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.

Most importantly:

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 😀

Now, did you enjoy that? Was it informative?

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.

Cut-Rate Thesaurus:

Team-Swap, (God love em) is the winner of the first award for this post.

A couple samples:

a Afro Africian American

That would be “an Afro-American”, or “African-American” – not both 😀

the roles of Black’s in the Confederacy

The apostrophe is used to denote a possessive – not to denote a plural. In that case, it would be “Blacks”. However, using “Blacks” after using the PC “African-Americans” seems inconsistent, if you ask me!

Civil war

Both words are usually capitalized.

(It happened twice.)

acceptance that the site of the Confederate battle flag

Sight, not site 😀

Several of the sentences would also be borderline (if not actual) run-on sentences, or have commas incorrectly placed. Those are relatively minor, though.

Just so you know – I still love ya 😀 (Don’t get mad at me? lol)

Scornful Skeptics Award:

This week’s award goes to The Evangelical Atheist. Why? (Content Warning) Just check out the title to this post.

Yeah. Plus, he signs all of his posts ~ I AM ~. He wins.

Are You Tongue Tied?

(Mild Content Warning)

Ales Rarus, A Form of Sound Words (I wonder if he’ll be upset to be mentioned in the same post as a “Romanist“?), Joe Missionary, Messy Christian and Jeff the Baptist have all dicussed swear words. Much different from The Evangelical Atheist’s discussion. Which is retarded.

Our friends above, however – are not. The discussion is interesting.

Update: 6:55p

Found this while my girlfriend was flipping through a photoblog.

Slick Willie is wearing a Kabbalah wristband. Guess he’s trying to impress Madonna. Well, it could have been “Kabbalah water“, I suppose.

Fun tools:

Gives you this:

Note: Remove spaces after opening “< " and before the closing "<"

Gives you the latest 15 posts in the Aggregator, to display on your blog.

Gives you this:

Once again, Note: Remove spaces after opening “< " and before the closing "<"

This gives you the external blogrolling list for the aggregator, to display on your blog.

There’s some fun tools for today.

News and Updates:

I’ve created a new page for the Aggregator – you can find it below.

Vox Apologia Apologetics Aggregator

It’s powered by RSS Digest – and it’s really, really cool.

Now, for something less cool.

I really like Vox Apologia’s Symposiums – but as you may have noticed, I haven’t been promoting, or planning new ones. For several reasons.

1. It is a MASSIVE time sink.
2. The response is pretty crappy, when I don’t VERY actively promote it.
3. I’m just not getting the necessary response/feedback

Now, don’t think I’m trying to be a nag – I’m really not. But, if I’m going to do this, I’m going to need a few people to help. The volunteers I got to start with really wanted to help – but, unfortunately, almost all of us ran into time issues.

So, here is a request: If you want to see a Vox Apologia Symposium – I need you to help me put it up, and work the logistics required.

It’s a fairly large task, as any of you who have hosted one before can attest to. I moved it to a central location so that we wouldn’t have any “missing blog” issues later on. That tends to happen, if you don’t pay attention, and if the blogs in question change urls, or et cetera. Vox Apologia is a nice site – and I’ve done some neat things with it, I think. However, in order for it to be used, and live up to it’s promise, it needs more than just me maintaining it.

This post will be re-posted to Vox’s blog – and it’s an example of what you could see daily on the blog, if we had the support of multiple posters for it. The Symposium is no different – it also needs volunteers to make it work properly.

The Librarium could use maintenance and additions to it, and I have an “instant update” system in place that only takes seconds to add content or links to pertinent content. It’s really that easy.

If you enjoy this site, and all the cool stuff I have linked here – Vox could be 10 times better. It’s already a lot better. It just needs more hands to run, as it was designed big, to be run by a team. My blog is designed to be run by… me.

You could maintain the Library, help post daily-cut style roundups of apologetics material, work on the symposium, or do a host of other things. Just volunteer. It’s really easy to do something like this, if you have enough people.

If you want to help: email me.

Apologetics:

An absolutely brilliant post from Metacrock, on Cadre Comments.

The post is called Everything Needs a Cause, Right?.

We hear a lot about the cosmological argument – and the Kalam argument, especially. This post does a fair job of blowing that to bits – and coming up with something more interesting in it’s place. Check it out.

I do have a reason for some of the more… unnoticed… members of the Aggregator.

Take a gander at these posts by Jottings from Tertius. I think I overlooked this blog for a while due to a slight sabbatical they were taking at one point, shortly after they were added. I like this blog.
showing no shame
the millions don’t get it
Re-Rethinking the Death Penalty

The Huntington Apologetics Team has two good ones. I’m adding both to the Vox Librarium.

God the Contradictory?
Doctor Washington’s Argument from Harm

Cut-Rate Thesaurus:

I have a confession to make. I like country music, and I’m not even from the South. I’m marrying a southern girl, though, if that counts…

Anyway, I ran across a truly funny song recently, called The Talking Song Repair Blues, by the inimitable Alan Jackson. There’s an absolutely funny line in there.

An’ I know you’ve been using a cut-rate Thesaurus
‘Cause your adverbs are backed up into your chorus:
Now your verse is runnin’ on verbs that are way too weak.

I love it! So, as I’m running through the blogosphere, I’m going to be on the lookout for posts with serious issues.

Don’t be that blogger. You might get an award you really don’t want.

Scornful Skeptic Award:

This week’s award goes to Positive Blasphemy – mostly because they are just so over the top – it isn’t funny.

You’ll see why.

