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The Not Old Better Show – Heaven and Hell Book Interview

On April 1 I did a podcast interview with Paul Vogelzang, the host of Smithsonian Associates "The Not Old Better Show," aired on Soundcloud (Washington DC). The podcast focuses on the issues or particular relevance to the 50+ crowd (nence its name) but obviously lots of the topics it hits are on the minds of everyone else as well. The interview was on my new book on Heaven and Hell: A History of the Afterlife.   I read an excerpt from the book int he interview but mostly it's question and answer. I've done the show several times now, and have always found Paul to be an unusually perceptive and generous interviewer.  Here 'tis. Please adjust gear icon for 720p High-Definition: 

2020-04-23T21:14:18-04:00April 22nd, 2020|Book Discussions, Public Forum, Video Media|

Teaching Religion as an Agnostic

When I finally admitted to myself that I was an agnostic, I had already been teaching New Testament and the history of early Christianity for ten years or so, first at Rutgers in the mid 1980s and then at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill starting in 1988.   It comes as a surprise to some people when I tell them that my decision to leave the Christian faith made absolutely no difference at all, of any kind, in either what I taught or how I taught it.  I think people find that very strange indeed because they have a rather serious misconception about what it means to teach religious studies in a secular research university. Many people imagine that teaching religious studies is simply different from teaching anything else.  I think in part that is because they really haven’t given it much thought.  Religion, in this common view, is different from other fields of study and inquiry.  Political science, or history, or literature, or anthropology, or classics, or even philosophy – any of [...]

My Debate with Kyle Butt on the Problem of Suffering

Kyle Butt Debate. On April 4, 2014, I had a lively and, well, rather rigorous and at times somewhat unpleasant debate (unpleasant for maybe both of us?) with a conservative Christian apologist named Kyle Butt at the campus of the University of North Alabama (UNA).  Gospel Broadcasting Network aired the event live on their television network, as well as live-streamed it on the Internet.  We were debating whether the problem of suffering can call into question the existence of God. Kyle Butt Debate with Bart Ehrman Kyle wrote previously about the event explaining that "He [Bart] is a self-avowed agnostic who claims that the pain and suffering he sees in the world make it impossible for him to believe that the Christian God exists. Thus, the debate will be on the subject of suffering and the existence of God. Ehrman will be affirming: “The pain and suffering in the world indicate that the Christian God does not exist.” I will be denying that proposition." Kyle Butt, M.A. is a graduate of Freed-Hardeman University, where he [...]

2022-06-19T00:03:10-04:00September 26th, 2015|Bart's Debates, Video Media|

Freedom From Religion Foundation Lecture

On May 3 of this year I gave a lecture at a meeting of the Freedom from Religion Foundation in Raleigh NC.    The lecture is about what it is like to be an agnostic who writes about religion.  That's an irony that I am constantly aware of and most of the lecture is about my experience as a non-religious person who is an expert in something he doesn't believe in. I also used  the lecture  to stress that being "free from religion" is not the same thing as "attacking religion."  I absolutely agree with the founding principle of the FFRF that no religion (of any kind, Christian or otherwise) should be imposed on us by the state.  But I do not at *all* think that this is the same thing as being opposed to religion.  I am personally not opposed to religion or people who practice it (although I *am* quite definitely opposed to fundamenalist kinds of religion -- whether Christian, Muslim, Jewish, or whatever).  And I think organized agnostic/atheist/secular/humanist attacks on religion per [...]

2017-12-14T22:43:38-05:00August 16th, 2014|Public Forum, Video Media|
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