Doug Wilson on the image of God
Freya Mathews: Good home-making (Full article)
Big plasma arc made by a friend of mine
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Doug Wilson on the image of God
Freya Mathews: Good home-making (Full article)
Big plasma arc made by a friend of mine
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Your friend has built an arc?
He hasn’t become surrounded by an increasing number of animal couples, has he?
Matt – I am interested in big arcs, weird I know but that’s beside the point, could I contact your friend? Here are some more arcs: http://tinyurl.com/ypoy8.
that image only loads about 10%
for me at least
Ctrl+Refresh
the home-maker article… hmmm, it was kinda hippy-ish but well suited to your recent stewardship interest. Not trying to sound like an inwardly focused Christian …. i don’t like the fact that relationships are not mentioned… despite those with neighbours. A house may feel like a home if you nurture it, but if you don’t nurture the people and relationships inside the “home” it’s gonna feel like a tense and stressed home… not a very nice place to be!! However, there is definatly value in treating things like they are going to be yours forever… Not only possessions and physical areas are ours…
infact i think those are the least important things that we need to ensure are appreciated
I have a feeling if a group of people have a common outside-of-themselves focus they are likely to grow closer together.
Bart: have fwd’d your comment to him.
Hi Bart
Nice pics on ur website – played around with Tesla Coils myself a few years back.
Can’t really say very much about how the arc is made, except that it is not a high frequency phenomenon and I don’t have any knowledge of anyone else making long plasma arcs. Mine is currently 10m and I’ll be going for 50m soon and making it more sustainable.
I can’t really comment too much on how it’s made as that’s a bit sensitive at least until either I find a technological application, publish a paper on it or find something more interesting to do with my time ;-)
Cheers,
Dan
In an attempt to forge a link between two disparate posts by Matthew, I suggest you invite Freya Matthews to pass through Dan’s arc. I predict that the arc would win.
don’t really like DW’s piece on image of God. No sense of what the image might mean except for words like ‘righteousness’, ‘holiness’, ‘order’, which have no content when said like that.
Aaron, maybe all three posts could be linked by setting up DW and FM battle to push each other through the plasma arc.
BTW, I don’t think I need to say that I found the FM article appalling, but I did and I am saying it now. You could drive a truck through the fundamental truth claims (both stated and implied) upon which she bases her advice about good home-making, and they are completely antithetical to Christianity.
I want to pre-empt the usual Matt response that says “But she is suggesting we do X, X is a good thing, therefore she is right and the article is good”. Even a stopped clock tells the correct time twice a day. But you would be stupid to laud the clock in those two instances where it tells the correct time, because it does so only coincidentally. You would be better to say the clock is broken, therefore it is useless and that we should find a working clock from which to tell the time.
I thought the article was worthwhile, particularly for the practical suggestions. She appears to be pretty much a polytheist/pantheist and anti-modern and has worked out her philosophy fairly thoroughly. I think the paper gives some hints/prods to start developing a Christian theology of place. Israel used to be the holy land, now all the earth is holy. Ps 104 says that God’s Spirit continues to be active in the natural world which leads me to a gentle kind of panentheism (for want of a better word), a bit like that of Brian Walsh in Trees, Forestry, and the Responsiveness of Creation:
I know I’m a bloody hippy and am taking a significant quantity of crazy pills.
I was excited with the opening reference to “trees qua trees” for the use of qua and then absolutely disappointed that there was no use of “vis a vis” -eg “our position as stewards vis a vis the trees”, although “heuristic” was good. But, grammar apart, this quote is absolute rubbish! Trees having volition? sounds like Gaia to me- not even remotely Christian. Ah, earth to Brint, I think the reference to trees clapping their hands is metaphorical.
Does this mean we’re not allowed to eat plants as well as animals?
What’s it a metaphor of, John?
You’re right, the language is a bit silly & pomo.
Sam I can eat a sheep and say thankyou to him and God, whynot.
John, I was going to phrase this nicely but then I didn’t:
you come across as a prick.
That said, so do I.
Richard. I am sorr you feel that way. Perhaps I do not convey tone very well. I try to express my disagreement strongly where it is strong, and feel a little more free to be derisive about someone else’s published quotes (Freya and Walsh) than to directly criticise Matt and his personal musings. Instead I try to challenge him to reflect on his ideas and hold them up to a Christian standard. If I have failed to do so, and have become mean-spirited, then I apologise.
Perhaps its time for a different brand of crazy pill!
IMHO we don’t deal well with language that gives trees, mountains, and the creation personal responses. We categorise it (‘metaphor’ or whatever), but we seem unaffected by its inclusion in scripture.
Perhaps Brian Walsh is trying to correct that lack. Are we so proud as not to listen? Shouldn’t we make an effort to listen to what he’s trying to say ‘underneath the words’, so to speak? Isn’t this better than dismissing his point because he obviously hasn’t categoried the scriptural language ‘properly’? I think it is.
And I suggest that the tendency to respond dismissively comes across as a kind of institutional pride, knowing our own rightness in knowing ‘the answers’: in which I have certainly been as guilty as anyone. Worse, it prevents us from hearing someone telling us “oi, you’ve got a problem!”.