An accidental blog

"If God is sovereign, then his lordship must extend over all of life, and it cannot be restricted to the walls of the church or within the Christian orbit." Abraham Kuyper Common Grace 1.1.

Sunday, 18 February 2007

Saturday, 17 February 2007

Odds and sods

There is a brief history of blogger here.

A list of 10 great web tools here.

Victor Reppert, author of C S Lewis's dangerous Idea, has a second blog here - the first is here. Dangerous idea 2 is a blog to discuss the argument from reason.

Camshafts has some interesting questions/ issues for neo-calvinism:
(1) There is an inherent ambiguity in the language of 'worldview' or 'groundmotive'.
(2) Ground-motive isn't explanatory.
(3) Is it foundationalism?
(4) Its criticisms of dualism seem unfounded.
OttoBib is a free bibliography generator - I've not tried it out yet, but hope too soon. [HT lifehack]

Scott McKnight has been discussing Wayne Grudem's take on William J. Webb's excellent book Slaves, Women and Homosexualsand his redemptive movement hermeneutic.

Friday, 16 February 2007

Chaos Remains

Chaos Remains ... remember that name (they previously went under the name Engystrimyth and Pandemonium). They will be the biggest band out of Bristol since Portishead and Massive Attack - and there average age is only 14.5 years . (I'm only a litle biased the drummer is my son!)

They played the coffee shop at went down brilliantly - it's not often you get a mosh pit inside a church building! They went down a storm at a Sunday evening service at the local Anglican church - even if they were a bit too loud for most peoiple - and now they won the Battle of the Bands at their local High School.

Check them out here.

Monday, 12 February 2007

Believing scripture but playing by science's rules

The New York Times has an article on Marcus Ross who has just obtained a doctioarte from the University of Rhode Island and is a young earth creationist.

For him, Dr. Ross said, the methods and theories of paleontology are one “paradigm” for studying the past, and Scripture is another. In the paleontological paradigm, he said, the dates in his dissertation are entirely appropriate. The fact that as a young earth creationist he has a different view just means, he said, “that I am separating the different paradigms.”

The website poses an interesting question: 'Can a scientist produce intellectually honest work that contradicts deeply held religious beliefs?' Comments are here
[HT Faith-Science News]

Uncommon Descent comments:

For the pro-ID and creationist students out there, Ross shows how to make it through a Darwinist controlled secular institution. Ross was never deceptive about his beliefs, yet demonstrated he could accept Old Earth Darwinism as a working but falsifiable hypothesis. One has a better chance of overturning prevailing paradigms when one is well-versed in it. Accepting a wrong theory as a working hypothesis is no more a profession of faith than accepting the wrong idea that the square root of two is rational in order to prove it is irrational.

Odds and sods

Wes Daniels of the Gathering in Light blog has a list of Fuller Seminary bloggers.

Including Richard Mouw.



A new edition of Reformed Perspectives is out. Including articles on teaching by Noel Weeks and the Reformed view of education by Van Til.



David Field who despite not liking principled pluralism redeems himself by posting some comments by Bavinck on God.



Between Two Worlds posts three sites where there are 'seminary level classes for free'. These are:









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Saturday, 10 February 2007

Speaking from faith in democracy ...

... is the title of Jonathan Chaplin's inaugral speech as director of the Kirby Laing Institute for Christian Ethics. It is available on-line here.



David Field has some comments on it here.



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Backing up your blog

The Google Operating System blog has a great piece on how to back up your blogger blog here. [HT Lifehacker].



This page lists the latest N posts from the blog:

http://blogname.blogspot.com/search?max-results=N

Instead of N, type the number of posts. If your blog has less than 1000 posts, you can save this page:

http://blogname.blogspot.com/search?max-results=1000



Then save the page!



To save the images use DownThemAll a Firefox extension.



The Google Op blog also notes that GMail is now open to all.



And useful tips on navigating Google Reader.















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Friday, 9 February 2007

How well do you know your environment?

1) Point north.


2) What time is sunset today?


3) Trace the water you drink from rainfall to your tap.


4) When you flush, where do the solids go? What happens to the waste water?


5) How many feet above sea level are you?


6) What spring wildflower is consistently among the first to bloom here?


