worship

i was reading the link that i put up a couple posts ago about the biblical meanings of words, and how they are different than our modern meanings: the one about worship. the conclusion struck me as very relevant.

In conclusion: "Worship" is often used to refer just to the time of singing and music in our services, but it is clear from contextual study that worship is a life and lifestyle, not just acts in isolated pockets of time. Worship can mean serving in a soup kitchen, or going on a mission trip, or conducting a ministry of some sort -- and we may consider deeply how far our Western, individualistic perceptions have in some cases taken us from the NT ideal.

i recommend you read that essay, and give some thought to it. we are instructed to pray continually. i think that we are also called to live lives of worhip.

the modal fallacy

ah, the english language; a source of wonderful beauty and mind numbing consternation. the way we naturally express our thoughts in english doesn't help when trying to explain very specific philosophical nuances. the modal fallacy goes like this. we would naturally say something like this:

if john has one son and two daughters, he has to have at least one daughter.
john has one son and two daughters.
therefore john has to have at least one daughter.

but think about it... that's rubbish. he doesn't' have to have any kids; daughters or sons. it is true that if john has one son and two daughters he will have at least one daughter, but it's not true that he must. in other words it is incorrect to mistake a logically necessary condition, as a logically necessary truth.

this holds for a number of philosophical problems. they are dependent on this misusing of modal concepts. if you're interested, please check out this article by Norman Swartz.

what does it all mean....

as christians reading the bible, and looking back on bible times, it is necessary that we understand what the authors meant when they talked of certain subjects. the culture of the ancient near east was very different to our modern western one. it's very dangerous for us to read the words of the bible using our modern vocabulary and understanding. thankfully there are serious scholars, of various faiths (or lack thereof) who study the way that people in the culture of the ancient near east thought and acted. three sources of this kind of information are: Malina's The New Testament World, Malina and Neyrey's Portraits of Paul: An Archaeology of Ancient Personality and deSilva's Honor, Patronage, Kinship and Purity.

to give a quick taste of what's inside, please check out these essays, they may change the way you think about your christian walk: what is faith, what is hope, what is love, what is mercy, what is worship, what is humility, what is repentance?

pax

code debunking

hi all. just in case you haven't read any really good articles debunking the rubbish in that book named after a renaissance man named leonardo, read this. if nothing else, mr. brown has got non-christians asking questions about christianity; this is good. so let's be prepared to answer them!

gridblog #1 - the good book

yes, i'm a little late to the blog-party, but here are my 2p...

the book is God's inerrant word. that statement has taken lifetimes of people far better qualified than i to explain. therefore i'll just give you some of my thoughts on what an impact that has on my life.

it is the revealed truth of how God relates to humanity, and how he expects us to behave as his children. it tells me how to relate to God, and everyone else in creation.

lately the all embracing nature of its truth has been changing the ways i look at many things in life. the presuppositions we bring to our day to day existence. how our world view is shaped, and the implications that has for how we live.

not to say that it's crystal clear and simple to apply. the christian walk might well not be so interesting if it was...

pax

the cornett has arrived

last tuesday, my cornett from CMI finally arrived. it has been a long wait, but so far i'd say it was worth it. i have progressed from making rude, flatulent, noises to making sounds that might be considered to have a pitch! i think that i have got something close to an octave range on it now: d' - d''. according to the tutor book i should need to get to at least c' - a''' (historically the range of a cornett is g - d''', or maximally f - g'''!?). that's a ways off for this aspiring musician. here are some pix of my new fave toy:

what colour is the sky in your world?

i don't remember when the thought first occurred to me. the first recollection i have of it is talking to my brother in the kitchen on le jeune. what colour do you see the sky as? if i was in your head would i recognize it as blue? or would it look green or pink?

we all know the sky is blue because we have been told so. common colours are named, and we have accepted certain archetypal representations to point to. the sky is blue, grass is green, blood is red, paper is white, and so on. but, if i was in your head, would what your brain perceives look to me like that? there's no way to know. maybe if i could see what you see, it would be a psychedelic vision of fluorescent pink skies, blue trees, streets paved with gold, and populated with gray scale people.

