Books to Read

As I gear up to go back to school and start reading required material again...here are a few books that I have thoroughly enjoyed over the past year....whether I agree with all of them is another question, and you can ask me if you'd like to know what I thought about them.
"The Challenge of Jesus" by N.T. Wright
"Imagine" by Steve Turner
"Desire of the Everlasting Hills" by Thomas Cahill
"The Presence of the Future" by George Eldon Ladd
"There is a god" by Anthony Flew
"The Irresistible Revolution" by Shane Claiborne
"God has a Dream" by Desmond Tutu
"Silence" by Shusaku Endo
"So You Don't Want to go to Church Anymore" by Jake Colsen

These books are all books that caused me to think about stuff this year. Anyways, read them and then let me know what you think.

My Buddy Steve

So, this week my budy Steve was trying to make it to LA and his car managed to breakdown somewhere around the Sacramento Area. He called and said that he might need my help, and then became disconnected. I therefore concluded that he would be alright. Then I tried to call him and his cell phone was either off...or dead. So, i started to think that perhaps Steve might be dead, or else be on the side of the road somewhere near Sac on the 5. So, if you see this Guy in the picture anywhwere, tell him that I'm looking for him....and let him know that he's alright ...even though he only weighs 90 Lbs... and looks like ET with his shirt off.

Vegetarians and Theists

Does it ever appear to be a contradiction when you meet a vegetarian who is an evolutionary atheist (EA). It always seems odd to me for the following reasons. If one is to look at the theory of evolution, there are basically four areas that a species would want to increase their fitness in, in order for their species to gain better traits and lose bad ones. The four areas are feeding, fighting, flighting, and reproducing (these basics are borrowed from Plantinga’s evolutionary argument). So, it seems that to excel in the areas of flighting and fighting, one would want the optimum diet, as well as, the optimum training regimen to make a specific species stronger.

This is where the problem enters.

A strictly vegetarian diet is not the optimum diet, in fact, we all know that the optimum diet would include various kinds of meat (specifically Chicken, fish, and other seafood). So, when an EA decides to be a vegetarian, they are actually not wanting their species to be the fittest (especially if you are a rational being…like a human), and therefore the species will eventually die off. The problem is that they are still around, and so I want to know what the justification for that is. My conclusion, is that all vegetarians ought to be theists, or else they shouldn’t be vegetarians because they are dragging down our species.

Polytheists in the Bible

So, I was reading a book today and the authors contention was that Abram in the bible was a polytheist, and the result of God speaking to him over his lifetime is that he became a monotheist. I think this is an interesting point because altogether too often when I read about his life in relation to Sarah, Isaac, and God, I see him as a monotheist just like myself. I think that when we consider that he might have been a polytheist just like every of Sumerian living at that time, we begin to see why it makes sense what God does for and through him. God, by the birth of Isaac and the almost sacrifice of Isaac seems to be demonstrating that not only does he control the other gods, but that he in fact is the only God. He demonstrates that he controls the cycles of life (which multiple gods were said to control) through the birth of Isaac at an old age, and he shows that he controls and regulates what and who gets sacrificed (there were a lot of different things to sacrifice to certain gods) through the almost sacrifice of his only son; Isaac. I think this is an interesting point, that i must research further...that is all for now.
- Milnik

Hello to All

This is my new Blog...I hope to post more than I have in the past...we shall see if this happens.