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Pascal Quote

2008-01-28T20:11:00.000-05:00

There are two kinds of people one can call reasonable: those who serve God with all their heart because they know him, and those who seek him with all their heart because they do not know him.

--Blaise Pascal

I'm more than a little bummed

2007-11-28T09:43:00.000-05:00

I just read over at LaffingBoy's blog that he'll be blogging a lot less. I can understand that, since I've been blogging very little of late due to real life's "intrusions". Priorities are hard sometimes (though they are technically easy: family, work, etc always have to come first). LB, I understand, empathize and all that jazz, but know that you will be missed. Please make sure that it's not a total withdrawal.

On a brighter note, I'm finding that I truly enjoy Kevin's blogging over at Memoirs of an Ex-Christian (see blog-roll). I could not disagree more with Kevin's worldview (maybe that's one reason I enjoy his blog so much?).

Kevin, after you dropped into Faith Well Grounded, I failed to give your blog the attention it deserves until now. I apologize, and I look forward to hanging out there a bit more often.

Anyway... LB, a tip of the hat to you and wishes of the best for you. Kevin, the same to you. Happy blogging...

Life's drama

2007-08-19T13:36:00.000-04:00

...the feet of shadows

2007-08-17T10:06:00.000-04:00

Will you come with me to the mountains? It will hurt at first, until your feet are hardened. Reality is harsh to the feet of shadows. But will you come?

CS Lewis-- The Great Divorce

Weekly Quote

2007-08-15T16:02:00.000-04:00

If a Nature which disintegrates order were the whole of reality, where would she find any order to disintegrate?

CS Lewis in Miracles

Tennessee Vol news

2007-08-12T16:19:00.000-04:00

Yes, maybe it is early for college football news. So sue me. :)

My Tennessee Vols are already showing some wear, and we are still weeks away from kickoff. Running back LaMarcus Coker has been suspended from the team indefinitely. Fulmer has not said what the infraction(s) may have been, but merely states that Coker has some work to do for himself before being allowed back on the team.

Coker has held a special place on the team for me. It was at the Marshall game last year that we worked his way there. This was the first lgame I had ever shared with my son (now 10) at a The Stadium. Coker broke an 80+ yard run that officially made my son a Vol. fan.

I hope he gets things together, make right and earns the needed respect.

Story here...

2008 Audi R8

2007-08-12T15:43:00.000-04:00

As an Audi enthusiast, I take notice of their offerings. I liked the TT when it came out. Not so much the new ones... I drive a 1990 Audi Coupe Quattro 20V just because I love the car and am a big fan of the 20V lineup. I'll be devastated when I finally have to retire it.

The new 2008 R8 is getting exceptional reviews over on this side of the pond. For $100,000+, I'll never reap the benefits, but it's good to see Audi on top over here for a change.

"•Too much attention. There's a fine line between attracting satisfying notice and being stalked."

USA Today Review

Blogger seriously needs an import function

2007-08-10T18:01:00.001-04:00

I'll be copy/pasting my blogs in from wordpress and manually setting the timestamp.

As an aside, Google Analytics is pretty cool, but blogger also needs some built-in blog stats.

So, what does blogger have going for it in my opinion? Laughing Boy, CyberKitten, etc... I like the activity in this crowd and look forward to the interaction.

Dating of the New Testament testamony

2007-08-10T10:09:00.000-04:00

There is a very good discussion over at cyberkitten’s Seeking a Little Truth blog that I’ve entered. It’s a comment trail discussing his blog entry about being an atheist. I must first say that, after interaction with him at Laughing Boy’s blog, and reading his entries at “Searching for Truth”, I find him a very capable and well-spoken person and I highly respect him, though I obviously disagree with his viewpoint. I hope that he doesn’t take issue with my arrival into his discussions or my “debating” style of dialog. I truly hope to see a friendship develop there.

Now with that said… During the course of comments on him blog entry, the subject of the reliability of the New Testament testimony came up. It was asserted that the New Testament is not trustworthy for (at least) a couple of reasons. I’d like to briefly speak to those reasons here, so as not to take up a lot of space in cyberkitty’s comment trail, and also to have them detailed as their own subject matter.

