From the monthly archives:

July 2009

A little Greek (and Hebrew) is a dangerous thing …

July 31, 2009

… as Richard Bartholomew notes today. He points to the absolutely insane rambling of a ppsimmons (presumably the pp stands for piss-poor) that when Jesus says what is commonly translated as “I saw Satan like lightning fall from heaven” (Luke 10:18) what he really said was “I saw Satan as Barack Obama.”
Read it (or watch [...]

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Apathy rules. Is God impassible?

July 30, 2009

(This post is one of a sporadic series on the Church of England’s Thirty-nine Articles)
Anecdotal evidence and conversation suggest to me that rather a lot of people might have problems with the first of the Church of England’s 39 Articles. Many of them would be among those self-describing as conservative or biblical – and probably [...]

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How to speak Australian

July 30, 2009

Mike Bird offers some advice on how to talk Australian. (Ignore the shonky bit about “gucci”.) He leaves out the three most useful things you need to know to speak Australian.

End every sentence on a rising intonation, as though you’re asking a question.
The principal Australian adjective is “bloody” – it can be employed in any [...]

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Richard Dawkins: the ego has landed

July 29, 2009

It’s a bit hard to get a coherent picture from the different stories about Britain’s first atheist summer camp. But as far as I can tell, it’s supposed to be subsidized and supported by Richard Dawkins. As its intellectual “heart” children have to come up with the best argument for proving unicorns don’t exist. Not [...]

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The Malvern Hills: Middle Earth in real life

July 28, 2009
Malverns1.jpg

The Malvern Hills are reputed to have inspired Tolkien’s vision of Middle Earth. here are one or two photos of their magnificence.
PS I’ve no idea who the dog belonged to, but he clearly wanted to pose for a photo.

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Star Trek foresees the future

July 28, 2009

Back in 1986, Lieutenant Commander Scott (once he had mastered the Mac’s mouse) showed a twentieth century engineer how to make transparent aluminium.
Now an Oxford research team have made it.

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Oh sit, Daniel, why did you do that?

July 27, 2009

Daniel Kirk has not only abandoned his Sibboleth blog abruptly, but he appears to have deleted or moved all his content. I hope he can pronounce the title of this post correctly.
Is he after a new job where he doesn’t want his opinions held against him?
I can’t complain, without a certain pt and kettle conversation, [...]

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Recursively dumb faith

July 27, 2009

John Anderson has a post on the importance of being able to think for yourself.

“Dumb faith.” An example. If I ask you why you believe Jesus is the messiah and the response is “because the church says so” or “the creeds say so” or “my parents raised me Christian, and that’s what we believe,” I [...]

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Faith seeking redefinition: beginning with God

July 27, 2009

(The second post in a sporadic series on the Church of England’s Thirty-nine Articles)
At the risk of a gross generalisation, there are two broad approaches to thinking about life, the universe and everything. One is to start with where we are, and the other is to look for a secure place to begin our exploration. [...]

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A big dose of so-what-ness over subordinationism in Paul

July 26, 2009

I’m really struggling to see the point over the spat between Mike Whitenton and Rob Kashow over whether Paul subordinates Jesus to the Father in 1 Corinthians. It seems to me to be relatively clear that there is one place where he does so specifically – 1 Cor 15:28. It is less clear how strong [...]

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