VMI Military History Tour March 2008

Gilbert and John just returned from touring WWI and WWII battlefields in France, Luxembourg and Germany. The "dragon's teeth" in the fields were to prevent tanks from rolling through. These were the fields where the movie "Band of Brothers" is set.....during the Battle of the Bulge.

They were honored to visit the grave of General George S. Patton, Jr. Incidentally, Gilbert and I met George Patton, III back in the early 80's when he came to Birmingham for a speaking engagement.

In Bastogne they saw General MacAuliffe's headquarters. The city is now home of a Belgium army base; they saw some soldiers outside the historic MacAuliffe hdqtrs practicing for their honor guard.... When the Germans demanded that MacAuliffe surrender he wrote back ...... "NUTS"...hence the Nuts theme stuck with the town.

Spring Break and Easter

Junie and I went to Arlington to visit my mother over spring break. We enjoyed helping her prepare for easter. One afternoon we attended the UMW Missions meeting and helped the ladies prepare easter baskets for shut-ins and elderly people. This was Junie's first time to make easter baskets. We helped mama get her table set, prepare flowers and get ready for an easter weekend visit from the Glovers.

We came home to Birmingham on Thursday to attend the Maundy Thursday Love Feast, our Good Friday Service of Darkness and Easter Day worship...it was a blessing. Praise the LORD for the bodily resurrection of Christ and his promises to us.

We were sad that our close friend, Charlie Richburg, died on Monday after Easter, but he is now at rest in the LORD.....he was a faithful Christian man who bore great witness to the love and glory of Christ even in his suffering. He is free now and O what a glorious day it will be in the resurrection for Charlie! It was a blessing to see a lot of friends who came to the funeral....praise the Lord for the fellowship of saints on the earth and now Charlie is in the great cloud of witnesses whom we will join as we worship our risen LORD!

... Gorbachev sets the record straight...says he is an athiest...

News: Or maybe not [Print] [Email] Christianity Today had this about rumors that Gorbachev was a Christian: Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev made clear this past weekend that he is an atheist after European news agencies last week claimed that he had confirmed his Christian faith during a visit to the tomb of St Francis of Assisi in Italy. Gorbachev, the last communist leader of the Soviet Union, confronted speculations that he had been a closeted Christian during an interview with the Russian news agency Interfax. “Over the last few days some media have been disseminating fantasies – I can’t use any other word – about my secret Catholicism, citing my visit to the Sacro Convento friary, where the remains of St. Francis of Assisi lie,” Gorbachev said, according to an Interfax article posted Friday. “To sum up and avoid any misunderstandings, let me say that I have been and remain an atheist,” he stated. posted by Peter J. Leithart on Wednesday, March 26, 2008 at 1:45 pm

"Summer Sanctus" Youth Camp.....

Mark your calendars! June 30 through July 3 are the dates for the first "Summer Sanctus" Christian Youth Camp for young people ages 13–19.The camp is being organized by Grace Covenant Church in Nacogdoches, TX and Auburn Avenue Presbyterian Church in Monroe, LA and will meet at the air-conditioned Pineywoods Conservation Camp southeast of Nacogdoches (http://www2.sfasu.edu/forestry/pwcc/).At Summer Sanctus the days will begin and end with psalms and prayers and there will be a couple of Bible studies throughout the day led by pastors Ben House, Lonn Oswalt and Duane Garner.Students will also have plenty of opportunities to enjoy the summer days with their new friends hiking, canoeing, playing games and sports, working on crafts, or simply enjoying God's creation. On the last night of the camp, we'll have a traditional ball with group dances and music.Camp registration will be $150 per student, which includes the room, all meals during the stay, and a camp t-shirt.More promotional information and registration forms will follow, but we wanted to be sure to let you know the dates as early as we could.Call or write if you have any questions.Pastor Randy Booth, Camp Director: 936-462-7495, rrb@cmfnow.comPastor Tom Brainerd: tom.brainerd@sbcglobal.netPastor Duane Garner: 318-323-3061, dgarner@auburnavenue.org

from First Things blog....re Sports...why we play.

