This very famous video by A-Ha has just been Awesome-ified. Too good to wait til Friday's web junk. Enjoy [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8HE9OQ4FnkQ]
More thoughts on Atheism
Last week I wrote a blog post about atheism, and it drew a couple of comments that got me to thinking. Before I go on I'll restate the paragraph that brought about the comments and than the comments that began this thought process. Here's the paragraph:
atheism always seems to have one of 2 causes at the core. First, the vast majority of atheists do not know how to deal with the presence of evil. In other words, they cannot reconcile the existence of suffering in the world with the existence of a loving God. (If anyone actually wants to read it, I can write a couple of posts addressing this problem.) Secondly, the desire to be in control of one’s own life. In other words the childish attitude that,”nobody can tell me what to do” extends even as far as to an all-powerful God. And I again remind you of the words of Ivan from The Brothers Karamazov, if there is no god there is no morality. (Somebody in Sunday School taught me this second one a while back and I’ve noticed it as a trend ever since.)
Here are the comments that came as a result of that paragraph. This one was first:
I’m sorry, but as an atheist I have to tell you that both of your reasons why people become atheists do not, at least, apply to me.
I’m an atheist because of the lack of evidence for the claims made by religions and religious people.
That’s it.
This one followed and agreed:
Neither of the reasons you give for atheists being atheists apply to me. It’s simply the lack of evidence for the existence of any Gods.
These comments coupled with the fact that almost everybody on the planet believes in a god in some form got me to thinking. So today I would like to suggest to my readers that it seems to me the onus of proving a position falls to them.
What I mean by that is that virtually everyone on the planet, believes in some god, because God has made himself known. I am not arguing for Christianity here, merely simple theism. (Theism is the belief in a god who is involved in His creation.) People seeing creation from the very, very minute to the vastness of space realize that there must be something greater than us. And science or naturalism, or whatever worlview you view the world through other than theism will never answer the most basic of questions. Where did all the stuff come from?
There are those who are firm atheists. They do not believe in any god, and do not see evidence for Him in creation, or beauty, or consiousness, or detail, but those people are a small minority. And to me it seems that rather than them feeling the need to be convinced of the existence of God, they need to be convinced of his non-existence. To put it another way, they should not see a lack of evidence for God as a sufficient condition to doubt His existence. They should need a preponderance of evidence of His non-existence to arrive at that position. Let me try and say that a third, less-convoluted way. Belief in God should be the default system of belief, with only overriding proof to change that position. (I actually believe that this is the position of most and their "proof" is the existence of evil. See the first paragraph.)
I don't want to be antagonistic or disrespectful of my commentors. I am grateful for their comments and that they read my post. But their comments got me thinking and I wanted to share those thoughts with my readers.
I leave you with this thought. There are virtually no rural atheists. Why? Because in the country at night you can see 10 times as many stars as you can in the city. Rural people are simply confronted by the vastness of space on a greater scale. Every time I go back home I am astounded by the stars in the sky as I drive from place to place. I urge you, if you are from a large city visit the country and be amazed. 
---Update---
*****Please read before you Comment*****
This post has drawn a few comments already. Please before you comment understand that I am NOT arguing the existence of God based on His popularity. In fact, in this post I am not arguing the existence of God at all. (The best arguments are very old and have been dealt with for a long time. See Anselm's Proslogion, Aquinas's Five Ways, or even the Kalam argument) I am merely begging the question - Why should the burden of proof not be with the atheists? I beg the question because the prima facie position for most people when they look at the universe is that God exists. If you want to argue for the existence or non-existence of God there are about a million places on the web to do that. I don't want that in my comments section. I would let it go on, but I am very concerned about the tone of the comments received so far.
Here's what I will moderate out of my comments-
- Insulting the intelligence of anyone for either belief or disbelief
- Insulting people who live in rural areas
- making the point that popularity does not equal truth
Please do not do those things. But feel free to tell me why the burden of proof belongs to the first blush position of the theists.
