A good sign that our core group is fired up about our church plant...see pumpkin on the far right...very nice. 

Much love the Jacob's Well peeps...Here is the final completed, full logo version.

On Science

• It seems associating lonely/cold and sinful/unclean is now the focus of some psychological research...Now go read Psalm 51 - God has been using this metaphor with us for hundreds of years...
  
• Seriously, I didn't make this one up - 'Fart gas' link to blood pressure - this one if from the BBC. Odd title indeed. 

On Philosophy

• I am very sad that this book is 95 dollars.  I am even more sad that I really want to buy it.  Just say no, Just say no...Consciousness and the Existence of God A Theistic Argument
  
• An interesting British piece on a return to virtue ethics rather than mere assertions of rights and individual volition.  Yet one problem remains for the virtuoso of virtue ethics - how do you ground goodness?  Aristotle grounded it in "the good man" - but there seems to be a circle he runs into there...unless the "good man" really exists.  Jesus and virtue ethics do go hand in hand.  Virtue is grounded in the being of God who became incarnate and demonstrated true virtue in Jesus Christ. Yes?  Interestingly enough this essay ends with describing environmentalism as a religion - I agree with such an assessment - worship of creation rather than creator has indeed become the case for many.
• More "brave atheism" stuff over at the NY Review of Books.  You know that it is a virtue to some to believe in meaninglessness...if only you can be "brave" about it. The end of this article has this good news offered to us all: Not only do we not find any point to life laid out for us in nature, no objective basis for our moral principles, no correspondence between what we think is the moral law and the laws of nature, of the sort imagined by philosophers from Anaximander and Plato to Emerson. We even learn that the emotions that we most treasure, our love for our wives and husbands and children, are made possible by chemical processes in our brains that are what they are as a result of natural selection acting on chance mutations over millions of years. And yet we must not sink into nihilism or stifle our emotions. At our best we live on a knife-edge, between wishful thinking on one hand and, on the other, despair.  What a great worldview that offers wishful thinking and despair as two great options! Wonderful news...the gospel solution offered? Well just try and laugh a bit, look at pretty flowers and go to the ballet!  OK, I feel better now.  

• Looks like some brewmasters have gotten religion- CNN - Beer Lovers: What Would Jesus Brew?

The Church

• Bob Kauflin gives his Top 10 ways to write a bad worship song (Hint - don't do this and you might write a good one)

Technology

• Sprint may be getting better with customer support.  If you are like our family, and stuck as a Sprint customer, there may be hope for us yet. 
• If you are young...the Internet may be turning your brain to mush.  Short attention spans, lack of ability to focus...etc.  Yet for older people - it may help out old brains...
  

I have just finished listening to two interesting books in the last week.  One is about our brains and their function the other is about the brains behind Google and their plans to "organize all the worlds information."  Both deal with the future extensively in different ways.  The first speculates and wrestles with technology that will be created to make intelligent machines, the second looks at one ambitious company and its plans to make all information (yes, all) indexed and searchable for the common man.  I'll cover each only briefly and in turn.

On Intelligence by Jeff Hawkins and Sandra Blakeslee, 2004 Times Books

Some people will find the name Jeff Hawkins familiar.  He was the inventor behind the first Palm Handheld computers in the mid 1990s, went on to found HandSpring and its modular handhelds and Treo smartphones and finally came back home to Palm to extend and kick start the smartphone category in the market for cell phones.  What many do not know is that Hawkins is extremely interested in human brains and has written a book about.

On Intelligence is Hawkins discussion and framework for how the brain works and how insights into brain algorithms might help us create intelligent machines.  Like the terminator...just kidding, not exactly like that.  Hawkins book begins with his frustrations with what he considers the misguided thesis of strong AI (artificial intelligence).  Strong AI considers your brain to be a computer and that when we have enough computing power in computers we simply arrive at intelligence or consciousness.  Hawkins discusses this primarily through the failures of strong AI both in its brute force and neural network flavors.  He also delves into the philosophy of consciousness by highlighting one of my favorite philosophical illustrations - John Searle's Chinese Room.  I won't get into that sort of discussion here, that is found elsewhere on the POCBlog.  Hawkins then goes into his own (or rather a commentary on the scientific work of others - particularly Mountcastle) theory of intelligence as it relates to the cortex and its functioning. What is found is fascinating writing on memory systems and prediction as the key to intelligence.