could this account for people with a good sense for the visual arts? the colours they perceive line up well with the population average? and perhaps people who have the most aweful fashion sense... maybe it does look good to them... hmmm...

so, what colour is the sky in your world?

maverick philosopher

i have been doing a lot of reading about philosophy and appologetics the last while, thanks to my brother-in-law's brother-in-law. a recent addition to my links section has been that of the maverick philosopher. i have enjoyed reading a number of his blog posts. it's pretty heavy stuff, so be warned! thankfully he seems to be towards my way of thinking (as much as i've read so far anyways ;-) i hope to learn lots from his site. i would definitely recommend. his refutations of naturalism, scientism, positivism and relativism are brain expanding and welcome. enjoy!

slinging

following a link from my friend tim to wildwoodsurvival
to read an article about making fire with a chocolate bar and a pop can, i also came across a link to slinging. yes, i mean as in the ancient weapon of 'dangerous dave'! as with all things now, the revival of this ancient projectile flinging device has gone online. all i can say is, very cool.

colour science

what do you get when you mix psychology, physiology, computers, and a can of paint? i'm sure that these guys could help you figure it out... color matters.

colours affect moods. colours affect vision, your body, and have applications on a whole pile of stuff. does colour affect taste? these guys have an answer.

i am a christian

following my own admonition of a month back i want to share what i believe and why.

i believe there is one God. i believe that Jesus is his son.

currently my evidences consist of the Bible, testimony contained therein, and external historical evidences corroborating it's claims.

ah... summer...

the summer dresses
flowers twirling on parade
forgotten things stir

arnold retires!?

i guess that it happens to all of us. after a time we want to retire. arnold robinson, bass for the nylons has retired. i have many fond memories of singing along to his parts; even won an air-band competition with some friends with 'love potion #9'. below is the post from the nylons site.

After 26 wonderful years with The Nylons Arnold Robinson has decided to move on to the next stage of his life and retire as the bass singer for the group. His career with The Nylons has taken him to all corners of the earth and enriched his life with a world of experience and fond memories.

Arnold will have an ongoing interest in the group and will be supportive as The Nylons continue their legacy in performance and on record.

Arnold can be reached at arobi44@yahoo.com regarding his activities in stage presentation and consulting.

The group has always been greater than the sum of its parts and The Nylons will continue as a premier force in the world of vocal music.

- nylons

ad eminem?

no... ad hominem! for someone who is new to the critical thinking field as a formal area of study with all kinds of jargon, it's cool to find terms for stuff that makes sense!

basically it goes like this. so-and-so says "bla". someone who doesn't agree with so-and-so says they're a moron so bla can't be true. how often does this happen? and in all kinds of situations? it can go the otherway too. so-and-so says "bla". they are instead a great person, so bla must be true. how often does that happen?

the problem with this kind of reasoning is that whether or not so-and-so is a moron/genius, "bla" must be proven/disproven by logical means. maybe the moron is right for once and the genius is wrong!?

basically i guess we could look at it this way... truth is truth whatever the source.

link to wikipedia for ad hominem

where have the real men gone?

today i offer for your enjoyment a short quote from the book that my wife bought me for father's day.

Society at large can't make up its mind about men. Having spent the last thirty years redefining masculinity into something more sensitive, safe, manageable and, well, feminine, it now berates men for not being men. Boys will be boys, they sigh. As though if a man were to truly grow up he would forsake wilderness and wanderlust and settle down, be at home forever in aunt polly's parlor. "Where are all the real men?" is regular fare for talk shows and new books. You asked them to be women, i want to say. The result is a gender confusion never experienced at such a wide level in the history of the world. How can a man know he is one when his highest aim is minding his manners?
-john eldredge, wild at heart

men and women are different. i think that it's time that society recognize that instead of trying to squish us all into some kind of androgynous mold as though there is nothing different about us except our hardware.

do we know how to think?

