Hector Avalos (October 8, 1958 – April 12, 2021) was a professor of

Religious Studies Religious studies, also known as religiology or the study of religion, is the study of religion from a historical or scientific perspective. There is no consensus on what qualifies as ''religion'' and definition of religion, its definition is h ...

Iowa State University Iowa State University of Science and Technology (Iowa State University, Iowa State, or ISU) is a Public university, public land-grant university, land-grant research university in Ames, Iowa, United States. Founded in 1858 as the Iowa Agricult ...

, a cultural anthropologist, and the author of several books on religion.Faculty Directory
; Iowa State University - Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies Avalos was an

atheist Atheism, in the broadest sense, is an absence of belief in the existence of deities. Less broadly, atheism is a rejection of the belief that any deities exist. In an even narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there no ...

and advocate of secular humanist ethics.

Biography

Avalos was born in Mexico, in Nogales, just south of the

Mexico–United States border The international border separating Mexico and the United States extends from the Pacific Ocean in the west to the Gulf of Mexico in the east. The border traverses a variety of terrains, ranging from urban areas to deserts. It is the List of ...

. As a child he was a fundamentalist

Pentecostal Pentecostalism or classical Pentecostalism is a movement within the broader Evangelical wing of Protestantism, Protestant Christianity that emphasizes direct personal experience of God in Christianity, God through Baptism with the Holy Spirit#Cl ...

preacher, child evangelist, and faith healer, and became so interested in the Bible that he immersed himself in

Biblical Hebrew Biblical Hebrew ( or ), also called Classical Hebrew, is an archaic form of the Hebrew language, a language in the Canaanite languages, Canaanitic branch of the Semitic languages spoken by the Israelites in the area known as the Land of Isra ...

. In 1982, Avalos obtained a

Bachelor of Arts A Bachelor of Arts (abbreviated B.A., BA, A.B. or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is the holder of a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the liberal arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts deg ...

from the

University of Arizona The University of Arizona (Arizona, U of A, UArizona, or UA) is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Tucson, Arizona, United States. Founded in 1885 by the 13th Arizona Territorial Legislature, it ...

, then he attended

Harvard Divinity School Harvard Divinity School (HDS) is one of the constituent schools of Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The school's mission is to educate its students either in the religious studies, academic study of religion or for leadership role ...

, where he obtained a Master of Theological Studies degree in 1985. Finally, he obtained a

Doctor of Philosophy A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of Postgraduate education, graduate study and original resear ...

in Hebrew Bible and Near Eastern Studies from

Harvard University Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyma ...

in 1991. Avalos arrived at Iowa State University in the Fall of 1993 after completing a postdoctoral fellowship (1991–93) in the departments of Anthropology and Religious Studies at the

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC, UNC–Chapel Hill, or simply Carolina) is a public university, public research university in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, United States. Chartered in 1789, the university first began enrolli ...

. In 1994, Avalos founded and later became the first director of the US Latino/Latina Studies Program at Iowa State University. The program is dedicated to teaching courses about U.S. Latinos, who are defined as people living in the U.S. who trace their roots to the Spanish-speaking countries of Latin America. In 2005, Avalos and two colleagues published a statement against the teaching of both

intelligent design Intelligent design (ID) is a pseudoscientific argument for the existence of God, presented by its proponents as "an evidence-based scientific theory about life's origins".#Numbers 2006, Numbers 2006, p. 373; " Dcaptured headlines for it ...

and

creationism Creationism is the faith, religious belief that nature, and aspects such as the universe, Earth, life, and humans, originated with supernatural acts of Creation myth, divine creation, and is often Pseudoscience, pseudoscientific.#Gunn 2004, Gun ...

as legitimate science; it was eventually signed by over 130 faculty members at Iowa State University and became a model for other statements at the University of Northern Iowa and at the University of Iowa. Avalos died in April 2021 from complications of

bladder cancer Bladder cancer is the abnormal growth of cells in the bladder. These cells can grow to form a tumor, which eventually spreads, damaging the bladder and other organs. Most people with bladder cancer are diagnosed after noticing blood in thei ...

, with which he was first diagnosed in 2012.

