A few days ago, a friend from an Assemblies of God-oriented discussion group raised an interesting topic. Since I haven't posted much here for a while, I thought I'd share my thoughts and joyfully invite your comments.

The Good Pagan

Carissa wrote:

« I think, and this is a lay person's humble opinion, that a person can live a good moral life without knowing Christ as Savior. »

Amen, Carissa!

It's a sad myth among us Christians that people can only act "good" by knowing Jesus when, in fact, Christianity is proof of the fact that good behavior is possible while not helpful at gaining eternal salvation. When the rich young ruler came to Jesus, he was not condemned by Jesus for bad behavior. The young man, in fact, kept all the commands since childhood. He said as much and Jesus, knowing

Short post today. I just wanted to point to a brief and fascinating roundup of arguments for the existence of God from a cosmological/mathematical viewpoint:

God by the Numbers
Coincidence and random mutation are not the most likely explanations for some things.
by Charles Edward White

The article summarizes the evidentiary value of three numbers in mathematics that seem to point to an intelligent designer of the universe:

Puritan, born in 1842. He was one of America's most influential ministers in the 1890s, but was affected by rampant liberalism of the early twentieth century. In 1892, while pastor of Plymouth Church, Brooklyn, New York, he wrote The Evolution of Christianity, based on the premise that the church, faith and religion evolved in the same manner as did man. He saw evolution as the vehicle of God's revelation. He is often considered the major popularizer of the New Theology movement.

[tags]blogrodent, church-history, churchrodent, evolution, history, lyman-abbott, liberalism, puritan, theology[/tags]

When referring to evolutionistic theory, one usually refers to that theory originating with the publication of Charles Darwins' Origin of Species (1859) and Descent of Man (1871). Darwin contended "that species have through the normal selection of numerous successive, slight, favourable variations." when he applied natural selection to human beings he reached the controversial conclusion that man's ancestors were probably monkey-like animals.

[tags]BlogRodent, church-history, ChurchRodent, Evolution, history[/tags]

My colleague, Ted Olsen over at CT’s Weblog, posted terse and apt commentary on the latest Pat Robertson gaffe. When things don’t go God’s Robertson’s way, he gets grumpy.

Is he on medication? If not, he should be. (Robertson, that is. Not Olsen.) He definitely should not have a public forum.

Here’s the latest from Pat Robertson, in reaction to the Dover school board elections and the Intelligent Design brouhaha:

“I'd like to say to the good citizens of Dover: if there is a disaster in your area, don't turn to God, you just rejected him from your city. And don't wonder why He hasn't helped you when problems begin, if they begin. I'm not saying they will, but if they do, just remember, you just voted God out of your city. And if that's the case, don't ask for his help because