Contemplations Along The Way

New theme.

Jeremy — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 03:44:04 +0000

New theme, new… direction? Or perhaps purpose in writing. In any case, since I’m not technically competent you’ll have to bear through some of the changes with me. Which on the back-end is considerable… Ouch, that blockquote text is huge… Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin. Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Relevance, but What of the Message?

Jeremy — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 17:14:38 +0000

What worries me to a great extent is the drive with which future church leaders are trained to be relevant to culture, and in the process forgetting about the message they are supposed to be relevant with. The problem isn’t that the church is irrelevant, or that the presentation is irrelevant (necessarily). The problem is that the church has retreated from culture. An inability to think critically will do the church in… Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin. Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Changing beliefs

Jeremy — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 22:59:03 +0000

If a person changes from one position to another, in which this other position is antagonistic towards the first, I often find that the ensuing criticisms speak much more towards the persons (1) previously held beliefs and (2) reasons for belief, than of the position per-se in question. That if such a person were ever criticizing anyone specifically (and primarily), it would be themselves. Related posts:Snap-shot Beliefs Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin. Related posts:

Snap-shot Beliefs

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Divine Hiddenness

Jeremy — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 03:29:20 +0000

I keep running across the question (or objection, depending on how it's phrased), "Why does God hide himself?" or "Why does God reveal Himself to some people, but not to others". In reply my answer is, 'I'll have to think about that'. Which in part means that I'm not going to accept out of hand that God hides himself, as I think that presumes too much, namely, that I know every way which God reveals Himself (also that I'm capable of recognizing them). As for why God reveals Himself to some but not to others, well, I think there are a number of reasons for that, probably most common is, "some people aren't listening", followed... Related posts:

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Outsider Test for Faith Examined

Jeremy — Sat, 28 Aug 2010 23:18:13 +0000

Recently I began thinking about John Loftus’ Outsider Test for Faith (OTF), and I have serious doubts that it’s the ‘tool’ he believes it is. As a reminder (or introduction), the OTF asks believers to, “test [their] beliefs as if [they] were an outsider to the faith [they] are evaluating”… That “if your faith stands up under muster, then you can have your faith. If not, abandon it…” In other words, the OTF asks religious believers to test their beliefs as objectively as possible, with the presumption of skepticism.1 My initial thoughts are as follows: -=-=-=-=-=-=- (1) If as a Christian (or a Jew, or Muslim, etc.) I take the OTF and find my beliefs... Related posts:

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Idealizing Past, Present and Future

Jeremy — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 19:30:52 +0000

(1) The first group idealize and long for a return to the past, while complaining about how awful the present is: “You know this wouldn’t have happened fifty years ago!” (2) The second group idealizes the past and demonizes the present: “The world has gone down the drain, if there were more people like me this wouldn’t have happened”. Oh yeah, this group always take themselves to be the exception; savior’s in their own minds. The ‘out-of-the-box’ thinkers. (3) The third group idealize the future as an escape from both the past and the present. Progress will be the savior of all. Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin. Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Knowing / Not Knowing All the Answers

Jeremy — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 04:06:42 +0000

I think to myself, how uncomfortable — and undesirable — it would be to have my knowledge of things completely corrected; to finally have all the answers to every question ever asked, to have nothing to think towards; to leave nothing negotiable, ‘open for discussion’. How much more preferable ignorance seems. But given immortality, having exhausted all possible contingencies of any problem (for surely, there are only a finite number of problems with a finite number of solutions, however innumerable they seem), surely having the answer will eventually become desirable when compared to an eternity of uncertainty…Why do I hold onto the idea of wanting to figure things out for myself. Related posts brought to... Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

School is for learning?

Jeremy — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 23:24:20 +0000

(Perhaps what follows is a bit of frustration?) I received a few of my coursebooks this morning, and among them was a bible, the (get ready for this): Fully Revised Fourth Edition, The New Oxford Annotated Bible, New Revised Standard Version With the Apocrypha, College Edition, An Ecumenical Study Bible - if that isn't a mouthful, I don't know what is. I've been wanting a bible with an Apocrypha for a while now, so it's nice that school was the way I came about it. But anyway; I immediately started reading the explanatory / study notes, and feel a hint of disappointment. Allow me to illustrate. Here's a brief portion of the explanatory note on... Related posts:

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Back to School

Jeremy — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 17:11:51 +0000

And so it begins, gearing up for back to school. This post will (hopefully) remain at the top, and will eventually serve as an introduction but for now will fulfill its purpose in saying only that as the school year is beginning, my free-time has greatly diminished. As a result, the time I have available to me to write has greatly diminished. Such that while I'm in school, I expect a minimum of one post a week, so we'll set the expectation there... Until I edit this post, that is it Related posts:Inner Conflicts School is for learning? Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin. Related posts:

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Book Review: Introduction to the Christian Delusion

Jeremy — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 19:19:42 +0000

Pages: 422 Publisher: Prometheus Books Year: 2010 Editor: John W. Loftus This will be the first of my multi-post review of John Loftus’ The Christian Delusion (Overview, review of each section, conclusion? Seven parts altogether?). This portion of the review will serve as a general and very brief overview of the book, and then in subsequent posts I will more critically examine a few of the claims of the book, section by section (rather than chapter by chapter). I was originally going to do only the critical examination, but that didn’t strike me as the best ‘book review’ — so I’ll do both. The Christian Delusion (hereafter TCD) is a collection of essays, edited by... Related posts:

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