Blogaround

Image source.

1. What makes a word “real”? (posted June 19) "I’m struck as a teacher that we tell students to critically question every text they read, every website they visit, except dictionaries, which we tend to treat as un-authored, as if they came from nowhere to give us answers about what words really mean."

2. Index to Creationist Claims. I've never seen all this stuff addressed so systematically and thoroughly. This is a really eye-opening site for me.

3. Young Earth Creationism Isn’t Science (posted June 28) "When doing science, you have to be willing for your hypothesis to be wrong."

4. Sex-ed for the religious right: Conception does not occur at ejaculation (posted July 1) "But this, um, misconception fuels a lot of the opposition to emergency contraception in the US."

5. Hobby Lobby Wasn't About Religious Freedom. It Was About Abortion. (posted Jun 30) "Basically, he's making the case that abortion is unique as a religious issue. If you object to anything else on a religious basis, you're probably out of luck."

6. How to Breastfeed Appropriately (posted July 1) "Real life stories: 'I saw a woman breastfeeding in a park and was overcome with desire. I left my wife the same day.' - John, 34, Nebraska"

7. God Loves Human Beings (posted June 18) "While we distinguish between pious and godless, good and evil, noble and base, God loves real people without distinction. God has no patience with our dividing the world and humanity according to our standards and imposing ourselves as judges over them."

8. This video (h/t to Shaney Irene)

9. 'Seinfeld' at 25: Five reasons nothing is everything (posted July 5)

10. And Bad Theology Beaver.

Are other things awesome besides God?

I tend to describe a lot of things as "awesome."  The law of cosines is awesome.  My family is awesome.  This Charizard made of pipe cleaners I found on the internet is awesome:

To clarify, I found the image on the internet. Not the pipe cleaners. Image source.

I've heard people say that "awesome" is a word originally used to describe God (don't know if that's true or not, but whatever) or it should be specifically reserved for God.  Don't say other things are awesome because that takes away from the meaning of "God is awesome."

Totally disagree.  Because if "God is awesome" is the only context in which we heard the word "awesome", we wouldn't have any idea what it even meant.

We already HAVE a word like that.  Holy.  What is the definition of "holy"?  The standard Christian answer for this is "set apart."  Well what does that mean?  I guess "set apart" as in "special."  Not "set apart" as in "the bags of dog poop have been set apart from the other trash so they don't stink up the trash can."

God is "set apart"?  What does that mean?  Err wait, does the "set apart" definition only apply to a context like "God wants his people to be holy", and not "God is holy"?

Okay Perfectnumber, you don't like the "set apart" definition, so how do you define "holy"?

Well, it's like... God is bigger than anything else, orders of magnitude more powerful... something like that...?

Or, it's like, God is perfect, he never does anything wrong, although, how do you really define right and wrong when you're talking about God... er... he's pure (what does that mean?  homogeneous?), he can't tolerate sin, he can't look at sin... he's going to someday bring justice for everyone... is that what "holy" means?

Or maybe, for me it kind of has this majestic feel to it, like God is the king of everything, sovereign over everything, complete authority, no worries- is that what "holy" means?

I really don't know what "holy" means.

But I know what "awesome" means!  I know how excited I get when I find some really cool computer game, or when I learn some interesting fact about an obscure animal, or write code to do some silly math thing, or how much I appreciate my awesome friends when they help me out with something- and God is like that!  God is the inventor of all things awesome.  He made science!  So cool!  I wish I could make science!

So I fully support the use of the term "awesome" to describe things traditionally thought of as unrelated to God (though, they're not really- as I just said, God invented everything awesome).

Agree/disagree?  Anyone out there have a better definition of "holy"?  Are there other words like that, that we only use to talk about God, so no one really gets what they mean?  (I'm looking at you, "hallowed"...)