Why We Play Posted by Peter Leithart on March 24, 2008, 4:41 PM In the March 26 issue of the New Republic, Leon Kass and Eric Cohen analyzed the moral crisis of professional American sports. While focusing on the steroid scandals that have rocked Major League Baseball, Kass and Cohen argue that biotechnology is only a symptom of a deeper and broader adulteration of play. The heart of the corruption, they argue, is a failure to grasp the proper ends of sport. It’s not all about winning and losing, “the separable, the measurable, and comparative results.” Sport is about the “humanity of the human performer.” At the heart of human play is “the lived experience, for doer and spectator alike, of a humanly cultivated gift, excellently at work, striving for superiority and with the outcome in doubt.” In professional sport, Kass and Cohen lament that these ends and goods of sport have been almost buried beneath mountains of hype, cheating, betting, drug abuse, scandals, and greed. College athletics has an air of innocence lacking in pro sports, but even college sports has been infected with a spirit inimical to the ends of sport. All year, media attention has been focused on the fab freshmen: Kevin Love of UCLA, USC’s O. J. Mayo, and several others. Media attention to superstars conspires with the hype of March Madness to give NCAA basketball an ever more professional aura. Not in Pullman, Washington, where the Washington State University Cougars have put together a remarkable two-season run, igniting frenzy in a chilly town hardly known for basketball. My sons and I became Cougar fans when we moved to Idaho a decade ago. It hasn’t been easy. For the first several years, the Cougs were bottom-dwellers in the tough Pac-10. With the arrival of former Wisconsin coach Dick Bennet, who came out of retirement to take over the Cougs in 2003, things began to turn around, and in the last two seasons, under the command of Bennet’s son, Tony, the Cougs have attained heights fans could only dream of a few years ago. It’s a story straight from Hoosiers. This year, they have been in the Top 25 all season, compiled an impressive 26-8 record, and obliterated Winthrop and Notre Dame in the first two rounds of the tournament. This week they have a chance to face off against North Carolina, who are favored to be this year’s tournament winners. The Bennets have turned the program around without any All-American star to lean on. Many of the players were lightly recruited coming out of high school, and the Bennets drew players from Serbia, New Zealand, and Australia to round out the team. They recruited players for their character—their willingness to sacrifice, to subordinate their stardom for the team, their work ethic and their off-court conduct. They have emphasized fundamentals—tough defense, unselfish team play, ball control, hustle. They have one of the best defenses among Division I teams, and one of the lowest turnover average. These stats don’t get anyone Gatorade contracts, but they win games. It’s entirely characteristic that junior guard Taylor Rochestie gave up his basketball scholarship so the coaches would have more to offer recruits for next year. And it’s entirely characteristic that, when asked how the Cougars held Notre Dame to half their season point average, senior forward Robbie Cowgill answered, “Coach told us to get back on defense.” The Bennets’ coaching style illustrates Kass and Cohen’s point that the beauty of individual performance is multiplied by the choreography of team play: “Players survey the entire scene as they perform in concert with others, attending to where their teammates are heading and how their opponents are defending. They embody the rules, manage the clock, execute their game plans, and make innumerable strategic adjustments when things go badly.” Team sports thus cultivate not only “game-specific skills” but “determinate, discipline, courage, endurance, enterprise, perspicacity, and mental toughness.” The Cougs have their work cut out for them. Few people give them much chance to beat North Carolina. But Washington State’s success illustrates that the kind of sport Kass and Cohen, and many others, long for still exists. WSU’s turnaround shows that there are still places where “the deepest appeal of sport is . . . the drama of the game,” where “in microcosm, the human drama is on display, with all its pathos and possibility.”

The Louvre, Paris

Gilbert and John called me today and they were standing in front of the Louvre, but get this....didn't think they would go in! It was late in the afternoon and they didn't think they had time. I suggested they at least go in and look around in the gift shop and at displays near the entrance....I would really like to visit the Louvre, in fact, I really like most all art museums...the guys sometimes think they are boring...can you imagine!

...this is interesting....Gorbachev and Christ...

