GQ: But aren’t there two sides to Christianity as well? The side that launched the crusades, and that many believe is still active, steering the last administration’s foreign policy. Aren’t we really talking about the human failing here, not tied to a particular faith?

MY: No, no, no, no. This is what I'm trying to avoid. I point to the book, to the god. I am not pointing to the people. I judge and compare books and gods. In Christianity, it’s very clear that the god we worship is equal to love. The bible says, ‘God is love’;. The god we worship was sacrificed, crucified on the cross, tortured, spit on, and was still forgiving. This is our highest example. The god of Islam tells his people, “Beat your wife. Go kill infidels. Go Kill Christians and Jews.” This is in the Koran; it has been for 1400 years. Their god tells them to kill everybody who doesn’t believe in the god of the Koran. The problem is ideological—it’s not a people problem. Now, most Muslims don’t obey the order of god to kill infidels. This is why I say Muslims have more morality than their god. To be honest with you, I’m amazed at how Muslims keep their humanity after reading the Koran.

via Son of Hamas: The Q: GQ.

It is a new format – a one day conference in the city – on October 2nd this year.

This will be a full day of challenging people to consider full-time gospel ministry here or abroad.

We have some very very good speakers lined up.

If you are interested in going into full time ministry mark this in your diary now…

MTS are an excellent network of Melbourne (+ Victorian) evangelicals passionate about evangelism, training and ministry of the Word and prayer.

EDIT: removed all uses of the word ‘great’

If life is simply about survival, and the replication of genes, then things like morality in general and truth-telling in particular seem quite out of place. As an example, atheist Richard Dawkins has been fairly candid about life without God. As he wrote in his 1995 volume, River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life:

“Theologians worry away at the `problem of evil’ and a related ‘problem of suffering.’ … On the contrary, if the universe were just electrons and selfish genes, meaningless tragedies… are exactly what we should expect, along with equally meaningless good fortune. Such a universe would be neither evil nor good in intention. It would manifest no intentions of any kind. In a universe of blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won’t find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference. As that unhappy poet A.E. Housman put it: ‘For Nature, heartless, witless Nature. Will neither care nor know.’ DNA neither cares nor knows. DNA just is. And we dance to its music.”

The question is: on what grounds do the atheists rail against the supposed ‘lack of morals’ of the God of the Bible when according to their own standard there are no such categories?

He also seems to have lots of computer screens.

Lig Duncan – Study Tour from Together for the Gospel (T4G) on Vimeo.

IT Crowd – Series 3 – Episode 2 – “Are We Not Men?”

Would love to see more of these…

Classical education involves understanding the present by learning about the past through history, philosophy, theology, literature, art, Latin, Greek, logic and rhetoric. Students see an integrated big picture of Western Culture from a Christian worldview – which has a strong moral code and traditionally a high benchmark of excellence and appreciation of beauty, as well as a foundational belief in absolutism; there is a right way and a wrong way. Maths and Science, reflecting God’s character, are also strongly integrated into this big picture, distinguishing classical education from a liberal arts education.

via St Augustines.

Unfortunately Doug did not let the cameraman give us the tour of the study/library. Not happy!

Ask Doug – “How do you organize your study?” from Daniel Foucachon on Vimeo.

I’m sure that the person who asked Doug this didn’t get what they were hoping for. I imagine that guy is really frustrated.

Al Mohler – Study Video from Together for the Gospel (T4G) on Vimeo.

I find myself surprisingly in agreement with Singer’s appreciation of the humanities. My hunch though is that our current ‘job factory’ culture within university education is a direct fruit of utilitarianism. In contrast, a theistic worldview drives you participate in Adler’s “Great Conversation“.

The idea of a liberal arts education goes back more than 2000 years to Plato’s Academy. It holds that an educated citizen in a free society should have a grounding in philosophy, history, literature, the sciences, maths, foreign languages, politics and fine arts. We might say that it attempts to answer the broad questions that Gauguin put into the title of one of his paintings (a title that he in turn took from a Catholic catechism): Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going? This kind of education does not train you in a profession, but it gives you an intellectual foundation to use throughout your life, whether you decide to go into medicine, law, business, engineering, or any other occupation.

via We must nurture the humanities.

Educators once believed in the classical education very strongly. Little more than a generation ago you could not get into Oxford or Cambridge without demonstrating competency in Latin, and practically every Western historical figure and writer until the 1950s was taught the classics from an early age. The line of thinking that we don't need to learn Latin and Greek because they are too hard, irrelevant, not useful or not the languages of the future would have been regarded as the argument of philistines.

via Culturally adrift without classical moorings | The Australian.

I do two backups. One to a second hdd within the desktop (every midnight). The other to an external hdd enclosure I bring in every couple of weeks from home. The backup is of the entire system using ‘rsync’.

The only problem with the USB enclosure is that it is very slow. So I bought an esata pci card and connect via that instead. This increased my speed from about 1MB/sec over USB2 to 57MB/sec over esata. That is an increase of 50 times!

I also noticed that my internal hard drive is much faster than a few years ago. Old notes suggest I was getting about 54MB/sec in 2003, but the newer hard drives are giving me 96MB/sec.

The sustained write speeds are slower than hdparm. The external esata actually rsyncs at about 30-40MB/sec  (not 57MB/sec). But now I can update the backup in minutes, not hours.

All measurements are using hdparm under linux.

Example:

root@homoousion:/home/schuller# hdparm -t /dev/sdc1

/dev/sdc1: Timing buffered disk reads:  290 MB in  3.01 seconds =  96.22 MB/sec

In summary: if you are using external hard drive enclosures, make sure you connect via esata.

What about NAS? They are great in theory, but very expensive compared to a generic esata/usb enclosure.

MTS Vic Training Day 1 2010.pdf

http://www.flickr.com/photos/challies/4248235677/in/photostream/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/challies/4248235113/in/photostream/

Here is a tour by Mark Dever:

Mark Dever – Study Video from Together for the Gospel (T4G) on Vimeo.

H/T Justin Taylor

David Peterson, “Resurrection Apologetics and the Theology of Luke-Acts“, in “Proclaiming the Resurrection – Oakhill School of Theology”, Edited by Peter Head, Paternoster Press, 2008.