The book offers some facinating discussion about how our brains work as a wonderful processor of patterns by what he refers to as a broad neocortical algorithm.  There was one glaring drawback for me in reading Hawkin's work - he is a physicalist who does not speak like one.  Now, I do not hold this against Hawkins as I believe it impossible to explain human consciousness in physicalist (you are your brain, matter is all there is) terms.  Our language will not even permit it.  For instance the book is filled with discussions about how sensory signals enter various portions of our cortex and then give "you" an experience of sight, hearing etc.  The brain is there, but even in talking about this Hawkins maintains a "you" as well.  Perhaps our brains cannot talk about themselves in a way that is consident with there being "nobody in there." Of course it is a philosophical and religious matter to state you are only a brain and nothing more.  But it seems to me that my brain processes and presents "to me" sights, sounds, etc. Also how "new thoughts" emerge from Hawkins empirical physicalism remains a mystery to me as it seems he is reduced to a framework where no thought can be thought of as such.

With that said, Hawkins book was a fascinating read that I greatly enjoyed.  It seems that Hawkins is passionately interested in the subject and has even founded a company to research application of these ideas. He believes that within our life time (if we give up on the dead end of AI) we may just create intelligent machines that are aware and thinking in the sensory environment of the world.  Or...perhaps a large network of computers simply "becomes" aware on a certain date...like SkyNet of Terminator lore. Or perhaps such a network of computers is already in place organizing all of the world's information.  Or maybe there is just Google - the company that "does no evil" but seems happy for its computers to know everything about all of us. 

Planet Google is a recent book written by author and New York Times journalist Randall Stross.  There are several books about Google which have been written.  Some works, like The Google Story, focused on the founding and expansion of Google from the early days of Larry Page and Sergey Brin at Standford University.  Stross' book takes a more recent tact focusing primarily on Google's forays toward its goals of organizing all the worlds information. I really enjoy technology and reading about the companies which create it.  This book was no exception. 

Particularly enjoyable was the treatment of Google's moves into new territory such as book scanning and video.  The chapter on video is interesting for its history on YouTube which was going to become a very famous Google acquisition. I also enjoyed discussion of Google's move from search Goliath into a company which desires to usher in a new era of cloud computing whereby you allow Google to host all your e-mail, documents and digital history on its computers rather than your own.  

Finally, the brief and non technical view of Google data centers (dark, mostly unmanned and automated rooms full of pulsating computers and voracious appetite for electricity) was quite interesting indeed.  How many Google computers does it take to organize the world's information?  Many more than the amount of pro wrestlers needed to change a light bulb.  Will Google become "the man" or "big brother"?  Time will tell I suppose...but I for one do not trust a company whose motta is "do no evil" yet is run by mere human beings.  Afterall, when the chief executive googler, Eric Schmidt, was asked what was "evil" the reply was simply: Whatever Sergey says is evil.  (see 2003 Wired Mag piece Google vs. Evil) Unless Sergey=God...which I am pretty sure that equation is false...I am just going to be crazy and guess that Google may be doing some evil along way. 

Great book though - recommended.

Sitting in my backyard today I am watching the wind cascade through the trees causing multicolored leaves to fall like rain to the ground.  The back of our house is quite wooded so Actually they are a little more like heavy snowflakes than rain.  The weather is not too cold yet so it makes for a great vision to sit outside on the WiFi and work from a rocking chair.  In the winds of the fall it is so easy for me to think about the transient nature of life; we are all slowly passing into reality soon to be gone from the scene of the earth.  Maybe I am just getting older...or maybe it has been the Lord of the Rings Trilogy that I have been watching again of late, but life feels a bit epic today.