History: God’s Spy
[Print] [PDF] [Email]
Malcolm Moore reports this morning in the London Telegraph on Mikhail Gorbachev’s visit to the tomb of St. Francis, and Gorbachev’s public confession of Christian faith. Moore writes in part:
“Mikhail Gorbachev, the last Communist leader of the Soviet Union, has acknowledged his Christian faith for the first time, paying a surprise visit to pray at the tomb of St Francis of Assisi.
” Accompanied by his daughter Irina, Mr Gorbachev spent half an hour on his knees in silent prayer at the tomb. His arrival in Assisi was described as ’spiritual perestroika’ by La Stampa, the Italian newspaper.
“‘St Francis is, for me, the alter Christus, the other Christ,’ said Mr Gorbachev. ‘His story fascinates me and has played a fundamental role in my life,’ he added.
“Mr Gorbachev’s surprise visit confirmed decades of rumours that, although he was forced to publicly pronounce himself an atheist, he was in fact a Christian, and casts a meeting with Pope John Paul II in 1989 in a new light.
“Mr Gorbachev, 77, was baptised into the Russian Orthodox Church and his parents were Christians.
“In addition, the parents of his wife Raisa were deeply religious and were killed during the Second World War for having religious icons in their home.”
Moore reports that Ronald Reagan suspected as much, telling aids that Gorbachev was a “closet Christian.”
And he adds: “‘It was through St Francis that I arrived at the Church, so it was important that I came to visit his tomb,’ said Mr Gorbachev.“‘I feel very emotional to be here at such an important place not only for the Catholic faith, but for all humanity.’ He also asked the monks for theological books to help him understand St Francis’s life.”
Rosenstock-Huessy says that when Lincoln walked into Richmond after the North won the Civil War, it was a sign of the triumph of St. Francis, a manifestation of a Franciscan politics unknown outside of Christianity. Gorbachev provides another example: Thou hast triumphed, pale Assisian.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Thursday, March 20, 2008 at 4:44 am

"spiritually eating and drinking one another"......

Some of the Glovers came to Maundy Thursday Love feast at church tonight! It was so nice to have Rose Ellen and their three youngest children with us. The men of the church served a lasagne supper, we sang hymns, heard the Word and had communion...it was a blessing. Here's a nice quote from the bulletin...

"I will therefore give myself as a Christ to my neighbor, as Christ offered himself to me...we ought...each one of us to become as it were a Christ to the other that we may be Christ to one another and Christ may be the same in all, that is, that we may be truly Christians...and just as one member serves another in such an integrated body, so each one eats and drinks the other; that is, each consumes the other in every drink, and each one is food and drink to one another, just as Christ is simply food and drink to us. Through believing the word which the soul takes and receives into itself, we eat the Lord. My neighbor in turn eats me together with my possessions, my body and my life; I give him this and eveything that I have and let him make use of everything in all his needs. In the same way when I in turn am poor and in trouble and need my neighbor, I'll allow myself to be helped and served. And in this way we are made part of one another so that one helps the other just as Christ has helped us. This is what it means that we spiritually eat and drink one another." Martin Luther

My favorite harp music!

Cynthia Lynn Douglass performs original, classical, Celtic, popular, contemporary, and world music on her Celtic, electric and cross-strung harps ranging in size from 23 to 92 strings. The Celtic harp is Cynthia's favorite instrument because of the rich harmonies it creates, and the healing effects it gives her listeners. She has regularly visited hospices, cancer wards of hospitals, and many nursing and retirement homes in California, Kentucky, Georgia, and Alabama.Cynthia was born and raised in the Middle East. Her current passion is performing Arabic music on the electric harp while dancing. The peacefulness of the harp sounds combined with Cynthia's use of passionate Arabic melodies and rhythms are her contribution to promoting Arab/American cultural friendship and understanding.Cynthia has recorded with World Disc Records, and has her own production company, which together have produced ten solo recordings, three compilation projects, five workshops and workshop books, and twenty published titles of sheet music.With her international background, musical talent and rich experience, Cynthia brings to her audiences an empowering and beautiful program.

My Parents

1st Lieutenant James Dennis Nettles (photo taken in Japan in WWII)

Rose Mary Semon (college graduation)

My Grandmothers

Lucy Hazel Ardis Semon and Janie Maude Rikard Nettles

Philip Jenkins lectures

Gilbert and I attended the Philip Jenkins lectures at Beeson Divinity School this past Tuesday and Wednesday. He made the point that cultures which are far removed from biblical culture run the risk of reading the Bible as fiction....especially the Old Testament. One's attitude toward the authority of scripture makes all the difference in one's vitality of faith. He said that ironically global North Christians (Europeans/Americans) have been influenced greatly by Marcian and tend to act as if the OT doesn't really matter much....the global South Christians run the risk of needing to be convinced that the OT is to be subjugated to the New Testament, because they are not far removed at all from the world of priests, and the need for bloody sacrifices to expiate sin. "If any African finds it difficult to identify with the Old Testament, they have lost their Africanness." Many global south Christians aren't far removed from seeing a literal blood sacrifice. He said global South Christians are ready to fight spiritual warfare, confront demons, and in doing so, they are libertating women, and creating a "reformation of machismo" family structure.