Note that the question of Jesus’ actual, historical existence is not in question for this particular dialog. From what I can gather, the idea is that Jesus very well may have been an historical figure, but the claims of His deity, miracles, resurrection and resulting theology were later inventions.

Reason #1: The authors of the New Testament can’t be trusted because they were Christians. They were biased… The NT is Christian propaganda, etc…

First, does that mean that nothing an atheist says can be trusted, since it is biased? Is it all atheistic propaganda?

Second, this line of reasoning misses the most important point: Why were they Christians? What possible motives could there have been for them to leave their livelihoods and religious beliefs, become outcasts in their culture, live a meager existence as wanderers and vagabonds, accept persecution, martyrdom and death?

Reason #2: The NT writings were written much later than the actual events.

This is a very common -- but wrong -- assertion.

First, the Dead Sea scrolls contain fragments of what many believe to be NT books that were written no more than 25 years after the fact. It is true that some deny that they are NT documents, but they can be attributed to no other known documents. Whether these are counted as good evidence is inconsequential. See following…

Second, all NT books were written before AD 100. We know this because all but two of the books were quoted in other materials by then or shortly after. (Those two books not quoted are Jude and 2 John. Jude was Jesus’ brother, who would have been dead by then, and 2 John would have come before 3 John). Clement (AD95) quoted from Rome, Ignatius (AD107) from Smyrna in Asia Minor, and Polycarp (AD110) from Smyrna in Asia Minor. Please bear in mind that this means they were written (probably WELL) before this time because they would have needed a lot of time to be circulated in the ancient world.

Third… The temple is still standing in NT testimony. There is no mention of its destruction in those books that never mention the temple directly. Since the temple was the absolute center of Jewish culture, this destruction would have been mentioned if it had happened by the time of the writings. This is a strong indication that they were written before AD 70.

Luke’s accounts end with Paul and James alive. Paul was killed some time in the reign of Nero, so was dead some time before AD 68. Josephus tells us that James was killed in AD 62. This is string indication that Luke and Acts were written before AD 62, less than 30 years after Jesus’ death.

With the date of Paul’s death in mind, realize that his writings contain complex descriptions of Christian practice and theology. This means that the full Christian theology was well formed and documented within 30 years of Jesus’ death. Further (as in 1 Cor 15), Paul lists specific people that Jesus appeared to in His resurrection, and challenges the readers to verify the fact-- because those who saw it were still alive to respond.

So, we see here a gap of only between 15 and 40 years between the historical event and the NT testimony. This is well within the time needed for the testimony to be eyewitness testimony. Thus, the charge that they are written later is unfounded.

Update: Fixed the gender issue as noted by Laughing Boy. My sincerest apologies, cyberkitty, for the assumption. Also, thanks for the clarification of your position. I highly encourage all reader to follow the link and have a gander at cyberkitty's little area of the blogosphere...

Unnatural trust in Naturalism?

2007-08-08T10:34:00.000-04:00

I posted a blog titled "The rationality of rationality" over at Faith Well Grounded a week or so ago after revisiting "Miracles" by CS Lewis, and it's recently started building some discussion there. Oddly enough, I came across Laughing Boy's blog during a foray into the ever-widening blog world, and he has posted a couple of good blogs on the subject.

The subject being that... If naturalism offers no better mechanism than blind, arational, chance-driven evolution, then we can not trust the rationality (or lack thereof) that is supposedly the result. If Survival of the Fittest does not necessarily equal Survival of the Rational, then the causes for rationality are not necessarily sufficient causes. We therefor have no grounded trust in our rationality, thus there is no proof that trustworthy proofs exist, making naturalism an internally inconsistent philosophy.

Lauguing Boy has done well in stating the basics of the preposition, so go visit his blog. I have done an OK job at Faith Well Grounded (follow the blog roll, Dorothy...), so that may be a visit point too. Feel free to comment here, and I'll enjoy the discussion.

Take care

New Blog

2007-08-07T22:17:00.001-04:00

I have a blog over at WordPress under this same name. I wanted to try out blogger and compare the two. (There seems to be a more close-knit community of religious philosophers here, so that plays a bit of a part in the trial too.)

Bear with me as I get to know blogger and consider it as my new blogging solution...