Anyway, each week will give you a different blog – which will be “awarded” the title of “Scornful Skeptic”. They get this award by being so outrageously anti-Christian, they aren’t even amusing. Just eaten up by their own self-deceit.

Science and Science Fiction:

The Minor Prophet has a couple in this category.

Would Jesus Die Twice?
Space, not even close to the final frontier

John Zuhone has a scientific point to make, and a resource to give us. One I agree with, one of which I don’t. My regular readers know by now which is which.

Appearance of Age:
The Lutheran Witness pushes appearance of age
A good explanation of what’s wrong with appearance of age

Teleological Arguments Resource

Stanford encyclopedia of Philosophy: Teleological Arguments for the Existence of God
John’s Post: Del Ratzsch’s Article On Design in the Standford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Just as a supplement – I had a recent discussion with my dad about Old Earth vs. Young Earth creationism. I also had a discussion with Chad, from Doxazo Theos, about the same basic subject over im.

Are we ready for another scientific topic for Vox Apologia? I do believe that #7 – “Creation vs. Evolution: So What?” was the biggest draw, as far as entrants, in Vox Apologia history.

So: Do we need to take another look, or a more specific look at the subject, or one similar?

How about my recent infinity discussion?

Stem Cell Research? (*cough* Imago Dei *cough*)

Welcome Vincent Cheung to the Aggregator!

This guy really knows his stuff.

I’ve also asked two more members of the Apologetics Resource Center to join as well. Hopefully, they’ll both say yes 😀

Incidentally – click the link to your left, underneath the aggregator links, that says “other apologists”. If you’re listed there, i want you to join too.

Also note that I have updated the aggregator links on Vox Apologia to match, and did some minor link update maintenance as well.

I don’t have a Vox Apologia Symposium topic – nor have we had many entries at all the past few weeks (prior to my suspension of it). I had my daughter the past two weeks, so I really didn’t have time for it, to be honest. I’m still looking for some frequent contributors for a REAL “daily cut” style apologetics roundup as well, over at Vox. As in, you help roundup posts. I just don’t have the time, kids. I’m really just looking for some help with that group blog.. that’s basically just been a second personal blog for me. As you can see, i rarely have time to even keep this blog updated. So, a second one just isn’t working well.

Who’s up for it?

Anyway. Hope you had a nice Father’s Day. I was “lucky” enough to have to take my daughter back home the day before Father’s day, for various scheduling reasons. Consider yourself blessed if you have your kids with you. The alternative is not very palatable – nor does a phone call really substitute. (Although I thank her mother for being considerate and ensuring I got to talk to her today)

So… that’s about it. Oh, my birthday is coming up. I’ll be 27 years old. Yay for me.

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.

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.

Check this out, from Wittingshire: On Boys and Bikinis. It’s absolutely great.

Ok, ok, I haven’t been blogging. At all.

I have a new girlfriend – who will soon become a fiancee. And who I am spending an inordinate amount of time with. At the expense of blogging…

Hey, the hours have to come from somewhere…

Conviction:

letters from babylon has this gem for us:

But one gray-haired lady didn’t buy it. She stuck a finger in his chest and said, “You’re fooling everybody but God and me.”

Go read the rest. I have, and we all have, a sort of double life. Who are we trying to fool? Yes, for a certain someone – this did convict me for that reason. We both know why – and I’m sure you agree.

Found

Blue Goldfish nails 21 Theses to his blog

View from the Pew awards a Clewie for conspicuous misue of a religious term….

A blog I think deserves mentioning: This is not for You – go check it out.

Matt Friedeman’s In the Fight always picks great articles to comment on. Take this one, for example…

Disgusted…

Mumon goes off the deep end again. Unsurprisingly.

Ok, I blogged something. And I’m back reading through The Great Evangelical Disaster.

So expect at least a little something from there, soon. I hope.

Oh, and Vox is up.

Because… I’m going to a Skillet concert.

Skillet, you ask? Oh ho… they ROCK.

Muchly.

So, anyway… no blogging tonight. Sometimes, dear readers… you just have to headbang.

I mean, c’mon… think a guy whose online handle is “RazorsKiss” doesn’t headbang?

puhlease. hehe.

Have a good night.

UPDATE:

I have this persistent ringing in my ears… perhaps because I was 10 feet from one of their multi-massively-huge speaker racks? Holy crap, it was loud. Even for a rock concert.

In a word, folks… they FREAKING RULED.

1 1/2 hours of pure, unadulterated, auditory mayhem.

3 minute guitar solo by Ben Kasica… 3 minute drum solo by Lori Peters…

Oh, man… it was excessively loud. I loved it. This is my second concert with Skillet – and they’re insanely good. This was the last show on their tour – and it was excellent. I got some headbanging done (my neck is going to hurt tomorrow), and I think my ears will still be ringing tomorrow night. This means it was a successful concert!

Plus, my little brother (who has been a Skillet fan for 9 years), got to talk to John Cooper, finally – a dozen plus concerts later. He got 3 cd’s signed, and he’s going to have them done in vinyl, to put on his guitar case. (He also plays the bass, like John – and he is very good.)

So, a fun time was had by all. My other Skillet freak brother got sick today, though – so he missed out on it. He was upset, but he’ll be ok.

Whew. I’m tired, but super hyped-up. I had a friggin blast though. I missed choir practice tonight… my mom will be understanding, though. Because, really – we’ve missed just about every other sort of event to go to Skillet concerts before… hehe.

Latah! Hope I can hear something tomorrow….