Publications

Avalos' first major work was ''Illness and Health Care in the Ancient Near East: The Role of the Temple in Greece, Mesopotamia, and Israel'' (1995), published in the Harvard Semitic Monograph series. The book combined systematically critical biblical studies with medical anthropology to reconstruct the health care systems of

Ancient Greece Ancient Greece () was a northeastern Mediterranean civilization, existing from the Greek Dark Ages of the 12th–9th centuries BC to the end of classical antiquity (), that comprised a loose collection of culturally and linguistically r ...

Mesopotamia Mesopotamia is a historical region of West Asia situated within the Tigris–Euphrates river system, in the northern part of the Fertile Crescent. Today, Mesopotamia is known as present-day Iraq and forms the eastern geographic boundary of ...

, and

Israel Israel, officially the State of Israel, is a country in West Asia. It Borders of Israel, shares borders with Lebanon to the north, Syria to the north-east, Jordan to the east, Egypt to the south-west, and the Mediterranean Sea to the west. Isr ...

. In ''Health Care and the Rise of Christianity'' (1999) Avalos outlined the thesis that Christianity began, in part, as a health care reform movement that sought to address the problems voiced by patients in the

Greco-Roman world The Greco-Roman world , also Greco-Roman civilization, Greco-Roman culture or Greco-Latin culture (spelled Græco-Roman or Graeco-Roman in British English), as understood by modern scholars and writers, includes the geographical regions and co ...

. In August 2018, Avalos received the first Hispanic American Freethinkers Lifetime Achievement Award "honoring a lifetime of scholarship and advocacy promoting freethought”. He was inducted into the 2019 Iowa Latino Hall of Fame for his role in founding the US Latino/a Studies Program at Iowa State University.

Books

*''The Reality of Religious Violence: From Biblical to Modern Times'' (Sheffield, UK:

Sheffield Phoenix Press Sheffield Phoenix Press Ltd. (SPP) is an independent academic publisher specializing in biblical studies. It was launched in January 2004, continuing the traditions of the former Sheffield Academic Press. SPP's main series of titles are Hebrew ...

, 2019) *''The Bad Jesus: The Ethics of New Testament Ethics'' (Sheffield, UK:

, 2015) *''Slavery, Abolitionism, and the Ethics of Biblical Scholarship'' (Sheffield, UK:

, 2011) *''This Abled Body: Rethinking Disabilities in Biblical Studies'' (co-edited with Sarah Melcher and Jeremy Schipper) (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2007) . *''The End of Biblical Studies'' (Amherst, NY:

Prometheus Books Prometheus Books is a publishing company founded in August 1969 by the philosopher Paul Kurtz (who was also the founder of the Council for Secular Humanism, Center for Inquiry, and co-founder of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry). The publ ...

, 2007) . *''Strangers in Our Own Land: Religion in U.S. Latina/o Literature'', (Nashville: Abingdon, 2005) . *''Fighting Words: The Origins of Religious Violence'', (Amherst, NY: Prometheus, 2005) *''Introduction to the U.S. Latina and Latino Religious Experience'', (Editor; Boston: Brill, 2004) . *''¿Se puede saber si Dios existe? an One Know if God Exists?'. (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Press, 2003) . *''Health Care and the Rise of Christianity'', (Peabody: Mass: Hendrickson Press, 1999) . *''Illness and Health Care in the Ancient Near East: The Role of the Temple in Greece, Mesopotamia, and Israel'' (Harvard Semitic Monographs 54: Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1995) . * A chapter called, "Why Biblical studies must end", p107 in ''The End of Christianity'' edited by John W. Loftus, (Amherst, NY:

, 2011) .

References

External links

Hector Avalos Faculty Webpage
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Avalos, Hector 1958 births 2021 deaths 20th-century atheists 21st-century atheists 20th-century American educators 21st-century American educators 20th-century Mexican educators 21st-century Mexican educators Harvard Divinity School alumni University of Arizona alumni Iowa State University faculty American biblical scholars American theologians Atheist philosophers Atheist theologians American critics of Christianity American critics of creationism Mexican atheists American atheists Mexican theologians Mexican emigrants to the United States Secular humanists Former Pentecostals People from Nogales, Sonora