The finality of falling leaves is but temporary as the stripped trees of winter will rise again green come spring.  Yet life has an abrubt ending and each day ebbs us forward to this reckoning. As we have started to take the first steps of establishing Jacob's Well I am thinking much about the impact of my own life.  Sometimes you feel like you are about to change the world, other days you realize your life doesn't count for much in the grand scheme of things.  I think most everyone is realizing these days that life is more than the sum of one's 401(k).  Well, maybe we are realizing that our lives had become little more than the sums of money sitting in some virtual account on a computer somewhere.  Either way, life is moving, as do markets as does the foliage in Northeastern woodlands.

Long ago philosophers debated whether life was static in being (Parmenides) or was a ever flowing see of change which we are unable to place a finger on (Heraclitus).  I think life and perception leads us at times to both conclusions rather than a certainty of fixedness or a chaos of never ending change.  I have long thought about how God brings an unchanging constancy to our ever changing lives and world.  Is it not a search for the beauty of truth, the order of the cosmos, the one lighthouse of purpose in the world by which we can gain our bearings.  We are indeed passing like ships along a great shore, or like sand flowing in an ever changing river.  Yet there is one who holds our lives and the changing world in existence and he even knows our very names. 

Such a God is not the unmoved god of philosophy, but rather the kind and severe God of the cross of Jesus of Nazareth.  He is fixed, unchanging...yet abounding in steadfast love.  He is sovereign over time and history yet calls us to live among the falling leaves each day.  I have found both joy and solace in seeking him.  In calling out to him in trial, in questioning in pain and worshiping him in his strength and beauty. 

Long ago, another sojourner of this path had something very relevant to say to us in our uncertain and changing times.  These words of ancient wisdom press upon me today.

So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.

So the man of the earth will soon pass into the shadows of eternity and the leaves will fall again next year.  Yet as spring buds forth the tree into newness, there is the promise of one who brings life anew in the fullness of time.

I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?

This is the most relevant question I know of for all mankind. Therein lies the key to an unfading, unchanging, unfailing hope.  It is bound up in the changeless one who can have the living die so that the dead might rise again. 

A friend sent me this link...awkward snap of the camera.  On Yahoo...all the people way too jazzed up about political wranglings please laugh today.

Some theo-geeks out there may be aware of the continental theological megaclash between Brunner and Barth in the 20th century over the place of "natural theology" in coming to a knowledge of God.  Now what is meant by natural theology is coming to a knowledge of God without special revelation - to form a view of God only form nature and reasoning.  Brunner advocated some form of this...Barth just yelled NEIN! A friend of mine and I were kicking it around a bit through e-mail and I found his thoughts clear and helpful. B&B here refers to Brunner and Barth. Emphasis is mine...

I couldn't work in one important criticism of B&B's language: they use the terms natural revelation, natural theology, and natural religion interchangeably.  I would use these terms to refer to different ideas and I think B&B use them to refer to different things....which makes B&B much harder to understand!

If God reveals himself cosmologically (in creation) , anthropologically (in humans), and Scripturally, the non-Scriptural means we call natural revelation.  Natural theology we could then define as any enterprise that places what we know about God from natural revelation on par with (above or foundational to) what know about God through Scripture.  I accept natural revelation; I reject natural theology. 

Biblical theology or let's just say theology takes Scripture as the starting point for knowledge of God and allows natural revelation a secondary and peripheral place.  We can think about God through natural revelation because we, though still in a fallen and thus humble state, can examine natural revelation in light of God's definitive self-revelation (Jesus in Scripture).  When we approach non-believers then with theistic arguments we are recognizing two things: (1) that belief in god is not equivalent to belief in God (Ex 20.2-3 & John 20.28), and any knowledge of God that takes natural revelation as the normalizing knowledge of god is idolatry. However, (2) those in whom the Spirit works will begin to recognize Him in his handiwork and when they hear true knowledge of God, in whatever form it has come to them, they will yield to it.

