One of the interviewer's questions referred to "Muslim martyrs."

I'm guessing he is referring to suicide bombers. These people are definitely NOT "martyrs," though those who sympathize with them would like to have us believe that they are.

These apologists are either lying, or perhaps mistranslating some word in Arabic that has a meaning similar, but not identical to "martyr."

I really get tired of seeing lazy journalists allowing themselves to be coopted with this sort of despicable misrepresentation.

Well, Dawkins loves to play village atheist. He's such a rationalist that the God that he's debunking is not one that most of the people I study would recognize. I mean, is there some great big person up there who made the universe out of dirt? Probably not.

Like many theologians, Pagels lacks the courage to admit that a great many believers -- perhaps most of them -- do believe in a "big person up there who made the universe out of dirt." Atheists and agnostics don't generally have any problem with thoughtful philosophers like her. We have big problems with literalists who make specific, testable claims about the actions of God in the material world, and whose claims can be shown to be false, but who keep shoving their anti-science into education and politics. It's all very nice to say, "The God I believe in isn't the God the crazies believe in," but when it comes to making things happen in the name of God, the crazies have the theologians beat by a mile.

"You're saying that we have to understand context.

I think we do. You were saying that some people believe faith has nothing to do with history. The fact is, somebody wrote those texts. They wrote them in a world in which slavery was taken for granted. That's a different world. So if we don't understand that, well, it says, Slaves, obey your masters, for this is right. "

Context? How can this be taken seriously? She's right, somebody wrote those texts. What else needs to be said about it? I see this bizarre behavior all the time. The rational part of a person's brain will speak up, and then the fantasy-land religious part of the brain will answer with some other excuse.

Re: Judas Iscariot

I was brought up in the Episcopalean church believing that Christ's cruxification was preordained. If so, then Judas' act was also preordained. I'm not sure I understand how this belief makes for controversy within the church.

What few folks have bothered to appreciate was just how sincere those of the Hebrew persuasion were about coming to understand God. They knew enough to realize that this was not going to be the quest of a single lifetime, nor even a single epoch: this quest could potentially last for centuries.

Project management, indeed.

Try arranging the books of the Old Testament in their original order, as Jack Miles has done before us.

The old Testament that Jesus taught from ended with Job. All that searching and experience ended with Job getting thumped on the nose by his own God explaining to him what had been explained to many heroes in many spiritual-religious traditions: sacraments and silverware only work for a while. The active ingredient of spirituality isn't piety, it's justice. It's not rigidly adhering to dogma, but allowing that faith to move and change a person from within. In any direction. At any time. For any reason.

Jesus' one and only commandment was that we love one another. That is what God would want from His children and that is what we have to get right.

2,000 years later, we're still throwing mud at each other while Rome burns to the ground.

Grab a banana and a remote and watch the show. Hiding our intelligence so that we don't have to appear responsible for what's going on is a deeply unintelligent thing to do.

Jesus' one and only commandment was that we love one another.

Actually, there's more to it than that. First and foremost, Jesus said, “ 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment" (Matthew 22:37-38).

If you don't love God, all the rest is for naught.

What does it mean to love God? Jesus said, "If you love me, you will obey what I command" (John 14:15). So for those who try to water down Christianity to some vague "let's all get along" message, you're confronted with Christ's own words that we're to obey him first.

Of course Borges had anticipated this already in his "Three Versions of Judas", available here:

http://southerncrossreview.org/49/borges-judas-eng.htm

This is my observation, based on growing up with a minister for a father, a crisis of faith at the age of 14, and lots of research:

With very few exceptions, people believe in the God they want. They believe in the God that reflects their world view. The God that punishes things they don't like.

They don't want to know what the bible really teaches. My minister went to a Presbyterian seminary. He has many stories of classmates whose response was, "I can't go back to my church and teach this!" when they learned what the bible actually stated. Because the reality of the bible contradicts what the congregation believes, or wants to believe.

Look at the concepts of Heaven and angels. There is nowhere in the bible where it says that everyone who dies goes to Heaven. In fact, the bible says something very different. But people constantly talk about someone who has died being "in a better place," or "looking down on us." And a human who dies does not become an angel, according to the bible. Angels are a completely separate class of being. But it is a firmly established part of American culture that people die, go to heaven, and become angels. The story of Clarence in It's A Wonderful Life depicts the Heaven that a large percentage of Americans take for granted.

Even though the bible absolutely contradicts this version of Heaven.

According to what I have learned, the writings that were included in the New Testament are a minority of the available texts. The idea the there is more to learn as we discover more texts seems obvious.

Here we have writings that have been suppressed. That these suppressed writings would cast doubt upon ideas that have "stood the test of time" is not surprising. It seems part and parcel of that universal truth of mankind, that those in power want to hold on to their power. Surely this isn't a surprise.