Best Web Junk (October 3)
gross, or disturbing, or just creepy? An awesome fail
My favorite lolcat of the week
Maybe there's hope for me :-)
I'm a big fan of expanding people's vocabulary, so enjoy this article maybe you'll learn something
Speaking of vocabulary, try to get out of the top 100 on this awesome list every so often. This is really cool
This video is really cool. Who wouldn't want to be the one to knock those dominoes made of dominoes down? [vodpod id=ExternalVideo.699908&w=425&h=350&fv=clip_id%3D1831335%26autostart%3Dfalse%26fullscreen%3D1]
Atheism and Attitudes
As I begin writing this post, this article has approximately 1000 diggs. Without question there is a new atheism rising. Not rising in popularity mind you, but rising in boldness. Books by Dawkins, Dennett, Harris, and Hitchens have recently been given wide publication. Also soon the Bill Maher movie, Religulous, comes out. I blogged about it here, and another good blog about it is found here.) People do not seem to be becoming atheists but the atheists are becoming more bold.
This article, "why do people believe in God?" is written by an atheist.
The thesis of the article is found in the following quote. "No religion accepts us as the person we know ourselves to be. Rather, we are told that we are inadequate, unsatisfactory and helpless" (Emphasis mine) There is a fundamental problem with this statement that plagues most of the atheists.
Before addressing the problem with the previous statement I need to say this; atheism always seems to have one of 2 causes at the core. First, the vast majority of atheists do not know how to deal with the presence of evil. In other words, they cannot reconcile the existence of suffering in the world with the existence of a loving God. (If anyone actually wants to read it, I can write a couple of posts addressing this problem.) Secondly, the desire to be in control of one's own life. In other words the childish attitude that,"nobody can tell me what to do" extends even as far as to an all-powerful God. And I again remind you of the words of Ivan from The Brothers Karamazov, if there is no god there is no morality. (Somebody in Sunday School taught me this second one a while back and I've noticed it as a trend ever since.)
This article represents both of these viewpoints. But the author gives herself away at the end with the quote. "The person that we know ourselves to be." She does not want to be told that what she desires or does is wrong, or even that it may be. I wonder if she believes that Jeffrey Dahmer should feel free to "be the person he knew himself to be" That person just wanted to eat people. She obviously does not say, but I assume that she believes that there should be some morality.
Here is the real problem I suppose that it never has struck her that the reason that virtually everyone on the planet believes in a god is that the "person we know ourselves to be" is flawed.
It's not just that we are told we are flawed. We are, in reality, flawed. We know that we do wrong if left to ourselves, and without someone offering guidance, we will continue to do wrong. Religion is not the reason that we need police in the world, and religion is not the reason that there are wars and depression. Nobody has to teach a baby to do wrong or to lie about doing wrong.
In fact, with just a small bit of looking at the world, we find that the Bible is correct. We find that God's law is written on our hearts. (Jer 31:33 Psalm 40:8 Heb 8:10) We find that God has made himself obvious to everyone, not just through creation (Psalm 19 Rom 1:19-20) but through our conscience as well.
Sorry Ms. Rowe, "the person we know ourselves to be" is not good enough, no matter how well we are accepted by others. And if you look at the previous sentence and determine that I am the problem with the world, I'll just have to accept that criticism.
What You People Come Here For (September Edition)
This is a selection of the searches that brought people to my site in September. Some interesting stuff here. I particularly like "harmness of tree" and I have no idea how some of these linked to my site. But it appears that I'm still an internet expert on peach trees and goose hunting. Oh the mysterious ways of google.
- tom merritt 25
- should a christian drink a beer or glass
- bowing peach trees
- shannon mathis
- lucas oil stadium photos
- .177 pellet gun hunting geese
- goose shot by air gun
- can christians drink scotch
- how to sing la bamba
- webjunk 5
- a canadian goose
- don lafontaine shares christ
- jeremy matheis
- killing domestic geese in park
- tropical storms named jeremy
- goose gun
- alcohol helps me relax, is it safe?
- harmness of tree
- what do 30 mph winds feel like
- using fantasy football insurance agents
Blogging & My Ego
The question of the day is; What the heck is wrong with me? I have been blogging now for about 8 months, and I pretty much know what my readership is. I get roughly the same amount of hits every day. (Except Saturday & Sunday, nobody visits then. I do good to get 10 hits on those days.)
So here's why I wonder what is wrong with me. I check my stats like 3 times a day. Why do I do that? Am I just the world's biggest narcissist, or is it normal? I remember when I wrote my first post I quoted Scott Adams and said that starting a blog is tantamount to saying that what the world needs is more of me. So maybe all bloggers are narcissists.
