No, it isn’t what you think.

Outspoken and antagonistic skeptic John Loftus locked horns with the outspoken and antagonistic Christian apologist Frank Walton in CADRE’s comment section. The irony?

The post was concerning whether atheists are persecuted or not, with BK condemning the hint of any such practice.

Neither person involved in the fracas were especially gracious. It looks as if there’s plenty of history between the two - but here’s a tip: Don’t let it spill into the comment section of other people’s blogs.

It’s not especially polite.

Are you a Christian? Do you blog?

Visit this site, and submit your info.

I think it’s an excellent idea. A Christian blogger’s annotated bibliography!

I’m listed!

Is it moral to lie? - No. Next?

Do I really love my boyfriend quiz - if you have to take a quiz to find out… no.

How to tell your boyfriend it’s over - Must have failed the quiz.

Not to mention the ten trillion searches containing the word “kiss” - for obvious reasons.

Well, I’ve revamped the Aggregator.

I’ve removed a few posters who combined their blogs, added quite a few who have been asking for a while, and a few of my own choices, who didn’t.

There are now 34 members, in total. All should be shown on v1 of the Aggregator display feed, to your right. I’m still working on versions 2 and 3, and on transferring them to Vox, as well, as more people visit here than Vox even though I’d rather it be the other way around… but, c’est la vie.

Welcome to CMV warrior, from Christianity is Jewish; Michael Craven’s “Cultural Apologetics“; The bloggers from the Apologetics Resource Center, who have combined their former blogs into one group blog - which is now on the Aggregator. Welcome to Mr. Dawn Treader, who I should have added months ago, and is ALWAYS worth a read. Welcome to the folks from Eternal Revolution, who have been doing some very interesting things with the “God or Not” series of late. Welcome to Scott Pruett of Pensées, who only recently asked to be added - but who impressed me thoroughly. Welcome to Tom Wanchick from The Good Fight. Definitely a different take - which I like. Last, but not least, welcome to The A-Team. They need no introduction. They’re… the A-Team!

As for the steadfast members of the aggregator, who have been posting, while I haven’t… thanks. Sorry I haven’t been around much. Life, a new marriage, work, and hurricane recovery stuff have been burying me solid. I figured it was way past time to at least straighten this out, if I did nothing else.

Check out John Zuhone’s thoughts of late. Check out Tim Challies’ latest - which is brilliant, as always. The CADRE is always good for thought-provoking material. Or Vincent Cheung? Wow.

Really, if you haven’t surfed the Aggregator lately… just do it. The amount of excellent, mind-blowingly brilliant material on these member blogs really will stagger you, if you just go through the last ten posts by each person. Well, except for me. I’m being lazy. But, hey… read some of these folks. You’ll be glad you did.

Anyway - welcome, new members - and thanks, those of you who’ve been with us for a while.

Something’s been bothering me lately.

I’ve been chatting in James White’s IRC channel on apologetics - and the main topic there seems to be Catholicism.

I had someone ask to be in the aggregator recently, yet I find that a large, large number of his posts concern the “apostasy” of Catholicism, and refer to Roman Catholics as “Romanists” and “Papists”. Now, I won’t say that I disagree that RC theology is erroneous, or even flat-out unbiblical (because, actually, I think it is) - but I asked a question in #prosapologian, James’ chat channel, and the answer took me aback, considerably.

The question was: “Does Roman Catholicism deny salvation to it’s adherents?”

The answer was: “Yes.”

So, I have a question for you, my readers.

If the Roman Catholic believes that Jesus Christ died for their sins, adheres to the Apostles’ Creed, and has accepted Christ as Savior and Lord - what doctrines within Catholicism, then, “deny” salvation to such a person?

I’m genuinely confused by this attitude. Do Calvinists really think that Roman Catholics who adhere to that doctrine are really not Christians at all?

I know Rand does, but we’re not talking about him…

The second question:

If some Protestants think that - do Roman Catholics believe that Protestants, because they believe in so many things that are pronounced “anathema”, are not Christians either?

If we really think that - then there’s a WHOLE lot less Christians out there than we like to admit, should we take that to it’s logical conclusion. For Calvinists, who insist (correctly) that Arminianism is a faith + works salvation - are they Christians? Does that deny them salvation?

For Catholics - is anyone outside the RCC a non-Christian?

We haven’t even reached the Orthodox churches yet.

Troubling subject, and it’s been weighing on my mind quite a bit. What do you think?