Also, there are many issues related to poverty in the global south that create dependence. It is the grasping of life's transience that creates total dependence on God.

He believes the greatest fear of global South Muslims is of the "Weapon of Mass Instruction" and that is why they are out to eliminate Christian proselytizers. Aren't we glad the Word of God is alive and sharper than any two-edged sword!

The Forty Martyrs of Sebaste, 10 March 320

In the year 320, Constantine was Emperor of the West and Licinius of the East. Licinius, under pressure from Constantine, had agreed to legalize Christianity in his territory, and the two made an alliance (cemented by the marriage of Licinius to Constantia the sister of Constantine), but now Licinius broke the alliance and made a new attempt to suppress Christianity. He ordered his soldiers to repudiate it on pain of death. In the "Thundering Legion," stationed near Sebaste in Armenia (now Sivas in Turkey), forty soldiers refused, and when promises, threats, and beatings failed to shake them, they were stripped naked one evening and herded onto the middle of a frozen lake, and told, "You may come ashore when you are ready to deny your faith." To tempt them, fires were built on shore, with warm baths, blankets, clothing, and hot food and drink close by. The mother of the youngest soldier was present and encouraged her son from the bank. As night deepened, thirty-nine men stood firm, while one broke and ran to the shore. However, one of the soldiers standing guard on shore was so moved by the steadfastness of the Christians that he stripped off his clothes and ran out to join them. They welcomed him into their company, and so the number of the martyrs remained at forty, and by morning, all were dead of exposure. (One source says that the few in whom a little life remained were stabbed to death at dawn.) We still have what some scholars believe to be an authentic eyewitness account of their martyrdom. It includes farewell messages to their family and friends written shortly before their deaths. written by James Kiefer Prayer O Almighty God, by whose grace and power your holy martyrs of Sebaste triumphed over suffering and were faithful even unto death: Grant us, who now remember them with thanksgiving, to be so faithful in our witness to you in this world, that we may receive with them the crown of life; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Philip Jenkins in Birmingham next week....

Next week, March 11 and 12, is Missions Emphasis Week at Beeson Divinity School, with special events on Tuesday and Wednesday featuring Dr. Philip Jenkins, Distinguished Professor of History and Religious Studies at Pennsylvania State University. Dr. Jenkins’ trilogy about understanding contemporary Christianity includes the award-winning The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity, The New Faces of Christianity: Believing the Bible in the Global South, and God’s Continent: Christianity, Islam, and Europe’s Religious Crisis. You are cordially invited to hear Dr. Jenkins and to participate in the following events: Tuesday, March 11, 11 a.m.-12 p.m. Beson Chapel service, “Reading the Bible in the Global South” 12 p.m. Bring your lunch to Divinity Hall S-111 and converse with Beeson alumni missionaries from Japan, Malaysia, Ghana, and Turkey. 1:30-2:30 p.m. Lecture, Hodges Chapel, “The Future of Christianity” Wednesday, March 12, 11-11:50 a.m. Missions class, Divinity Hall N-101, “Is Christianity Dead in Europe?” 12:10-12:55 p.m. Luncheon address, Divinity Hall N-101, “The Lost History of Global Christianity: The Thousand-Year Golden Age of the Church in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia.” For further information and to register for the luncheon (limited seating), contact Beeson’s Global Center at global@samford.edu.

