Ep 13: Cloning Jesus with Christian Piatt

What if someone cloned Jesus, to kickstart the second coming? What if fringe religious groups USED science for a change? Christian Piatt explains his religious sci-fi thriller, and tackles thorny questions in science, faith, and progressive spirituality.

Christian Piatt is an author, speaker, musician, podcaster, and church planter. His books include the novel Blood Doctrine, a non-fiction book titled PostChristian, and the upcoming work "Not THAT kind of Christian: Loving God Without Being an A**hole". He also hosts the "Home-brewed Culture Cast", which discusses pop culture and news through the lens of progressive Christian spirituality.

• Blood Doctrine and PostChristian by Christian Piatt
• Christian Piatt's website
• What if we had a fringe religious group USE science for a change?
• The bone box of James, brother of Jesus
• 2000-year-old seed springs back to life
• Free idea: a bible-themed Jurassic park
• The pope would baptize martians
• Einstein wanted to know the mind of God
• The movie Pi and its basis in religious numerology
• The tree of the knowledge of good and evil as the original MacGuffin
• Rene Girard and the structure of desire — the gospels are full of people disappointed in Jesus because he was not the messiah they were looking for
• Our uncomfortableness with Jesus' humanity, Christopher Moore's book Lamb, and why we obsess over relics
• Using religion for the power of fear, rather than the power of faith
• Richard Rohr, Christian mystic
• How we misuse the Bible and the DSM
• You can use a brick to build a hospital, or to break someone's window
• The problems with how we approach neuro-diversity
• Deconstruction and reconstruction
• The Year of Jubilee and the apocalypse
• The end of Christian empire
• The unconscious bias towards right-handed people, and what that shows us about our culture
• Orthodoxy, orthopraxy, orthopathy
• "A childlike faith" — children ask lots of questions!
• The opposite of faith isn't doubt, it's indifference