In other words, God reveals himself through natural revelation (transmitters of his Glory), but the receivers (our knowledge of God through them) are broken.  God's megaphone to the world falls on deaf ears.  Actually, no, God's natural revelation falls on twisted ears that turn knowledge of God into gods of our own design.  We justify our existence through them, though they come to dominate us.  Without the Spirit speaking through the lens of Scripture all knowledge of God is idolatry.  We thus stand condemned.  When we take the Scripture as our starting point we can use natural revelation as a secondary form of knowledge of God.  Some in whom the Spirit is at work will begin to recognize God through natural revelation, but we are people groping in the dark.  God might (may it be so!) use natural revelation to destroy false idols, to make us uncomfortable in our captivity to them, to prod us, and to prepare the way for true knowledge of Himself. 

So, yea, I agree!  Natural revelation has a place in evangelism: a pointer to our foundation, light, shepherd and sum of all things, King Jesus...

Back to work...

OK, Justin Taylor just caused me to covet.  I think this may be the sweetest chair ever (I mean bibliochaise).  This could seriously solve some space issues in the home office (which is my living room btw).

Sometimes I just become amazed at the lack of logic and precision in our every day discourse...well, maybe I am not amazed but frustrated. It seems we have lost the desire to create valid and sound arguments in making our case.  I ran across such an example a few minutes ago when receiving an e-mail from a friend.  The e-mail was regarding The Green Bible and some of the sales pitch associated with the volume.  Let me from the outset here state clearly a few things.

First, I am 100% committed to stewardship of creation, not trashing the planet and living green in a reasonable way.  Not that I am down with worshiping creation rather than the creator like many can do...nor am I an dvocate of attempting to save ones soul by lowering one's carbon footprint.  Obviously there are forms of environmental idolatry out their that are as fanatical as any fundamentalist religion.  Yet I am thrilled to now live in a community that has a wonderful curb side recycling program and recycling centers very close to where we live.  I just replaced the light bulbs in my bathroom and bought the more expensive, but long lasting kind that use less energy and make Al Gore smile.  Furthermore, I am all for a Bible that is printed with soy ink on recycled paper.  Hooray!  OK, with that said, this is some shtick associated with the Green Bible which is troubling theologically and some that is just faulty reasoning and stupid logic.  Now on to my rant for today.

First, one of the design features of the Bible that is green is that it "green letters" the verses that mention the earth and creation care.  Now what is a bit strange about this is the format.  It could have simply highlighted the verses, had commentary etc. but in making a "Green letter" edition it is obviously connecting to the tradition in Christianity of turning some letters red.  In many Bibles the direct words of Jesus, the Lord God incarnate, are highlighted in red so as to see what he actually articulated.  This in itself is problematic in that these words are not "more important" than the other printed words but it does highlight the importance of Jesus.  What the green letter book is doing is using that to parallel the high importance of the Bible's message about "the earth."  Again, not against the earth or being green - but it does seem fishy to set off this message from the Scriptures as if it was the central focus of the book (like Jesus is).  This seems to be driven by an agenda from outside of Scripture rather than from its own pages.  OK, now on to a lesson in logical fallacies.

In its print, online and video marketing materials, the publishers of the Green Bible make this statement:

The Green Bible will equip and encourage people to see God's vision for creation and help them engage in the work of healing and sustaining it. With over 1,000 references to the earth in the Bible, compared to 490 references to heaven and 530 references to love, the Bible carries a powerful message for the earth.

http://www.greenletterbible.com/

Now, my professor in one of my graduate classes in philosophical logic used to say that we should not advocate the saying of stupid things.  He was of course referring to things that were logically fallacious in a formal sense...which of course is very much the vernacular of so much spin today.  Let me show you the message that the Green Bible team is communicating:

• Heaven and Love are important Biblical teachings
• Heaven and Love are mentioned only 490 and 530 times respectively in the good book
• The "earth" is referenced over 1000 times in the Bible!
• Therefore the earth is a very important teaching in the Bible!

Now, I am not saying that you cannot make the case for the stewardship and care for the creation from Scripture.  In fact, I think it is an easy case to make.  Yet this argument is clearly no argument at all for the importance of the earth.  It is fallacious on several levels.

