DaveScot from Uncommon Descent states clearly the problem with the Intelligent Design movement,

Permutations of the question “Who designed the designer?” are trite, easily addressed, and if you read the moderation rules you’ll find that comments using this and other trite arguments are deleted. There is not enough data to make any determination of who designed the designer. When and if we can identify the designer of organic life on this planet we might have some data to work with in determining the origin of that agency. Until that situation changes, maybe SETI will give us some data someday, there’s no point in asking the question over and over again.

The candidate you can count on.

“The jobs are never coming back, the illegals are never going home, but we’re going to have a lot more wars.”

HT: Restless Reformer

Doug Wilson address illegal downloads,

Downloading music is not theft of an idea, or of a thing, but under many circumstances, it is most certainly theft. Call it theft that violates the golden rule. If you had a band, and you were trying to make a living that way, would you mind if someone spread the word about your music by copying a song and sending it to a friend? No, you wouldn’t. Would you mind if someone were standing at the counter of a music store with your CD in hand, and a friend told him to put it back—that he had that CD at home that could be copied? Yes, you would mind, and you would mind because someone was stealing from you.

I’m currently reading Michael Horton’s book, A Better Way:Rediscovering the Drama of God-Centered Worship. I’m enjoying it, although there are a few reoccuring quirks that get in the way. One is Horton’s Law-Gospel distinction (the other is his strict two kingdom dichotomy).

He sets up the Law-Gospel distinction by quoting Louis Berkhof,

The Churches of the Reformation from the very beginning distinguished between the law and the gospel as the two parts of the Word of God as the means of grace. The law comprises everything in Scripture which is a revelation of God’s will in the form of command or prohibition, while the gospel embraces everything, whether it be in the Old Testament or the New, that pertains to the work of reconciliation and that proclaims the seeking and redeeming love of God in Christ Jesus.

Now, that, to me, sounds like the typical explanation, the law is everything that requires something of us, and the gospel is everywhere that Christ is offered to us. I read Horton’s article, The Law & The Gospel and got the impression, again, that the distinction is something in the actual text.

Horton’s WSC buddy R Scott Clark describes the distinction in this way,

By “law and gospel” I’m referring to the debate between those of us who hold to the historic and confessional distinction between those places in Scripture where God command and those places where he promises. Historically, Protestants have described these two ways of speaking in Scripture as “law” and “gospel.”

Again, this doesn’t appear to make the distinction in how any particular text affects or is received by an individual, but rather is something innate in the text. Even the Wikipedia article on Law and Gospel says that “it is used as a hermeneutical principle of biblical interpretation”.

However, just halfway down the same page, Horton then says:

We have to be careful of reductionism here, of course. Texts are not frozen into categories of either “law” or “gospel.” Often the same verse could be either, depending on how we take it… The same verse may strike one as a threat and then also as a consolation. That is because the Bible is not simply a book of objective, timeless propositions but a means of encounter with the Triune God. Through preaching, God addresses us, and, as in any relationship or confrontation with another person, our existential situation before the one who addresses us is never excluded from the event of being addressed. While the grammatical meaning of the text is the same, it is variously applied by the Spirit to each person.

This seems to me to be taking with one hand what was given with the other. This paragraph sounds strikingly close to what Doug Wilson has said and written on the subject, but I’m pretty sure that Horton wouldn’t claim to be on the same page as Wilson. So… what gives?

Visualizing the Bible

I especially like the cross reference image. A single, unified story of redemption.

HT:Restless Reformer

Matt Colvin on our Nation’s foreign policy:

Can you imagine if China bombed an American factory or shot down an American airliner “by mistake” — let alone invading our nation and toppling our government because they thought we were getting more weapons than we ought to, or because they judged our leaders to be evil, or because they thought we might be a military threat to them in the future, or because someone from Canada or Mexico had committed an act of terrorism in China.

How about a few more?

So, it snowed here Wednesday night. So I didn’t have to go to work yesterday. There’s still snow on the ground, and because this is the South, I don’t have to go to work today, either. Four day weekend!

Ron Paul is Not A Bigot: Refuting the New Republic Charges

Obama is the Most Pro-Abortion Candidate Ever

He is so pro-abortion he refused as an Illinois state senator to support legislation to protect babies who survived late-term abortions because he did not want to concede — as he explained in a cold-blooded speech on the Illinois Senate floor — that these babies, fully outside their mothers’ wombs, with their hearts beating and lungs heaving, were in fact “persons.” “Persons,” of course, are guaranteed equal protection of the law under the 14th Amendment.

In no particular order, here are some of my favorite albums from last year…

Andrew Bird - Armchair Apocrypha
Derek Webb - The Ringing Bell
Arcade Fire - Neon Bible
Feist - The Reminder
Waterdeep - Heart Attack Time Machine
The Khrusty Brothers - The Khrusty Brothers
Moonbabies - At the Ballroom
The New Pornographers - Challengers
Radiohead - In Rainbows
St. Vincent - Marry Me
My Teenage Stride - Ears Like Golden Bats

I want to note that this is not an exhaustive list, and I reserve the right to add to it as I see fit.

And you may be interested to know that eight of the eleven above are available at emusic.com. Give it a try and get 50 free songs