From Discovery Channel: “the decay rates of radioactive elements are changing. This is especially mysterious as we are talking about elements with 'constant' decay rates -- these values aren't supposed to change, school textbooks teach us this from an early age.” It seems the sun is emitting a strange particle which is meddling with decay rates (from researchers at Stanford and Perdue). “The decay rates are changing throughout the year in a predictable pattern.” We either don’t understand neutrinos very well at all, or the sun is emitting something we’re not aware of. “If either case is true, we'll have to go back and re-write those textbooks.” [NOTE: one of the key assumptions in radiometric dating is CONSTANT decay rates! The article even acknowledges this, noting it would through the scientific community into a spin] http://news.discovery.com/space/is-the-sun-emitting-a-mystery-particle.html#mkcpgn=rssnws1
Girltalk cites Piper, who points out from Psalm 126:5-6 that there is work to do whether we are emotionally up for it or not. If you sow even through sorrow, the promise of this psalm is that you will ‘reap with shouts of joy… not because the tears of sowing produce the joy of reaping, but because the sheer sowing produces the reaping.’ Talking to Your Tears
Turretinfan shows that while Rome's practices with respect to the freedom of religion have obviously changed (i.e. no modern inquisitors!) Rome's view on coercion of apostates is actually set in a dogmatic definition. On the one hand, Trent says that people who reject Christianity upon coming of age, but who were baptized as infants, are to be compelled beyond excommunication. On the other, Cardinal Ratzinger says that the church’s mission is to proclaim salvation to all, following in Christ’s footsteps, while knowing that "truth can impose itself on the mind only by virtue of its own truth, which wins over the mind with both gentleness and power". T-fan asks, How is the alleged freedom of self-determination consistent with compulsion beyond excommunication? Rome and Freedom of Religion
From Desiring God: 13 Questions to Diagnose Your Idolatries
DG has some encouraging words on the work of God through Christian Hip Hop artists, who have God-centred music and lyrics. What God Is Doing Through Christian Hip Hop
Phillips recommends Tragdor (with the hope he starts blogging more). “For [some obscure figure] — wherein Trogdor notes that Justin Taylor opines that things are what they are... except in one particular area; and No true Scotsman would write a post like this — making short work of one particular atheist silliness.” Enjoy. Trogdor is Trogdorizing
Engwer interacts on atheists on resurrection witnesses. Some points: i) Under traditional authorship, Matthew saw the risen Jesus, John is the beloved disciple, who saw Him, and the belief that seeing Jesus risen was a criterion for apostleship was widespread. Peter affirms Peter’s status as an eyewitness. ii) The claim that Paul "merely saw a vision of Jesus on the Damascus Road rather than Jesus himself" is contradicted by Acts 22:14 and 1 Corinthians 9:1. iii) Even the testimony of Paul taken as a whole is just a portion of the evidence Christians have traditionally cited. Resurrection Witnesses And Acts 26-19
Hays continues defending penal substitution: i) In the story of Achan, the principle of collective punishment doesn’t being with Achan’s family. It begins with Israel. God holds Israel responsible for his crime (Josh 7:1,11). ii) Israelites were killed in battle despite their ignorance of Achan’s crime. iii) The generation upon which the Mosaic covenant was enacted was pretty much all dead, yet the younger generation is help to it, though they weren’t the signatories. iv) God held Israel responsible for Achan’s sin, even though they were ignorant, so there’s no reason to think the sanction was predicated on “corruption and complicity” of his wife and kids. v) Does collective guilt punish the innocent? Not from the narrator’s perspective. vi) Finally, corporate responsibility cuts both ways. In the very same book, Rahab and her family are the beneficiaries of this principle. Corporate solidarity
