Vox is not canceled permanently – I worded it badly, in the last post.

The current editions were canceled. God Or Not, on the other hand, IS canceled permanently.

Vox Weekly is suspended temporarily as I retool it, but the Symposium will have a new topic soon.

Look for updates.

No entries for the Symposium, and only one for Weekly, from codepoke.

I’ll have the next Symposium topic up soon – but I’m thinking about doing something else for Weekly. The first two went fine, but I’m thinking we need more lead time again. Perhaps every two weeks? Or, I need to pick a few posts in a row for us to respond to, while we drum up some submissions.

I honestly don’t know. Something has to happen.

God Or Not was canceled, as well, with a biting comment at Evangelical Atheist.

wo weeks ago, GOD or NOT 10 was cancelled because there were no theist submissions. Tomorrow’s edition, which was to be hosted at Buridan’s Ass, is also cancelled. Once again, the theist bloggers have shown no interest in participating; not a single believer submitted work.
It’s over. The grand experiment has failed, and I’m bringing the carnival to a close. I want to thank everyone who hosted and participated, particularly LBBP, Chad and Cadmus.

Failure is acceptable if you learn from it, so what have I learned from this experience?

1. Some theists (and theasts) are willing to exchange ideas about the existence and nature of gods in an open, intellectual forum.
2. The vast majority is not.

I don’t agree, obviously – I just think that a lack of promotion is what brings endeavors like this to their knees. I’m guilty of this, myself – but I need some ideas, folks. I’m short on time of late, which is why I went to a “carnival” style hosting.

How do we get this moving?

I want Vox to be a regular staple. I wish I had the time to do the promotion right, but I’m oh, so short on time right now.

What shall we do?

Looking for hosts on upcoming versions, but I’ll take it this week. I’ll announce something tomorrow, too.

Incidentally, GodorNot needs some theist hosts – go visit, and find a date that works for you.

Vox Weekly’s current question is here, submitted by John Loftus (reposted from his blog, here).

This post is a response.

In my book I argue that there is no coherent understanding of the atonement. Here are some questions for those who accept the penal substitutionary view:

Fair enough.

In order for someone to be forgiven why must there be punishment at all?

Well, I think we’ve crossed terms already. The forgiveness is not dependent upon the punishment. It follows after it, but is not dependent upon it. Forgiveness is granted upon repentance, not atonement. Atonement is required to satisfy God’s Justice, and His Holiness, but not to satisfy His Mercy.

…

To forgive someone doesn’t mean that you must first punish the offender at all.

Yes, they are two different terms altogether.

Punishment is satisfied by the Atonement, and satisfies God’s Holiness.

Forgiveness is granted by God, and satisfies His Mercy.

They are related, as God will not forgive anyone who has not been atoned for. This is due to His holiness, which cannot tolerate sin. A sinful man cannot even *be in the presence of God*. It’s not a random requirement, it is necessity. For us to be with God, we must be atoned for, and our sins as if they never were – as far as the East is from the West.

Forgiveness doesn’t really depend upon the remorse of the offender, either, although it does help quite a bit. At this point it’s not up to the offender at all, but the victim who must find a way to forgive.

Remorse is onlya step toward repentance, which is required for salvation. God found a way to forgive – He substituted Himself for us. The victim took the punishment for the offender, and seeks to grant the offender eternal fellowship with him.

To forgive means bearing the suffering of what that person has done to you without retaliation.

That’s a bit of a fib. Forgiveness is pardon, excusing a mistake or offense – not bearing suffering and the like.

If I stole something from you, then forgiveness means bearing the loss without recompense.

How can we recompense God for anything we’ve done? We have no way of doing so. That doesn’t apply very well. Besides, God doesn’t want recompense. God wants Justice, and Holiness. Neither can accept anything short of perfection without negative consequences.

If I slandered you, forgiving means bearing the humiliation without retaliating.

God cannot slander us, and cannot ever commit any sin in retaliation. You’re comparing apples and oranges.