I definitely don't judge myself by the amount of friends I have on Facebook, (65 btw) or Myspace. In general I don't care about being popular, but I sure do look at my blog stats.
I have some friends who are bloggers, maybe they can weigh in and tell me if they do the same thing. In fact, do me a favor and give them some hits today. Help out their numbers by clicking the links below just in case they are all as concerned about their stats as I am.
Best Web Junk (September 26)
Best warning sign ever. This is a headline you probably thought you'd never see.
The best fail of the week
I cant stand the Yankees, but I have to admit to being a bit sad about Yankee Stadium closing. This is so cool.
This is pretty neat
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLNfN6-eA0g]
Portal is one of the few games that I have played through more than once. It's fun funny and clever, and it has the best ending of all time. This is a fan video of the song "Alive" from the closing credits.
[vodpod id=ExternalVideo.698969&w=425&h=350&fv=clip_id%3D1612411%26server%3Dvimeo.com%26autoplay%3D0%26fullscreen%3D1%26md5%3D0%26show_portrait%3D0%26show_title%3D0%26show_byline%3D0%26context%3D%26context_id%3D%26force_embed%3D0%26multimoog%3D%26color%3D00ADEF]
The cake is a lie
Another post about politics
Please be sure to read the * at the bottom for my disclaimer. Last Tuesday I wrote a post complaining about, among other things, covering elections by polls. Then I promptly went out last Wednesday and read this Zogby poll. It is very telling.
Today I want to post about politics again, but this time from a different angle. Before I begin I want to say that I am certain that no hope for this world, or for our country is found in politics, but only in the gospel of Jesus. (You can read more of my thoughts on this subject here, in what I consider my best post ever.) It does, however, matter how we vote.
So how should responsible Christians think about politics? There are those who would say that there is nothing to think about; we are Republicans, right? Then there are those others who would say that the Republican party is too ungodly they don’t care about the environment and they are only concerned about money so we are to be Democrats. My pastor says look at the party platforms and see which you are. (Here are links to the Democratic and Republican platforms 2008 version.) I must admit that at 123 pages I did not read both platforms. I did, however, skim them both, and my conclusion is that although the two sides are in opposition on most major issues, there is plenty covered by both parties that I can disagree with. (I disagreed with a lot more in one than in the other)
How are we, as responsible Christians, to vote? It seems that it comes down to issues and how a particular candidate feels about those issues. Let's imagine that there are only a handful of issues, even though in reality there are more like hundreds, those issues include:
- The economy (it's the economy, stupid) or see here
- The war on terror, including the Iraq war
- Technology issues, such as net neutrality
- Sanctity of human life issues
- Defining Marriage
- Healthcare
- Immigration
- Energy policy, including climate change policy
- Social security
- Issues of privacy vs. security
- Crime control
Here is where it becomes more difficult, it is not as simple as merely dividing up the candidates by their positions, seeing who is on my side more often, and selecting that candidate. The fact is, these issues do not all weigh the same. If I am in agreement with one candidate in his view of net neutrality and another candidate in his view of the sanctity of human life, (which, in fact, I am) those are not equal issues. Both are important, but it is more important to protect human life than to protect the internet from the greed of the telecoms.
For quite a long time evangelicals have been considered a two issue group. However, lately there is this notion in the media that evangelicals are no longer interested in the same issues. This is largely brought on by Rick Warren’s movement to assist with AIDS in Africa and the recent statements by evangelicals on global warming. In response I will quote Dr. Daniel Akin, who said his [SEBTS] presidential forum last week, “We’re not looking for a different moral/social agenda, but we are looking for an expanded agenda.”
I would agree with that statement totally. What I am saying is that Christians should still be committed to the issue of the sanctity of human life in all its forms, from the youngest to the oldest. Christians should still be concerned about defining marriage legally the same way that it is defined biblically. Those, however, should not be the entire list. We should be concerned about the poor in our nation and around the world. We should be concerned about those in war-torn parts of the world. We should be concerned about the AIDS epidemic both in Africa and in America, and we should be concerned about the way we care for our planet.
I guess, 700 words into this post, it's time to reach some conclusions. So let's ask the question again; How should a responsible Christian vote? At the very least a Christian should be educated about the candidates, know their views on the issues, and vote according to his or her beliefs.
It is also imperative that Christians know which issues are most important. In the Zogby poll I mentioned earlier, the number one issue by a landslide was the economy, and that was before the disastrous events of last week. I submit to you two things. First, the president actually has very little control over the economy. The current issues have arisen from corporate debt, and the next collapse is coming because of personal debt. Second, don't sacrifice morality for money. What I'm saying is; it's not the economy, stupid.
A final word. Vote! Don’t ignore your local elections. In all reality, your mayor, or governor or city councilman will have much more effect on your life than the president. Voting for president is important, but don’t ignore your local elections.
[polldaddy poll="946871"]
* Although I am a staff member of LaGrange Park Baptist Church, the views and opinions expressed in this blog are my own and not that of the church. They may not be construed as an endorsement or attack on any candidate or party on behalf of the church. They are my views as an individual.
A Very Weird Day of Fishing
Last Friday I went fishing, just as I do most Fridays, at the largest lake on Fort Bragg, Mott lake.It was a very strange day so I thought I'd simply share a story of what made it weird.
For starters, the night before, the weatherman said it would be very windy, and he was very much right. When we first got to the lake it was about 60° and the wind blew consistently the entire time. I was freezing at first, no jacket and shorts on. By late morning it had warmed up, but it was seriously cold at first. It doesn't make any sense to fish in crazy high winds because, for one, it becomes impossible to keep the boat where you want it to be, so you either work yourself to death on the trolling motor or you have to anchor all the time, and that's just impractical. We fish out of a 10 foot johnboat and at the levee end of the lake the water was actually whitecapping by early afternoon. It made fishing in the main part of the lake nearly impossible. The wind was directly out of the northeast. Last time I was home and went fishing with my dad he had this little rhyme. This is not it exactly but it's close:
Wind from the West, fish bite the best. Wind from the East, fish bite the least. Wind from the North, do not go forth. Wind from the South blows bait in their mouth
So anyone want to guess how fishing was on this day? Which brings me to the second odd thing about the day...Tiny fish
It is not unusual [for me] to go fishing and get totally shut-out. But it is unusual to go fishing and catch baby versions of what you are fishing for. I'm pretty certain it is a healthy lake, but all we caught were these tiny jacks and bass. By tiny I mean 6 inches or less. Seriously we caught 5-6 apiece but they were all tiny.
I said at the outset that we were fishing on Ft Bragg. It is not unusual on Ft Bragg to hear the rumbling and booming of artillery in the distance. But on this day it was a non-stop cacophony of booms and machine gun fire from the nearby ranges. The nearest impact zone to the lake is at least 3 miles away, but there were 3 booms in particular that made me flinch. They were so loud and abrupt that it seemed like we should duck.
Another first for me on this day was the presence of a drone aircraft. I have never seen one of these flying before but there were 3-4 flights overhead during the short trip. It was a strange looking aircraft and made an unmistakable sound. (It looked like the one in this pic the best I could tell.) I tried to take a video of it with my camera, but it was too hard to find in the window with the boat moving the way it was. So you'll just have to take my word for it, it was a strange-looking loud contraption.
Edit- Here's a vid where you can catch a glimpse of it. You can certainly hear how loud it is and also hear the wind -Edit
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8OD93k-IfIY]
There were other strange things that day, there was a man there with an RC boat, which one time broke down and he had to swim after it, we also fished out 2 tennis balls. I just thought I'd share my adventures with the readers of my blog
Best Web Junk (September 19)
If you are a Simpsons fan, this map is amazing a new monster
A duck scared of water? Maybe because it's a Chicken in disguise
The best of GraphJam this week
A very difficult game (at least for me)
Since my other post was about politics this week, here's a high quality rant from Craig Ferguson
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdRVQ4xwwmQ]
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1good-Ifdg]
Before & After
I hoped that my spike from "What's the baby using?" would translate in to more readers of my blog on a regular basis. You remember this image from before:
What I hoped was that a few people would read more of my blog than just the one post and maybe stick around. "What's the Baby using?" is by far my most popular post ever, and I really improved my numbers, but it is well & truly over now. I thought I would share my new stat graph before the spike disappears forever.
The trend is not completely over, I still have never had a day when that particular post got 0 hits, even though my blog has fallen to 8th place in a google search for "what's the baby using?" Tom Merritt mentioned it on Buzz Out Loud about a week ago (and Jason didn't know what he was talking about), and Len, the man who created the meme, himself commented on this post, and put an update on his site.
And there's this
Thanks to all of you who visited.
[polldaddy poll="932295"]
The Political State of Affairs
This post on politics will probably not be what you expect. That post is coming either tomorrow or Thursday. But since this is my first ever post about politics, please go to the * and read my disclaimer. This is an election year. For me it's a year to vote for governor and US Senator as well as another office you may have heard of, President of the United States. One of the interesting phenomenons that is a part of the election process is the coverage in the media.
I am not writing this post to simply complain about the coverage, although I am not happy. I already know the situation. In college I was a political science major. Part of studying poly sci in this age (even though I was in college last century) is studying politics in the mass media. Although there is a new form of mass media since I was in college, these lessons are still useful.
The first lesson about politics in mass media is about the practice of negative campaigning. (The Willie Horton ad is the most famous attack ad of all time.) The short summary of negative campaigning is this – it works – very well. And refuting the messages in attack ads does not work – at all. So how do you combat negative ads? With negative ads, of course. People all say that they hate them, but they work, so they are not going anywhere. Get used to them. BTW, now you can recognize an attack ad before it begins because the "I'm ___ ____, and I approved this message" is at the beginning rather than at the end as a way of separating the candidate's name from the negative ad.
Here’s the second thing to learn about politics in mass media, the news only covers the election as a horse race. For example, if one candidate comes out with a huge policy statement, lets say he is rolling out his policy on terrorism. Here’s is the coverage you will get on the news on every level. A brief summary of the plan, nothing that would ever take longer than 15 seconds, maybe some bullet points, and quite a lot of discussion of how the plan will affect the candidates standings in the polls. The closer the election gets, the less talk of anything substantive. The coverage becomes only stories of new polls and how a particular candidates latest move will affect their standings. After a debate, the number 1 question will always be; "who won?" Nobody covers what they actually said, unless it was incredibly stupid. Watch and see as we get closer to November.
The world we now live in is slightly different than when I was in college. Now we have the internet. (We had the internet when I was in college, but it was video free and blog free. It was a very different web.) A quick perusal of digg on any day, (Go there now, I’d bet there are at least 3 of the top 10 stories on politics (and probably negative about McCain/Palin)) or the top technorati tags or wordpress tags will show you what is popular. And politics is very popular. The problem with the internet is that so much of what we see and is popular is what is called an echo chamber. It’s people blogging about something somebody else already blogged. Then, rumors and half-truths become so popular that nobody can tell them from the truth. I still know people who believe the Obama is a Muslim who refuses to say the pledge of allegiance, and Palin’s youngest child is actually her grandchild. Nobody believes it because of any proof or reason, but because they heard it so often. That is the major problem with the internet as a news source, so much of it is just a giant echo chamber. Over half my posts are just linking to videos or other stuff. And my blog is an actual blog with original content a couple of times a week. Of the thousands & thousands of typepad, wordpress and blogger blogs, I would love to see what percentage contain original content as opposed to reposts of links of stuff from around the web. (BTW – That is why there will always be a need for professional journalists, Their form may just change from newspapers to the web.)
Finally I believe there is a greater influence of celebrity now than there has been in the past. Celebrities have always been involved with politics, but it seems like now there is either much more news about them, or somehow they get much more attention. In just the last week, Matt Damon, Pamela Anderson, and Lindsay Lohan have all publicly bashed Sarah Palin. Every time it makes headlines, and people seem to care.
[polldaddy poll="929433"]
* Although I am a staff member of LaGrange Park Baptist Church, the views and opinions expressed in this blog are my own and not that of the church. They may not be construed as an endorsement or attack on any candidate or party on behalf of the church. They are my views as an individual.
A New Post is Coming
I'm working on a post about politics, but I just saw this video on myextralife.com and it's too good to wait til Friday to share it. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muLIPWjks_M]
It's even a little bit scary when he gets close
Best Web Junk (September 12)
First, this is the best thing I have read all week Is there anyone who doesn't want to wake up to the smell of bacon?