7) How far do you have to travel before you reach a different watershed? Can you draw the boundaries of yours?


8) Is the soil under your feet, more clay, sand, rock or silt?


9) Before your tribe lived here, what did the previous inhabitants eat and how did they sustain themselves?


10) Name five native edible plants in your neighborhood and the season(s) they are available.


11) From what direction do storms generally come?


12) Where does your garbage go?


13) How many people live in your watershed?


14) Who uses the paper/plastic you recycle from your neighborhood?


15) Point to where the sun sets on the equinox. How about sunrise on the summer solstice?


16) Where is the nearest earthquake fault? When did it last move?


17) Right here, how deep do you have to drill before you reach water?


18) Which (if any) geological features in your watershed are, or were, especially respected by your community, or considered sacred, now or in the past?


19) How many days is the growing season here (from frost to frost)?


20) Name five birds that live here. Which are migratory and which stay put?

21) What was the total rainfall here last year?


22) Where does the pollution in your air come from?


23) If you live near the ocean, when is high tide today?


24) What primary geological processes or events shaped the land here?


25) Name three wild species that were not found here 500 years ago. Name one exotic species that has appeared in the last 5 years.


26) What minerals are found in the ground here that are (or were) economically valuable?


27) Where does your electric power come from and how is it generated?


28) After the rain runs off your roof, where does it go?


29) Where is the nearest wilderness? When was the last time a fire burned through it? 30) How many days till the moon is full? :


31) What species once found here are known to have gone extinct?


32) What other cities or landscape features on the planet share your latitude?


33) What was the dominant land cover plant here 10,000 years ago?

34) Name two places on different continents that have similar sunshine/rainfall/wind and temperature patterns to here.

[HT Kevin Kelly]

Loving technology, loving God ...

Loving technology, loving God is the title of the new Comment by Rosie Perea.



Among other things, the sense of a disconnect between my faith and my interaction with technology led me to leave a successful career as a software engineer and become something of a Luddite, resisting new tech toys and computer or software upgrades for years, in order to seek out spiritual growth, instead, as if this were an either-or proposition. This ultimately brought me full circle to examining the relationship between technology and Christian faith. The examination led me to consider the goodness of technology when it is used for good, and employed in a healthy way. Only over the past few years have I begun to integrate two formerly disparate parts of my life, and to find pleasure once again in being a "techno geek." I have come to the conclusion that our love for technology, if not derived from and subordinate to our love for God, can compete with our love for God. That danger is still a reality for me, and I am always looking for ways to keep my love of technology grounded in the deeper love of God. Here follow some thoughts on how to keep a proper balance.


Thursday, 8 February 2007

Not For Sale

Christian bloggers survey

recently participated in a Christian Bloggers Survey. We were asked to post the list of those who participated - so here it is.

The results of the poll will be posted at Church Communications Pro, as well as in Rick Warren’s Ministry ToolBox.

Wednesday, 7 February 2007

What is the emerging church?

Here are two brief video introductions to the emerging church.


Ryan Bolger:

Eddie Gibbs:


Ryan Bolger’s blog: TheBolgBlog; Bolger’s class site

Tuesday, 6 February 2007

SMOG

A couple of days ago I posted a useful tool for analysing a text. Here is another tool - this one measures the readability of a text - the lower the number the easier it is to read it is called a SMOG test. SMOG - Simplified Measure of Gobbeldygook (I kid you not) - was devised by Harry McLaughlin in 1969. Details are available here and the code for the test is here.


Sunday, 4 February 2007

What is the emerging church?

Scott McKnight excellent piece on the emerging church has now been published on-line at Christianity Today. It is drawn from this paper he delivered at WTS in October 2006.





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Net Finney

Worried about Calvinism being the new emergent? Concerned for your loved ones stumbling over neocalvinsm sites on the web that might wreck their lives? Fear no more - there is Net Finney. Developed by a team at Liberty university, and named after revivalist Charles Finney, Net Finney filters out 99.9% of Calvinist and Reformed literature on the web. [HT Idiot Savant]





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Saturday, 3 February 2007

Analysing a text

There is a great tool to analyse a text at usingenglish.com. It provides a number of interesting statistics. The following are data from a section of Dooyeweerd's New Critique of Theoretical Thought:

A word cloud: