My Take: There’s no such thing as the Bible and never has been

By Timothy Beal, Special to CNN

 Editors note: Timothy Beal is the author of "The Rise and Fall of the Bible: The Unexpected History of an Accidental Book." He is a Florence Harkness Professor of Religion at Case Western Reserve University.

"Trying to save the Bible by recovering the Adam of all Bibles is as futile as trying to save the marriage by recovering the Eden of married life. There’s no such thing, so there’s no going back. Our desire for a pure, unadulterated, original Bible, “in the beginning,” is an illusion that shields and distracts us from the real, unstable, often terrifyingly ambiguous relationship with another that is the life of faith.

Life is crazy uncertain, so it’s understandable that many of us want religion and especially the Bible to offer deliverance from it. But it doesn’t. It’s not a rock but a river, not a book of answers but a library of questions. When we take it seriously, and soberly, it calls us deeper into the wilderness – away from the sunny shoreline of the island and toward the uncharted interior.

That wilderness, like the ones in which the Israelites wandered and Jesus was tested, can be a place of danger and disorientation, but also of renewal and reawakening."

[Full Article]

God Worship or Religious Economics?

The Washington Post
ORGANIZED RELIGION IS BIG BUSINESS
by Martha Woodroof

"Talk about marketing! The (Organized Religion Industry) O.R.I. has sold its message brilliantly, concentrating on such talking points as fear of death, answers to the unanswerable, and moral certainties delivered in God's name. I think it's fair to say the O.R. I.'s strident voice owns the public God conversation in America; so much so that people who reject organized religion often feel compelled to reject God, the great Whatever, as well.

Now, before I go one word further, let me acknowledge that a lot of good people do a lot of good things driven by their participation in organized religion. My quarrel is not with those good people or those good things, or even, per se with organized religion; it's that the Organized Religion Industry seems chiefly concerned with maintaining itself and its employees (often quite lavishly) by pedaling itself as essential to having a relationship with God. The focus of organized religion is not God, as much as itself. People starve, while Joel Osteen makes millions."

[Full Article]

Freelance Whales

Digging it...

It’s Official: The Computer’s Smarter

 

"The IBM supercomputer named Watson has beaten two Jeopardy! champions in a three-night marathon. The computer was awarded a $1 million prize, but the BBC reports that “the victory for Watson and IBM was about more than money. It was about ushering in a new era in computing where machines will increasingly be able to learn and understand what humans are really asking them for. Jeopardy is seen as a significant challenge for Watson because of the show’s rapid-fire format and clues that rely on subtle meanings, puns, and riddles; something humans excel at and computers do not.” With his final answer, Ken Jennings, one of the human competitors and the winner of 74 consecutive Jeopardy! shows (a record), wrote, 'I for one welcome our new computer overlords.'" 

 By FREAKONOMICS

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What did Watson the Computer Do?

"That’s what Watson — the I.B.M.-built computer that won a game of  “Jeopardy” last week over two human opponents — does. It’s just a bigger and fancier version of my laptop’s totally annoying (spell check) program. It decomposes the question put to it into discrete bits of data and then searches its vast data base for statistically frequent combinations of the bits it is working with.  The achievement is impressive but it is a wholly formal achievement that involves no knowledge (the computer doesn’t know anything in the relevant sense of “know”); and it does not come within a million miles of replicating  the achievements of everyday human thought."

 By STANLEY FISH

I just couldn't help myself

Thanks to Billy Carter for this one...