5:05p
Our Prayers and Heartfelt Expressions of Concern go out to the People of Great Britain during a Day of Tragedy.

You were there for us during 9/11, and it’s aftermath - we’ll be there for you, in whatever way you need us.

Newly added to Vox Apologia:

Deism, by Chad MacIntosh (Doxazo Theos)

It’s an excellent explanation (and rebuttal) of Deism.

An addition to Vox XX - The Unfairness of Heaven?, from Anne/WeekendFisher at CADRE Comments.

From Anne’s synopsis: Response to atheist Michael Martin’s latest critique of Christianity. Although a few of Martin’s arguments were probably destined to be unique to Martin, I decided to respond because a few of them were common enough. I mostly wanted to retake the ground on whether Judgment Day is fair, being a bit tired of the atheists thinking they have the high ground there. I go some places that Christian apologists usually don’t go, but it was about time we opened up some new ground there and stopped being so defensive.

Anticipating:

The first set of questions for The Theomeme Project. Hint: The first question author is a member of Ten Christian Blogs

Other Cuts:

Parableman writes about The Problem of Evil, in reference to a reference of a paper on it. Follow the link trail - good reading all around.

Aggregated:

From the Apologetics Aggregator, we have a VERY nice collection of posts, of late. I really encourage you to read through one of the aggregator versions every day or two. There are 30 blogs on the aggregator, and I NEVER find less than 3-4 interesting posts.

Another post from Chad, entitled Ontological Musings explores the varying ontologies which necessitate the existence of God.

United Church of Christ and Gay Marriage

A Pastor and His Apologetics informs those of us who may live under a local rock that the UCC has voted to support gay marriage.

Alex Forrest posts about the Creation Science Museum. I’d also recommend this post from blestwithsons. And remind you what I think about evolution, etc.

Which reminds me: someone email me if I forget to do a post on Old-Earth Creationism within the next two weeks. I had an email exchange with my dad, and an interesting im conversation with a friend on the subject recently.

From Daily Apologetics comes America: Yoga’s Greenhouse

From Hux, we can find two posts on T.D. Jakes’ Modalistic Heresy. What is that? Read #1, and #2, to find out.

Check out James White’s fisking of BYU professors Millet and McConkie’s Sustaining and Defending the Faith.

Resource Blog is looking for articles and/or reviews

Should we Defend Doctrines? The Huntington Apologetics Team asks the question - and gives the answer.

Just read Vincent Cheung’s Blog. You’ll enjoy it, I promise. Read it all, if you have to.

My girlfriend’s blog, which I just finished the basic design for.

Visit now, visit often - I’ll make sure there’s plenty of updates

Well, I can’t do it that often. Look at the post time, in case you’re thinking “but, you did all of that - it’s easy, right?”

It is mind-bogglingly time-consuming to collect links JUST from the Aggregator. If I did half of the posts I WANTED to, this week - this would be three times as long - every day.

I’m still looking for people willing to collect 4-5 links per day - and post them in a similar format to Vox Apologia.

Think, people: 5 people, 5 links a day. That’s 25 links/day.

I just posted 17 by myself. Think about it. It’s not hard, and it won’t take long.

Email me - Contact button - top left.

Now, in the last post (see directly below), I brought up a new idea of mine.

The TheoMeme ©.

There are two reasons for this.

First:

Vox Apologia needs a retooling. It wasn’t working. This is an attempt to do so.

Second:

It’s a way to claim at least some portion of the “meme” craze for Christ. Considering it’s origin, I find it fitting. read the preceding link. You may find it eye-opening, Christian, where the word comes from. Our friend, the pragmatist - Richard Dawkins. It teaches theology to those who may need to read it, allows others to teach it, and makes us all think about it, if we get involved.

The Way it Works

We’ve all seen memes, by now. Book memes, community memes, movie memes, Star Wars character memes - whatever you can think of, there’s been a meme about it. Except Theology.

Why, Christians, is that? Are we not to take every thought captive? Let’s take one meme captive, shall we?

Ok, so here’s how it goes. The questions - every time - will be written by a pastor, or a theologian. Period. As much as I adhere to Sola Scriptura - the people who know how to succinctly, correctly phrase theological questions are theologians, and pastors. That way, we will minimize the effect of poorly worded questions on the responses. We hope

The additional question is as follows: “Do you attend church? If so, what denomination or congregation do you attend at?”

