Funny searches landing here:

COUNTERING BIBLICAL APOLOGISTS

(I suppose they thought shouting it would make it more likely?)

full paraphrase for Prufrock

Led them to this post… why? Heck if I know.

Joe Carter Apologetic

haha. Joe’s got his own apologetic! Leads to This post. Heh.

Anyway – something to post…

Other…

Lots of cool blogs added to my blogroll – and I’ve done a lot of additions/changes, etc lately. Hope you enjoy them. We’re now working on Bethany’s house (soon to be mine as well.. yay!), so I haven’t had a lot of time recently. Sorry.

Oh – and Vox XX is up.

Very strawman(nish) – but this is the reason I no longer post on politics.

The unfortunate merge of Christianity with politics, instead of the other way around, comes out looking like this. I don’t like it – so check it out.

The Ten Commandments
of Evangelical Co-Belligerence
by Steve Camp

1. Thou shalt keep all family values/moral causes continually before you
2. Thou shalt not let the Word of God, doctrine, theology, truth, or
   the gospel of Jesus Christ keep you from “standing together” with
   anyone to reach our goal of impacting our culture by returning it back
   to moral traditional family values through legislation, judicial
   process, and co-belligerent partnerships
3. Thou shalt remember the Sabbath Day and keep it political; rename
   it by changing it from the Lord’s Day to “Justice Sunday” (substitute
   worship services with political rallies and make sure you feature
   non-Christians for a wide tolerant religious ideological appeal)
4. Thou shalt not take the name of family value/moral causes in vain;
   but use every social cultural political co-belligerent means necessary
   to strong arm politicians to win the day
5. Thou shalt honor thy senator and thy congressman as long as they
   stand for what we tell them to stand for (this is the first commandment
   with a vote)
6. Thou shalt boycott, protest and petition against all who act
   immorally and who try to filibuster judicial Presidential appointees
7. Thou shalt fault, criticize and belittle unsaved people for living
   like unsaved people given every opportunity possible. It’s OK for them
   to remain unsaved people, but they just can’t live like they’re too
   unsaved. (They can be unsaved, but just can’t be gay; they can be
   unsaved, but just can’t be pro-choice; they can be unsaved, but just
   can’t believe in euthanasia; they can even remain unsaved, but must be
   for a constitutional amendment to protect traditional marriage)
8. Thou shalt faithfully turn the body of Christ into The Pope’s
   Political Action Committee (TPPAC): The Lord’s Lobbyists; Value Voters,
   Patriot Pastors; the Largest Special Interest Group in America; and
   most importantly, Christocrats.
9. Thou shalt not do anything to shrink the mailing list of any
   Para-church ministry for three things are always necessary for success:
   donations, donations, donations.
10. Thou shalt always remember to keep your primary focus on the family and not on the faith

(HT: Reasons Why, originally from Audience One)

As I have said in previous Vox Apologias with this common theme – “useful, or useless” – all apologetics are merely tools. Every defense has an object, a particular use, and an audience best suited for it. I have also said that I disagree with the “you must only use a certain type” of apologetics approach. Be it presuppositional, evidential, or what have you. This is much the same way. It is a tool. As with most tools, it has a specific purpose, and will be quite useless if you attempt to use it for something other than it’s specific purpose.

My thesis: The Trilemma has a particular audience, and a particular application. If these two conditions are not suitable, the Trilemma will not be effective, or it’s effect will be severely limited.

No apologetic is a substitute for study, effort, and prayerful consideration. The Trilemma is no exception. This apologetic has a very specific purpose, and is an answer to a very specific assertion: That Jesus was only a great moral teacher. The apologetic rests on one presupposition: That Jesus claimed to be God.

When using the Trilemma, you must do two things. One, consider your audience. Two, have a definite application, complementing the apologetic. They must both coincide, or you are wasting your time.

Read the rest of this entry

Even more template tweakage. I like, myself.

Except for that STUPID LINK GLITCHING.

Someone, please… tell me what that is.

When a link has not been visited, a mouseover will make it spaz out. It also spazzes during page load. Someone? Anyone? I’m annoyed, and I don’t have the time to track it down :/

I know what’s doing it. I just don’t know how to fix it.

Incidentally – Funky – check out the new javascripts. You might like them, because they don’t preload as the full list. They do have the annoying feature of setting everything over to the right, though. I like it, though.

Yes, I know it looks weird in IE. Sorry. IE is… weird, though. Or I did something really strange to it. I think it has something to do with those opacity masks in the CSS. *shrug*

Anyway, I reorganized everything. Again. while I should have been sleeping. or blogging something. I’m a terrible “tweaker”, though.

Oh, I’m going to a 4Him concert tonight. Cool, huh?

