It’s been a great past year. I really feel like the ministry has made some forward progress. My one prayer for this ministry is that my work is leading souls to Christ. I have no way to track that, but I do receive over 1,000 hits per month so I’m hoping that some of those are from honest seekers who the Holy Spirit convicts while they are here. Praise God for the wonderful work of all apologetics ministries, including this one!

Next year is going to get better! I plan to continue working on my responses to Marshall Brain over at the new God is NOT Imaginary site. I should hopefully be completely done with that site by mid to late January. I’m working on porting that site over to a free, no advertisements web host service so that I can tweak the appearance of the site better than I can in WordPress.

Starting in either February or March I will be adding a biweekly podcast to the site, which will be available every other Friday. I’m aiming for either February 1, 2008 or March 7, 2008 as the first show. The first show, inspired by a thread at RRS, will be on women in the Bible–how the Bible elevates them in the traditional Christian interpretations and it is unnecessary to try to find a more “politically correct” interpretation. More details on the podcast and that show in particular as they become available.

Sometime within the first quarter of 2008, I will be officially incorporating Josiah Concept Ministries as a 501(c) 3 nonprofit organization. Right now, I am officially asking you, dear readers, that if my writings have blessed you, please prayerfully consider a donation to this ministry to help make the incorporation possible. Please e-mail me and I will send you any information that you request about me, the ministry, or anything that will help you make a decision for either a one-time donation, or a commitment to donate monthly. Apologetics is an important cause, now more than ever. Christianity is under attack from all sides and from within. Apologetics ministries, like this one, can be used by God as the glue to hold His church together, and to defend His truth from the many attacks against it.

If you have no money or do not wish to donate money at this time, your prayers for financial support and in general support of the ministry activities would also be greatly appreciated. Drop me a line and let me know about your prayers for the ministry. I love knowing that I’m being prayed for.

Finally, I need a name for the podcast. If you have suggestions for that, include it in your e-mail.

Thank you for everyone who has remained a faithful reader, and I pray to God again that we gain many more over the coming year. Pray with me that we go from 1,000 hits per month to 2,000 (or even 3,000!).

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!

To all of my readers, from Cory, Jody, and Ashleigh.

I’m not a jewelry person, so I long ago discarded the idea of wearing a small cross around my neck in order to put more of my faith out there for people to see.  Instead, I have to rely on my lifestyle and my decision-making paradigm for people to see my faith.  I find that works and appears more genuine than a show of faith through jewelry.

I think, however, that if a person wears the jewelry, then they ought to use it to talk about their faith with interested parties, and it seems that even our atheist friends agree with that.  Reference this blind date:

After being seated, I noticed she had a cross around her neck and mentioned it. She already seemed really nervous about the blind-date situation, but when she started defending herself and insisting that she wasn’t really religious, it seemed like she wasn’t being all that genuine. I mean, if you’re wearing a cross, there must be something to it.

Brothers and sisters in Christ: Be proud of your faith!  Jesus said:

You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven.  (Mat 5:14-16)

I now have three blogs that I update on a regular basis.  This one, Fast Food Management Secrets, and God is NOT Imaginary.  I still occasionally share an anecdote about my daughter on my Xanga site, but that last one is all but shut down.

Here is what I’m going to try to do:

Josiah Concept: I’m going to try to update at least three times per week, probably on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday until I’m done with all the proofs on God is NOT Imaginary.  Then, I will try to update everyday.

Fast Food Management Secrets: Since this one is new, I’m going to try to update it everyday, Monday through Friday, starting Monday the 17th.   I also need to e-mail my “contributor” and bug him for his bio and an actual article or two.

God is NOT Imaginary: I had thought of doing something cool, like “50 Proofs in 50 Days,” but I was never one for marketing campaigns.  I like the material to speak for itself.  So instead, I’m going to do it the old fashioned way and just keep doing daily updates, much like FFMS.  The material on this site is free for anyone to use and adapt, provided credit is given and the adapted material is shared alike.  So copy this stuff, send it around the net, and generally use it to your heart’s content!  That’s what it’s there for!

All this, and I still have a small child to care for.  Wish me luck and forgive me if my updates are less frequent than I state above.

I’m not normally one to give the atheists credit when they come up with another God-denigrating parody of Christmas, but this one is just too funny not to post:

Yeah, I laughed out loud.  I’m a Christian science geek.

(HT to Hemnant from The Friendly Atheist)

Both Frank Walton and J.P. Holding have used what I have come to call the “Brood of Vipers” defense when someone tells them that their tactics are not Christian. Essentially, it goes a little like this:

I say:

I realize now that Frank has never fully risen above the evil he seeks to defend Christianity from. Not only does Frank fall short of answering any of the charges of the RRS make against Christianity, but he also reposts their God-denigrating material with only a few weak ad hominem attacks as a reply.

Referring to Sapient by his real name, or pointing out “enhancements” to Kelly in a derogatory way are not answers to the RRS. They only serve as more ammunition the Squad can utilize to attack Christianity. It makes us all look like hypocrites.

Walton’s “Brood of Vipers” reply: “I won’t apologize for using rather extreme words. When Jesus called the Pharisees and Scribes a brood of vipers was that sinful?”

J.P. Holding has a lengthy discussion of the “Brood of Vipers” defense here.

