CalvinDude.com

As I mentioned a few blog posts ago, part of my assignment for the class I’m currently taking is to re-read Genesis - Esther. Since I have to keep track of the dates I finish the individual books….

Last night (March 5, 2007), I finished reading Genesis.

Once I finish the two textbooks I’m supposed to read (I have about 50 pages left in the first; unfortunately, the second has not yet arrived in the mail, but the tracking assures me it will be this week…yeah…), I’ll read them faster. But as it stands now: 1 down, 16 to go… :-)

Claude Allegre recants:

Claude Allegre, one of France’s leading socialists and among her most celebrated scientists, was among the first to sound the alarm about the dangers of global warming.

“By burning fossil fuels, man increased the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere which, for example, has raised the global mean temperature by half a degree in the last century,” Dr. Allegre, a renowned geochemist, wrote 20 years ago in Cles pour la geologie..” Fifteen years ago, Dr. Allegre was among the 1500 prominent scientists who signed “World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity,” a highly publicized letter stressing that global warming’s “potential risks are very great” and demanding a new caring ethic that recognizes the globe’s fragility in order to stave off “spirals of environmental decline, poverty, and unrest, leading to social, economic and environmental collapse.”

…With a wealth of data now in, Dr. Allegre has recanted his views. To his surprise, the many climate models and studies failed dismally in establishing a man-made cause of catastrophic global warming. Meanwhile, increasing evidence indicates that most of the warming comes of natural phenomena. Dr. Allegre now sees global warming as over-hyped and an environmental concern of second rank.

Someone get Algore on the phone. He’s got a heretic he needs to take care of!

And there’s another documentary coming out too! This one says:

The UN report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was published in February. At the time it was promoted as being backed by more than 2,000 of the world’s leading scientists.

But Professor Paul Reiter, of the Pasteur Institute in Paris, said it was a “sham” given that this list included the names of scientists who disagreed with its findings.

Professor Reiter, an expert in malaria, said his name was removed from an assessment only when he threatened legal action against the panel.

“That is how they make it seem that all the top scientists are agreed,” he said. “It’s not true.”

Gary Calder, a former editor of New Scientist, claims clouds and solar activity are the real reason behind climate change.

“The government’s chief scientific adviser Sir David King is supposed to be the representative of all that is good in British science, so it is disturbing he and the government are ignoring a raft of evidence against the greenhouse effect being the main driver against climate change,” he said.

Philip Stott, emeritus professor of biogeography at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, said climate change is too complicated to be caused by just one factor, whether CO2 or clouds.

He said: “The system is too complex to say exactly what the effect of cutting back on CO2 production would be or indeed of continuing to produce CO2.

“It is ridiculous to see politicians arguing over whether they will allow the global temperature to rise by 2c or 3c.”

Meanwhile, I will sit back with a bag of marshmellows and wait for Global Warming to cook them for me…

In the near future, Lord willing, there will be some changes to the content on the main website here at CalvinDude.com (and by “main website” I mean that this will not be on the blog). Those who have seen the main page at www.calvindude.com already know that in the left-hand sidebar, there are many articles and such available for you to read (although I know some people only go directly to the blog and may not know this).

Since I am currently taking an Old Testament Survey class and need to do some of this stuff anyway, I will be introducing a new field under the Theology section. It will be my summary of the entire Bible. This project will take some time to complete, and I will not necessarily be doing the books in “Table of Contents” order; however, I intend at some point to finish all the books, and will begin putting in the necessary database framework in the next few days.

This means that you will find some fields inserted in the next few days that will say something like “Check back for content” or whatever I feel like writing once I code that section. I will keep the blog section informed when I add a new section, though, as well as providing the links you need to read the latest info.

