Day: September 26, 2000

The Jesus Seminar’s Latest Publicity Stunt

On my bookshelf I’ve got several different versions of the Bible along with quite a few volumes Christian apologetics as well as atheistic criticism of the Bible, not to mention just straight ahead historical looks at Christianity. It’s a topic I used to be strongly interested in, but don’t really get into very much today.

Anyway, as an atheist I’ve often talked with very intelligent Christians who agree with me on at least one thing: that the issue of whether or not God exists is a serious one worthy of study rather than reflexive rush to judgments on either side. Which is why the Jesus Seminar’s regular publicity stunts are so annoying.

According to a story in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, at its next meeting the Jesus Seminar is going to vote up or down on the following statement: “Jesus of Nazareth is a manifestation of God.”

Robert Funk, the scholar who originally organized the Jesus Seminar, actually tells the Star-Telegram that, “We are opening up a new phase of the seminar. We are discussing the future of God, so to speak.”

Only an academic would possess the incredible level of hubris necessary to take it upon himself to discuss “the future of God” in this fashion, especially given that a question such as whether or not Jesus was a manifestation of God is really not one that can be answered through historical or scientific means. Leave it to a bunch of historians to think they can actually vote, after they decide about Jesus, whether or not “God is.” Just forget the thousands of years of philosophical debate on this issue, and let the Jesus Seminar folks take a vote!

Supporters of the Jesus Seminar claim their controversial pronouncements stir interest in Biblical scholarship. I think this is a bit like saying that Jerry Springer’s show encourages research into conflict management. More likely, the Jesus Seminar’s publicity stunts probably convince a lot of people that secular Biblical historians are a bunch of morons.

This reminds me of the campus atheist group at the university I work at — I went to a couple of meetings only to find them quite a bit more obnoxious than any of the Christian groups on campus. I happened to walk by a display table they set up in the student union the other day, and prominently displayed on a presentation board was a bumper sticker that said “Evolutionists do it with increasing complexity.” Along with strongly implying that religious belief and evolution are incompatible, the whole effect to me was to completely demean and trivialize the important insights of Darwin, much as the Jesus Seminar trivializes the insight and importance of the near universal belief in some sort of deity by asserting that the matter can be decided by democratic vote.

MS Wins — Supreme Court Won’t Hear Case; Sends Antitrust Appeal to Lower Court

The Supreme Court today decided not to hear the Microsoft case immediately, but rather sent the case to an appeals court to wind its normal way through the judicial system. Bottom line: buy Microsoft ASAP as the stock is going to soar over the next few weeks.

Microsoft is downplaying the impact of the decision, but in reality it’s an enormous victory for the company. The appeals court is very likely to overturn part or even all of the excessive penalty against Microsoft, and whatever the final outcome of the case is it will take years to decide at which point the whole case will be even more irrelevant than it already is today.

(On the other hand, I think MS is going end up committing suicide with their .NET plans so don’t hold on to that stock too long. Disclaimer: if you’re seriously thinking of buying stock based on what I say, you need your head examined. Don’t blame me if .NET succeeds and you’re out a lot of money. Don’t blame me when pigs start flying either.)

It Takes an Incompetent Government to Flood India

India has had a number of famines that were caused by its government, and now its citizens can thank the government for a disastrous flood so far has killed 400, left 200 more people missing, and left more than 15 million people homeless.

West Bengal, where the worst of the flooding occurred, was hit by heavy rains, but government officials compounded the problem because of a lack of coordination between officials who were responsible for monitoring water levels and those responsible for managing dams in West Bengal. As a result, the dam operators thought water levels were far lower than they were and released way too much water, resulting in the worst floods in the area in 30 years.

To add insult to injury, according to opposition parties the government is also bungling relief and rescue efforts. There have been riots in relief camps as people are waiting several days for food, water and shelter. Opposition parties claim the West Bengal government mismanaged funds. For example, one of the delays was caused by the fact that the government never used funds it was allocated to buy a sufficient number of speedboats for transportation during flooding which is common in the area.

Source:

Authorities helped cause India floods. The BBC, September 25, 2000.

John Tesh Sues Vignette

Okay, first I have to get this out of the way — the best thing about John Tesh is that he is not doing Olympics gymnastics coverage this time around. If he was I really would hate the Olympics coverage.

Anyway, I’ve mentioned the content management system, Conversant, that powers this web site and marveled that it is both a) reasonably priced even for individuals such as myself, and b) extremely easy to use.

That’s quite an accomplishment considering there are a lot of very expensive systems out there that have a nasty reputation of being almost impossible to use. One system with such a reputation is Vignette’s StoryServer software. Tesh is suing Vignette after having what apparently is a common experience with StoryServer: he paid a lot of money ($210,000) and the software simply didn’t do what Vignette said it would. In fact some companies who have paid for StoryServer licenses reported spending as much to customize it to fit their needs as they did for the actual license (meaning they could have probably done their own system from scratch more cheaply).

As a story on the lawsuit from Inside.Com reports,

The suit further alleges that Vignette’s trainer said site development time with the software was six to eight months, with 12 to 14 months a possibility.

I don’t know about Tesh’s plans, but a 6 to 8 month lead time is basically business suicide on the Internet, especially since Internet technologies are likely to advance substantially in that 6-8 month time frame — whatever you end up with at that point is probably out of date and will need further extensive modification.