Topics
• Why you shouldn't buy a diamond (6/22/05)
• Salvation by grace is a short email talking very briefly about my current views on salvation. (2/27/04)
• Theistic Evolution is a sort of God-directed evolution theory. I propose some challenging questions. (1/10/04)
• The Taize Community is a sort of monk-like community in Taize, Frace, who claim to leave all to follow Christ. Are they a cult? I also appended a short discussion on cults, like Christian Science.
• Communication with the dead: Someone emailed me about my plasma tweeters wanting to find out about using flames to communicate with the dead. (7/8/03)
• Salvation Without Jesus touches on other religions which appear to seek God, but don't believe in Jesus. (2/2/03)
• Catholicism, a quick summary of thoughts.

• Why I believe in Jesus
• Thoughts on Christianity a collection of short thoughts

Links
• Beware of Harold Camping a document refuting the allegorical interpretations of Family Radio's leader in light of his new doctrine to flee the church.
• BlueLetterBible.org contains many reference materials, translations, etc.

Logic and Critical Thinking
• Cogent argument diagram illustrating the only way to obtain a cogent argument. I'm investigating this very mathematical method as a way to very carefully arrive at logical conclusions as an aid to interpretation.

Book summaries

Why I Left Jihad: The Root of Terrorism and the Return of Radical Islam by Walid Shoebat (updates coming).

The use and misuse of Analogies

Analogies are often misused in explaining matters of theology. For instance, consider the following:

Salvation is like being shipwrecked in the sea, about to drown: Jesus throws you some floatation device. If you refuse it, you drown; if you accept it, you're saved!

On what authority do we have to define salvation this way? What's keeping someone from saying the following:

Salvation is like being drowned to death in the sea. Not only does Jesus rescue you by taking you out of the sea, but He also restores your life from the dead!

Thus there are two conflicting analogies. In the first one, the person must respond to and accept God; in the other, he has no ability to respond. How can we have two analogies that seem consistent with certain parts of the Bible, yet they conflict? The problem is that analogies can't be used to explain something that's not understood! The reason why Jesus used analogies ("The Kingdom of Heaven is like...") is that He understood everything and wanted to give us a simpler picture to understand. Thus we see that analogies, which use simpler concepts, can only be used to explain something that is understood and harder to understand -- the reverse does not work. We can't use simpler words (that we understand) to explain something complex (that we don't understand). Thus we should be very careful to understand the limitations of analogies such as those above; they may be useful for explaining the Gospel to those who don't understand, but they by no means carry any weight in a deeper theological discussion because they are not valid analogies.