Heather Martin..... BreakPoint: Prayer in the Whirlwind, 3/4/08

...the following article is from Chuck Colson's Breakpoint. Heather Martin is our niece. This is an account of their experience in the tornado which struck Union University....we are very thankful that the lives of these girls was spared. Prayer in the Whirlwind Building a More Perfect Union March 4, 2008 Heather Martin, a junior at Union University, was trying to climb into a bathtub for safety when the E4 tornado hit the Union campus in Jackson, Tennessee. It was 7:02 P.M. on February 5. "It sounded like a thousand trains," she said, describing the funnel cloud that ripped through the school, causing massive damage to all but one campus building. The wind nearly sucked Heather out of the building. When the walls came crashing down, her legs were pinned between the side of the tub and the floor above. In the tub were three other girls. Crushed beneath her was Julie Boyer, a spiritual mentor of Heather's. Two nights before, Julie had spent an hour interceding in prayer for Heather. When Heather had called to thank her, Julie said, "I know you would do the same for me." Heather soon proved Julie right. As the weight of the building settled, Julie struggled for breath. Her mouth and chin were crushed against the right side of her chest. Her neck was exposed as she describes it, "like a swan when it ducks its head." Her right lung was so compressed she thought it had collapsed. Heather's hip pressed into her left lung. In her spirit, Julie began to pray, "Jesus, I need you . . ." Then she realized she had forgotten to breathe. She told God, "I'm sorry, but I cannot pray anymore, or I won't remember to take my next breath." Just then, Heather called out to her, "Julie, do not try to pray, just breathe. I am interceding for you. Focus on breathing." Heather had no way of knowing what thoughts had been running through Julie's mind just moments before. As rescuers arrived and began to dig, the debris shifted, increasing the pressure on the trapped women. Julie wondered if she had survived a tornado, only to be killed by the rescuers. Heather called out to the rescuers, "Someone is stuck under me . . . Her neck is exposed, so you can't slide the debris. You have to lift it." With Herculean strength, rescuers lifted off the main piece of rubble, and for the first time in 45 minutes, the women breathed fresh air. All four were safe, sustaining only minor injuries. Heather and Julie were not the only ones to be miraculously spared. All 1,200 Union students on campus survived the storm. As Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians, and the EMT nurse quoted to Julie that night, "We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed." In the aftermath of the tornado, churches, Christian colleges, and the local community have rallied around Union to help in the rebuilding effort—which may well exceed 40 million dollars. This enormous challenge facing Union leads me to do something I rarely do on the air, and that is make a direct appeal for your help. Union—a Southern Baptist university—is a premier evangelical institution. What better proof is there that this school is training students to integrate their faith into all of life than the way these students responded to the storm? Now the only question remains is whether you and I will put our faith into action as well. To contribute directly to Union's disaster relief fund, visit the university's website at http://www.uu.edu/. Or you may visit our website, http://www.breakpoint.org/, for more information. Help, won't you? I am going to.

Everyone should know THIS about Obama....

...from an oped by Rick Santorum During the partial-birth abortion debate, Congress heard testimony about babies that had survived attempted late-term abortions. Nurses testified that these preterm living, breathing babies were being thrown into medical waste bins to die or being "terminated" outside the womb. With the baby now completely separated from the mother, it was impossible to argue that the health or life of the mother was in jeopardy by giving her baby appropriate medical treatment. The act simply prohibited the killing of a baby born alive. To address the concerns of pro-choice lawmakers, the bill included language that said nothing "shall be construed to affirm, deny, expand or contract any legal status or legal right" of the baby. In other words, the bill wasn't intruding on Roe v. Wade. Who would oppose a bill that said you couldn't kill a baby who was born? Not Kennedy, Boxer or Hillary Rodham Clinton. Not even the hard-core National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL). Obama, however, is another story. The year after the Born Alive Infants Protection Act became federal law in 2002, identical language was considered in a committee of the Illinois Senate. It was defeated with the committee's chairman, Obama, leading the opposition. Let's be clear about what Obama did, once in 2003 and twice before that. He effectively voted for infanticide. He voted to allow doctors to deny medically appropriate treatment or, worse yet, actively kill a completely delivered living baby. Infanticide - I wonder if he'll add this to the list of changes in his next victory speech and if the crowd will roar: "Yes, we can." How could someone possibly justify such a vote? In March 2001, Obama was the sole speaker in opposition to the bill on the floor of the Illinois Senate. He said: "We're saying they are persons entitled to the kinds of protections provided to a child, a 9-month child delivered to term. I mean, it would essentially bar abortions, because the equal-protection clause does not allow somebody to kill a child." So according to Obama, "they," babies who survive abortions or any other preterm newborns, should be permitted to be killed because giving legal protection to preterm newborns would have the effect of banning all abortions. Justifying the killing of newborn babies is deeply troubling, but just as striking is his rigid adherence to doctrinaire liberalism. Apparently, the "audacity of hope" is limited only to those babies born at full term and beyond. Worse, given his support for late-term partial-birth abortions that supporters argued were necessary to end the life of genetically imperfect children, it may be more accurate to say the audacity of hope applies only to those babies born healthy at full term.