First, it is a clear non sequitur; the conclusion does not follow logically from its premises. Simply because something appears in a book a number of times does not make it central to its message.  It may be significant if something is repeated but one has to look at how "earth" is used to make an argument from this.  For instance, just mentioning the earth does not make an argument for "creation care" or "contemporary environmentalism" For instance the Bible talks about the earth swallowing up people, being cursed, people bowing their face to the earth, the earth having detestable things on it, being destroyed etc. etc.  None of these have anything to do with the marketing message of the Green Bible. What the Bible actually is teaching when it refers to the earth, creation etc. is much more important than the fact that a word is used a whole bunch of times. 

Anyway, I am enjoying the turning of the leaves here in my home town and thanking God for the beauty of his world and for recycling.  Furthermore, red letter Bibles at least correctly focus a reader on the importance of Jesus.  To me the green letter one has the potential to lead some people to completely miss the main point of Scripture - the person and work of Jesus. But it could be a best seller and make people lots of money.  Yet even in the NRSV translation (which I do not recommend) there will still be good things found in the green version of the good book. So while I don't want us to buy into this nonsensical marketing spin I do hope people do read of the saving Christ...even by reading in the green book.

We just posted our most recent update on our work in planting Jacob's Well.  For those interested in church planting, core group stuff...the following is a short four week study our group has gone through together covering Christology, Missiology and Ecclesiology. 

• Knowing the Way - Jesus
• Knowing the Way - Jesus' Mission - One
• Knowing the Way - Jesus' Mission - Deux
• Knowing the Way - Walking the Way - The Local Church 

Dr. John Piper recently got a new coat from the kind people of Mars Hill Church Seattle. Picked up at a skateboard park in the pacific northwest and freshened up with some Desiring God logo fabric art, John Piper just got style-warped. 

Check out the video below:

As X to the Z might say it, John Piper you've been...

More videos and messages from the recent desiring God conference can be found here - The Power of Words and the Wonder of God

Over the past few weeks our core group at Jacob's Well has been asking some simple questions as we start our work to establish a new church in central New Jersey.  How do we begin to establish a community which will live for the glory of God and the good of the city by extending hope through the gospel of Jesus Christ.

In order to walk in the way of Jesus we are pausing right at the beginning to look at some important questions.

• First, if this is Jesus' church we need to know clearly who he is...he is the Christ, the one promised to be our prophet - to bring us the message of God, he is a great priest - reconnecting us to God and he is our great King - our leader in this life and the age to come. Furthermore, this "Christ" is the Son of God - he is God come to earth...God incarnate - God in a meat suit.
• Second, we asked the question...what is Jesus' mission? What did he come to accomplish when he came to earth? We saw two things clearly: 1) To seek and save that which was lost...people far from God - con men, hookers, liars, religious people, etc. he came to forgive people and reconnect them to the Father by his death on a cross. He paid for our sins and offers grace and pardon to all who will come. 2) He came to bring a new reality - the Kingdom of God. A realm not of physical geography or political boundaries but rather a realm where the rule and reign of Jesus is supreme. This kingdom breaks through into this age, through the church, a counter cultural society where we live in the world but differently. We handle sex, money, power, alcohol, media, marriage, soccer games, etc. in a different way under the rule of Jesus our King.
• Third, we looked at how the mission of Jesus extended through his earliest followers and how their model gives us a paradigm for our work today. Normal people, empowered by God the Holy Spirit, moves people to establish churches, communities where people are saved by Jesus and set together under his rulership and reign. Through the course of everyday commerce and living the church extended the mission of Jesus into the reaches of the Roman Empire through the ancient port cities - urban areas of cultural and economic import.

This week we close our series on Knowing the Way by looking at this society called the church and seeing what the church is and how she functions. Finally, we'll see how we live life together in a way that gives God honor, does good for our neighbors and people hear of the forgiving God of the gospel of Jesus Christ.  

Should be fun times...