Fwd: EDGE 209: Elaine Pagels: The Gospel of Judas; Paul & Zucker

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From: Edge <editor@edge.org>
Date: 2 May 2007 20:41
Subject: EDGE 209: Elaine Pagels: The Gospel of Judas; Paul & Zucker
To: Rhys Evans <wheresrhys@gmail.com>

Edge 209
May 1, 2007

(9,500 words)

This EDGE edition, at 9,500 words with video, graphics, and links, is available online at http://www.edge.org/documents/archive/edge209.html

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THE THIRD CULTURE
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THE GOSPEL OF JUDAS [4.30.07]
A Talk with Elaine Pagels

This text sees Judas dying as a martyr-because here the other disciples hate him so much that they kill him! But the Gospel of Judas challenges the idea that God wants people to  die as martyrs-just as it challenges the idea that God wanted Jesus to die. Whoever wrote this gospel-and the author is anonymous-is challenging church leaders who teach that.

It's as if an imam were to challenge the radical imams who encourage "martyrdom operations" and accuse them of complicity in murder-the Gospel of Judas shows "the twelve disciples"-stand-ins for church leaders-offering human sacrifice on the altar-and doing this in the name of Jesus!

Conservative Christians hate gospels like this-usually call them fakes and the people who publish them (like us) anti Christian.  There was a great deal of censorship in the early Christian movement-especially after the emperor became a Christian, and made it the religion of the empire-and voices like those of this author were silenced and denounced as "heretics" and "liars." The story of Jesus was simplified and cleaned up-made "orthodox."

[MORE]
http://www.edge.org/documents/archive/edge209.html#ep

ELAINE PAGELS is the Harrington Spear Paine Professor of Religion at Princeton University and has published widely on Gnosticism and early Christianity. Her latest book, coauthored with Karen King, in Reading Judas.

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WHY THE GODS ARE NOT WINNING [4.30.07]
by Gregory Paul & Phil Zuckerman

Disbelief now rivals the great faiths in numbers and influence. Never before has religion faced such enormous levels of disbelief, or faced a hazard as powerful as that posed by modernity. How is organized religion going to regain the true, choice-based initiative when only one of them is growing, and it is doing so with reproductive activity rather than by convincing the masses to join in, when no major faith is proving able to grow as they break out of their ancestral lands via mass conversion, and when securely prosperous democracies appear immune to mass devotion? The religious industry simply lacks a reliable stratagem for defeating disbelief in the 21st century.

[MORE]
http://www.edge.org/documents/archive/edge209.html#gp

GREGORY PAUL is an independent researcher on subjects dealing with paleontology, evolution, religion and society. Books include PREDATORY DINOSAURS OF THE WORLD AND DINOSAURS OF THE AIR.

PHIL ZUCKERMAN is a sociologist at Pitzer, and the author of INVITATION TO THE SOCIOLOGY OF RELIGION, and SEX AND RELIGION.

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THE REALITY CLUB
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Gloria Origgi, Charles Leadbeater on "Who Says We Know" by Larry Sanger

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CHARLES LEADBEATER [4.27.07]

If social networking and Wiki media is the new religion, we need dissenters and atheists to challenge the new faith. Larry Sanger is making a macro argument about how society establishes "background knowledge" and a much more detailed critique of how Wikipedia works. I am not convinced by either argument but I am grateful to Sanger for making the challenge. ...

[MORE]
http://www.edge.org/documents/archive/edge209.html#rc
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GLORIA ORIGGI [4.26.07 ]

Why reputation matters

...An efficient knowledge system like Wikipedia inevitably will grow by generating a variety of evaluative tools: that its how culture grows, how traditions are created. What is a cultural tradition? A labelling systems of insiders and outsiders, of who stays on and who is lost in the magma of the past. The good news is that in the Web era this inevitable evaluation is made through new, collective tools that challenge the received views and develop and improve an innovative and democratic way of selection of knowledge. But there's no escape from the creation of a "canonical"-even if tentative and rapidly evolving-corpus of knowledge.

[MORE]
http://www.edge.org/documents/archive/edge209.html#rc
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EDGE BOOKS
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WHAT IS YOUR DANGEROUS IDEA?
Today's Leading Thinkers on the Unthinkable
With an Introduction by STEVEN PINKER and an Afterword by RICHARD DAWKINS Edited By JOHN BROCKMAN

Harper Perennial, US
Free Press, UK

"A selection of the most explosive ideas of our age."- SUNDAY HERALD

"Provocative" - THE INDEPENDENT

"Challenging notions put forward by some of the world's sharpest minds"-  SUNDAY TIMES

"A titillating compilation" - THE GUARDIAN

"Danger - brilliant minds at work...A brilliant book: exhilarating, hilarious, and chilling." _ THE EVENING STANDARD (London)


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WHAT WE BELIEVE BUT CANNOT PROVE
Today's Leading Thinkers on Science in the Age of Certainty
With an Introduction by IAN MCEWAN
Edited By JOHN BROCKMAN

Harper Perennial, US
Pocket Books, UK

"...This collection, mostly written by working scientists, does not represent the antithesis of science. These are not simply the unbuttoned musings of professionals on their day off. The contributions, ranging across many disparate fields, express the spirit of a scientific consciousness at its best - informed guesswork" - Ian McEwan, from the Introduction,in THE TELEGRAPH

"An unprecedented roster of brilliant minds, the sum of which is nothing short of an oracle - a book to be dog-eared and debated." - SEED

"Scientific pipedreams at their very best." - THE GUARDIAN

"Astounding reading." - BOSTON GLOBE

"Fantastically stimulating." - BBC RADIO 4

"Intellectual and creative magnificence." THE SKEPTICAL INQUIRER

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THIRD CULTURE NEWS
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NEW YORK MAGAZINE
April 21, 2007

Are You There, God? It's Me, Hitchens.

