GeorgePWood.com

• Hey, baby! Your name must be grace because you’re irresistible.
• You know your mouth your mouth is saying no, but unconditional election is saying yes.
• Girl, it is predestined. God rearranged the alphabet and put U and I together.
• I hope you believe in the perseverance of the saints, because my heart is forever yours.
• Baby, you are so fine, it is women like you who make particular redemption a necessity.
• I would ask God to bless you, but I can see he already has.

Apropos of this (somewhat), I’m interviewing Roger Olson about his new book, Against Calvinism, this Thursday, October 20, at 1:00 p.m. (Central) on MinistryDirect.com/live. If you would like to ask Prof. Olson questions, email them to questions@ministrydirect.com, tweet them using #MinistryDirect, or use the Facebook interaction tool on the live page.

Dead-tree publications are so outdated! This little girl knows how to use an iPad but can’t figure out how to do the same functions on a magazine.

This is an interesting video about prehistoric “flutings” made by children who lived in caves. I don’t plan on showing this to my nearly 3-year-old son, lest he begin “fluting” on the walls of our house.

See also “Prehistoric children left marks in caves.”

Singapore is a very clean nation, with very nice citizens. Not surprisingly, then, its people voice their complaints in choral form…the public performance of which is promptly banned.

Evidently, other nations also have complaint choirs.

…but please don’t!

I attended Prof. Kvanvig’s lecture on atheism at Evangel University last year, but I was unaware that the video had been posted until now. So, here’s the lecture:

By the way, I recently interviewed Prof. Kvanvig about his forthcoming book, Destiny and Deliberation. Here’s the video:

By the way, Kvanvig is not pronounced “Kwanvig,” as I say repeatedly in the interview. Both Vs should be pronounced.

I’m in the mood for new glasses, and Tony Hunt alerted me to Warby Parker. You can order frames and lenses online for $95 from this company. And when you buy a pair of glasses, Warby Parker sends a free pair to a poor individual. It’s a social enterprise that I think is worth supporting. Plus, the frames are vintage, which I like (though my wife doesn’t). How do you know whether the frames will look good on your head? Warby Parker will send you five frames to try for free. All you have to do is return the frames in the pre-paid envelope they provide. It’s a no-lose situation. Here are the five frames I like. Tell me which one you think I look best in.

#1: Webb Whiskey Tortoise Matte

#2: Fillmore Sandalwood Matte

#3: Zagg Striped Chesnut

#4: Miles Sandalwood  Matte

#5: Fillmore Revolver Black

Today is the fifth anniversary of Pope Benedict XVI’s lecture at the University of Regensburg, “Faith, Reason, and the University: Memories and Reflections.” The lecture generated a controversy among Muslims because Benedict quoted a derogatory statement about Mohammed uttered by Byzantine Emperor Michael II Paleologus: “Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.” The subject of the lecture was not Islam, however, but the necessary roles both faith and reason play in “genuine dialogue of cultures and religions.” Benedict cited the emperor’s remarks about Mohammed as context for his quote about God and reason: “not acting reasonably (σὺν λόγω) is contrary to God’s nature.” Benedict then goes on to critique the dehellenization of Christianity, sundering as it does this necessary link between faith and reason in favor of an irrational voluntarism. He then concludes:

Only thus do we become capable of that genuine dialogue of cultures and religions so urgently needed today. In the Western world it is widely held that only positivistic reason and the forms of philosophy based on it are universally valid. Yet the world’s profoundly religious cultures see this exclusion of the divine from the universality of reason as an attack on their most profound convictions. A reason which is deaf to the divine and which relegates religion into the realm of subcultures is incapable of entering into the dialogue of cultures. At the same time, as I have attempted to show, modern scientific reason with its intrinsically Platonic element bears within itself a question which points beyond itself and beyond the possibilities of its methodology. Modern scientific reason quite simply has to accept the rational structure of matter and the correspondence between our spirit and the prevailing rational structures of nature as a given, on which its methodology has to be based. Yet the question why this has to be so is a real question, and one which has to be remanded by the natural sciences to other modes and planes of thought – to philosophy and theology. For philosophy and, albeit in a different way, for theology, listening to the great experiences and insights of the religious traditions of humanity, and those of the Christian faith in particular, is a source of knowledge, and to ignore it would be an unacceptable restriction of our listening and responding. Here I am reminded of something Socrates said to Phaedo. In their earlier conversations, many false philosophical opinions had been raised, and so Socrates says: “It would be easily understandable if someone became so annoyed at all these false notions that for the rest of his life he despised and mocked all talk about being – but in this way he would be deprived of the truth of existence and would suffer a great loss”. The West has long been endangered by this aversion to the questions which underlie its rationality, and can only suffer great harm thereby. The courage to engage the whole breadth of reason, and not the denial of its grandeur – this is the programme with which a theology grounded in Biblical faith enters into the debates of our time. “Not to act reasonably, not to act with logos, is contrary to the nature of God”, said Manuel II, according to his Christian understanding of God, in response to his Persian interlocutor. It is to this great logos, to this breadth of reason, that we invite our partners in the dialogue of cultures. To rediscover it constantly is the great task of the university.

What do you think?

Hilarious!