If the cross of Christ means someone got punished for my sins, then that’s not offering forgiveness, that’s punishing someone for what I did wrong.

Do you really think that forgiveness means that there are no consequences for sin? If my son or daughter steals from me – I’ll forgive him or her – but, they will still be punished for what they did. To simply allow them to do wrong, and not face consequences for it is not good parenting.

I forgive them – I do not hold it against them, and still love them. However, they will still have to face consequences for their wrongdoing.

If the cross was needed to pay the punishment for my sins, then how can God really be a forgiving God?

Punishment was for the sin. Forgiveness is for the sinner. Punishment is for the action. Forgiveness is for the actor. Actions have consequences – forgiveness does not negate those.

Forgiveness and punishment are not balance here. Atonement and punishment are. Forgiveness is the act of God to grant life eternal with Him, to those who believe. Atonement is the payment for sin by the substitutionary death of Christ. The two are not the same. Atonement is paying for the consequences of sin. Forgiveness is granting more than just not-death, but life more abundantly. Therein lies the difference.

Forgiveness doesn’t require punishment.

No, it doesn’t. Holiness and Justice does.

To put it bluntly, if I can’t forgive you for striking me on the chin until I return the blow back to you, or to someone else, then that’s not forgiveness, that’s retaliation, or sweet revenge!

Do we let criminals go free, if the families forgive them? Do we let people get away with crimes, if we choose to forgive them? Only if a pardon is signed – but the consequences are always the same, and authority has to grant that pardon to the consequences.

In God’s legal system, there is one penalty, for one crime. Death, for Sin. To pay that penalty required a substitutionary death. God’s love is still boundless, but it does not allow for sin to go unpunished. It must be atoned for, and it has been, for those who believe. For those who do not, they will take their own penalty on themselves.

Revenge is never an ethical motive for action, even if we are led to take revenge on others sometimes. John Hick: “A forgiveness that has to be bought by the bearing of a just punishment is not forgiveness, but merely and acknowledgment that the debt has been paid in full. (The Metaphor of God Incarnate, p. 127).

Vengeance is often quite ethical. If a man takes a life, his life is required of him. God says “the man who sins, shall die”. God is the essence of ethics, thus, you are incorrect. God Himself says “Vengeance is Mine”. So, rethink that one. Your own idea of ethical, when God says differently, won’t sway me here.

Besides, revenge is said to be wrong because it can be done spitefully, or vindictively. It’s been a mainstay of human life since human life began, just about. However, Christians are told that revenge is not ours – it is God’s – because He is Just, and Righteous in every way. How could a perfectly righteous God seek vengeance and not do so Justly and Rightly?

It’s not possible. Thus, you are incorrect.

To sum up:

Forgiveness =/= Atonement.
Punishment does not relate to forgiveness.
Vengeance is not wrong when God executes it.

That’s about it.

I found out early last week that… my wife is pregnant!

No, we don’t know whether it’s a boy or a girl. She’s like… 3-4 weeks along. So, no idea.

So, needless to say, lover of children that I am… I’m ecstatic. Beyond, actually. I really don’t have much to say, really, other than that we’re very excited.

To top it off, the day *before* that, my ex-wife (that I haven’t heard from in years – literally) contacts me, out of the blue, after searching for me on the internet (finally) – to tell me about our daughter – who I also haven’t seen or heard from in years. She’s now seven. She’s adorable! I got a picture of her last night, and she’s absolutely precious.

No details yet, on when I get to see her – but, I will get to keep my youngest all this summer. All I can say is that God is really, really good to this former prodigal son.

The folks in the Gregarius IRC channel asked me to write up a tutorial for how I did the Vox Apologia aggregator through WordPress, using Gregarius.

So, here’s a quick and dirty tutorial.

1. Install Gregarius. The instructions can be found here. Enable the RSSView plugin, in the config of your admin section. This is essential.

