Steveawiggins
MY BLOGS
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Sects and Violence in the Ancient World
http://sawiggins.wordpress.com/
A blog that tries to find intelligent things to say about religion and related subjects.
LATEST ARTICLES ( 4522 )
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Belting Beltane
Things have been so busy that I forgot that today is Beltane. That’s all the more ironic because yesterday I’d been on a panel to address the British... Read more
Posted on 01 May 2025 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY -
New Hope Nightmare
One of my favorite places along the Delaware River is the town of New Hope. Across the river is the very nice town of Lambertville, New Jersey, but New Hope ha... Read more
Posted on 30 April 2025 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY -
Capture and Release
Waste not, want not. I place some stock in old sayings. With the way things are going, prices are sure to rise and so saving a penny or two may be wise. So I... Read more
Posted on 29 April 2025 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY -
Playing Sleepy Hollow
In my teenage years I wrote a short play or two. I haven’t done it since. I’ve read plenty over the years but my fiction takes the form of short stories and... Read more
Posted on 28 April 2025 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY -
Drac Retold
House of Darkness is one of those horror movies that doesn’t seem like horror until a good way in. I knew nothing about it, other than it had to do with... Read more
Posted on 27 April 2025 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY -
Not Schrödinger’s
It’s quite a dilemma. It’s Schrödinger’s cat without the box. Well, it’s a dead cat in my yard. It’s not my cat and I only know about it because the next-doo... Read more
Posted on 26 April 2025 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY -
From the Grave
“Macabre” is a word of uncertain etymological origin. One of the most convincing arguments that I’ve read is that it derives from Hebrew qbr, a root associated... Read more
Posted on 25 April 2025 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY -
Shadow off Campus
I’ve been to quite a few academic conferences in my life. Some have been held in neighborhoods declared “unsafe.” I even had a job interview in a hotel room... Read more
Posted on 24 April 2025 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY -
Saint Francis
With the death of the most saint-like Pope in living memory, it feels a little like fate that I’d seen Conclave just three days before. Francis was the only Pop... Read more
Posted on 23 April 2025 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY -
Thinking of Home
The earth, and even life on it, will, I’m confident, outlive our petty desires for money and being the king of the hill. Scientists are getting tantalizingly... Read more
Posted on 22 April 2025 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY -
More Than Zombies
I was near fifty, if I hadn’t already passed that threshold, before I saw Night of the Living Dead. Whispered about in my high school as one of the scariest... Read more
Posted on 21 April 2025 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY -
Easter Gathering
On Easter I’m thinking of Conclave. My wife had been wanting to see it and we watched it on Good Friday—a work day, of course, in this “Christian” nation. In an... Read more
Posted on 20 April 2025 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY -
Unusual Autopsy
I avoided The Autopsy of Jane Doe for some time because, well, autopsy movies just aren’t my thing. Besides, I thought it might be a “true crime” sort of movie... Read more
Posted on 19 April 2025 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY -
Space Rocks
The thing from another world. No, not the movie, but an artifact. My recent post about the asteroid sent me looking for something. Read more
Posted on 18 April 2025 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY -
Horror Adjacent
We have the basic facts, but still, it takes a good bit of imagination. We simply don’t know what the life of Mary Shelley was like, as experienced by the... Read more
Posted on 17 April 2025 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY -
To the Maxxx
Okay, so Maxxxine will be difficult to discuss in my usual format here, but I’ll give it the old college try. Ti West is quite a stylist when it comes to... Read more
Posted on 10 April 2025 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY -
Four-leaf Clover
It was recently my late mother’s birthday. I didn’t post about it on that that day since it might become a security question some day. In any case, it was a... Read more
Posted on 09 April 2025 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY -
Going Viral
Okay, so there are some pretty big plot holes, but Viral is nevertheless an effective horror film. The “virus” is actually a parasite spread by blood, which... Read more
Posted on 08 April 2025 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY -
Remembering Consciousness
I recently inadvertently read—it happens!—about anesthesia. I’ve been relatively healthy for most of my adult life and have experienced anesthesia only for... Read more
Posted on 07 April 2025 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY -
Seeing the Forster
The thing about exploring dark academia is that its recognition is fairly new. It seems that the “concept” emerged only ten years ago and the longer that it’s... Read more
Posted on 06 April 2025 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY
