- Ross Douthat and Bart Ehrman debate about the evolution of human morality; I’m not completely on board with either of them, and have a better explanation;
- Examples of the religiously besotted: who think Christ is the King of America; who thinks US troops are fighting for Jesus; who want women barefoot and off the voter rolls;
- Trump name-checks God;
- The teleport guy triples down.
Items on religion, beginning with a serious debate between two scholars.
NY Times, Ross Douthat with Bart Ehrman, 2 Apr 2026: Did Jesus Rise From the Dead? A Debate., subtitled “A ‘Christian Atheist’ joins Ross Douthat.”
Very long, with video. I noted it a couple days ago but haven’t taken the time to read it (or watch it). But then I saw this take:
Why Evolution is True, Jerry Coyne, 3 Apr 2026: Bart Ehrman schools Ross Douthat on Christianity and how to find Biblical “truth”
Coyne summarizes and quotes. Both have recent books. Douthat, a reliable defender of faith for NYT, has Believe: Why Everyone Should Be Religious from a year ago. Ehrman has Love Thy Stranger: How the Teachings of Jesus Transformed the Moral Conscience of the West just published in March.
I dismiss Douthat completely; he thinks the world would be a better place if everyone were a Christian, just like him; he thinks that’s what right and true about the world; he was imprinted young. I’m open to Ehrman, who went from believer to scholar (if not entirely skeptic), but I’m still skeptical of him; I had issues with his book JESUS BEFORE THE GOSPELS (review here), and the new one seems similarly credulous about matters of moral evolution (the moral conscience he refers to is the evolved human nature of hundreds of thousands of years; Jesus could not have changed human nature’s moral inclinations in a single generation, and what about the rest of the world?).
(One trouble with experts on any subject is that they don’t always know very much about anything else.)
