dear gmail:

plz die kthxbye. So they have a thing where you can replace all their news with Atom/rss feeds of you own choosing. So, I was, in my infinite vanity, going to remove all of their news and replace it with something better, something brighter. GMail would have none of it. It protested, "L'URL du flux RSS/Atom est incorrecte." C'est impossible! Annoyed at it, I attempted several other feeds [only as an experiment, not out of any desire to read what anybody else has to say about anything] and met with universal failure. I expanded to real journals: First Things. Some worked. Others, not so much. Dozens of perfectly good RSS feeds were summarily rejected by the Google fascists [not that there's anything intrinsically wrong with fascism, I think it's merely impractical in most modern states]. Scientific research must be done. My feed must work.

slacking.

Last Friday, chapter 4 seemed a bit much to tackle. The long weekend kept me too busy to go to it, Wednesday I was busy with something-or-other, Thursday I was doing flooring, and then, today, I just failed. I went to work but then decided to take a nap. Then it was time to go. So I did. I finished some reading but no problems. C'est la vie.

while I have no reason to read heterodox theology...

...I do have use for atheists. The whole situation has been amusing to me: after several years of mocking Goddists of all stripes, "The Raving Atheist" has promised to stop making fun of Christians. The fellow atheists on the site immediately began worrying that he had converted and started spouting all sorts of vile things about him [in addition to their normal mockery of Christians and other "godidiots" [one of their very clever terms]].

It boggles the mind. Perhaps he is converting, but I'd bet against it. Atheism per se is a distinctly Christian phenomenon. If God exists, one can either love Him or hate Him: one cannot live as if He did not exist. Hence the violence of atheists. Which seems to be the more well-grounded type of atheist: the sort who wishes that God exists, but can't believe, or the sort who hates God and refuses to believe even if it were true? The sort who constantly insults God, Christians, and people who believe things, or the sort who doesn't say a thing against them? Most of the atheists I know, fortunately, aren't the militant sort one finds on "The Raving Atheist", which lends their reactions to his posts their perverse charm.

It's lunchtime.

I haven't gotten to the Voegelin article [yesterday being a holiday and Monday being busy]. By tomorrow, it won't be topical any longer to really discuss the ideology of evolution. So I think I'll prepare the piece, sit on it, revise it, and wait for it to become topical again. Sorry to disappoint, but this will give me more time to find illustrative examples of naturalist materialism being conflated with evolution, esp. in the context of scientific education.

The Brits seem a little slow today...

...the USians are on holiday, and I still have not gotten around to reading that Voegelin article. Verdict: it will wait till Wednesday. It will still be fresh then, though, so we're all good. Just keeping you informed.