The intention of this summary is to provide a sort of survey of the entire Bible with a chapter-by-chapter summary of each book. The only major changes to this will be in the genelogies, proverbs, and Psalms (which, due to their nature, do not summarize very well; I shall instead probably focus on a more topical approach when dealing with those). The hope is that this summary will enable people to get a grasp on some of the systematic doctrines taught in Scripture, as well as enable someone who has never read Scripture before to get a “quick and dirty” overview so that, as they begin to read Scripture, some of the typologies, themes, and common arguments throughout the entirety of Scripture will be there from the beginning.

I just read this article about the tomb of St. Peter found in Jerusalem (H/T: James White). Note: I don’t agree with all the logic of the author when he attacks the Catholic Church as he uses some rather weak, Jack Chick-esque arguments sometimes; however, the archeological information is quite interesting, and the ultimate conclusions are, I believe, quite sound.

…it’s nice to know Liechtenstein can still be invaded….

Stupid carbon dioxide emissions: Where is Algore now?

In 2005 data from NASA’s Mars Global Surveyor and Odyssey missions revealed that the carbon dioxide “ice caps” near Mars’s south pole had been diminishing for three summers in a row.

Let’s employ a little logic here:

1) Algore is from Mars.

2) Mars is melting.

3) Therefore, Global Warming is real on Earth too.

I rest my case.

March 2, 2007; Colorado Springs, CO — Explosions were heard throughout Colorado Springs this morning as angry Christians took to the streets protesting James Cameron’s documentary, Something We Made Up While Inhaling Fumes From An Ancient Tomb.

“This mockumentary is an attack on our religious beliefs,” said one masked man toting an AK47. “This insult to Christianity will not go unchallenged.”

Another man, carrying an RPG, shot at a police barricade near Acacia Park before police shot him dead. There has been no word on the number of police deaths, but experts fear Colorado Springs could be decending into sectarian violence (although thus far officials have stopped short of calling it a civil war).

Colorado Springs, known to many as the Mecca of Evangelicalism, is home to nearly 100 Christian organizations. James Cameron, the producer of the documentary, has been in hiding since early this morning when he came out of his home and saw his shadow, thus discovering six more weeks of Global Warming.

As I spoke with some of my Christian friends at work today, we got onto the subject of eschatology. I was told, in no uncertain terms, that THIS IS THE LAST GENERATION and that “The 1950s were better days than today” (spoken by a person who was alive during them, and thus “an expert”)…and I was thinking, What about the 1940s and Hitler and such? Were those days better days than today?

In any case, after the convo, I had an epiphany. James Cameron is the atheist’s version of Jerry Jenkins! That’s right, both men make wild speculative arguments as if they were true, both ignore historical contexts, and both completely avoid the more “common sense” interpretations of data. And even more compelling: both men seek explanation from “future” events (in the case of Cameron, it’s the fact that he used the name Mariamenou from The Acts of Phillip, which is only extant in a 14th Century text–that’s right 14–despite that being a common name in the Herodian dynasty; and in the case of Jenkins, it is to assert everything Jesus said would happen “within this generation” must happen in the future despite the fact that everything Jesus said would happen happened by the fall of Jerusalem in 70AD).

One thing the flak over The Jesus Family Tomb has done is enable us to see the importance of Thomas’s doubt being recorded in Scripture. Since the filmmakers give us a disclaimer where they say that finding Jesus’s physical bones in an ossuary would not require us to doubt the resurrection, it becomes obvious why Scripture tells us that Thomas felt the physical body of Christ after His resurrection (John 20:27).

Because Thomas doubted, we can now be sure that Christ’s resurrection was, as portrayed in Scripture, a physical resurrection. Because Thomas doubted, we can know that the film makers are wrong in proclaiming that finding Jesus’s body would not be damaging to Christianity.

Some people who read this blog may not read Triablogue. Alas, that this should be so. Regardless, Evan posted a link earlier that I finally had a chance to read over, and it’s very informative. So, for those who don’t read Triablogue, you should. But since you don’t:

The Dawkins Confusion by Alvin Plantinga.