if God didn't want me to be rich he wouldn't have invented money!!

Give me cash Lord... take away financial uncertainty... if you give me lots i'll give most back to you i promise... you can trust me... i would be doing something for you but i need money first... don't i have enough faith for you to bless me?... if i pray the prayer of Jabez a bit more God will have to give me some... i promise to do great things that you will be really impressed with Lord but i need cash... now!

thanks veritas and middlebrow

In modern times, things have been different: we take for granted that there must be an absolute divide between vital Christian experience on the one hand, and careful doctrinal theology on the other. To us, action and reflection seem mutually exclusive, especially when it comes to Christian faith. The last thing we would expect to find is gospel and theology flowing from the same passionate commitment. But in the long flow of Christian history, that is how it has usually been, from the church fathers and the medievals through the reformers and puritans. All of them recognized that simple, saving faith could and should be elaborated into the trinitarianism of Nicaea and the incarnational theology of Chalcedon. It took the crafty liberal theologians of the nineteenth century to invent the argument that central Christian doctrines were, in Adolf Harnack’s words, “a work of the Greek spirit on the soil of the gospel” and a betrayal of the simplicity of Jesus’ message.

One of the great ironies of modern theological history is that the heirs of those conservatives who opposed high liberalism have become the chief bearers of the Harnackian bias against doctrine. Whenever they assume that the best way to embrace the simple gospel is to eschew the difficulties of doctrine, evangelicals are unconsciously adopting the position of their opponents and standing in contradiction to their own best interests. In doing so, they take themselves out of the very stream of power which made their movement possible in the first place: the gospel stream of doctrine and devotion that flows from the fathers to the first fundamentalists. J. I. Packer once defined evangelicalism as “fidelity to the doctrinal content of the gospel,” taking care to not to bypass the “doctrinal content” in the rush to get to a gospel. Fidelity to the gospel requires recognition of doctrinal content, and those who would preach the gospel must make use of the tools of theology.

for Augustine and the early church, and for Anselm and the medieval church, the relationship between faith and knowledge could be summed up in the saying, Credo ut intelligam: I believe in order to know,

but this relationship was then inverted by Descartes, whose principle then became, "I doubt in order to know":

For Descartes, the fact that he was doubting, that his mind was active in doubting, was for him indubitable evidence of his existence. Cogito ergo sum: I think therefore I am. But take note of his way to know. It used to be: I believe in order to know. For Descartes, it became: I doubt in order to know.

Descartes did not take this to its logical conclusion (namely, "the elimination of the possibility of certain knowledge about anything"), but Nietzsche did, and "the relativism and pluralism of the postmodern mind reflect a triumph of the ways of Nietzsche". A particularly good point made by Dr Okamoto is:

For Descartes, doubt was the starting point to certain knowledge, but doubting has turned out to be his legacy, and it is enormous. As Lesslie Newbigin observed: "At the most obvious level, it has created a prejudice in favor of doubt over faith. The phrases 'blind faith' and 'honest doubt' have become the most common of currency. Both faith and doubt can be honest or blind, but one does not hear of 'blind doubt' or of 'honest faith.' "

"Blind doubt": brilliant. That's exactly what we see all around us. People who don't actually have the first idea what Christianity is about, but (like a three-year old refusing his dinner), just know they don't like it. And yet who think they are exercising "honest doubt" in place of the poor, deluded "blind faith" of those ignorant, lumpen, bigoted Christians.

from confessing evangelical

Evolution v Intelligent Design v Creationism

I was recently at the University of NSW to hear a lecture by Robyn Williams (no not the comedian- the science journalist) on Intelligent Design for the launch of his new book called 'unintelligent design' (no real points for originality)... anyway

the scientific establishment is bent on amalgamating Intelligent Design (ID) with Young Earth Creationsim (YEC) which seems to kill 2 birds with the one stone, but, only after forcing ID into a sort of 'straw man' marriage with YEC.

there are excellent arguements against YEC and a few were illiterated on the night but the arguements against ID were of woeful quality.

To make matters worse, I engaged in conversation with a bright biology student who invited me to discuss things with him on 'scam.com' where a protracted debate was being held in regards the evolution/creation debate.... only to find stupid Christians who have no idea of how to debate a point properly let alone represent thier faith in an appropriate manner, basically vandalising the debate.

see http://www.scam.com/showthread.php?p=281448#post281448 for more detail on how not to do it.