I found an interesting post by a former/vacationing #prosapologian channel regular, on the subject of presuppositional apologetics. When I pointed it out to Chris, from Choosing Hats, he wrote a response.

Also at Choosing Hats, installment 2 of their study of Always Ready – I really recommend it.

If I haven’t mentioned it before, I’m trying to complete the outline/syllabus of a church history class for my church. This is preparatory for a later class on apologetics. In my study, I’ve been buying a lot of rather interesting books, and listening to a lot of lectures. I enjoy it, though. I’ll try to share as much as I can, as I progress. One thing I should share: it’s possible to get Schaff’s History of the Christian Church, in an e-sword plugin – for FREE. The program’s free, the plugin is free – and it’s searchable. You can get the Ante-nicene fathers, and lots of other stuff, too, not to mention the completely searchable versions of QUITE a few bible translations. I’m stuck in footnotes and references right now, so I’m a bit out of my mind in boredom 😀 But, the history of the church is integral to the study and practice of apologetics. So, have to do that first!

Yeah, I know. It’s not exactly… daily. Still, I’ll just cruise through a few links that caught my eye.

New group blog about apologetics: Choosing Hats. They’re going through a study of Greg Bahnsen’s “Always Ready”, which I would highly recommend, having just finished it myself.

Also interesting:

I agree with the first comment on this post. (Blest‘s) – Pure Genius.

Triablogue announces a response to The Empty Tomb: Jesus Beyond the Grave. Go take a look.

Challies has an uber post, as always. Revel in it’s uberness.

Grace is ridiculous. See Jared explain the scandal.

Joe is Plagued by Certainty. Cool.

I got home very late from work tonight, so this is all I’m going to post. I’ll get to TULIP when I have… umm… a normal night. This isn’t it.

Aaron finds a professor from Cali who thinks Satan is just misunderstood. What? Read it here.

A post on Challies from a few weeks ago really caught my eye. The Butt of Too Many Jokes.

STR has a cool post from yesterday: The Danger of Unquestioned Answers

Oh, and Jon Rowe thinks Jefferson has something authoritative to say about orthodoxy. I think not.

Back to TULIP tomorrow. I had choir tonight, and didn’t get home until pretty late.

Update: Hilarious Chuck Norris Facts-style post about James White. Read it.

CADRE Comments pointed me toward this post by Ben Witherington: Justification By Doubt, and makes some comment on it as well.

Great stuff.

Challies talks about Spiritual Eavevsdropping.

But, most importantly: My wife just announced what our baby’s name will be.

Well, I already knew. Everyone else just didn’t. So… go check her post out.

Update: I’d like to do some writing about Calvinism/The Reformed faith soon, since it has interested me more and more recently. Maybe I’ll do a trip through the TULIP, and the 5 Solas.

Cadre Comments reminds apologists of a sin they need to be wary of.

The Good Fight gives his picks for best all-time debates – the catch is… well, you’ll have to read and find out!

Imago Dei takes PZ Meyers to task for equating human worth with appearance.

Apologia Christi explores our fear of theological controversy.

Joe Carter posts “Alice, Atheists, and the Ability to believe impossible things” – lively debate in the comments section already, as always – but a low signal-to-noise ratio so far.

Wheat and Chaff thinks something is fishy about a God-shaped-hole.

Challies, the inveterate reviewer, takes a look at “One Minute Answers To Skeptics’ Top Forty Questions,” by Charlie Campbell.

Added Withallyourmind.net and Twoorthree.net to the Vox Aggregator. I’ve been looking at both for quite a while, and I think they’re both great blogs.

Welcome!

Mr. DawnTreader discusses – “No More Einsteins?”

Interesting read, and interesting comments.

Challies de-memes a meme, with “When I Grow Up…”

Incidentally… I want to be Tim when I grow up! (Dude, he’s 2 years older than me. This knowledge depresses me, as he runs his own web design company – and I don’t :D)

Also incidentally – this quote is me, to a T. (Although I have done a few memes just for boredom’s sake.)

