Sunday, April 29, 2007

The theological imagination of C. S. Lewis - 4 audio lectures by Michael Ward

Quotes and comments;
- recorded at Wycliffe summer school. (In 2006 I believe.)
- recommended.

1. Ward claims each of the Narnia books is about a planet; that it attempts to express what Medieval cosmology imagined each 'planet' to represent. (And so the Dawn Treader is about the sun; The silver chair is about the moon, and so on.) He goes on to claim that in each of the books Aslan 'incarnates' the 'personality' of one particular planet.

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Tuesday, April 24, 2007

An interview with Jacques Barzun - audio from Liberty Fund

Quotes and comments;
- the interview (60 mins.) was conducted about the time 'From dawn to decadence' came out.
- I don't share Barzun's worldview, but I find him an interesting writer. (I recommend the above book highly.)

1. Barzun is good on why our academics favored the communist countries and collectivism in general. (They felt that society needed a large tyranny - the state - to counter the smaller tyrannies... ie. business, the church, etc.)

2. I guess we'd have to call Barzun the classic agnostic. (He doesn't seem to understand that the agnostic can only exist because others have definite beliefs. We can't all be agnostic :=) He also seems unaware that agnosticism is an absolute truth claim. ie. to claim there is no truth is to make an absolute truth claim.

3. The interviewer asks him, "is there no standard?" and Barzun apparently feels there isn't any. "Where are we going to get the standard?" he asks... as if this were utterly impossible.
"How can we then judge whether things are right or wrong?"
"We have to judge things by their consequences... by their fruits..."
(He wasn't too pleased when the interviewer pointed out we have to judge consequences by a standard.)

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Monday, April 23, 2007

J. S. Bach's music and worldview - audio lecture by John Hodges

Quotes and comments;
- enjoyable lecture; he plays selections from the mass in B. minor, and then comments on them.
- apparently church services in Bach's day were quite long. One pastor asked Bach if he could shorten his cantatas as he wanted to get the service down to a mere four hours.
- there are four other lectures available as well.

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Sunday, April 22, 2007

The world's greatest creation scientists - an online book

Quotes and comments;
- this book is a wonderful introduction to science from a bibical perspective. It would be a great resource for homeschoolers.
- there are a great many links to other online materials.
-it begins with the period around 1000 A.D.

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Thursday, April 19, 2007

Mars Hill audio Journal - you can download a copy of this audio magazine from Marshillaudio.org


Quotes and comments;
- In this sample (hosted by Ken Myers) you get nine short interviews with various people.
- on one section Dana Gioia reads a poem (I enjoyed) called Words.
- one section features Mary Midgley, speaking about her book poetry and science. In the interview she talks about metaphors in science... and how Darwin scored a big triumph for evolution by speaking of 'selection' - natural selection being a metaphor based on (playing off of) the idea of artificial selection (of qualities) in animal breeding.
- M. also speaks of the greeks atomists as being motivated by a desire to depersonalize the universe.

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Sunday, April 15, 2007

The "Baby Doctor," Benjamin Spock, On Darwin and Morality an article by Jerry Bergman

Quotes and comments;

1. 'In his classic work, Baby and Child Care, under the subheading, "They're repeating the whole history of the human race," Spock wrote that watching a baby grow is "full of meaning" because,
"the development of each individual child retraces the whole history of the human race, physically and spiritually, step by step."
- this is the kind of nonsense evolutionism has given the world. It has nothing to do with science, but is merely darwinian myth making. The theory (passed off for generations as science) is based on fake drawings by the Nazi evolutionist E. Haeckel.
Evolutionists have long known it's a bogus idea but keep using it to deceive the public with. (In the last year of his life Carl Sagan even used it to defend abortion.)

2. "Weeks later, as they lie in the amniotic fluid in the womb, they have gills like fish."
- how sad it is to think this was the reading of tens of millions of expectant mothers. This is another evolutionary fairy tale; utterly false.
- if this weren't a serious matter it would merely be comical.

3. "Toward the end of the first year of life, when they learn to clamber to their feet, they're celebrating that period millions of years ago when our ancestors got up off all fours."
- does this sound like science to anyone?

4. Evolutionists like to claim the theory of evolution is as certain a fact as the earth orbiting the sun. Not even close. It's as certain as the drawings of E. Haeckel.

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Saturday, April 14, 2007

Recent Rapid Uplift of Today's Mountains - an article by John Baumgardner

Quotes and comments;
- people have been told so often that 'mountains are obviously very, very old...' that they just accept the idea without thinking. But are mountains really old? It's clear that you can't tell just by looking at them.