You've always wanted to know, now here's the chance to pull of the heist of the century and learn one of the world's most valuable secrets
Here's another awesome link from engadget
My favorite link of the week - http://hasthelargehadroncolliderdestroyedtheworldyet.com/
And a very interesting vid from Adam of the Mythbusters to make up for last week's disappointing link involving the mythbusters - via myextralife
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-XbjFn3aqE]
An Observation
I have lived in North Carolina for 5.5 years and all along I have heard jar flies. But whenever I talk about them nobody knows what I am talking about.
So today I was mowing the yard and I saw the shell of one on a fencepost. I decided since I have this blog to just ask my readers. I picked up this whole batch without even looking hard to find it. There are the shells from dozens of them in my back yard.
Do you have jar flies where you come from? do you call them something else? Technically they are called cicadas, but the only ones I ever hear called cicadas are the 13 year variety. If you had ever seen [or heard] the 13 year variety of cicadas you'd remember it.
By the way, it's really funny to take one (the full grown kind with wings) that fell out of a tree and put it on somebody's back. When they touch it, it'll make that buzzing sound they make, and the person will make a screaming sound. Really it's quite hilarious.
What To Do When I Have No Inspiration For Blogging
I think the problem is that I blogged every day last week. (Adam did just the opposite.) Now I have nothing fresh on my mind. So I'll go ahead and post a video plus what would have been the last paragraph from best web junk Sep 12. For some reason I am very entertained by lipdub videos. (Even though I often don't like the music.) The most famous are this one and this one. But the one below is my favorite, and I saw it for the first time last week.
[vodpod id=ExternalVideo.682841&w=425&h=350&fv=clip_id%3D1287067%26server%3Dvimeo.com%26autoplay%3D0%26fullscreen%3D1%26md5%3D0%26show_portrait%3D0%26show_title%3D0%26show_byline%3D0%26context%3D%26context_id%3D%26force_embed%3D0%26multimoog%3D%26color%3D00ADEF]
That "HD" vimeo video is pretty impressive.
Live-Blogging a Tropical Storm
I have lived my whole life in Kentucky. I don't know how many of my readers are aware of this geographical tidbit, but we don't get many hurricanes in Kentucky. The closest beach is about 9 hours away from where I grew up. I have now lived in NC for 5.5 years and I've experienced a few hurricanes. None have been very bad this far inland. (I live in Fayetteville the beach is an hour away) The worst was the first. Isabel in 2003 was definitely a learning experience for me. I remember thinking it wouldn't be a big deal, and since you know its coming, not that bad. Then all my friends in seminary told me how bad they are, and I began to be concerned. At the time I lived in a trailer, so I loaded up Esau and spent the hurricane day at a friend's house. I had never seen anything like the steady 40 mph wind, and it rained quite a bit, but the power stayed on all day. I went home about 6 pm after I thought the worst was over. There was no power at my house, but it was on by the time I got up the next morning.
Well, now I have a blog and I have readers all over the country. (Ok, really they are mostly in NC and KY.) So I thought I'd give play-by-play of the experience of Tropical Storm Hanna. The storm is only 65 mph now and not going to become a hurricane, but 65 mph is enough. The real problem with this experiment is that the worst part of the storm will be during the dark. But I'll take pictures of the sky, and fill you in on the events periodically.
11:00 am Friday, September 5
I had an appointment at 9:00 then decided to run some errands. This is the bottled water isle at wal-mart. Clearly people are concerned about having no power (loads of people around here are on wells.) Winds are calm, but it looks like rain.
1:30 pm - Wind is still calm. It's raining a little bit now.
2:00 pm -The sun is shining, still no wind.
2:49 pm - Raining again
5:50 pm - Winds are up to 70 mph. So it might become a hurricane after all. Here it's still pretty calm. it's raining. But no real wind to speak of.
At any rate, I gathered up my flashlights, batteries and candles just in case my power goes out for a while. The headband light works for a long time on just a couple of batteries. I can read all night if necessary. I'll cook the meat I bought today for supper, so it doesn't spoil. And everything that can blow away is fairly sheltered. The can trailer at church was emptied yesterday so it's good that I won't wake up with aluminum cans all over my yard.
7:54 pm - I just ran an errand about a mile from the house. It's raining pretty good, but still no wind to speak of. There is a lot of traffic for any rainy night, but especially one with a hurricane coming. Lots of cars at the gas station. I wouldn't want to be anywhere near the bread & milk at the grocery store. Wind is getting closer though.