The purpose: To give us a “doctrinal map” of comparative theologies between branches of Christianity. This, friends, is a useful thing. Comparative theology is a pain, at best - but this may be something the blogosphere is uniquely suited for. If we take it seriously.

How to do it effectively:

A pastor writes the questions. The questions are inserted into the initial meme. That meme post “tags” 5 higher-profile Christian blogs, for a good “first seed”. (Evangelical Outpost, Jollyblogger, Adrian Warnock, SmartChristian, Parableman?) Those blogs can each seed 5 in turn - and the meme spreads. I’ll posit, though, that those 5 blogs can reach 75% of the God-bloggers within 3 links of their blog. I’d almost guarantee it. So, it would be possible to reach the vast majority of the Christian blogs with a real live theological discussion, every week.

How about that for meta-niching?

Seriously - think it over. What downsides are there? It is worth a shot, most definitely.

Technical:

Have as many blogs as possible trackback to the original meme post - include the trackback url in the meme. Have the blogs who understand technorati tags - tag their posts with “TheoMeme” - as this post (and it’s predecessor) just were. Create javascript updater, which gives current information about Meme info, which can be included on any blog, and centrally updated. (See King of the Blogs, or the New Blogs Showcase for examples)
Technorati Tag: TheoMeme

I just coined this word - and because I just coined it, I’m going to use it fairly soon - and I’m taking the credit for it, should it take off

I just had one of those “stroke of lightning” ideas, while I was on one of my nightly “thinking cap” sessions.

The Supposition:

A meme is a popular thing, in the blogosphere. There are book-memes, quiz-memes, community-memes…

Memes can be powerful - so, let’s harness them for something the Godblogosphere can uniquely address - theology. Not to mention actually learning about theology. The catechism - blog style.

The Structure:

Post something short, which brings up a point of theology - and list 5 short questions which serve to bring out doctrinal stance on that theological issue. Add one question to the end: What denomination or church group, (or neither) do you belong to. I’ll explain that soon.

The Strategy:

Address that meme to 5 people who regularly read your blog, and will find it quickly. Spread meme. Have them trackback to your original post, and collect the links to their answers. Answers will be collected for the next Vox Apologia, two weeks later, so that the meme has time to spread. Start meme two weeks ahead of time, and keep the pace going - post a new meme every week, and maintain that pace. You will always get an answer, and there will always be content, and discussion on that content, which adds to the body of information.

Categorize the answers by doctrinal/congregational affiliation, so that the stances from various groups can be annotated and tracked - and provide a sort of “comparative theology” study.

Thoughts?

The idea that blogs would succeed in the Christian community ought not be a surprise. When it comes to community, believers should always outstrip those who are not obedient to the Gospel. Believers should always out-community any unbelieving community, whether it be the local Kiwanis or the worshippers at the local football stadium. There’s no biblical directive to blog, but if blogging is community and believers are blogging, we ought to be outdoing any unregenerate blogging effort.

Did you catch that? Excellence - because we are His.

Check out the Blogdom of God, on the TLB communities page. We are the largest blogging community there is. Bar none. We have networked FAR beyond what we would be expected to - and we have more influence than you would expect - and far more readers from outside the Christian community than we will ever know about. I see them come by, like smoke - due to my referral logs, and traffic tracking. I know why they came, and i know why they come back. We have something they want to see. We take what we believe seriously - and we take what we have to say seriously.

Now, with my editorial comments at a close - read the rest of the post I referenced, from Apelles.

(I have them in my “extremely sharp” category for a reason - I reward excellence )

Now, if they would only fix their trackbacks…

Joe’s new Geisler Bio!

Bets are on: How many comments until we get a scathing character assassination of Geisler by Joe’s resident troll brigade? Who will it be?

It’s currently at 0 comments, so I can do some prophetic utterances…

I give it <5 - Larry being the obvious choice, with mumon coming close behind.

At most, 10 comments in. Now, it’s the waiting game. Feel free to join in.

Which gives me an idea - this could be a fun meme. “How many comments at EO till you get to the slavering troll remark?” Because, after all - EO just isn’t EO if it doesn’t have slavering trolls. I wish we wouldn’t keep feeding them, though…

Well, mumon isn’t ALL troll. He just lurks in the vicinity of trolldom - especially when it comes to EO. A large, large percentage of his posts are Joe-stalker material

(I think mumon is the president of the Joe Carter anti-fan club! If he isn’t, I nominate him…)

Anyway, just something to look at, since I haven’t posted jack lately.