I don’t do memes. I have not (to my recollection) done a single one of them since the dawn of this site. I have often been tagged to do them but have always resisted because, quite frankly, I don’t care what character I most resemble, but it a character from Lord of the Rings, Narnia, or Napoleon Dynamite. I also don’t really care to know what theological system I most clearly adhere to, what type of flower I would be (if I were a flower), and, well, you get the idea.

Heh. Great post 😀

Folks – I don’t know about you. I really don’t. If this, however, isn’t the most brilliant husband-wife conversation you’ve ever heard… I’ll eat my hat. It’s red, has a bright white University of Arizona A on it, and has been freshly washed.

I doubt I’ll need to break out the ketchup, though. I mean, really… that’s cool stuff.

Oh, and from Gratitude and Hoopla? “Christians, we are not God-experts“.

I’m telling you – this hit home.

From Red Skelton to Jonah. Laughing, from Job’s Tale.

This blog is very, very good – and the writer, like Job himself, has a trove of wisdom he’s gleaned from the hard knocks of life.

Another blog I suggest is This is Not for You, by the ever-poetic Matthew. He can turn a phrase like noone else I know – and sound Edwardian while doing it.

That’s the Daily Cut for today. Enjoy.

(and it was shorter, Milton! 😛 hehe.)

Well, this hasn’t been much of a “daily” cut recently.

Oh well. I’m back into blogging, so… I’m back into Daily Cuts.

Agent Tim has a great post entitled “Nothing or Something”

I sat down and began to write without thinking—just allowing the thoughts to flow onto the blank page in front of me, hardly slowing or pausing to consider what would come next. Then it happened—it stopped. I couldn’t write anything more. Nothing came to mind, nothing inspired me, and the word nothing plagued my mind.

The Apologetics Resource Center has an interesting post contrasting Positive Faith with the God of the Gaps theory.

Christians do not believe in the existence of God, the truthfulness of Scripture, and the words of Christ in order to simply fill in the knowledge-holes left by modern science. Rather, Christianity is believed based upon positive and rational reasons that stand on their own right.

Paul sheds some light on the “Dark Ages” over at Pensees.

Based on the other myths from my school days that have been burst one by one, like Columbus being the first to think the world was round, I should find it no surprise that the true nature of the Middle Ages is quite different than I imagined[…]

Alex Forrest contrasts George Barna with Rousseau.

[…]it is almost as if Barna is advocating a spiritual version of Rousseau’s myth of the Noble Savage. For Rousseau, of course, the myth (now strong in the popular mind) was that the “natural man,” unfettered by the shackles of civiliation and technology, lived in a state of natural purity and goodness. Civilization, however, brings with it bondage, degradation, self-interest, and all sorts of other vices. […] Barna seems to have a similarly romantic image of the “Noble Christian Savage,” unfettered by the trappings of dry institutionalism, empty tradition, and other vices that often beset American evangelicalism.

Interesting stuff.

Comment by Aaron Kinney (of Kill the Afterlife), in response to Eternal Revolution’s post entitled A Need for Compassion:

Oh and by the way, you said:

“As he hung there, dying on the cross, facing an injustice far worse than any of us could ever fathom…”

I could fathom something much worse: an eternity in hellfire.

I could point out that Aaron’s schtick has always been that he refuses to accept the “inhumane and immoral” belief that life goes on after death. (If the very concept is immoral, isn’t he violating his own stance by contemplating such a thing? :D) But, I won’t.

Anyways, the point is that hell is separation from God – which is what the lifestyle found deserving of hell wished in the first place. The punishment is the wages of sin – you never get anything for nothing. If you choose to ignore what is right, and do what is wrong, there will come a penalty, eventually. That’s what hell is. But, whatever. Aaron likes to post throwaway snarks – don’t you Aaron?

I’m sure I’ll have another Scornful Skeptic award for you soon. That one’s actually pretty tame, for you.

Imago Dei has an interesting post entitled “A Different Abortion Story”, which was crossposted from LTI, who is also on my blogroll, and Serge’s new second home!

The Good Fight has two interesting posts:

One is entitled “The Hypocrisy of Anti-Creationists“. Here’s an excerpt.

