Ronald V. Huggins

Birth of the Buddha At the 2014 Annual Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature and American Association of Religion I picked up Donald S Lopez Jr’s  The Scientific Buddha: His Short and Happy Life  (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2013).  I was particularly excited about the book because it represented the published version of one of the most distinguished current scholars of Buddhism delivering one of the most distinguished series of lectures on religion, namely  the 2008 Yale University Terry Lectures,   Lopez is the University of Michigan’s Arthur E. Link Distinguished University Professor of Buddhist and Tibetan Studies. He has written more than 20 books.  As a Terry Lecturer he followed in the footsteps of such prominent thinkers as John Dewey (1933-34  , A Common Faith ), Paul Tillich (1950-51,  The Courage To Be ), Carl G. Jung (1937-38,   Psychology and Religion ), Jacques Maritain (1942-43,   Educati...

Subject:   The Claim that Krishna was a Virgin Born, Crucified Savior is a 19th century Western invention that continues to be circulated by ignorant, intellectually lazy people who've never bothered to read the  classic Hindu texts on the subject, most of which are now readily available in English.  See further  Jesus & Krishna: Two Different Versions of the Same Archetypal Myth? , and  Krishna, Not Virgin Born, Not Born on December 25 .    If the subject of other alleged "crucified saviors" is of interest I would invite my readers to read my posts on  Was Prometheus a Crucified Saviour on the Pattern of Many Other Gods Including Jesus .     Then further  The Buddha: Virgin Born? Dying & Rising God?    On the late Christopher Hitchens's plagiarism in his own discussion of "crucified saviours" see  An Example of Christopher Hitchens’s Plagiarism  .  On a related topic, see  Does Christ...

One of the problems for a country where media drives activism, where the entire focus of our moral outrage is determined by whatever news stories happen to break today, is that it discourages long-term, sustained, well informed, effective engagement in critical issues. This leads to a situation where moral outrage on a particular issue might only last as long as the story that provoked it continues to be deemed newsworthy, and another lets-all-get-mad news story breaks and everybody compliantly moves on to it. Eventually there comes a point where people won't even be able to tell you what issues they will be inflamed with moral outrage over even a week or two into the future. A friend's answer: " Yes, there is truth to that but Trump started this whole thing by tweeting about something no one was even thinking about to distract from other things going on. He has done this over and over again. You are right the press jumps right on these things at that point even havin...

Christian institutions offering dumbed-down PhDs are basically engaging in robbery and fraud because they are selling students something that is not par with traditional standards of education or with standard expectations in other institutions. I can't help but fear that the Evangelical Theological Society is being hindered in its ability to pursue its academic mission and calling due to the increasing influx of under-educated but over-confident bearers of half-baked, dumbed-down PhDs. Causes: (1) Confusion between DMin and various "Prodoc" doctorates on the one hand and traditional PhDs in Biblical Studies, Theology, and Church History, and so on, on the other. Traditionally a great deal more work is required for the latter than for the former. (2) Seminary leadership models that do not permit faculty control of curriculum. In such cases formal lip-service may be given to faculty oversight, but completely undermined by other factors such as the tacit unde...

Carl A. P. Ruck, Boston University The OED defines “Entheogen” as: “A psychoactive substance which is used in a religious ritual or to bring about a spiritual experience, typically a plant or fungal extract; (more widely) any hallucinogenic drug.” In then offers as the word's first occurrence: 1979 J. Bigwood et al. in Jrnl. Psychedelic Drugs 11 146/1   We...propose a new term that would be appropriate for describing states of shamanic and ecstatic possession induced by ingestion of mind-altering drugs... The term we are proposing: entheogen. The reference is to the article “Entheogens,” Journal of Psychedelic Drugs 11.1-2 (1979): 145-146.  It was indeed in this brief article that the term “entheogen” was proposed as an alternative to the more common “hallucinogen.”   The problem is that the OED entry should read “C. Ruck et al.” instead of “J. Bigwood et al.”   The article represented the work of a committee that lead to the ...