Sunday, 30 June 2019

They really wanted freedom from error

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Although the Puritans are often depicted as seeking freedom of conscience, that is misleading. They really wanted freedom from error - in o...
Saturday, 29 June 2019

These billions have done more to chart the universe than did Galileo Galilei, Christopher Columbus and Charles Darwin

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During the last 500 years modern science has achieved wonders thanks largely to the willingness of governments, businesses, foundations and...
Friday, 28 June 2019

The only steak you could obtain in Argentina in 1492 was from a llama

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One of the most interesting examples of this globalisation is 'ethnic' cuisine. In an Italian restaurant we expect to find spaghett...
Thursday, 27 June 2019

History is something that very few people have been doing while everyone else was ploughing fields and carrying water buckets

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Until the late modern era, more than 90 per cent of humans were peasants who rose each morning to till the land by the sweat of their brows...
Wednesday, 26 June 2019

I was so relieved when the Cultural Revolution began. I just threw the exam results down the toilet and wrote the editorial

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Like all my classmates, Future had been a Red Guard. In 1966, he formed a faction of two at his high school in Beijing and mimeographed his...
Friday, 3 May 2019

Since the Gnostics already knew what the text meant, they were no longer constrained by what the text "said"

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This refusal to subscribe to a literal understanding of the text was a source of perennial frustration for the proto-orthodox church father...
Thursday, 2 May 2019

But the final phrase, "The Son of God," is lacking in several important witnesses

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The vast majority of manuscripts introduce the Gospel of Mark with the words; "the beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of...