[…]what is truly interesting about many of the critics of YEC is their seeming hypocrisy when it comes to scientific theory. I’ve seen often many of these scholars advocate scientific explanations that are so odd and radical that they are the only ones who believe it. But isn’t that supposed to be what YEC believers are famous for?

Two, a post entitled “Gratuitous Evil and God“.

Gale presents an argument for the reality of a god who is similar to the theistic God but who is not apparently fully omnipotent or ominiscient. He is very powerful and intelligent but not necessarily maximally so.

It’s an interesting look at Gale’s response.

CADRE takes an in-depth look at Earl Doherty, in response to favorable posts on other blogs.

I have noticed an up-tick in Earl Doherty admiration on the blogs. So, I decided to bring some of the points I made in my articles on the Jesus Myth to the pages of Cadre Comments.

In this post, I examine a passage in Hebrews that proves troublesome to Doherty’s theory that the early Christians did not believe that Jesus existed on earth. Hebrews 9:27-28 refers to the second coming of Jesus Christ to earth.

Challies gives his State of the Domain address, and asks some questions to help guide the future direction of his blog.

And so, as I gaze towards 2006, now only a few days off, I would like to ask for your input. I promise not to be offended and am honestly asking for honesty. If you know me, you know that I have any easier time dealing with criticism than praise! […] While this site is and will remain my site (and I say that in as non-offensive a way as I can) I am eager to hear from readers what you feel is done well and what is done poorly.

Go check it out.

Mr. Dawn Treader puts some perspective on 2005 with “Buzzing the Treetops“.

I encourage you to take a look at his personal commentary.

Now, on a personal note – yes, I’m back to regular blogging. I’m back to tweaking my site fairly regularly, as frequent visitors can see pretty clearly. I’ve updated all my blogrolls, fixed the Aggregator once again, and I’m working on a few new posts.

In addition, I’ve been asked to join The Dialogical Coffee House as a contributor. I’m definitely going to enjoy that, as I’ve been a reader over there for quite some time, and respect the bloggers there immensely.

I’ll be back to working on new ideas, until one hits home, and revisiting some old ones that I ran out of time for. Here’s to a New Year, a new start on blogging, and a renewal of my walk with Christ.

Firstly:

“What is Atheism“, by “Goosing the Antithesis“, an atheistic blog.

So atheism is a peculiar position for an evangelist in that you don’t necessarily have any answers to give. Many atheists don’t have any answers and aren’t as efficient at evangelizing because they don’t provide a safe space for the Christian to look at and feel comfortable with before jumping away from religious indoctrination. This is not great. Ideally, there should be a safe space there, one made of the bonds of friendship, family and love, the power of science, the control and responsability brought about by individualism, the beauty of life and nature, and so on.

…

Basically, the main thrust of any individualist, rational evangelizing is to liberate the individual’s life and values from their self-imposed belief systems, so that everyone can live at peace with each other and believe whatever they want in their own private lives. That is the ultimate goal.

Note: “Liberate” them from self-imposed beliefs – so they can believe whatever they want.

Say what?

Interesting post, but a prime example of what atheism does not provide – answers. They want to replace something with… nothing. Or, they want you to believe whatever you want – as long as it wasn’t what you believed in the first place. Odd attitude.

Secondly:

Infidel in Exile is on to us! Francis Schaeffer: A key Figure for the Dark Side

An interesting look at my favorite thinker, from someone opposed to what he thinks. I find it highly fascinating.

But in many years of debating with Christians on numerous Christian and atheist websites, blogs, and forums, no one has ever thrown even a single Francis Schaeffer argument or citation at me. Not until I visited evangelical websites and blogs did I come to appreciate his importance for the Dark Side.

Schaeffer’s own work was highly focused on living his philosophy, and he lived in faraway Europe. Craig, Boyd, Koukl, etc, live in the US, and seem to be engaged in building and running small apologetic empires rather than in serious intellectual engagement with the world Out There, as Schaeffer was. That may also have something to do with it.

Very interesting take.