Still, it's reassuring to see it. It really is.

KILLROY AND TINA, one of my favorites, was one of the casualties. The good thing is that Justin, the creator, had backed up everything so he just needs to upload everyting again.

It could have been me.

(Update) No, it's not automatically updating at the time I've arranged for MM to update. Nor can I get in and "force" an update. They're evidently still having problems...

Bummer. But it could be worse.

Brian's back from his ski trip...tired, congested, but satisfied. He didn't ski, but he had a very good time nevertheless.

Barb got compliments on her work on the web page for the church during a meal we had after church. (We had a ministry fair to entice people to sign up for different things, from helping victims of sexual abuse to helping with the nursury.) That someone said, who had never gone here, that her web page looks like one for a church ten times our size.

I agree; and Barb is happy, for it's something she can do and can do well, for the church so she feels she's contributing something.

I'm a little envious.

Because I'm looking after Eric so much, during the service anyway, that I don't feel I can devote a lot of time to other things, so I'm hesitant to sign up for things.

I'd love to teach something on the anthropic principle and reason and God, but it's not the sort of thing that's simple to explain to others, nor is it something that the Elders---the leaders of the church---might want me to teach. They sometimes let very controversial teachers teach---I've mentioned one local professor who is teaching a class on the thesis that Satan is not a true being, just a metaphor for our own self-will...but he is an established teacher/professor of a local college. They would---rightly---feel this is a difficult subject and even though I know I could do it fairly easily, the divorce between science and religion has progressed so far---the Barthian division between faith and proof...that I couldn't blame them for being sceptical.

Heck, nine-tenths of them---or perhaps nine-tenths of the churchgoers---may not believe in evolution. At least on Sunday; although I'm sure many happily go to JURASSIC PARK at the movies...

I can't compartilize my brain that way; I can't divorce "Let there be light" from the Big Bang, and talk about one on Sunday and another on Monday, and pretend one has nothing to do with the other. Obviously, if there is a force behind the Creation of the Universe, that has obvious implications in cosmology, astrology, biology, etc.

I think some people could be drawn in that way; could be reached by a reason-driven approach rather than "It's true because the Bible says it" and eventually wearing them down, which seems to be the way of most evangelism these days...

I've never understood that approach.

And yet...

I know, from bitter experience, that arguing from reason also eventually becomes just a debating society, with the inevitable polarization such causes...

That people are frantic to defend their own points of view, and can take away from the reason of the argument in the snottiness of their attitude...

But I still don't understand, sometimes. How did reason get so divorced from religion? Oh, I can cite the historical things, like the trial of Galileo...and yet...

People are afraid to embrace reason in their reason for believing in God---for fear that it might be someday be explained away.

For fear of what might happen.

Well, Kalki might appear any moment, proclaiming the godhead of Lord Krishna, and then I'd be wrong, also...

But I'm not worrying about it.

It seems that rejecting reason because it's sometimes proved more subtle than we thought before...is a very poor reason for rejecting it.