After slaying the Bull of Heaven, Gilgamesh and his devoted friend Enkidu embarked on a long trek back to the palace at Uruk. Along the way, Gilgamesh boasted to Enkidu that he had installed an ingenious security system to protect his royal chamber from intruders: if anything larger than a gnat passed through a door or window, the system would give it a lethal electrical shock. He added that the system logged each instance in which it was triggered and security cameras monitored activity outside his room at all times. There was no safe way in or out, Gilgamesh warned, unless one carried the electronic key card that hung from his neck.

But when the Champions of Uruk arrived at the royal chamber they found that the furniture had been overturned, the king's clothes were shredded and strewn across the floor, certain valuable items--jewelry, statues of lapis lazuli, and his T.V.--were missing, a half eaten sandwich was left on the dining table, and the words "William Loftus wuz here!" were painted on the wall.

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...so that she can stay connected as a family and effectively reach each community in our postmodern world.

Do you agree with this statement? If so, why? If not, why not? 

This is my working thesis statement - which means I might change it - for a case study assignment in my Transforming Contemporary Culture class at Fuller.

For this case study, I am supposed to select a cultural theme that is relevant to my current ministry, analyze the interplay between the two, and then propose an alternate, missiological approach. I will be analyzing how the church is currently engaged with social media, and then discuss how Semper Vita plans to engage. If you'd like to learn more about Semper Vita, check out the blog site at www.sempervita.org.

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So many people have been reading and talking about The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins, so I finally decided to pick up a copy and read it (twice). While Dawkins is an engaging and entertaining writer, his arguments are surprisingly weak. It is clear that he is completely unaware of the revolution in philosophy of religion that has taken place over the past few decades. It’s amazing to me that he could write a book against God and not deal with philosophers such as Alvin Plantinga, William Lane Craig, or J.P. Moreland. Maybe he knows of them and simply ignores them (just as he refuses to debate someone of the likes of Craig). Or maybe he really is unaware. I lean toward the former.

While this is not the place to respond to all of Dawkins book—after all, it’s over 400 pages!—I do want to respond to Dawkins key claim that the design argument fails because it can’t explain who designed the designer. He says, “A designer God cannot be used to explain organized complexity because any God capable of designing anything would have to be complex enough to demand the same kind of explanation in its own right” (136).

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MySpace. Facebook. Classmates. MyYearBook. Bebo. LiveJournal. BlackPlanet. Hi5. LinkedIn. Tagged. Reunion. 360.Yahoo. Imeem. Friendster. Orkut. Flixster. Fubar. Tickle. CafeMom. Xanga. Yuku. Twitter. Ning. UrbanChat. AsianTown.

As of February 2008*, these are the top 25 social networking sites - and 84% of online consumers belong to at least one online social network. Needless to say, there is a whole lot of social networking going on.

Since I'm relatively new to the ConversantLife community, I would like to take a moment and learn more about your social networking habits, specifically:

• Which social network(s) do you belong to?
• Why did you join the social network(s)?
• Which one(s) do you keep up with and which one(s) are gathering web dust? And why?
• How valuable is social networking to you? If it all went away tomorrow, would you care? 

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Have you seen the latest American Express commercial with Ellen Degeneres and Beyonce? If you haven't, you can check it out below.

The ad centers around a common phrase from the 80's - have your people call my people - which clearly makes the ad more entertaining. I mean, who says that anymore? If you do, well...hmmm... Today, it's all about text messaging and social networking - directly - with our own network of BFFs. 

When I think about technology and the church, many churches are still living in the Have your people call my people age, while the rest of the world is planning to cu@12. It's a crazy and exciting time we live in.

Hi, my name is Tamara, and welcome to my blog. I invite you to join me as we talk about the recent (and not-so-recent) kewl technologies that are out there. We'll also take a look at ways the church and faith community - perhaps your own - take advantage (or not) of these technologies. That discussion may get a bit spicy because there are clearly those that believe technology is a secular thing and should be avoided at all costs.

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Where did we come from? Why are we here? How did life as we know it come about? Are we accidental by-products of a purposeless, dark, and cold universe (as Darwinian evolution teaches)? Or are we the pinnacle of creation by a loving God? In other words: Is the world a cosmic fluke? Or is the universe the handiwork of personal God? Few questions, it would seem, are more important than these.
If you’ve taken Biology 101, visited a museum lately, or watched a recent Discovery Channel documentary you’ve probably heard that the evidence for evolution is overwhelming. University Professor Francis Ayala recently said, “Scientists agree that the evolutionary origin of animals and plants is a scientific conclusion beyond reasonable doubt.”

This idea shows up frequently in popular television shows, too. For example, in a Friends episode Phoebe and Ross discuss the merits of Darwinian evolution. Shocked to find that Phoebe rejects it, Ross says, “Uh, excuse me. Evolution is not for you to buy, Phoebe. Evolution is scientific fact, like, like, like the air we breathe, like gravity.” If you look closely, you’ll also find Darwinism being taught in the children’s movie Lilo and Stitch and in a recent episode of The Family Guy. The take-home lesson is simple: smart people are supposed to believe in evolution, and only fools believe the world was designed by God.

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President Bush set off a firestorm of controversy when he claimed, in a lighthearted conversation with a Texas journalist, that intelligent design out to be taught in public schools. He said, “I think that part of education is to expose people to different schools of thought, and I’m not suggesting—you’re asking me whether or not people ought to be exposed to different ideas, and the answer is yes.”

Bush’s comments set off such a firestorm that Time magazine shortly had a cover story entitled, “Evolution Wars” that discussed the merits of intelligent design (ID) as a scientific enterprise. The controversy has continued into this election process, as the Republican candidates were asked in a nationally televised debate in 2007 whether they believed in evolution. Former Governor Mike Huckabee, Representative Tom Tancredo, and Senator Sam Brownback, indicated that they did not. John McCain said that local school districts should have the final say as to what is taught in their communities.

An interesting article was forwarded to me recently by Stan Jantz regarding the newly built SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) radio telescope funded to the tune of $30 million by Microsoft. The head researcher, Rick Forster, is working on this project in collaboration with UC Berkeley, which in case you don’t know, is one of the leading research institutions in the world. Why the huge investment of time, money and resources? Because, according to Forster, "It's nuts to think we're alone. It's just a matter of looking in the right direction, at the right time, at the right frequency, with the right algorithm.” Just to recap, a leading scientist receives $30 million, notoriety and accolades for having a hunch. Important to note that at this point, no substantial evidence whatsoever has been found to indicate that there’s life out there in the great beyond, and nothing suggests that anyone out there is trying to dial in on planet earth.

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