Links

Here's some stuff that I've had sitting around my browser for awhile that I need to dump here on my blog.

1. Here's probably the first apologetic piece against Islam, written by St John of Damascus.

[D]uring his lifetime, St John did not consider Islam to yet be a separate religion, but rather a Christian heresy.

Most interesting to me is that most of the arguments don't seem to be dated at all.

2. For classics geeks out there, this is Stanley Lombardo reading the entirety of the Iliad (in Greek).

3. Dale Ahlquist, President and co-founder of the American Chesterton Society, created a series covering a number of GK Chesterton's writings called GK Chesterton: Apostle of Common Sense. EWTN broadcasted these and made them available online here.

4. Albert C Winn wrote Ain't Gonna Study War No More: Biblical Ambiguity and the Abolition of War and it's completely available online. For those interested in Biblical positions on war, it would make for an interesting read.

5. For anyone who has a hard time understanding exponents or scientific notation, here's an excellent movie called Powers of Ten that demonstrates the effect of simply adding a '0'.

6. Oh, and here's my family tree.

7. This is a site dealing methods of obtaining a human voice when calling big companies.

8. If anyone out there is interested in neo-calvinism or 20th century Dutch theology, here's a pretty good summary of Dooyeweerd's Societal Sphere Sovereignty.

9. This series of blog posts on inerrancy is supposed to be good (though I give no guarantees).

10. Oh, and Alvin Plantinga wrote an article on Religion and Science in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (this might be guaranteed). Highly recommended (both the author and the subject matter).

11. Biblical Training is a pretty good source of Christian seminary lectures.

12. JC Ryle's Thoughts for Young Men

13. Also for classics geeks, Tyndale House is an excellent resource for unicode Greek fonts and keyboards.

14. Finally (so that we stay away from the dissonant number 13), everyone should check out James Jordan's Through New Eyes (pdf). Its focus aims its readers towards viewing the modern world (or the ancient one) through Biblical categories instead of modern ones. So very Chestertonian in attitude, it smacks of NT Wright's theology, and speaks to the continuing (and everlasting) need to make imagination central to our experience of the world. Then again, I might be mistaken.

on Recommended Reading

For anyone who's just coming to my blog for the first time, or for those who just stopped paying attention to the near daily changes that were taking place and are actually still here (probably better chance than that of finding a snowman on the Stygian shores), I've placed a Recommended Reading list on the sidebar. Essentially, it's a list of the sites that I think are worth mentioning to y'all without actually wasting your time with those constant my-favorite-links-from-this-week posts. The point is, I read a lot more good stuff than I have time to write about. So for all those crazies who actually want to read the stuff that I enjoy (I know, it's a long shot), this will provide a near daily stream of it all. Enjoy.

Quick Links

1. Ehrman vs Craig on resurrection (pdf) HT:Pontifications
2. Best tips on speed-reading HT:ChristianThinker
3. How Lord of the Rings should have ended - be careful, this is hilarious
   
4. 10 principles of Burning Man - weird, but fascinating
5. How to do church at 9Marks - check out the survey of 'emerging' thinkers...good for the most part, though the section on NT Wright misses some important distinctions
6. How is it that such well-meaning writers can criticize others into dust, but in the process have lost the ability to criticize themselves (here 's an example). CS Lewis had a good point:
   

The good critics found something to praise in many imperfect works; the bad ones continually narrowed the list of books we might be allowed to read. The healthy and unaffected man, even if luxuriously brought up and widely experienced in good cookery, could praise a very modest meal: the dyspeptic and the snob found fault with all.

Catch-up Links

Look at all that I've missed:
- The best poem I've read or heard in a long time.
- Reminder that only good arguments are allowed on the internet.
- Evidently, physics broke while I was gone.
- This site looked painfully familiar.
- Mark Driscoll's points on self-destructing denominations do as well.
- Once again we find that politics is the new religion.
- Anyone interested in the aesthetics of Bibles, J Mark Bertrand is for you.
- Here's a flighttracker that looks amazing (or scary if you wish).
- Dooyeweerd, for any phil of science or neocalvinists out there.
- Also, Google has opened registration for Writely (give it a shot).
- On economics, Arnold Kling fascinates me (1, 2, 3).
- Here's an article on inerrancy by Kevin Vanhoozer.
- And here's a political version of Noll's Scandal on conservatism.
- Catholic perspective of justification.
- Introduction to NT Wright by Garver.