raising the level of literacy in East Tennessee. Football, as the students know, is low on their level of interest. A JC Press editorial said it well.






Besides, ETSU students have enough to do including debating the religious hacks who invade the campus. This is from the East Tennessean.

This is Earth Week. News about it on the cover of today's Johnson City Press. The gentleman to the left is retired ETSU professor Monroe Morgan who organized the first campus Earth Day.


Dr. Monroe Morgan discusses environmental concerns. Morgan was an environmental activist in the 1970s - Morgan says “there are still old problems and new problems that need society’s attention.” (Lee Talbert / Johnson City Press)




For a list of events for Earth Week go to DemocracyNowTricities.

Here is a pic of Joseph Fitsanakis taking your pledge for the WETS fundraiser. Dr. Fitsanakis is a political scientist and the blogmaster of DemocracyNowTricities. Nice article in the JC Press yesterday, Local Station Dishes Out Democracy.

Keith Pilkey, left, and Joseph Fitsanakis, “Democracy Now” support group organizer, man the phones during the WETS fundraiser. Photo by Tony Duncan.

At First Pres., we are celebrating Earth Day this coming Sunday with a worship service around that theme, following that with a hike to Dennis Cove. It's for all ages. Join us!

I spotted at least one First Presby in this parade for climate action. Here is the article,


On to religion. Have your read the article by Robert M. Price, "By this Time He Stinketh?" Price takes on apologist William Lane Craig. For those of us who consider much of the New Testament as legendary (ie. Jesus walking on water, Jesus feeding 5,000 with one lunch, Jesus rising out of the tomb), we are often accused of two things:

1) Our "unbelief" is because we willfully reject God and God's revelation, and
2) We deny the supernatural.

Price does a fine job answering those accusations. As to 1) it would be just as simple to accuse those who don't believe all the stories in the Qur'an or the Book of Mormon as being willfully disobedient. As to 2) again if you don't believe the Qur'an or the Book of Mormon or any other work that contains "miraculous" elements, you also deny the supernatural. Those accusations as Price points out are smokescreens for biblical inerrancy. Everything in the Bible is "true" historically and otherwise because it is in the Bible. If you don't believe that, you are unregenerate.

Price writes:

So if it would not require a blanket principle to reject the historicity of particular miracle stories, we must ask if it would take a blanket principle to require acceptance of all biblical miracle stories. Clearly it would. And that principle cannot be simple supernaturalism, openness to the possibility of miracles. One can believe God capable of anything without believing that he did everything anybody may say he did. One can believe in the possibility of miracles without believing that every reported miracle must in fact have happened. No, the requisite principle is that of biblical inerrancy, the belief that all biblical narratives are historically accurate simply because they appear in the Bible. After all, it will not greatly upset Craig any more than it upset Warfield to deny the historical accuracy of medieval reports of miracles wrought by the Virgin Mary or by the sacramental wafer, much less stories of miracles wrought by Gautama Buddha or Apollonius of Tyana. (Read More)

James Tabor is back from the Holy Land. On his blog he responds to common objections to the Talpiot Tomb as the tomb of Jesus.


I am slowly making my way through April DeConick's book on Thomas. It is a scholarly work and takes work to read, but it is well worth the effort. She takes seriously orality in the construction of the gospel narratives. She blogs at Forbidden Gospels.






Things to do this week include:

Monday, Mundy, tonight at First Pres. Jon Mundy presents a lecture on A Course on Miracles. It begins at 7:00.

"The Ground Truth" will show at First Pres. this Thursday at seven p.m.




North East State Community College in Blountville is putting on the play "The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail." Here is the announcement. It runs April 18-22.





That's it.

Honor Earth,
John