Forget the phrase “Jesus Christ on a pogo stick!” The proper phrase is clearly “Jesus Christ on a trampoline!”

From what I’ve read, the early Enlightenment approach to the historical claims of the Bible was pretty similar. In particular, many scholars assumed that the miracles in the Bible accurately reported what people experienced, and they attempted to find some kind of natural explanation for them. For example, they would say that Jesus only appeared to walk on water, but in fact, the disciples must not have known that the tide was really low, such that Jesus was actually walking in shallow water.

In contrast to that naive view, David Hume cast serious doubt on the reliability of the reports Bible in his chapter Of Miracles in the Enquiry. I always enjoyed teaching that to undergrads.

Also, this kind of silly image is precisely the kind of potentially offensive posting that I discussed in my recent webcast on poking fun of friends’ ideas online. I don’t post this kind of material to annoy my religious conservative friends: I post it simply because I find it funny. They ignore such posts, thankfully — just as I ignore their “inspirational” status updates quoting scripture.