NeoFundamentalism and the doctrine of Separation
What would make a fundamentalist reject or reclassify some of his fundamental brethren as "neo" fundamentalist, and why would they want to discuss separating from them?
Let me begin by saying that the doctrine of separation could fill
books, and this is an introduction according to my neophyte
understanding of the matter. For some more depth, visit my friend Neofundametalist.
There are at least four ways to describe or view the doctrine of separation, and this may clear up why, how, and when we should separate from certain people. These scriptures and doctrines definitely apply to the scores of Episcopalians leaving the mainline church because of it’s pro-homosexual stance.
My Two Cents (03/30)
Soda Geiser: Now you can own your very own, for making nice mentos geisers.- Chris Sligh: Chris Sligh says he’s glad he’s finally off American Idol, and he wanted to quit anyway. Great interview. And his band’s album sounds pretty cool.
- Persecution in India: Christian persecution at the hands of Hindus and Muslims is at an all time high in India because people are turning to Christianity. I guess "believe or else" isn’t working.
- States Demand English (mp3): More and more states are defying the feds by saying that they will only do government docs in English. Good for them. See Newt’s other 90 second radio spots.
- Keyboard Wallet: How to make a geeky wallet out of the innards of an old computer keyboard. Too much time on their hands.
Dobson’s not a fan of Thompson
Dr. Dobson has went out on another political limb and this time I think he went way too far.
My Two Cents (03/29)
- Infanticide in Germany: Al Mohler discusses the rise in infanticide in Germany, with this astute observation: "The logic of infanticide is just the logic of abortion pushed beyond the moment of birth. The fact that Germans have responded with outrage over this spate of
infanticides is comforting in one sense, but it also reveals the
hypocrisy of the age. How can infanticide be wrong and abortion be a
basic right?" - Purity Balls: Despite the unfortunate title of these things, many evangelicals are not only asking their children to take chastity pledges, and giving them chastity rings, but having a ballroom dealio for their daughters (reminds me of debutante balls or quinceañeras). These purity balls are almost like a wedding, but the daughter pledges to wait for marriage, and the father pledges to be faithful to his wife AND stay away from porno. While liberals may laugh such a thing to scorn, recent studies have shown that daughters who are loved by their fathers delay sexual involvement and puberty itself.
- Sex-Ed and moral reasoning: EO has a nice piece on the moral reasoning we should be teaching children, not just our own pet approach to sexuality. "The foundation of any sex education program must be to teach students
how to apply critical moral reasoning in order that they may make
informed decisions. Anything less is merely well-intentioned propaganda
and doesn’t deserve the noble honorific of education."
Please pray for…
Elizabeth Edwards and Tony Snow, who are dealing with cancer while in the public spotlight.
Paper or corn byproducts based plastic
Shoppers in San Francisco, the city whose officials have solved all the world’s major problems, will soon have a simple question made a little more difficult.
The city council passed a ban on standard plastic bags used by grocery stores because they pollute the street and kill aquatic wildlife. In fact, I’m told the last person to ever get the death penalty in San Fran was a nasty plastic bag named Vinnie who took out three dolphins and a seagull before who was caught while blowing down the street.
My Two Cents (03/28)
Book Review – America Alone: Very nice review of Mark Steyn’s book on how we are civilization’s last hope to keep the world from Islamization – Europe is succumbing due to it’s multicultural subjectivity. My favorite quote, which is on its way to becoming a classic:
You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours.
How to Read Faster and Better
In just a couple of days, I came across a couple of great posts on reading. There’s a little overlap andd duplication among them, but check them out:
The Question that Evolutionists Hate
Michael Egnor, Professor of Neurosurgery at SUNY, has stirred up the hornet’s nest of evolutionary believers by asking one question, first in a Time Magazine piece, and then at PZ Meyer’s site Pharyngla (the most visited science site on the net, but I prefer New Scientist). The ad hominem and diversionary attacks, and lack of intelligent answers, is telling:
Two questions remain: (1) Why is such name-calling so common among Darwinists? and (2) How do Darwinian mechanisms produce truly novel biological information?
I’ve seen no good answers to question 2, and perhaps their lack of such
a good answer is driving the observations behind question (1).
He notes that gene duplication does not really count as novel information, but is merely a combination of existing information. You can listen to a short interview with Egnor here. He discusses his interaction with Meyers, and how good scientists welcome questions, yet this question seems most unwelcome.
Mohler responds to furor
After beign shouted at by both sides, Dr. Al Mohler attempted to clear up misconceptions many had about his earlier column about homosexuality and the unborn.
The Superiority of Homeschooling
Many people who are unfamiliar with homeschooling picture it as a bunch of religious fanatics socially isolating their kids from culture and diversity in order to brainwash their kids. However, the facts bear witness to the fact that the opposite is true. Here are some facts culled from the excellent Homeschooling entry at wikipedia.
In general, people who are against home schooling are ignorant of it’s history in America, it’s proven benefits, it’s proven superiority over public schooling, and that the classic criticisms leveled against it, primarily those of social and religious extremism, omissions of critical subjects (like evolution), and poor socialization, have been shown by many studies to be nearly entirely false. In fact, as it turns out, homeschoolers are better educated, more emotionally stable and mature, more socially adjusted, and more academically balanced than students who emerge from our faithless, Darwinist, underperforming public schools.
Christian or Christ-follower? Mac spoof videos
Gotta love well done spoofs that actually say something.