SDW11G fun

2007-07-28T20:29:00.000-04:00

I'm writing this on my IPAQ 2210, connected via the SDIO SDW11G SD wireless card that I ordered off of ebay for ~$35 + shipping. This will be sort of a combination review of both the PPC and the card.

The card installed well. It literally took about 10 seconds to install the drivers and it recognized my wireless network immediately thereafter. I got a little upset because it couldn't get an IP address, thus of course couldn't hit the web. Once I remembered my MAC filtering and took care of that, all was well.

Right now I'm sitting about 200 ft from my wireless extender- 300 from my router. The range seems better than I even hoped for.

Especially for a cheap SD wireless card, I'm giving this thing a solid A+.

The 2210... After a heavy week of use, I'm getting to know it quite well. It is already proving itself priceless. I'm more organized, more connected and just generally a much better person. :) It has proven easy to learn to use, and its features lend themselves to the busy professional. It syncs easily, navigates easily, and seems to scale well with new software.

Especially with the new wifi, I can see this thing becoming indispensable. I see myself hitting wifi hot spots and adminning my various websites, checking gmail/calendars, referencing synced mail/calendar/tasks from work... All while sitting @ the ballfield and cheering my son on.

IPAQ... A+

Now... Will I find myself even busier? Will I hit burnout? Stick around and see...

God bless.:

Jehovah Jireh-- My God provides...

2007-07-20T23:33:00.000-04:00

1Ti 6:17 Tell those who are rich in the present world not to be arrogant and not to place their confidence in anything as uncertain as riches. Instead, let them place their confidence in God, who lavishly provides us with everything for our enjoyment.

OK, I need to be more organized between family, work, ministry,and projects . I need to be less of a technological hypocrite. I need to take my contacts, emails, calendar entries, documents, etc with me on the go. I need to be more connected.

I really do.

So, I was planning on having the wife get me the Nokia 770 to try and do all of that. I would rather use the money to fix my motorcycle (another blog altogether...), but a man has to have his priorities. $140 well spent is well spent, no?

Well, I was in a meeting at work today and mentioned the purchase. Our IT asset manager was in the meeting and mentioned that we have a box full of "Pocket PCs" not being used. I should help myself. So, I did.

I now have a HP IPAQ 2200 cradled in front of me. I feel more organized already. I feel empowered. I feel exhilerated. I feel like an even bigger geek.

I feel like fixing my motorcycle. :)

God is good, and that is the understatement of the century.

Jehovah Jireh, the God that provides.

Peace...

Jack Handey, philosopher extraordinare

2007-07-20T23:20:00.000-04:00

If God dwells inside us, like some people say, I sure hope he likes enchiladas, because that's what he's getting.
– Jack Handey
How do you even form a response? :)

Friday fun...

Peace...

The Tail of the Lion

2007-07-19T12:28:00.000-04:00

Nature shows us only the tail of the lion. But I do not doubt that the lion belongs to it even though he cannot at once reveal himself because of his enormous size. -- Albert Einstein

The above quote can easily be misinterpreted. Einstein is sometimes credited with believing in God, which is partially true. He was basically a pantheist, in that he identified God with/as the Universe. With that said, the above quote is more meaningful. And it's backwards.

Einstein's Theory of Relativity defined a beginning of the Universe, thus making it a cause. If we define God as that which created the Universe, then how could the Universe be God and God the Universe? This means that the finite Universe created itself, and thus that it existed before it existed.

With the implications of Einstein's theory in mind (along with lots of other scientific proof that make it more than implication), we see that the lion does not belong to the tail-- the tail belongs to the lion.

Take care

Nokia 770

2007-07-18T18:20:00.000-04:00

OK... After my blog post admitting to my technological hypocrisy, I've decided to do something about it. I am now shopping for a PDA-type device to help me stay more organized, keep up with data, and (most importantly) keep me a bit more connected so that I can admin the various websites I am involved with while on the go.

I'm intrigued by the Nokia platform. I noticed the Nokia 770, which was marketed as more of a personal internet surfing device, and it isn't actually a PDA, per se. But, being a Linux Geek, I am super-intrigued that it ships with a Linux OS. And as such, it has a host of open source apps that can turn it into just about anything you want.

