According to a Washington Post poll cited here,
94 percent of Americans said they are “above average” in honesty,
89 percent “above average” in common sense, 86 percent “above
average” in intelligence, and 79 percent “above average” in looks.
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Elnwood has added a post recounting the behind-the-music story for the Proverbs 31 song.
It is my hope to organise another coffeehouse soon to include new material to go with some of the material from last time. So if you attend CHBC, get thinking. Hopefully I’ll have some more material to post here before too long.
Over at Scienceblogs, a number of contributors have started producing posts that explain basic concepts within their fields.
Mark Chu-Carroll at Good Math, Bad Math has been producing posts on concepts within statistics. So far he has written on the topics: mean, median and mode; normal distributions; standard deviation; margin of error. Others are covering topics in Physics, Biology and Mathematics. An up-to-date list is being held here.
For lyrics and video clips of a performance go here.
Boundless magazine has published part 1 of a series of articles on ‘biblical dating’ by Scott Croft. It looks like it is based on the first of CHBCs core seminars on the subject, so I suspect the remaining articles will follow the rest of that course. Since there are various views as to what biblical dating should look like I am sure the various reactions expressed in the comments to the various biblical dating blog posts are only a taste of what’s to come.
The article first applies the principle of the sufficiency of scripture to the issue of dating, establishing the need for a description of what biblical dating is. This should not be controversial, though Christians don’t always take it as seriously as they ought. Secondly he outlines the principles he intends to discuss by distinguishing between biblical dating and modern dating according to a number of features that he says are always present in biblical dating and may not be present in worldly dating. By modern dating it appears he means modern secular dating, where biblical principles are not intentionally used, rather than Christian dating, where proponents believe a different set of principles ought to govern dating. Scott now prefers to use the phrase ‘biblical dating’ rather than the word ‘courtship’. I’m fine with him leaving out the word courtship because it miscommunicates various ideas. I am also OK with him speaking of biblical dating, since that’s what he believes he has described, even though he may get things wrong, as long as he does not consider his optional suggestions to be necessary parts of biblical dating.
In the course of revisiting my thoughts on this subject I discovered that Rick Holland’s view on biblical dating is available online in a series of articles. He contributed a chapter to the book 5 Paths to the Love of Your Life which has been serialised at crosswalk.com: Part I, Part II, Part II – continued, Part III, and Part IV. The material is based on his relationship series. I understand that he is also writing a book based on his ideas. I tend to prefer Rick’s content and presentation to the way Scott has taught ‘biblical dating’ in the past, though I hope Scott will make some good changes this time.
Technorati Tags: dating, courtship, scott croft, rick holland, boundless, guided path, 5 paths
One of the first articles to appear on Boundless from CHBC folks was Physical Intimacy and the Single Man by Matt Schmucker which is based on the talk he has given a couple of times in the church’s sexuality talks and at the Sex and the Supremacy of Christ conference (and taken from the conference’s book). Well now Boundless have published an interview their staff had with Michael Lawrence and Scott Croft on the subject of sex and the single man, which is well-worth reading. In part 1 they discuss the extent of what constitutes sexual activity, the need for asking specific questions to single men regarding their ’struggles’ and the obligation for many men to pursue marriage. In part 2 they discuss the marriage norm and the gift of celibacy being a rare thing and that often men attempt to use 1 Cor 7 to justify selfish singleness, and they oppose married couples choosing childlessness. There is also a comment to women who desire marriage regarding singleness being a gift in the sense of 1 Pet 4:8 and also a form of suffering.
While I disagree with some of what they said, particularly regarding the gift of celibacy, I do think that there are some helpful points that they raise. Here are some key points:
Technorati Tags: single men, sexuality, gift of celibacy, Michael Lawrence, Scott Croft, Boundless
Nick Matzke has put together some charts of the cranial capacity of hominin fossils vs the age of the fossils. Hominins are humans and supposed ancestors of humans. The charts show a gradual trend of increasing cranial capacity as the fossils become more recent. They are striking illustrations in support of evolution.
I have links to 2 bible sites on my sidebar. The first, Bible Gateway is probably the better known one, and is great for getting bible passages in any of a wide range of translations (etc.) and searching for words and phrases. The second is Blue Letter Bible, and has its own strengths that make it worth using as well.
I use Blue Bible for looking up Greek and Hebrew words. I have no formal theological training, and find the site useful for some basic word exploration.
For example, in 1 Cor 7:7 the Greek word for gift is charisma. If I search for ‘1 Cor 7′ and then click on the ‘C’ next to v7, I get this page, with the Greek words and Stron’g numbers for each word or phrase alongside the English from the KJV. If I click on the Strong’s number next to ‘gift’ I get this page, which provides the lexicon entry for charisma. From the usage list I see the various ways in which the word is used, such as Spiritual gift as definition 5. Of course I don’t have to take their word for it, I can check all the references and see, for example, its use to refer to the gift of eternal life in Rom 3:26, and Paul’s delivery from death in 2 Cor 1:11.
On my pda I have MyBible from Laridian, and they have a new concordance that has some of the same features.
Technorati Tags: Blue letter bible, charisma, Greek, Hebrew, MyBible
The following are my notes based on a tape recording of a talk by Vaughan Roberts in 1997 on the subject of what the bible has to say about singleness.
No Christian is Single Forever
No Christian is single forever, in fact no Christian is single, Christ gives us marriage. Eph 5:22-25 has implications about marriage, but also shows that human marriage is a reflection of divine marriage between Christ and his church. Whether or not you are married to another person, you are married to Christ. 2 Cor 11:2 has the image of engagement. Rev 19:7 shows that when Christ returns our marriage to Christ will be permanent. That marriage is the one that will last, the most important relationship, there will be no human marriage in heaven (Mk 12:25). Read the rest of this post »
John Wilkins has written a post discussing the report of a snake with legs. The biological explantion is that genes that normally prevent legs from forming happened to be switched off (I assume this just takes a small mutation), reversing the evolutionary loss of legs that earlier species had.
This is a small example of the kind of thing that contributes to my opinion that the scientific evidence really makes it look like evolution is true (for more on my tentative thoughts on this see my previous post here). The snake legs are such a strange occurence, yet they make perfect sense within the evolutionary framework.