Christopher Hitchens on religion (no thanks), Iraq (not a mistake), and his own loud reputation.

By Boris Kachka

So what makes it different from recent atheist screeds by the likes of Daniel Dennett and Richard Dawkins?

I don't think Richard Dawkins would mind me saying that he looks at religious people with this sort of incredulity, as if, "How possibly can you be so stupid?" And though we all have moods like that, I think perhaps I don't quite.

[MORE]
http://www.edge.org/documents/archive/edge209.html#ny
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SLATE
April 26, 2007
Brains!: A special issue on neuroscience and neuroculture

Mind Reading
Slate's special issue on the brain.
Daniel Engber, Slate Science Editor

Cells That Read Minds?
What the myth of mirror neurons gets wrong about the human brain.
By Alison Gopnik

God
Can "neurotheology" bridge the gap between religion and science?
By George Johnson

Spirit Tech
How to wire your brain for religious ecstasy.
By John Horgan

Brain Lessons
Steven Pinker, Oliver Sacks, and others [Daniel Gilbert, Alison Gopnik, Joshua Greene, Marc Hauser, Joseph LeDoux] on how learning about their brains changed the way they live.

[MORE]
http://www.edge.org/documents/archive/edge209.html#slate
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THE CHRONICLE REVIEW
April 20, 2007
The DNA of Religious Faith
By David P. Barash

In his 2004 book, The End of Faith, Sam Harris pointed out that alone of all human assertions, those qualifying as "religious," almost by definition, automatically demand and typically receive immense respect, even veneration. Claim that the earth is flat, or that the tooth fairy exists, and you will be deservedly laughed at. But maintain that according to your religion, a seventh-century desert tribal leader ascended to heaven on a winged horse, or that a predecessor had done so, without such a conveyance, roughly 600 years earlier, and you are immediately entitled to deference. It has long been, let us say, an article of faith that at least in polite company, religious faith - belief without evidence - should go unchallenged.

[MORE]
http://www.edge.org/documents/archive/edge209.html#barash
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THE ECONOMIST
April 23, 2007

In the beginning

The debate over creation and evolution, once most conspicuous in America, is fast going global

... In his July 2005 article the cardinal seemed to challenge what most scientists would see as axiomatic-the idea that natural selection is an adequate explanation for the diversity and complexity of life in all its forms. Within days, the pope and his advisers found they had new interlocutors. Lawrence Krauss, an American physicist in the front-line of courtroom battles over education, fired off a letter to the Vatican urging a clarification. An agnostic Jew who insists that evolution neither disproves nor affirms any particular faith, Mr Krauss recruited as co-signatories two American biologists who were also devout Catholics. Around the same time, another Catholic voice was raised in support of evolution, that of Father George Coyne, a Jesuit astronomer who until last year was head of the Vatican observatory in Rome. Mr Krauss reckons his missive helped to nudge the Catholic authorities into clarifying their view and insisting that they did still accept natural selection as a scientific theory. ...

[MORE]
http://www.edge.org/documents/archive/edge209.html#economist
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DISCOVER MAGAZINE
MAY 2007

THE DISCOVER INTERVIEW: MARC HAUSER

Interview by Josie Glausiusz

His new theory says evolution hardwired us to know right from wrong. But here's the confusing part: It also gave us a lot of wiggle room

[MORE]
http://www.edge.org/documents/archive/edge209.html#hauser
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YOU TUBE
April 23, 2007

Bill O'Reilly Interviews Richard Dawkins

[MORE]
http://www.edge.org/documents/archive/edge209.html#bo
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POP TECH
April 25, 2007

Brian Eno

Musician, producer and artist Brian Eno shows how simple things can give rise to complex things-in art and life. See how he uses Darwin's ecological model of the world as a roadmap for human culture now and in the future.

[MORE]
http://www.edge.org/documents/archive/edge209.html#be
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This EDGE edition, at 9,500 words with video, graphics, and links, is available online at http://www.edge.org/documents/archive/edge209.html
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EDGE

John Brockman, Editor and Publisher
Russell Weinberger, Associate Publisher
Karla Taylor, Editorial Assistant

Copyright (c) 2007 by EDGE Foundation, Inc.
All Rights Reserved.

Published by EDGE Foundation, Inc.,
5 East 59th Street, New York, NY 10022

EDGE Foundation, Inc. is a nonprofit private  operating foundation under Section 501(c)(3) of  the Internal Revenue Code.
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