It has 802.11b/g wifi built-in, and also supports BlueToot. The biggest gripes against it that I've seen have been that it is a bit slow due to the hardware used, which the newer n800 helped. But the thing is selling for under $140. I figure for what I plan on using it for, it should do pretty well. If anyone who reads this has used one, I would appreciate some input. Let me know what you think.

I think a little trip to TigerDirect may be in future...

Technological Hypocrite

2007-07-13T18:06:00.000-04:00

I realized today that I'm a technological hypocrite. And the first step to recovery is that admission.

I was sitting in a project meeting, and broke out my organizer. No, I don't mean Palm, BlueTooth, not even the calendar in my phone. I broke out my portfolio, looked up a contact I had previously written in, looked at the appointments on my calendar, and then jotted down a note to myself.

I traverse the technological landscape daily. I pride myself on my varied skillset, that varied skillset that got me the position I have now. I troubleshoot DNS issues, define IP ranges, administer servers, model databases and connect disparate schemas. I write complex code in several languages, script out-of-box software functionality, and the lose myself in opensource technologies during my free time.

And I use a $15 portfolio I got at WalMart.

Maybe it's the case of the auto mechanic who won't work on his own car?

Whichever... I needed a camera for the looks I got from the true, unhypocritical uber-geeks there with me.

Any others out there in the same boat as me? We should start a support group. Maybe a rally?

What is a church? Vatican weighs in and so do I.

2007-07-11T13:38:00.000-04:00

The Vatican recently said that the Roman Catholic Church is the only true church. Naturally, Protestants are outraged. Blogging at Faith Well Grounded put this into a Biblical perspective, i.e. that our relationship with God is defined through Christ, by Christ. In this blog, I'd like to take a look at the theological context in which the Vatican makes this distinction-- primarily the theological fallacies involved with the tautology that "Any other church is not a true church because the Roman Catholic Church is the only true church."

Here's the crux of it, quoted from the news story from CNS (above).

In a long theological reflection on the document, Catholic Bishop Kurt Koch of Basel, president of the Swiss bishops' conference, said he understood how the document could be confusing or even hurtful to Protestants and to Catholics who usually refer to the Protestant communities as churches.

The new Vatican document, he said, is looking at the term in a "strictly theological" way, explaining that if the Catholic Church believes apostolic succession and valid sacraments, particularly the Eucharist, are essential aspects of the church established by Christ it cannot recognize as "church" those communities who do not have them. ( emphasis mine )

I'm at least glad that he put the "if" in there, since this all hinges on that "if".

The Catholic Church believes that apostolic succession and valid sacraments define the true church.

First: What defines valid sacraments? Why, being administered by the Catholic Church, of course. What makes this true? Catholic Church doctrine based on Catholic Church history. What does scripture say?

1Co 11:28 A person must examine himself and then eat the bread and drink from the cup.

It's a very personal sacrament, and it's between the individual and God.

Second: Apostolic succession... It isn't mentioned anywhere in scripture. This too is an edict of the Roman Catholic Church. Thus, it is circular (theo)logic. What does scripture say?

Heb 3:1 Therefore, holy brothers, you who share in a heavenly calling, consider Jesus, the apostle and high priest of our confession,
Heb 3:2 who was faithful to him who appointed him, just as Moses also was faithful in all God's house.
Heb 3:3 For Jesus has been counted worthy of more glory than Moses--as much more glory as the builder of a house has more honor than the house itself.
Heb 3:4 (For every house is built by someone, but the builder of all things is God.)
Heb 3:5 Now Moses was faithful in all God's house as a servant, to testify to the things that were to be spoken later,
Heb 3:6 but Christ is faithful over God's house as a son. And we are his house if indeed we hold fast our confidence and our boasting in our hope.

Did you notice that? Christ is our apostle and high priest. What succession do we need beyond Him, our perfect Mediator? Who would seek to succeed Him? He is the builder of His house. Who would seek to wrest ownership of it from Him?

The Roman Catholic Church seeks to own the Church, but if their definition of Church is flawed, then I say let them have it. The Church is not an organization that can be "owned" or "limited" here on Earth. It is the body of Christ, consisting of those who Christ owns. It is the collection of "new creatures" that were reborn from slavery into adoption and royalty.

If the Roman Catholic Church is intent on owning what they have, let them have it. It has no bearing whatsoever on the Body, the true Church, or any individual's relationship with God.