Peter Williams on the Bible and Slavery

The longer a video is the more it takes to convince me to watch a link. A few minutes tops as I prefer to read text. Partly because reading is generally quicker for conveying the same amount of information, and reading allows you to skim or skip around to see if you want to invest the time in reading the article. Nevertheless, this Peter Williams lecture is worth recommending even though it is over an hour long. I had not heard of Williams though came across this link twice in as many days. It was very useful, very sensible, very interesting.

For those who don't wish to invest the time Williams shows how "slavery" is a poor translation choice given how Westerners think of slavery, even though slave is increasingly used in modern translations. A helpful chart (reproduced below) from 22:31 minutes compares the rights of slaves (bondservants) in the Old Testament with Roman slaves and American slaves. He also introduces a very helpful interpretive point on Exodus 21:21 (from 25:40 minutes).

Does the Bible Support Slavery? by Peter Williams

Conditions	OT	Roman	New World
Holiday	Yes	No	Yes
Food enough	Yes	No	No
Legal redress	Yes	No	No
Sexual protection	Yes	No	No
Kidnapped	No	Yes	Yes
Chains	No	Yes	Yes
Torture	No	Yes	Yes
Physical abuse	No	Yes	Yes

Hat tip: Mark Ward, Andrew Wilson.

Underground Church in China

A short video on some of the difficulties faced by our brothers in China. Yet Jesus continues to grow his church!

The reliability of the gospels

Peter Williams defends the gospels being authentic by appealing to names of people and places mentioned by the authors. The first 20 minutes discusses just the names of various persons. Held my attention, even though I was previously aware of this argument. Worth the 30 minutes.

Hat tip: canon fodder

Dinosaur bones dated with carbon-14

This escaped my notice at the time (2012 August). We should definitely carbon date more fossils and ignore calls that this is a waste of time because we already know that fossils cannot contain carbon-14 except as a contaminant.

Coal and diamonds both contain radioactive carbon despite supposedly being too old. The half-life of carbon-14 is 5730 years. So after 5700 years there is half the original amount of carbon-14 left. After 11500 years a quarter of the original amount. If we assume all the carbon in an object is carbon-14 (it is however only a fraction) we can get an extreme upper bound on how old it can be (carbon-14 decays into nitrogen so the known presence of carbon-12 lowers this upper bound considerably). If we measure any carbon-14 we know it must be younger than the extreme upper bound age, though it could be much younger.

So carbon-14 has been found in

1. Coal
2. Diamonds
3. Dinosaurs

All of which are claimed to be older than what they possibly can be. This refutes the argument for an ancient earth. The only response possible is contamination.

Africa for Norway

 

Africa raising funds for Norwegians. Length 3:45.

Source.

Inside the cell

This video is an animation of cellular activity. The animators tried to make the cells and cellular structures true to life. Colour is added, and there is more space in the animation: cells are packed full and structures would be difficult to discern with an accurate spatial rendering, though shape and scale are probably accurate.

What struck me first on seeing this, other than the cell being sublimely impressive, was that God must have had such a fun time designing life. It must have brought him so much pleasure.

More on the making of this animation here.

A longer 8 minute video with commentary available here. Well worth the time.

The moral case for free enterprise

This video gives a moral argument for capitalism. Arthur Brookes claims that principles of capitalism, such as a free market, are not just effective, they are also righteous.



If you don't want to watch the video a similar article can be read here.

Stealing in broad daylight

This is concerning. Man steals bikes in several public places but no one is interested.

Perpetuum Jazzile performs Africa

Jazz choir Perpetuum Jazzile is from Slovenia. This is a video of them doing a performance of Toto's Africa a cappella . I think the thunder simulation is quite clever.

Death of a daughter

I only became aware of this recently. Steven Curtis Chapman, Christian singer, lost his daughter in a car accident in May. Extremely sad. Steven and his wife Mary Beth talked about their loss on Good Morning America.