Religion at the Margins

Building a Mystery

Ted Troxell — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 14:41:33 +0000

I recently referred to myself as a “postsecular atheist,” which I think might be fairly accurate if I knew what it meant. I’ve been wondering about that. Insisting that I’m technically a theological non-realist (or a metaphysical non-realist more generally) seems pointless since nobody knows what that is, either. But the problem with identifying as an atheist is that I’m not the sort of atheist for whom being an atheist is the goal as opposed to an artifact of not believing in God. There is no “right way” to be an atheist, but some atheists seem to act like it, and I’m not sure I pass the test. It’s mutual, though: atheism, as a discourse community, is not that attractive to me — no offense to my atheist friends. I don’t share the (stereo)typical atheist disdain for religion. I don’t think we’d all be better off if we just got rid of religion, as if that were even possible. I’m an atheist less by virtue of being certain that God does not exist than by not being able to say what it would mean if God did, or why we should assume there is only one God, or how I [...]

2011 in Film: Best, Worst, and in Between

Thom Stark — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 22:22:24 +0000

Top 20 Worst Films of 2011 20. Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows 19. Rise of the Planet of the Apes 18. X-Men: First Class 17. Thor 16. Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides 15. Transformers: Dark of the moon 14. Conan the Barbarian 13. The Mechanic 12. Killer Elite 11. Season of the Witch 10. Drive Angry 09. The Hangover Part 2 08. The Sitter 07. Our Idiot Brother 06. The Change-Up 05. Your Highness 04. Twilight: Breaking Dawn Part 1 03. The Adjustment Bureau 02. Jack and Jill 01. Sucker Punch Top Ten Most Disappointing Films of 2011 1 10. Straw Dogs 09. Larry Crowne 08. Super 8 07. The Conspirator 06. Contagion 05. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy 04. The Thing 03. The Ides of March 02. The Debt 01. Cowboys & Aliens Top Ten Surprises of 20112 10. Friends with Benefits 09. The Lincoln Lawyer 08. 13 Assassins 07. Fright Night 06. In Time 05. Limitless 04. Win Win 03. Kill the Irishman 02. Moneyball 01. Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol Top 25 Best Films of 2011 25. Hanna 24. The Beaver 23. Carnage 22. The Guard 21. Super 20. Paul 19. Beginners 18. The Descendants 17. Of [...]

I Am a Terrorist Sympathizer

Thom Stark — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 14:36:15 +0000

I am a terrorist sympathizer. I sympathize with the women who live in poverty and fear, under the thumb of dictators installed by alien powers. I sympathize with the clerics who have witnessed age-old traditions ravaged by exotic economic adventures. I sympathize with the children taking cover from the cluster bombs excreted unblushingly by strange gods in the sky. I sympathize with the kite-flying boys cut down by the toy airplanes of remote delinquent drones. I sympathize with the rock-throwing boys who stand proud and fearless before the giant iron monsters menacing their playground. I sympathize with the rock-throwing boys who trade their roadside games for roadside bombs. I sympathize with the families who live huddled together in concentration camps on the fringes of a land that television tourists have the audacity to call holy. I sympathize with the sanctioned, the starved, and the displaced, with the collateral damage of malnourished egos over-asserting themselves to their dogs. I sympathize with the slaves who dream of enslaving their pale-skinned masters. I sympathize with the orphan whose desperation and righteous indignation is manipulated by the affluent cowards who promise liberation from foreign occupation on the other side of someone else’s suicide. I [...]

Turnin’ Thirty: A Musical Retrospective

Thom Stark — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 00:18:40 +0000

A college buddy of mine posted a quote on my Facebook wall today, a quote from a song I wrote back in 1999, at age 16. That instigated a revisitation of all the bad music I’ve written over the years. Since I’m turning 30 in two days, I thought I’d share some of it with you. I’ve left out much more than I’ve included. (I’ve even ignored an entire album. You’d thank me for it if you heard it.) All the recordings are quite poor. I never tried to do this professionally. So get over it. 01. gabriela’s song (1999) – I wrote this at age 16. It’s an instrumental which tells the story of the life of my daughter from birth to death. Admittedly, my daughter wasn’t born until 2007, eight years later. But I knew back then that her name was Gabriela, and what her life would be like. 02. move on (2001) – A crummy, cliched Christian song that nevertheless holds a special place in my heart because my friend Frank and I loved to play it over and over again on slow afternoons back in Denver. 03. surprise, surprise (2002) – Lame lyrics, lame recording. Fun [...]

A Call to Arms: Matt Flannagan’s War against Who-Gives-a-Damn

Thom Stark — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 00:46:10 +0000

Matt Flannagan is on a crusade to prove that I’m an untrustworthy, incorrigible, incompetent, lying sack of shit, and that no one should like me. All he’s shown, however, is that he’s guilty of all the intellectual crimes of which he has accused me. (See here, here, here, and, most recently, here.) But it’s all very silly. I don’t enjoy playing these little “who misrepresented whom” games. If people would stop emailing Matt’s rants to me, asking me to respond to them, I wouldn’t even give this nonsense the time of day. A while back, Matt posted on Copan’s blog a revisionist narrative of his interactions with me. It was one-sided. It displayed Matt’s selective memory. It was quite juvenile. But he had some fair gripes, because in the past I have in fact been impolite to Matt. Of course, I apologized back then, and had had numerous very congenial interactions with Matt between my apology and his ad-hominem rant on Copan’s blog (none of which made an appearance in Matt’s “history of my interactions with Thom Stark”). But apparently Matt wasn’t willing to let it go. Fair enough. His prerogative. That affects Matt, not me. Anyway, so my response [...]

