Published Again--Journal of the American Academy of Religion-Queer Sects in Rom 1

My second research article came out this month in the Journal of the American Academy of Religion. The first, from winter 2011, was in Journal of Biblical Literature. It looked at the historical and linguistic context of Roans 1:26-27, proposing that Rom 1:26, the only alleged reference in the Bible to "lesbians", is not actually a reference of lesbians at all. The entire chapter is Paul's attack on non-Yahwistic religions, and many of the references can be interpeted as allusions to the goddess cults. This most recent article builds on that theory, but demonstrates that the first millennium church's interpretation of this passage shows little indication of a "gay or lesbian" interpretation outside of the goddess religions context.

http://jaar.oxfordjournals.org/content/current "Queer Sects in Patristic Commentaries on Romans 1:26–27: Goddess Cults, Free Will, and “Sex Contrary to Nature”?"
J Am Acad Relig (2013) 81 (1): 56-79.

Abstract

This article provides evidence that Romans 1:26b–27 was interpreted by the early Christian church as a reference to the sexual practices of the goddess cults, and was used as an attack on polytheistic religions, not a reference to homosexuality. I clarify the rhetorical usefulness of the goddess cults for the early church in making the antipolytheistic case in relation to the Patristic contrast between free will and determinism. While the early church did not originally interpret Romans 1:26b as female homogenitality, a transition to this view is apparent as the Western Roman Empire began to collapse. A queer theory lens is incorporated into the discussion about Romans 1 by introducing cultural practices of gender, sexuality, and religion uncommon today.

Scientists vs. Creationism

I often find myself spending hours googling the same information, so I thought I'd post it here so I can save time in the future. Scientists do not support creationism. The following are polls of scientists on the issue. It doesn't matter that half of the U.S. "public" supports it, especially when we rank near the bottom of scientific and math literacy of all the industrialized countries (all of which have publics that reject young earth creationism, by the way).

Texas, 2008, "1,019 biologists and biological anthropologists on the faculty of all 35 public and the 15 largest private colleges and universities in Texas" (97.7%)
http://www.tfn.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=5621

Gallup, 1997, "Scientists," 1997 (95%-evolution)
http://ncse.com/rncse/18/2/do-scientists-really-reject-god

Pew, 2009, "Scientists," (97%) "humans have evolved over time"
http://people-press.org/reports/pdf/528.pdf

NSTA, 2007, "HS Biology Teachers" (16%-short earth creationism)
http://science.nsta.org/nstaexpress/10.1371_journal.pbio.0060124-L.pdf

Supreme Court, 1986, "Amicus Curiae Brief Of 72 Nobel Laureates, 17 State Academies Of Science"
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/edwards-v-aguillard/amicus1.html

American Scientific Affiliation, 2010, Scientists by speciality
100% of geologists and astronomers agree to old earth theory
88% of biologists affirmed evolution (7% did not answer the question, so only 5% affirmed short-earth creationism)
http://www.asa3online.org/Voices/2010/07/16/asa-origins-survey-with-correction/

Univ Cincinnati, 2002, "Ohio PhDs in natural or physical science", 90% "no scientific evidence at all for the idea of "intelligent design".
http://www.uc.edu/news/idpoll.htm

Forget your Yahoo Messenger Password?

Did you forget your Yahoo messenger password because you saved it years ago and have it automatically entered? You tried the "password recovery", only to discover that your "alternate e-mail" is no longer a valid email (or was fake to begin with), you don't remember your "secret questions", and you used a fake birthday and address (since it's none of Yahoo's business and you know they sell your private information). But now you are moving to a new computer and without the old password, you'll lose all of your old contacts and e-mails from that account?!

This happened to me, and there is an easy, if not incomplete solution. The problem is that none of the "password" recovery methods work, and Yahoo's "help" services are useless. After Yahoo started requiring personal information, like phone numbers, address, other e-mail accounts, etc, to gain access to your years worth of e-mails and Messenger chats, I found ways to bypass the security questions. The consequence is that the only way I have access to my Yahoo e-mail is to log into Messenger with the stored password, when the "you have mail" icon appears, I can click it, and it opens into my Yahoo email account. However, I cannot log directly into my Yahoo e-mail, because it says that my password is wrong, or expired. I don't quite understand how the "stored" Messenger password works, but I can't manually type it in and it doesn't work, but regardless, that's the situation.

So when I moved to a new computer and tried to set-up Yahoo, Messenger wouldn't accept the password. I KNOW the password, but the software doesn't accept it. Googling for ways to hack the software or the password was useless, and it appears that the current versions of Messenger are not "hackable." This is how I transferred my old stored password from my old computer and Yahoo Messenger to my new computer and updated Messenger.

1) Install Yahoo Messenger on the new computer. I was moving from Windows 7 to Windows 8, and had Yahoo v. 11 on the original and new computer.
2) Copy the old Yahoo files to the new computer--these were in ProgramFiles directory--my profile, old chats, etc.
3) The stored password is saved in the registry, so this has to be copied over.
a) On your original computer, open registry by clicking the start menu and "regedit"
b) Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Yahoo\pager -- right click, "export" and save it someplace handy.
c) Copy this file to your new computer and double-click.

That's it--it should automatically install. That's what worked for me. Now the username and password automatically populates the Yahoo Messenger fields again, and I can again access my Yahoo e-mail when the e-mail icon appears. It doesn't seem that you can extract the original password from the registry key (ETS), but copying the entire key to the new computer is sufficient to make Yahoo Messenger work again.