Josiah Concept Ministries

After years of Andreas09, I have decided that it is time to give my site a makeover.

One of the recent updates of the WordPress software made it is possible to customize menus. Before that update, the theme itself controlled what menus appeared. Fine for WordPress.org users, since they can mess with the code of the themes. But for us WordPress.com users, that is irritating, since I can’t monkey with the code of the themes and I don’t only want to link to internal pages with menus. I want to link to my donation site and e-book sales site by menu rather than on a sidebar widget.

I thought it was time to change themes, since I’ve had the same theme for the better part of four years. I think that this is the theme I’m going to stick with for the time being (though I might change my mind–I’m back and forth between this one and the Freshy theme). I thought this theme had customizable menus when I selected it, but I was wrong. But I can have a widget below the title, so that’s the next best thing!

Let me know if you like the new theme in the comments below. If you don’t care, feel free to put that in the comments below, too.

It has become easier for me to manage my growing number of sites by creating two site networks. The domains “christiandelusion.info” and “godisnotimaginary.info” will now be networks, the first dedicated to critiques of John W. Loftus and his comrades, and the second a critique of parody religions used to step on the veracity of Christianity.

The site network for “godisnotimaginary.info” will consist of the following sites:

• http://www.godisnotimaginary.info – The portal site, listing and linking to all of the other sites.
• http://blog.godisnotimaginary.info – The blog, which will report on the other sites in the network.
• http://wwgha.godisnotimaginary.info – Response to Why Won’t God Heal Amputees. (coming soon)
• http://gii.godisnotimaginary.info – Response to God is Imaginary.
• http://fsm.godisnotimaginary.info – Responding to the Flying Spaghetti Monster. (coming soon)
• http://google.godisnotimaginary.info – Responding to the Church of Google. (coming soon)

The site network for “christiandelusion.info” will consist of the following sites:

• http://www.christiandelusion.info – The portal which lists the sites and leads to all of them.
• http://blog.christiandelusion.info – The blog that will update you on all of the activities on the other sites.
• http://tcd.christiandelusion.info – The free online refutation of The Christian Delusion.
• http://eoc.christiandelusion.info – The free online refutation of the forthcoming book The End of Christianity.
• http://otf.christiandelusion.info – Online refutation of Loftus’s infamous Outsider Test for Faith. (coming soon)

I’ve given up on the Josiah Concept Ministries discussion board idea. Although it seems to get plenty of views, only 3 people have signed up for it–including me. Only I’ve started threads, and one other user has responded only to my introductory post. The third user hasn’t even made a single post.

Therefore, as I finish up proofs for God is NOT Imaginary, I will be enabling the built-in comments section from Google Sites. Hopefully this will generate some discussion. The same will be happening over at the Are Christians Deluded? site. As I finish up my counterpoint articles, I will enable the built-in comments.

To help everyone keep up with Are Christians Deluded? and God is NOT Imaginary, I have added the blog feeds in the sidebar.

John W. Loftus seems to have two new books in the works. One is a continuation of The Christian Delusion tentatively titled The End of Christianity. I expect that title to change, as William Dembski recently published a book with that exact title. Truth Be Told has another take on the book’s title.

As Loftus has published abstracts of the chapters appearing in the new book, I will put some tentative responses up on a new site, http://endofchristianity.josiahconcept.org. The final answers (and a spiffier website, perhaps with its own domain name) will be forthcoming when the new book is available, summer 2011. For now, I have some initial thoughts on the first two essays ready to go.

Domain names are getting expensive. Though I was able to purchase godisnotimaginary.info and christiandelusion.info for peanuts, renewing them certainly won’t be as cheap. I could be looking at almost $10 per domain. My plan is to leave those domains active for the next year, but then move the sites to subdomains of my josiahconcept.org domain after that. Therefore, you will be able to access the Loftus refutation at http://christiandelusion.josiahconcept.org and the updated God is NOT Imaginary at http://godisnotimaginary.josiahconcept.org (or, since that’s a mouthful, http://godisreal.josiahconcept.org.) after the other two domains expire.

I’m experimenting with a blog for the God is NOT Imaginary site, as an antidote to select blog entries from the WWGH/GII blog. You can find it at http://blog.godisnotimaginary.info. I’m probably going to end up deleting it, but we’ll see how it goes for right now.

My other blog, Fast Food Management Secrets, is in stasis for the moment. I have a few additional posts to hammer out, but I probably won’t be doing anything further with that blog. Its domain name has been canceled and deleted.