i've heard it said, and i have started saying it too, "common sense ain't so common". especially when dealing with matters of religion, do we know how to think - how to identify what's valid in the morass of ideas.

in our modern society of moral relativism, it is difficult to convince people that there is such a thing as moral absolutes, or even that there is such a thing as truth. is one person's opinion really just as valid as any other's? or are some right and some wrong?

what a brave new world that would be! a world where there is something - someone - that you could be sure of. a world where right and wrong are spelled out clearly. a world where there is absolute truth, not just subjective matters of perspective. can we handle that much certainty? whoops, off chasing rabbits...

back on topic. critical thinking is not something that is covered in k-12, or Sunday morning. so is it any wonder that people seem to be swayed by the most ridiculous and ill founded of arguments because it seems to be grounded in common sense.

i would like to challenge all of us human beings to look at what we believe and why. have a basis for our beliefs. know why we believe what we believe. have reasons why it is the one way. and if we find it is not based on anything, scrap it and find the one that is.

yidaki

what a great instrument. most will have heard of it called a didgeridoo (in any of numerous different spellings), but that is just onomatopoeia. yidaki is it's name in the language of it's originators.

it's cool to think that somewhere in the outback, some dude found a hollow log and picked it up and made some cool noises with it. then someone figured out that termites hollow the logs for you. what a wild instrument. if someone today had come up with the idea we'd think he was a quack!

my reason for posting about yidaki today is that you can construct one, or more likely find one in your home. any tube of sufficient length and diameter can make a cool didge-like noise. if you want to 'make' one PVC pipe is an inexpensive medium. a length of pipe around 1.3m long, give-or-take. yidaki sound wild, and there is something distinctly un-modern about playing one. it takes you out of the everyday existence; time just flies by. also, i dare say that the breathing involved must be therapeutic.

so go grab some big long tube-ish thing you have around your home. make rude noises down it with your lips, and birdcalls, catcalls, whatever. go a little on the wild side. forget yourself for a bit...

if you'd like to read more of the history or physics have fun.

fathers

my thoughts today are with my dad. i'm thankful to him for the way he modeled many of the behaviors that i now try to emulate, either consciously or subconsciously. it's true that our estimation of how wise our fathers are changes throughout our life time. right now the dad-o-meter is very high. i often marvel at all the stuff i remember him doing. the skills he has that i still have no grasp of. he still amazes with his knowledge of various unrelated topics.

here's to you dad. you are a singular individual. i love you.

math & music

yes everyone says that music is mathematical.... ok they don't, but it turns out that music is all about math. sound is vibrations in the air. vibrations at a certain frequency, we call notes. and more specifically, notes are related to each other by very specific ratios. the simplest four would be: unison, perfect octave, perfect fifth, perfect fourth, major third. or in notes this could be starting from a c: c', g, f, and e, respectively. as mathematical ratios they would be 1: 2/1, 3/2, 4/3, and 5/4. if your really interested in some of the nitty gritty, check this wiki page on intervals.

now, this makes me wonder if one could write music that is based purely on math. is it possible to describe or produce a work based solely on math? and if produced would it sound any good? i have a feeling that this might be what 'new music' is about. who knows, food for future bloggings.

so back to math-music... i think that it would be interesting to try to write some music based on mathematical series: geometric, exponential, hypergeometric... who knows maybe even Taylor series! i wonder what it would sound like? maybe music could be produced by random number generator, with notes, chords, and dynamics determined by some statistical method? i'm sure some computer science jocks have tried something like this, but it's fun to think about... maybe you could have your own background music generator that could have it's coefficients tailored to your preferences of key, tempo, style, etc.? music just for you...

is anything sacred anymore?

modern society seems to have largely decided that nothing is sacred. and anything that someone may hold up as special or sacred is immediately attacked, marginalized, and pulled down into the morass.

back in antiquity, some things were sacred. some things were so special - so sacred - you didn't dare to even speak their name.

maybe some things are special. maybe some things are more important. maybe some things are sacred after all.