The purpose of this post is not to attack Frank Walton again. As Brian Sapient has stated, Frank’s tactics speak for themselves and I don’t need to delve any further. What I am doing with this post is to consider the “Brood of Vipers” defense itself, and whether it is a valid defense for conducting a ministry in the fashion that Walton does and Holding did once upon a time. Read more »

Deus Caritas Est (25 Dec 2005)

Spe Salvi (30 Nov 2007)

I’m acting as secretary for the Vatican. See, I hate to read long articles while sitting at my computer screen. So I try to print them out if I can. The Vatican’s website didn’t have a very printable version of the Pope’s encyclicals, so I decided to make a Microsoft Word copy of the documents. For the benefit of my readers, I am making them available for download.

I knew that we’d see backlash from the atheist community when the Pope not only slammed atheism in the encyclical (see also here and here), and he blamed it for the worst tragedies of the 20th century. Kelly from the Rational Response Squad has offered a typical atheist reply. She plays all of the usual cards: the Inquisition card, the Crusades card, and the This-Doesn’t-Prove-God-Either-Way-So-Neener-Neener card.

Kelly does make a very good point. Historically, religious violence accounts for the vast majority of tragedies. She also states that violence committed by atheists was not committed for an atheistic agenda, but as a way to eliminate religious idealogues in order to strengthen the control of the government over the people. Read more »

I saw three comments, one on this site, one on another site, and one via e-mail that worried me.  The first comment was from Kelly of the Rational Response Squad:

In all seriousness, as I pointed out in the last comment I sent (which wasn’t posted…), you are wise to disassociate yourself from the aforementioned stalker. Maybe you should also remind him that Jesus said that you should pray for those who “persecute” you. (Not that we are doing that to him personally, but he has clearly taken it to that level on his end.) [emphasis added]

The second was from Brian Sapient, also of the RRS:

Kudos to you Cory. I look forward to a day when we can have you on the show. Preferably at some point after you start approving our blog comments on your blog. You can have a free pass on that one tonight considering the circumstances. (source, emphasis added)

I’ve never deleted a comment from Sapient or from Kelly.  I may have ignored these if it weren’t for an e-mail from the commenter on my Catholic Mass article.  He complained that I deleted his comment, too.  Trick is, I didn’t delete it; in fact, I had planed to respond to it as soon as I got more time.

Turns out the WP theme I was using ignores comments on pages.  That was why Sean Hutton’s comment disappeared for a little while.  Thank you for pointing that out to me, Sean!  I have changed to a new theme a little bit earlier than I had planned on for that reason.

As for Sapient and Kelly’s aforementioned comments, I have no explanation. They were not deleted by me.  I never saw any comments from either one other than the two that appear in response to my Frank Walton articles.

So I have crafted a Comments Policy page.  It is already on that page, but let me repeat it now:

I do not delete comments that represent dissenting opinions.  If they did not make it to the blog, then I apologize sincerely. It is likely a server mistake.  I only moderate comments that have more than one link, so if your comment (with one link or less) doesn’t appear immediately, e-mail the comment to me and I will post it personally.

This blog is an open forum and I encourage dissenting opinions.

VJack reacts to Christian reaction to his Bible thoughts:

When faced with an atheist who is actually reading their bible and still rejects it, the argument becomes one of interpreting things too literally. “You’re missing the point. Christians don’t read their bibles literally like you are doing.” In other words, I am attacking a straw man by unfairly criticizing Christians for believing things they don’t actually believe. (source)

I’ve never said that VJack was reading the Bible too literally, only that he’s not taking everything into consideration.  To read anything–including the Bible–literally is to allow the writer to employ accepted literary devices, such as metaphors and hyperbole.

But, in the portions that VJack has posted so far, he is reading the Bible correctly.  God demanded animal sacrifice.  God declared certain things clean and other things unclean.  Nothing symbolic about those statements.

But, as I’ve pointed out, God has, through Christ, made all things clean.  Now, we are no longer bound to the Jewish ceremonial laws, which are the ones that include animal sacrifices.  There is a better sacrifice, pure and innocent blood poured out for our sins.  That blood was the blood of Christ, which we may use to enter the Holy of Holies pure and blameless before God.

The Old Testament is symbolic of the New Testament.

I should note that there is such a thing as HYPER-literal, but that is a different subject altogether.  People reading the Bible hyper-literally do not allow for any sort of literary device.  They will take obvious metaphors and read them literally.

For example, they take the Bible’s phrase “foundation of the world” (Ps 104:5) to mean that the Bible teaches a flat earth.  Of course that’s ridiculous.  Equally ridiculous is using the poetic phrase “circle of the earth” (Is 40:22) to prove that the Bible was forward thinking enough to teach a round earth.  The Bible isn’t a science text book and is neutral on cosmology.  The phrasing represents the author’s understanding of God’s revelation to him.

VJack is making an attempt–a half-hearted one, it seems–to understand the Bible.  I commend him for that.

I don’t want this to turn into an anti-Frank Walton ministry, but I thought that I would offer up one more post on why his “ministry” is not a Christian one.

First, the new poll on the side.  He asks for the best word to describe Brian Sapient.  The choices are less than Christian ways to describe any individual.

While Sapient and I disagree ideologically, a small part of me wishes that I had the ability to devote my life full-time to my writing and ministry.  Sapient has the opportunity to do that, and he seems very driven at his activism.  I suppose, therefore, the word I would choose to best describe Sapient is “driven.”  I think it fits better than the choices that Frank has offered up.

Why is this wrong?  Read more »