I have completed the first step of a complete revamp of my Articles tab. All of the on-site article links now point to a URL on the website instead of a shared Google Docs page. For interested parties (read: everyone who disagrees with me), that means that all of the articles now allow comments.

The Google Docs was actually a carry over idea from when I used to use Blogger. At the time, Blogger didn’t allow static pages the way WordPress does. They do now, but not to the same extent as WordPress has always allowed them. To construct articles, I had to use Google Docs and then link the shared document to Blogger. That way, I could create the “illusion” of a website/blog.

Discovery of WordPress was a godsend. WordPress allows the creation of static pages outside of the blog chronology, so the user can essentially create an entire website with a blog built in. And, the static pages utilize the same template as the blog posts, so the whole project looks more unified. The user can even program a specific homepage that is not the blog itself, so the blog can be secondary to the website! (That’s what I did with the original God is NOT Imaginary blog.)

For some reason, it took me almost four years to go through my Articles tab and eliminate the articles that weren’t tied directly to apologetics, then take the ones that were Google Docs and cut & paste them into a proper WordPress page. I always thought it would take longer than the half hour that it actually took.

Make sure to revisit the Articles tab! Read some of my work. Now, you can comment on all of it!

Second step will be much bigger. I want to go through my posts–all of my posts–and isolate the ones that will make good stand-alone articles. Then, link to them from the Articles tab. I’m so not looking forward to that, especially in light of my other two ongoing projects, which also take up quite a bit of time! Also, some of the posts might require some editing (and joining ot other posts in a series) to be better stand-alone articles. That has “time consuming” and “tedious” written all over it. Wish me luck!

In my announcements post, I pointed readers to an update of my God is NOT Imaginary blog, but I had said that I didn’t have a domain name set up for it. Well, I registered one this morning: http://www.godisnotimaginary.info.

Everything should now be in order. Look for updated versions of my articles on prayer soon.

I will begin two new writing projects this month, and they should take at least four to six months to complete. I will also be revamping and beefing up the “Articles” tab of this website. I also have two pieces of bad news. Read the rest of this entry »

This blog may be slowly gaining some popularity, but it still only reaches a relatively small audience. Therefore, few people (if anyone) probably noticed a short hiccup in service. The domain “josiahconcept.org” wouldn’t have worked after midnight on April 17 through the early morning hours of April 18. I apologize for the temporary inconvience.

I pay two fees in order to maintain this site. I register the domain through GoDaddy.com (which uses women in bikinis to advertise its services, so go ahead and let’s hear the charges of hypocrisy based on 1 Tim 2:9; I’m ready!), which has pretty reasonable prices and good service. WordPress.com also charges a nominal fee to redirect web traffic via the purchased domain instead of forcing me to use the default blog address (called domain mapping).

I was an idiot and kept putting off renewing my subscription to domain mapping, which expired on April 16. Therefore, beginning on the 17th, attempts to reach this site via josiahconcept.org would be met with an error. This morning was my first opportunity to correct that problem.

Also, this past week my mother-in-law was in town. She sleeps in the same room as the computer is located, so I can only blog sporadically when she is home. As chance would have it, I didn’t get to blog at all. This also contributed to the domain mapping subscription running out under my nose.

As a result, there is a serious backlog in comments. I got to most of them this evening, but there are still two really long ones (both from HeHe) that I haven’t mustered the werewithal to dig through and answer yet. I should get to those soon.

There are also two comments in moderation (again, both from HeHe) that I haven’t got around to yet. I should have all this resolved shortly.

Hopefully soon I can begin work on two big projects for the blog. The first is digging back through previous posts to find some material that can either be adapted or stand as-is for articles under my “Articles” tab. That will probably be ongoing for the remainder of this year.

The second is a multi-part essay that aims to answer the question “Who is a True Christian?” Many skeptics believe that all it takes to be considered a Christian is a profession of Christian faith, such as that made by Fred Phelps. Based on Matthew 7:17-19 and 12:33, however, the issue is a bit more complex than a simple mental assent to Jesus as Savior (see also Jms 2:19). Anytime we apologists attempt to disown a character like Phelps, the skeptic whips out the “No True Scotsman” fallacy. I hope to put that to bed for good.

Speaking of the “No True Scotsman” fallacy, philosopher Anthony Flew (the fallacy’s inventor) died on April 8. Flew, an able apologist for atheism, recently became convinced of the existence of God. He wasn’t a Christian, so I join James White (and hopefully many others) in wondering why the EPS touted him as a great victory over atheism. Maybe he was closer to the truth, but he still didn’t embrace truth in its fullness. Either way, his books are still going to be on my reading list, particularly the book that describes his conversion to deism.