Lost Dogs Uprising

Here's a funny thing I stumbled upon out there on the worldwideweb: a massive criticism of my posting about my disappointment with the Cornerstone Lost Dogs concert.

You can find it here. This is page two of comments about the C-Stone show. A little ways down the page, someone puts a link to my disappointing blog entry, and that unleashes the dogs and their fury. I signed up to get on the message board (feeling a little like I was signing up for a Treky Convention) and left a post in my defense.

It's all good fun.

Philosophy of Religion

This book, co-edited by my friend Chad, was just released. It is a very significant volume, containing 64 brand new introductory essays on lots of topics in the Philosophy of Religion by such luminaries as John Hick, Bill Craig, Kai Nielsen, Merold Westphal, and other famous philosophers you've never heard of. It represents an enormous amount of work on Chad's part, and I'm very proud of him. It is only in hardback at the moment, and so carries a hefty $160 price tag from the publisher. Amazon will have it shortly for $100. They expect a paperback in a few months (and if sales are strong, perhaps a movie adaptation thereafter).



To celebrate, I'm taking him to see the Bourne Ultimatum tonight. Nothing says "congratulations on your new academic work in philosophy of religion" better than going to an espionage thriller blockbuster movie! (Showplace 16 at 9:50 in case you'd like to join us.)

Tuesday's Blog on Blogging

So my plea for a carefully articulated philosophy of blogging has been heard! There's a very nice series going on over on Derry Prenkert's blog about this topic, beginning with this one. I expect that in the future, serious philosophy departments around the country will have specialists in the philosophy of blogging who point back to the Prenkert Series as the seminal work in the field. Seriously, it is worthwhile for both readers and writers of blogs to ponder what it is they're doing and why they're doing it.

But then, you probably know all about that series already, because it appears that nearly everyone who reads this blog is somehow connected to Derry's. It seems to be the case that Derry is a kind of godfather of blogging related to the web of linked sites in which we live and move and have our digital being: a good word from him and you'll get visitors; his shunning of your site would be its death knell. I appreciate the chance to ride his blogging coat tails.


Interesting name, Derry... the only other I know of is the guitar player and lead singer of my favorite band of all time: The Choir. His name is Derry Daugherty. I think his real name is Derald. Unfortunate name, Derald...

I was thinking about Frank Peretti's novels (This Present Darkness, etc.) for some reason today (I think when mulling over the reality that there is a spiritual realm) and got chuckling a bit when I realized the eerie similarity with the movie, Monsters, Inc.

In the latter, the monsters in their alternate reality have to live on the power of screams that are collected from the regular world; in the former, the combatants in the spiritual warfare that is going on behind the scenes are buoyed and strengthened by the prayers that are offered in the regular world.

Something seems a little funny about that... We certainly need a way of articulating that reality of a spiritual realm and the fact that we can influence what is going on there (and vice versa); but we need to be careful not to reduce prayer to screams that can be collected and burned for fuel.

Mindless Musing

Sorry things have been a little slow on Stump Speeches this week. I suppose we could make a ratio of what you have burning in your gut to say to how busy you are. Let's call it the blog-o index Then the higher your blog-o index on a particular day, the more likely you are to post an entry blog. My blog-o index has been pretty low lately.

I see, though, that with this posting I've just provided a counter-example to my own theory. Because I actually have quite a bit to do at the moment, and this isn't exactly a message burning in my gut...

I guess we could save the theory by adding another factor that takes into account the propensity we have for avoiding work by tricking ourselves into believing that we're doing something important by the mere fact of fingers striking keys... evidently I'm scoring pretty high on that count at the moment.

I feel a little bit like that song on the new Relient K disc that goes like this: "I've just wasted ten seconds of your life."

tuesday's blog on blogging

At some point, you run out of things to say on some topics...

Lust

I've been asked to speak in chapel October the 15th about lust. This is a dangerous thing to talk about to a bunch of guys on the internet... I'm taking nominations for funny stories, songs, or other "hooks" to incorporate.

Terrorist

When I travel through airports, I have a difficult time resisting some over-priced fiction at the book shops. On the way out to Portland, I picked up Terrorist by John Updike.

Last summer I tried doing a reading group with a couple of ex-philosophy students, but it fell apart when we picked Updike's Rabbit, Run (for reasons I'll leave to your imagination). Updike is one of those highly regarded contemporary novelists, and I've read a couple of his stories.

Well, this was not his greatest fiction. The supporting characters were under-developed and almost caricatures, and the plot was fairly predictable. But it was very interesting because you got into the head of the main character who is a Muslim teenager growing up on the outskirts of NYC. You could almost feel that it made sense for him to accept a suicide mission. Updike had certainly researched the Koran.

I don't know that I'd go so far as to recommend this as reading, but if you're looking to eat up some time between Minneapolis, Portland, Detroit, and South Bend, there are worse things you could do. Though I'll also admit that it makes you a little jumpy reading about terrorism as fly the friendly skies...

Tuesday's Blog about Blogging

Communication 101 drills into you that the first rule in communicating is to know your audience. Blogging by its very nature renders that almost impossible. I tried to do something about that.

Last week's blog about the blogging process yielded six people who revealed themselves from behind the mask of anonymity. How does that affect things? If I know who is out there, am I no longer blogging and now essentially writing letters to them?

I really want to be hip and with the times (though by using such a locution I probably render myself unfit for membership in the club), but I still would like to see a carefully articulated philosophy of blogging.

Ease into Mondays

Instead of adding some cheesy song to my blog today (which according to the feedback doesn't seem to be my most popular feature), I thought I'd post a You Tube video. And now that I'm composing my post, I realize that I don't know how to do this. A little help anyone??

In the meantime, you might check out this post by my Colorado-an reader which has a video of Keith Green--who was a significant influence in my own life.

Have a good week.