Monday night...

...and challenges might have been bad... hopefully I'm still in.

Went to an extra-credit lecture tonight about the last days of Jesus's life, and how sequences of events don't match between the Synoptic Gospels and John, and how the non-reactions to Jesus's doings and the insistence on crucifixion were oddities in the account. The scholarly portion of the lecture wasn't too bad. She did fairly well in providing data, justification, and references. However, the second part of the lecture was a disaster for the lecturer's credibility in my opinion. I will preface my assault by saying some of the matter may be attributable to fatigue, as her day today sounded like it was rather long... she did arrive late to her own lecture. However, I do not believe it exonerates her very much of what occurred.

Anyway, the second part of the lecture was about the Mel Gibson movie that's coming out depicting the last moments of Jesus. From the beginning of that section, the lecturer's prejudices and utter disgust were plain. It felt like an overreaction to a stupid statement that Mel had made about the accuracy of his movie. The Question and answer session was not too much better. The lecturer got confrontational to her questioners, sometimes interrupting, and other times asking questions back to the inquisitor that seemed designed to make them look poor. The last question killed her coming across as any sort of professional to me. The question was asked about her religious background, as a possible reference point to see where her views might have basis in. She refused to answer the question, and made remarks like, "I'm a historian. I look at history from a historical perspective. My religious background has nothing to do with this."

I believe that while the inquisitor may have been searching for something that she might be unconsciously favorable to, in terms of religion, the response makes me think that she may have something that she is consciously trying to fight against, an agenda of trying not to come to a particular conclusion. The question wasn't worded too well, and the speaker to me had tones of a fundamentalist about him by the way he asked the question. (He asked whether she had taken into account that Jesus, in the gospel accounts, fulfills certain prophecies made before him.) The question to me came off as sounding like a question of whether or not she believed in the gospel message or not, and she got rather huffy about that. She said something to the effect of: "I don't go looking for ways to make my research collaborate with Hebrew prophecies." Either way, I was not happy about that. I hid my disgust and conversed back on the scholarly side of things at the reception, where she handled herself quite well. (We never did find out what religious background she was from. Must have been too impertinent a question to be asked again.)

So the question I pose to you is: Am I just paranoid, or is there a good reason to be perturbed by her behavior?

Tuesday.

Not much to report on the front today, other than that our female footballers were defeated tonight. The all-dudes team that I'm playing for begins the campaign tomorrow. Hopefully things will go well.

I apparently can pick friends pretty well, according to the Oct. 31-themed meme going around:

My LiveJournal Trick-or-Treat Haul
silveradept goes trick-or-treating, dressed up as The Shadow.
eleme gives you 16 red-orange grape-flavoured gumdrops.
getsource gives you 2 brown lemon-flavoured nuggets.
laforce gives you 8 red vanilla-flavoured gummies.
maritzac tricks you! You get a broken balloon.
miyabiarashi gives you 17 green chocolate-flavoured pieces of taffy.
taniwhanui gives you 2 mauve lime-flavoured gumdrops.
tinchen gives you 15 dark green blueberry-flavoured hard candies.
tkarrde98 gives you 5 red-orange vanilla-flavoured miniature candy bars.
warwulf gives you 11 mauve spearmint-flavoured pieces of chewing gum.
welah tricks you! You get a broken toy car.
silveradept ends up with 76 pieces of candy, a broken balloon, and a broken toy car.
Go trick-or-treating! Username:
Another fun meme brought to you by rfreebern.

Not bad at all, hehe. Anyway, my readings are starting to gnaw away at my sanity. It seems like all I do in my spare time is reading for the next course. Admittedly, this has likely helped me on my exams (got my midterms back with 96 and 98 marks, respectively...), but there are times where I want to lounge about and do nothing, but I can't really permit myself to do so because it makes my schedule wonky. Someone got good de-stressors?

I'm in for the game against the s-Party-ans, which means going to the game, playing there, and then driving down to another performance at the state HS Marching band competition. It will be a day of Doom and very tired-ness when it is finished. The good news? Monday's got no practice and Tuesday will be pretty light.

Tuesday next starts women's basketball games, which will place even less time on my hands for doing readings. Something will slip, and I guarantee, the books will be the first to fly. Anyway, I shouldn't probably be taking so much on with my credit-load, but by the time the bowl game (knock on wood) rolls around, it will all be over. Which reminds me of the papers that are starting to draw a dark cloud over my head in addition to all the readings...

And finally, something from freetobelieve: Apparently, Pat Robertson is against the Episcopal Church and the elevation of their first openly gay bishop. On the 700 Club, the matter was being discussed. During a newscast clip or something, Bishop-Elect Robinson said he believed that God wanted him to go through with his consecration. At the end of the newscast, Pat Robertson retorted, "God wants him to go forward? Well, God also wants to destroy the Episcopal Church. So that is fine with me."

We're checking out source right now to ensure that the isnad of this particular gem of wisdom is a reliable one. Considering what has been attested to him beforehand, I have few doubts that it is authentic.

Is there something particular about inter-sect fighting that makes it worthy of commentary such as this, or is this our favorite fundie spouting off again and saying things that he really shouldn't?

And thus, I fall away into the comforts of bed, for I still have that 10 AM course to get up for...