2. Add your feeds.

3. Navigate to the folder you’d like to aggregate to an external source – in our case, Vox.

4. Scroll to the very, very bottom of the page – you’ll see a tiny link entitled “RSS” – that’s the key to it all.

5. Use that link in the tool of your choice, and begin displaying your aggregated content.

Now, that’s the quick and dirty tutorial. Nothing I’ve done is hard, but you need to tweak a bit to get WordPress to display it correctly.

I’ll forget steps one through 3 – it’s easy, and documented elsewhere. The difficult part is knowing how to format it to get it to show up correctly in a call from javascript or from within WordPress.

Tools required:

1. A WordPress blog
2. External script to format the RSS feed for display
3. Plugin to enable php to be executed from within a page

For number one, I am on WordPress 1.5 for one blog, and WordPress 2.0 for the second.

For number two, I am using rss2html, designed by feed4all, which parses the RSS output into html, to be displayed on a webpage. What I prefer about this, is that I can host the script *on my own site*, without having to rely on yet *another* external application.

There are external options, however. Feedroll and FeedDigest can do much the same, as well – but, they do so on *their own* servers. Which are often slammed. Like all free services, you get what you pay for.

For number three, I use the runphp plugin, from Mark Somerville. It works. You type whatever you want to run from within special html-looking brackets – and it works.

Easy stuff. What, however, do I run? I run the script listed above – rss2html_full.php. What this does, is format whatever the feed inputs are into html, however I want them to, using a stylesheet and template. What you can also do, is run feedroll or feedigest the same way – but they display with javascript. This way is much, much better. I would venture to say that trying to do this with an external tool wouldn’t be very nice, at all.

For sidebar RSS updates, there is a smaller rss2html script that displays it in a more compact, “headlines” style format. I use this as well – and export it to several places.

This combined setup (Gregarius, rss2html, WordPress) does the following things:

Aggregates the RSS feeds on *your* server. *Exports* the feeds you’ve just aggregated – which no other “on my own server” aggregator software/setup I’ve found can do. Plus, it lets you take that exported, aggregated feed, format it and display it in your blogging software, on it’s own distinct page. Nothing against Gregarius’ server-side display – but you can’t put that on *anyone else’s site*. Which brings me to the thing I really wanted to mention – also, with this setup, I can export the *aggregated* feed – *with* formatting, to *anywhere* else.

Gregarius gives you the aggregation muscle, and the distinct advantage of *exporting* an aggregated feed (which, I might add, only blogdigger allows you to do, from the external aggregator tools – and they are notoriously slow!). Rss2html gives you formatting options on that aggregated, exported feed – and allows you to display it anywhere.

It’s a powerful combination, and I hope someone else finds it useful.

I’ve been telling you, for some time now, that I was going to write some code for everyone to see when/where Vox is going to be, and where it is right now. I got it.

Here’s the code:

[code lang=”javascript”][/code]

Hope it’s helpful. Now, remind me to update it regularly, will ya?

It’s up, at CADRE Comments!

1. Vox Weekly was unavoidably detained! It should be posted later on tonight, 3/7, over at CADRE. I have to admit something, though – the original question DarkSyde posed was not changed, per his request, until a few days ago – I put up the initial draft of his question, and forgot to change it when he asked me to 🙁

So, the amended question is now up, below the original, with my apologies, on the Vox Questions page.

2. Vox XXI will be postponed until March 25th, just so we have a bit more lead time.

3. Vox Weekly 2 will skip a week, because I got sidetracked by some other obligations, and haven’t got anything up on it – and it’s a week away. I’ve learned that this sort of thing *requires* lead time – especially for custom topic issues. The next post date will be March 20th.

4. We need volunteers – I have no hosts lined up for the next editions of weekly, and I’d like to see this be a migratory effort, like a carnival.

5. I’m going to try and take care of the javascript to display Vox info on your sites, and get as many bugs worked out as possible tonight. Also, I’m going to try to get a script running to display the latest posts from all three sections of aggregated posts.

Added Akismet to my spam-fighting software – even Hashcash alone can’t keep up with the bots now, as they’re getting me with “insurance” related comments – sorry, Elliott! I still love Hashcash, though – it gets *almost* everything 😀