1. "An ongoing enigma for the standard geological community is why all the high mountain ranges of the world—including the Himalayas, the Alps, the Andes, and the Rockies—experienced most of the uplift to their present elevations in what amounts to a blink of the eye, relative to the standard geological time scale. In terms of this time scale, these mountain ranges have all undergone several kilometers of vertical uplift since the beginning of the Pliocene about five million years ago."
- even if you accept current e. dating methods this 'result' clearly demolishes the idea of Uniformitarianism.
- you wonder how many times the 'theory' will have to be refuted (by the evidence) before evolutionists abandon it.

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Monday, April 09, 2007

The Silences of God - an article by Arthur Custance

Quotes and comments;
- this is one of his 'Doorway Papers'

1. Four centuries of Silence
"Looking back upon those centuries -- which at the outset seemed to hold such promise for so many reasons but which ended up in such a sad denial of everything rewarding that life has to offer when lived as God intends it to be lived -- one cannot help but feel that this disappointing experiment was allowed to run its course while God deliberately remained silent, only that He might show once for all the inability of man to discover the meaning of life by the mere exercise of his own intellect and without the aid of revelation."
- he's referring to the 4 or 5 centuries before Christ.

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Saturday, April 07, 2007

Twilight of evolution - audio lecture by Henry Morris

Quotes and comments;
- this seems to be a lecture given in the 1970's; but I still found it interesting. (He talks quite a bit about the Darwin centennial conference held in Chicago.)
- I had a great admiration for the late Dr. Morris. He was not a great lecturer; but he gradually gets over his nerves and delivers an excellent lecture.
- one thing I always admired about Dr. Morris was his christian spirit. (I only wish I had something close to his ability to deal with opponents without losing his cool :=)

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Friday, April 06, 2007

How did Jesus Die? - article by Arthur Custance

Quotes and comments;
- this is one chapter' of his book The virgin birth and the Incarnation; available online.
- I found the above chapter helpful in getting an understanding of exactly how Jesus might have died. Full of interesting detail and anecdotes from his study on the subject.

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Wednesday, April 04, 2007

Reaping the whirlwinds: the ethical significance of Darwin - audio lecture by Gary De Mar

Quotes and comments;
- an excellent lecture.

1. He mentions that in a foreword to a book by James Randi, Arthur c. Clarke writes ''I'm disappointed he didn't write more about one of my pet peeves... creationism, perhaps the most pernicious thing now affecting the american public."
- you have to laugh when a reprobate like Clarke gives people a lecture on ethics and morality. Give me a break old sod. (He's been protected by the sf community for decades; and the Brits have even named an award after him. This alone tells you about all you need to know about the spiritual health of England these days.)
- actually I think Darwinism is the main religion in england; where even 'evangelicals' will denounce anyone who says a word against it.

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Tuesday, April 03, 2007

Teaching science under the attributes of god - audio lecture by David DArmond

Quotes and comments;
- this lecture is directed to a popular audience, and includes at least one experiment.
- I think this might be a good resource for homeschoolers, as he goes into the difference between open and structured questions... and how open questions lead to creative thinking.

1. I didn't care for his definition of science; he quoted the definition from Webster's dictionary, but unfortunately chose one of the recent editions instead of the 1828.

Science: (current)
1. knowledge or a system of knowledge covering general truths or the operation of general laws especially as obtained and tested through scientific method.' (current definition.)
Science: (1828)
1. In a general sense, knowledge, or certain knowledge; the comprehension or understanding of truth or facts by the mind. The science of God must be perfect.
- these are radically different concepts of truth. Truth used to be seen as knowledge of reality. Truth is now increasingly defined as what man can find out about reality using the 'scientific method.' (ie. empiricism or physicalism.)

Sunday, April 01, 2007

The character of God - audio lecture by J. I. Packer

Quotes and comments;
- this is one of 19 lectures in systematic theology by Packer. Excellent.
- I found these lectures at Monergism.com. (The best resource for Reformed theology that I know of.)
- J. Packer was one of the first christian speakers I ever heard of. He taught a stones throw from where I live; and I used to listen to him on a local tv program. (Terry Winter)
- I haven't heard in about ten years I guess; sad to see that he's adopted the 'frame work' view of creation. (This bit of obfuscation more or less allows you to pretend you believe anything the secular community says at any point in time; as no one has a clue what you're talking about.)

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Amazing complexity and design in life - audio lecture by David DArmond


Quotes and comments;
- although directed at a popular audience, the talk is excellent. (Some background noise. Is that someone practicing the organ upstairs :-)
- there are six more lectures in the series

1. Even though everything about scales and feathers are different, many evolutionists (most notably the popular science magazines) are still promoting the fanciful speculation that feathers 'evolved' from scales. It could never have happened; as any who has studied the subject knows very well. (As the bible says; ''all men know god...")

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