Hays continues here: i) Unmerited suffering raises the same moral or theodicean issue as unmerited punishment. ii) Distinguishing between “punishment” and “consequences” is an artificial dichotomy, for a punishment is simply a special type of consequence. iii) The fringe benefits of punishment are secondary to retributive punishment. iv) The Bible itself doesn’t view penal substitution as contrary to its canons of justice. And extrabiblical objections have no force. To ground the objection to substitutionary atonement in an objective moral norms, while appealing to evolutionary psychology, means that one really only explains the origin of moral beliefs. It doesn’t prove they map to moral facts. Indeed, such a view of the formation of moral sensibilities undercuts their normative force. v) The human administration of justice is necessarily imperfect inasmuch as human judges aren’t privy to all of the relevant factors–unlike God. So a law code might contain measures to restrain human judicial authority. Such measures aren’t applicable to the divine administration of justice. Former Fundy's latest failure
Challies: At the True Woman blog is a discussion about the growing problem of girls and pornography. Not Just a Guy’s Struggle
Purswell answers, “Sovereign Grace churches and leaders often use the phrase “cross-centered.” Doesn’t this phrase lead to an overemphasis on the cross and a neglect of the resurrection?” ‘Cross’ functions as a metonymy for the whole complex of Christ’s atoning work. (Gal. 6:14; 1 Cor. 2:2; 1 Cor 1:17). Hence, we refer to it as ‘cross-work’. The cross and resurrection are inextricable. 1- Will focusing on the cross lead us to neglect the resurrection-
Edwards Sermons – Yale has made everything FREE ONLINE! Whoooot! New Jonathan Edwards Sermons Are a Blessing and a Joy
CMI: Our blood is not similar to seawater, contra evolutionists who make this baseless claim. The mineral concentrations are different. The claim doesn’t even make sense according to evolutionary beliefs. They hold amphibians came out of the sea more than 350 million years ago. Salt is being added to the sea all the time, by rivers carrying dissolved salts from the land to the sea, for example. It would have taken a maximum of 62 million years to accumulate all the sodium we now have in the oceans. CMI then goes into some detail on the concentrations and functions of blood. Red-blooded evidence
Science articles often go beyond the data. A jumble of bones found on an island is boring; people want a story of what they were, and how they got that way. Many scientists and reporters are only happy to fulfill that curiosity. This article goes into details here: Dinosaur Graveyards and Arctic Tortoises- Who’s Got the Context-
JT notes the slanderous and shameful responds of Dr. Giberson to Al Mohler. “Giberson’s response is, frankly, embarrassing—especially for a Christian. With hyperbolic immaturity he casts aspersions upon Dr. Mohler’s character… This piece by Dr. Giberson confirms my impressions of Biologos. They may be doing some helpful things here and there, but some of their main themes seem to be an insisting on theistic evolution, casting doubts on Adam and Eve’s historicity, and the undermining of inerrancy.”. Mohler, Biologos, and Slander
Mohler’s letter to Giberson is great, and it cuts to the main issues. He begins, “I will respond by means of this open letter, though your tone and chosen forum are not indicative of any serious desire for an honest exchange. Your choice of a secular website, well known for its more liberal leanings, is quite a statement in itself. Did you write this in order to gain the favorable attention of the readers at The Huffington Post? If so, presumably you have your reward. But your tone — hardly the tone of a serious scholar or scientist — is even more disappointing.” But he goes to the main issues: “Of far greater concern is your tendency to appear to agree with some of Darwin’s complaints against biblical Christianity… If your intention in Saving Darwin is to show “how to be a Christian and believe in evolution,” what you have actually succeeded in doing is to show how much doctrine Christianity has to surrender in order to accommodate itself to evolution. In doing this, you and your colleagues at BioLogos are actually doing us all a great service. You are showing us what the acceptance of evolution actually costs, in terms of theological concessions.” On Darwin and Darwinism- A Letter to Professor Giberson
From Beggar’s All: “It could be that Aquila and Priscilla, like Paul, became itinerant missionaries, and they could well have settled back in Ephesus where they seem to have started.” Aquila and Priscilla, itinerants
To those so interested, from AIG: Baraminological Analysis Places Homo habilis, Homo rudolfensis, and Australopithecus sediba in the Human Holobaramin: Discussion
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