Lunch with TPC College Students

We enjoyed hosting the college students yesterday after church. We are blessed to have such a nice crowd of regular attenders from Samford and UAB......we had 16 for lunch. I served gumbo over rice, crackers and dessert. It worked nicely to have a large "one pot" meal which could be stretched by the amount of rice cooked, and shrimp,gumbo veggies added into the pot. We had brownies, angel food cake, strawberries and ice cream for dessert.

from a Boneman post

March 02, 2008 Van Tilian Presuppositionalism Goes Mainstream? I was amazed to run across this article (reproduced below) written by Paul Campos in last week's Orange County Register... Is it possible that Van Tilian presuppositionalism has gone mainstream?!?!? "Evidence can't shake your faith if your faith excludes it as evidence." Why is Stanley Fish so much smarter than Richard Dawkins? That question occurred to me last week, while attending a lecture at which Fish, the well-known literary and legal theorist, did the thing he always does, which is to make the following point over and over again: "No believer will find his faith shaken by evidence that is evidence only in the light of assumptions he does not share and considers flatly wrong." Richard Dawkins is, I'm told by persons whose authority I accept on faith, a distinguished evolutionary biologist. He holds a chair at Oxford. He has won many prestigious academic prizes. By all conventional measures, Dawkins is an extremely intelligent man. So why does he seem incapable of understanding what Fish is saying? Here is Dawkins on the evidence for religious belief: Such belief, Dawkins writes, "will earn the right to be taken seriously when it provides the slightest, smallest smidgen of a reason for believing in the existence of the divine." Consider what Dawkins – the author of "The God Delusion" and, along with Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens the most prominent of the current crop of evangelical atheists – is claiming. He's claiming that if one draws up a list of things that Dawkins considers evidence for the existence of God, and another list of things Dawkins considers evidence for atheism, one list has nothing on it and the other list has everything else. And he would, of course, be right. Dawkins is a true believer, and for the true believer literally everything is evidence for the truth of his belief. For example, Fish points to St. Augustine's advice when confronting something that appears to contradict Christian belief: the phenomenon should be subjected "to diligent scrutiny until an interpretation contributing to the reign of charity is produced." That is, Augustine's first principle of sound interpretation is that an interpretation is sound if it confirms the truth of the Christian faith. Indeed, for the perfected soul – which Augustine points out again and again he himself is not – "diligent scrutiny" is unnecessary. For "the pure and healthy internal eye," he says, "God is everywhere." Dawkins, whose atheism is every bit as zealous as Augustine's Christianity, employs the identical interpretive procedure to reach the opposite conclusion. Now Dawkins will object that he, unlike the religious believer, is committed to the methods of "science," and will therefore change his mind when evidence refuting his beliefs appears – but it just so happens none ever has. The striking naivete of this viewpoint becomes clear if one asks a simple question: What, for Dawkins, would constitute evidence of God's existence? Suppose an angel of the Lord were to appear before Dawkins, even as he was delivering another lecture on the delusion that God exists. Would such an experience change Dawkins' views? Fish has spent his whole career pointing out why it wouldn't: not because of the nature of angels, but because of the nature of interpretation. As long as Dawkins remains who he is now, he will remain incapable of seeing an angel of the Lord. After all, a genuine atheist must interpret such an event as a temporarily inexplicable hallucination, or a sudden psychotic break, or a clever technological trick – in short, as anything but evidence that atheism is false. (An atheist who questions the truth of atheism is ceasing to be a genuine atheist precisely to the extent that he is asking himself a genuine question.) In other words, evidence must always be interpreted within the context of interpretive assumptions that necessarily determine what that evidence is understood to signify, and which by their nature are themselves matters of faith. Thus the only way someone like Dawkins will ever see any evidence for the existence of God will be if he loses his faith that he never will. Posted at 08:08 AM in Philosophy Permalink Comments (0) TrackBack (0)

Daffodils by William Wordsworth

I wandered lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o'er vales and hills,

When all at once I saw a crowd,

A host, of golden daffodils;

Beside the lake, beneath the trees,

Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine

And twinkle on the milky way,

They stretched in never-ending line

Along the margin of a bay:

Ten thousand saw I at a glance,

Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced;but they

Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:

A poet could not but be gay,

In such a jocund company:

I gazed--and gazed--but little thought

What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie

In vacant or in pensive mood,

They flash upon that inward eye

Which is the bliss of solitude;

And then my heart with pleasure fills,

And dances with the daffodils

I am ready for Spring!!!