Home Schooling Advice Lists
Scriptorium has two excellent posts on homeschooling, What is a Classical, Traditional, Christian Education? and Toward Virtue: Ten Lessons We Have Learned Home Schooling. I’ve provided the content of the second article as a list.
South Carolina House Approves Ultrasound-Abortion Bill by Large Margin
I’m not very clear on exactly what the South Carolina Ultrasound Bill requires, but it looks like if a patient asks for an ultrasound, they will have to be provided one. That’s a nice compromise position, and hopefully, it will save the lives of many unborn children by truly providing pregnant mothers with all the information they need to make a decision.
Of course, the abortion industry is against this, and has been attacking the pro-life pregnancy support centers for using such "emotional manipulation tactics" as showing them the actual size, shape, and movement of the fetus. Yes, the truth is sometimes distressing, but ignoring it actually ends up doing more damage. You think about that.
My Two Cents (03/26)
Satan and Rock and Roll
- CrossTV has posted a free version of their hour-long evangelistic
documentary linking rock and roll with artists who have sold their soul
to Satan for fame, or have admitted that they feel possessed when
playing. Common old timers are documented here, like Robert Johnson,
Black Sabbath, AC/DC, Led Zeppelin, and the Grateful Dead, but also
covers more modern groups like Oasis, Godsmack, as well as many modern
rap artists such as Ez-E, Snoop Dog, Method Man, Master P, DMX. It’s
also interesting how they view Bill Haley’s "Rock around the clock" the
"trojan horse of rock," which slipped rock by parents because of
Haley’s "innocent, uncle-like look." I must admit, having seen the
similar Hell’s Bells
videos by Eric Holmberg, I am a little skeptical of such scare-tactic
approaches, but on a purely intellectual level, these types of
evangelistic documentaries are fascinating for both their alarmism, their exposition of artist interviews and lyrics, and their tie-in with sexualizing our children through sexualized music by popular artists.
Homomisia and Islamomisia, not phobia
I have to take a stand on the misuse and abuse of the suffix "phobia", used by alarmist fear mongers to discredit their moral critics. The terms "homophobia" and "Islamophobia" are both disingenuous misnomers aimed at those who take a negative moral stance against homosexuality and Islamism.
I think that a much more accurate suffix will actually please both sides of this question, and that is the suffix misia, which means "hate, hater, hatred; disgust for; revulsion of." You see, while I find homosexuality disgusting (and there are valid reasons for disgust – we find poo disgusting for health reasons, for example), gays would say that I am actually hating. But hey, misia could mean either, so I’m good with this one word. So, I may be guilty of homomisia and Islamomisia, but not phobia.
Although I admit that actually being afraid of Islam is a valid and real phenomenon – what sane person would not fear such a murderous, oppressive system?
OCLC Book List
The Online Computer Library Center (OCLC) has published its Top 1000 books, as measured by how many copies their member libraries carry. They also have a nice list of other book lists as well as their own "fun facts about the OCLC List." Here’s a smattering:
- 01 – The Bible
- 02 – US Census
- 03 – Mother Goose
- 08 – Lord of the Rings
- 12 – The Koran
- 15 – Garfield
- 23 – Bhagavadgita
- 29 – Pilgrim’s Progress
- 45 – Handel’s Messiah
- 69 – Peanuts
- 77 – Calvin and Hobbes
- 92 – Imitation of Christ
- 117 – Democracy in America
- 124 – Origin of Species
- 152 – Analects of Confucius
- 185 – Upanishads
- 189 – Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe
- 249 – Communist Manifesto
- 301 – I Ching
- 302 – What Color is Your Parachute?
- 439 – Talmud
- 440 – Mein Kampf
- 594 – Dianetics
- 598 – Three Little Pigs
Christians on American Idol
My wife and I, being musicians, have loved American Idol since the first season. I also participate in the AI pool at work, but that’s another discussion. However, I just found these two articles on who’s a Christian in the AI top 12. It’s no surprise that Melinda Doolittle and Jordin Sparks (my favorite for AI this year) are Christian, but two of the guys are also evangelical. Phil Stacy (who I call "cancer patient") is a worship leader in his Florida church. But the real surprise is another of my favorite contestants, Chris Sligh. Surprisingly, his band Half Past Forever has a slick site and a CD available on Amazon. You can hear snippets of the songs at the HPF site, and they sound pretty good. Interestingly, like many truly creative Christians, Sligh doesn’t want to be pegged or limited as a Christian artist, but as "an artist who is a Christian" (a la Evanescence – see What is Christian Music?). Nice.
HT: Challies
Why Bill Cosby Is Right, by Juan Williams
Juan Williams, senior correspondent for NPR's Morning Edition and political analyst for Fox News, recently gave a 90 minute lecture at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, and his lecture was included in Princeton's University Channel Podcast, with the title
Eyes Off the Prize? Why Bill Cosby Is Right and What We Should Do About It.
In this powerful speech, he asks the listeners to imagine if Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. suddenly returned and asked you "how is the black family doing?" Williams plays out this scenario with tragic humor, then goes on to attack the culture of victimhood, the poor leadership of the black American community who focus on the wrong things, and how it attacks its own internal critics like Bill Cosby or Oprah instead of listening.
Christians and Public Education
I wanted to mention a couple of books that I’ve come across, books that address the responsibility of Christian parents to educate their children rather than leaving it up to the ailing public school system. In the preface of Excused Absence: Should Christian Kids Leave Public Schools?, Douglas Wilson and Marvin Olasky (one of my favorite Christian world view writers) make the case that we should not be institutionalizing our kids in the public school system.
