Here’s another book review. This book may be a little intense for the average layperson, but it might make a great gift for the pastor of your church. 😏   Introduction: The Champions of Induction F. Scott Fitzgerald once famously noted, “Writing is hard. And if it’s not, you’re doing it wrong.” The same could be said of reading, at least when it comes to a book as deep and multi-layered as the bible. If it is easy, it is likely because the reader is mapping his or her own unexamined presuppositions onto the scriptures. If the reader is a…

Tonight I impatiently endured a two hour Zoom webinar while out the window of my home office I watched the sun slowly set on a near perfect spring day. I wanted to be sitting on the back deck with my wife. Heck, I would have settled for pulling weeds in the back yard. This sort of Zoom abuse should be outlawed. A big part of my frustration this evening was the value of the material being covered. Can’t we develop an educational fast track for those who have a certain degree of common sense, self-awareness, and life experience. Certain professional…

From what I can tell so far, the “intelligence” being produced by AI is little more than pattern recognition. Maybe AI is able to synthesize ideas more quickly than humans can, but is that going to be its limit?  It seems to me that people have high hopes for more than mere intelligence. Maybe people are imagining the possibility of Artificial Wisdom – which would be much more valuable, but I think less likely, since: 1) Artificial Intelligence is just reading what humans have already produced, so it can’t really reach the Truth. I doubt a mainframe can expect the…

I once asked a junior high Sunday school class what they knew about John the Baptist. After a long pause, one kid finally spoke up. “I guess I know two things about John the Baptist…” “One, some chick asked for his head on a platter.” “Two, it wasn’t for the purpose of eating it.”

Here’s a random thought regarding my Calvinist brothers and sisters in Christ: They often warn that if you believe that your faith comes from within you and plays any decisive role in you becoming a Christian, that leaves you with room to boast. And the Apostle Paul says there is to be no boasting.  They seem to think we would say (or at least think) something like, “Look at me – I put my faith in Christ. I am so much smarter than that atheist over there.” I guess I can see where they are coming from, but such boasting…

If you are too young to remember Victor Borge, do yourself a favor and look him up on YouTube. Borge was a Danish-born musician and comedian who passed away in 2000 at the age of 91. His comedy was unique. Who would ever expect goofy jokes and musical slapstick from such an extremely talented and classically trained pianist? My favorite of Borge’s stage stories was of an uncle of his who was an amateur inventor. In the early 1900s this man had invented a new soft drink which he dubbed “1Up”.  But nobody liked it. So Borge’s uncle went back…