11:04 pm - This is so far the boringest tropical storm ever, but it's still a way off. The rain has really started now, and it's gonna rain heavy off and on all night. There probably won't be another post until morning. When I get up we should be having sustained 35-40 mph winds, and it looks like it will be a hurricane before long. I'll take a vid with my camera for you tomorrow. Good night all.
5:40 am Saturday, September 6 - Wow, its raining. Raining hard enough to wake me up. it's very windy but I still have power. According to the TV, the eye is a county away. This looks like the last really hard band of rain. I'm going back to bed.
7:19 am - The eye is north of us now, and the wind has pretty obviously changed direction. (I get wet in places where I could stay dry before.) I shot a short movie on the camera, but it's boring. Imagine trees blowing in a 30 mph wind, and a lot of rain. I still obviously have power.
9:06 am - It has rained A LOT, but it looks like it will be over in about an hour. It moved a bit faster than they predicted, but looks like I'm clear. If you read along, thanks. One more update coming, pics of the damage at my house
11:27 am - This is my last post on Tropical Storm Hanna, detailing the wind damage at my house. I seem to still have no shingles missing from the roof. But I do have this huge limb and terrible flooding in the front yard. :) The sun is shining now, it's pretty breezy but the storm is officially over. Here's the pic of the destruction wreaked by the terrible storm. Thanks for reading.
Best Web Junk (September 5)
This looks awesome but it didn't work for me, In fact I don't think it's finished. I put in names I associate with a place like Wang, Patel, Mohammed, and Gonzalez, but no matter what, the same 10 countries light up. I may put it in best web junk again in the future as it gets closer to completion. But for now you can see the US top 5000 names here. (My name is 585th) A story about dirty words that aren't dirty contains this awesome paragraph:
Rudimentary versions of this software do not just replace obscene words, but also alter longer words which contain banned letter combinations, so "assassination" becomes "buttbuttination", "passenger" becomes "pbuttenger", and "passerby" becomes "pbutterby".
Unknowingly I've been living by this for a long time. if they would just add Scrabulous to the list
This article is very interesting. It is interesting that some of these ever caught on, but is is definitely worth your time - via digg
I was planning to post the vid that is the subject of this article this week, but I guess I won't since it's all a lie.
silly vid
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnEr34dOR2Q]
A Question for My Brilliant Readers
I don't usually do posts simply requesting your comments, but I'm planning a post for next week (or the week after) and I could use your help. In the comments section, please answer this question. What is your definition of legalism?
Thanks for your input.
Evangelism & Results
Note to all my non Southern Baptist readers: please don’t let all the big words in the first sentence keep you from reading further.
Three weeks ago I spent my days at an Intentionally Evangelistic Church Strategy seminar sponsored my local Baptist Association. In it, we focused on the need for our churches to be more intentionally evangelistic. In other words, we need to learn to make whatever we do as a church be focused on sharing the message of the gospel.
This seminar obviously got me thinking about my own witnessing habits and the effectiveness of my own ministry. I used to make this comment somewhat regularly:
“I always hear about all these churches that don’t baptize anybody and I can’t even imagine that. I’ve been in ministry since 1997, in nothing but small churches, and I’ve never gone a year without someone in my youth ministry being saved.”
It’s true. I have never gone a calendar year without anyone in my youth group getting saved.
So what brought about this post. No one in my youth group has come to Christ since July 2007. I have been blessed to lead two people through the sinner’s prayer in that same period, and I am thankful to God for that privilege. However, I consider it my main calling to work toward the spiritual growth of the students in my youth ministry. (There are some students who do not know Jesus there.) You can see why this is troubling for me.
I do share the gospel regularly, I do pray regularly for my students, and I understand that being faithful with the gospel is not equal to leading others to Christ. As they say we have to love fishing, not catching. I have this fear that students (not necessarily the ones in my ministry) do not think that being a believer matters, that, since it doesn’t affect the behavior of their [Christian?] friends, it’s not important to live differently from unbelievers. Therefore the message is compromised if not completely undercut. I do know this, the best thing that ever happened to me was asking Jesus to save me from my sins and be my Lord.
I’m not really sure why I wrote this post, maybe it should be a prayer request, maybe it is just me venting, or maybe it is time for some serious questioning the of way I do things. Sometimes I post things that I should probably keep to myself.