I wrote a big long post announcing our new podcast on Talkshoe but for some reason b2e doesn't like the damn thing. We're doing a podcast tomorrow at 3 PM Pacific, 5 PM Central. You can either dial in or use ShoePhone, which is what I prefer. I tested both and they sound all right. You'll need to sign up for a TalkShoe account, download the software, and signup for ShoePhone if that's what you want to use. It's a quick process. Talkshoe allows me to produce a podcast hassle free, which will probably result in much more frequent podcasts. Check out the test cast I made. So join us at our Talkcast page tomorrow and we'll chat it up.

The Else

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Book 7) by J. K. Rowling, Mary GrandPré

Live Free or Die

Plain View #75 - July 25, 2007

Bufe

Minneapolis part duex

Craig's List

Vietnam Culture Camp

Sun Yung Shin

Dancing Boys

Tammy & Rules vs. Love

Jostens

VBS

Hapkido Testing

Sweet Land

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Searching for God Knows What by Donald Miller

I just found out that a good friend of mine, Mark Gregg was shot and killed in a police altercation in L.A. a little over a week ago. While I hadn't seen Mark in a few years, he was one of my best friends in high school. He was an amazing actor and just a really fun guy to be around. My brother had stayed in touch with Mark throughout college and when I would visit Carson in San Francisco we would hang out. Carson hadn't heard from Mark for awhile and he hadn't been answering his phone. I'm still in a state of shock, wondering how this could happen. I also feel guilty I didn't make a greater effort to contact Mark since he lived rather close in L.A.. I'll never forget the great times I had with Mark and the rest of my friends. They were some of the best times of my life. I'm sad that I wont' be able to have any more good times with Mark, but I take some comfort in knowing that his one-of-a-kind spirit and memory will live on.

The Else by They Might Be Giants

My name is Danny and I am an atheist. Three years ago I was a youth minister at a fundamentalist church. This change has been gradual, starting with the realization that youth ministry wasn't for me. I think I still believed when I left that job, but I took the opportunity to step back and come to faith again on my own terms. As time went on I found that I wasn't interested in beginning a new devotional life or getting involved in the church again.

I probably could have rode the fence indefinitely, but my wife encouraged me to put some thought into this and make up my mind. I did both. After taking a hard look, I can't find any compelling reason to believe that God exists.

The arguments for God that I latched onto before were the moral argument, the cosmological argument and the perceived reliability of the New Testament accounts of Jesus and his resurrection. Here are my thoughts on those three now.

I dealt with the moral argument in my review of The Language of God. To sum it up, I think our moral sense is an evolved trait rather than evidence of a cosmic moral lawgiver.

The cosmological argument says that the universe had a beginning, so it had to be caused by something, viz God. My main problem with this is that God is then let off of the same hook the the universe is put on. Who made God? I used to answer that question by saying that God is eternal and exists outside of space and time. But now I think that saying God is the first cause doesn't really get us anywhere.

While I used to think the New Testament was historical evidence that Jesus was supernatural, I now see it for what it is, a collection of religious documents. Religious documents and historical documents have very different goals. The NT was written to convert people, not to provide an objective account of what really happened. I hope to write in more detail about this, but here's a quick example.

Compare Mark, the earliest gospel, to John, the latest gospel. Over the 30 years between them, the stories and views about Jesus changed quite a bit. In Mark, very few people in the stories think Jesus is divine. When anyone brings it up, Jesus tells them to keep it secret. In John, Jesus goes on and on about how divine he is. One or both of the gospels has to be wrong about this basic aspect of the life of Jesus. I see this fact as it relates to the tendency for people to improve stories over time and I think that they're both wrong.

So far, I haven't found atheism to be nearly as sad and hopeless as I always thought it was. I still have meaning, love, morality and purpose in my life.