Lex Talionis: Misrepresentation for “Misrepresentation”

Thom Stark — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 07:28:44 +0000

In a recent Facebook post, Matt Flannagan has taken to gloating in the fact that in my last post I made a few open and happy concessions to his criticisms, while at the same time he refuses to acknowledge that the vast majority of his criticisms of me were not only uncharitable, but fundamentally wrong. Ignoring his own misrepresentations of me, Matt is now claiming that I misrepresent Paul Copan when I critique his use of secondary sources on the issue of lex talionis in Israel and the broader ancient Near East. In actual fact, it’s Copan that misrepresents himself, and Matt knows this, as I’ll demonstrate toward the end of this post. In my most recent post, responding to Matt Flannagan’s shenanigans, I said: My critique was that Copan argued that Israel’s talionis laws were figurative, but that Babylonian talionis laws were morally inferior because of their brutality. But what Copan obfuscated here was that the same scholarly sources he used to argue that Israel’s talionic laws were not meant literally also argue that Babylon’s talionic laws were not meant literally. This undermines his incessant attempt to portray Babylon and other ANE cultures as far and away more brutal [...]

Responding to Criticisms of My Copan Review

Thom Stark — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 06:45:16 +0000

On his Facebook page, Matt Flannagan continues to try to discredit me by avoiding all the substance and most salient points of my arguments and focusing on what he thinks are contradictions in my writing or misuses of scholarship. No concessions have been made yet, however, to all of the abuses of scholarship I pointed out in Copan’s book. I recently responded to one sorry, failed attempt of Matt’s to show that I contradict myself. Nonetheless, Matt has actually made a few valid criticisms this time. I’m happy to concede them, as I will below. But for the most part, what Matt is doing is trying to discredit me while either unintentionally missing or intentionally ignoring the central points of my arguments. First, I’ll make some concessions to Matt, partly in the hopes that Matt will learn from my example and start owning up to all the abuses of scholarship and straw man arguments he himself is responsible for. Lex Talionis The most solid criticism Matt makes has to do with Sprinkle’s article on lex talionis. Here is Matt’s Facebook post on the matter (I don’t have a link), beginning with quotes from me: “Copan will later cite Joseph Sprinkle [...]

Note to Self: Teaser Trailer

Thom Stark — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 19:07:46 +0000

Here’s a black & white version of the teaser trailer for Note to Self. The composer is currently hard at work on the score, and we hope to have a release ready by early 2012. In the meantime, enjoy this! (Be sure to watch in HD.)

Joshua Wrote the Battle of Jericho

Thom Stark — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 07:04:12 +0000

Matthew Flannagan is apparently a glutton for punishment. He’s certainly an accomplished straw-man artist. But what else is new? In my review of Copan’s book, I critiqued Copan for stating that Joshua wrote Joshua, pointing out that writing didn’t develop in Israel until a few centuries after Joshua’s lifetime. On his Facebook page (I don’t have a link because Matt and I are only friends IRL, not on Facebook), Matt has posted a series of quotes from my Copan review which Matt thinks displays a blatant inconsistency in my arguments. Here is the content of Matt’s post (I believe in its entirety—it was emailed to me by a third party): “Writing didn’t develop in Israel until the eleventh century BCE at the earliest, about two hundred years after the period of the purported conquest of Canaan.” Thom Stark, “Is God a Moral Compromiser” p 249, criticising Copan for suggesting Joshua wrote Joshua. The reason, writing did not develop in that region to [sic] after the 11th century. “what the Amarna Letters tell us is that Jerusalem and Shechem were under the direct control of Egypt, in fact, under the control of the Pharaoh. The vassal kings of Canaan lived in [...]

Heiser Learning: Michael Heiser’s Response to My Criticisms

Thom Stark — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 00:35:59 +0000

I’ve just become aware that Michael Heiser has finally responded to an old piece of mine, in which I critique his reading of Deuteronomy 32 and Psalm 82. In his response, Heiser has tried to display that my critique is full of bad logic and straw men, but he has only succeeded in displaying that trouble with logic and fair representation of an interlocutor are problems he himself struggles with. I’ll respond to his claims one by one, and demonstrate why this is the case. But first, in his blog post, Heiser has this to say: Some of you might be wondering about why I’d bother to respond to Stark’s response. First, he put a lot of time into it, so I thought I owed it some attention. Although I think that he regularly misconstrues things and uses some startlingly poor logic in places, it was something that deserved not to be ignored. Second, a number of readers have requested it. So, Heiser has responded in part because he wishes to expose that I “misconstrue things” and use “startlingly poor logic.” In short, I deserved a response because what I wrote was (1) long, and (2) bad. I’ll let that [...]