…I read Joe’s comments section.

From btdhguy:

And praise God for your spectacular conversion story! Saved from years of going down the dark lonely road, being a blind prisoner of sin! Saved from having an art gallery in your mind filled with scenes of years of fulfillment of past passions and pleasures! Saved from years of living in malice and envy, being hated and hating others! Saved from years of being in the habit of gratifying the cravings of your sinful nature and years of following its desires and thoughts! Saved from all those years of sexual immorality, lust, and greed, and being an object of God’s wrath! What an awesome display of God’s power and mercy and grace that you did NOT have to go through ALL THAT! What an awe-inspiring tale you have of the kinds of things that surely would have happened were it not for Jesus saving you. What a great and merciful Lord Jesus Christ we have in that He often chooses to glorify Himself in what He prevents as much as He glorifies Himself in what He redeems.

Freaking awesome. Oh, and the post is great too. Joe’s too hard on himself, by the by. RLP has nothing on him as a writer.

…how tired I’ve been.

I get off of work at 6:30 am. I usually go to bed fairly soon. I was running for a while, but then I discovered that running allowed even less time for sleep – so I haven’t done it in a while.

I tried to blog, for some reason, this morning – I wrote a small post for Vox, and added a few people to the Aggregator, and a small post for my own blog – while reading all of those blogs I promised I would check back to, to see if they were, in fact, blogging apologetics. Some I’m still checking, some I liked – and added.

However, that put me to bed about 9:30 am. I was supposed to get up at around 1:30 pm, so I can be up, take a shower, check comments/email, etc., and meet my girlfriend for lunch a bit past 3. I don’t know if my alarm didn’t go off, or I got up, went across the room and shut it off, or what – I got up at 6:30 pm. I was supposed to be at McDonald’s at 3:30 or so, and choir starts at 7. It’s a half hour drive to church, or thereabouts – so I’m late just waking up.

Gotta love it.

So, I actually got 9 hours of sleep today. Which is the highest in 3 weeks, by about 4 hours – sans last Friday (where I actually stood my girlfriend up again, because I just didn’t hear the alarm).

Why, oh why, do I feel like sleep is something I won’t discover again until I’m married and settled down, and in a 9-5 job? I’d almost forgotten what it felt like to sleep 8 hours. It feels just like 5 hours – except you are more refreshed, and it takes longer. Which is often diastrous. (The latter, not the former.)

*sigh*

All because I did something *else* I said I was going to do…

I DO have a reason for most of the blogs on my blogroll.

For instance: “This is not for you…”

Once you check out this post – take a look through some of Matthew’s other stuff. He is a phenomenal writer.

Maybe this is a dumb question – but first, why is noone submitting anything to Vox? Second, why is noone visiting? Third, why don’t you email me to become a contributor? Fourth, how the heck do I fix the comments on Vox? I broke them, somehow…

It’s annoying me.

Basically, I want a few people to spend 5 minutes a day, and link to a few apologetics posts or articles apiece. That’s at least content. I’m having a severely hard time keeping up with it, and it seems like the existing contributors are pretty much up to their eyeballs themselves.

So, if you are listed in my apologetics section (see top right of my massive blogroll), or think you should be – and would like to help – talk to me, please. That’s one thing I CAN do faithfully, regardless of how limited my time is – answer email.

Introduction

Give me a place to stand and a lever long enough and I will move the world.
– Archimedes

I’m not going to deal with evidences, or proofs, or anything of the sort, for the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. That isn’t the question. The question is as follows: “Was the Resurrection of Jesus Christ a lever long enough to move the world?”

The answer? A resounding “YES!”

Why is this? Well, that’s what I’m here to talk about. Contrary to the beliefs of many non-Christians, the most important concept in Christianity is NOT His birth, His teachings, His death, His healing, His moral authority, or His claims.

The central tenet of Christianity lies here: That Jesus died, He rose from the dead, physically, and promised to do the same for everyone that believes in Him, and serves Him as Lord. On that basis, everything else in Christianity rests. The incredible spread of Christianity, its well-nigh-impossible staying power, and its far-ranging influence all stem from this tenet.

This is not the extent of Christianity, or the sum total of it – but therein lies it’s uniqueness. A historically verifiable claim, resting in space-time, and a promise, made in an equally verifiable space-time, that the same thing will be done for those who follow Him.

Jesus died, and He was buried – then rose from the dead, was seen by His disciples, and hundreds of others. That is the testimony of people who died for claiming it. They wrote about it, preached it, and the constant message of the Gospel is that exact same thing.

Read the rest of this entry

Blogging

All about blogging: General, Conceptual, or Technical

(Ignore this post – it’s for navigation/organizational purposes)

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.