Just to make things interesting, I’ll explain how I discovered YouVersion. Google Reader grabbed a post from The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) which detailed an iPhone app written by the folks at YouVersion, and I followed the link back to the YouVersion website. Ah, information!

Anyway, YouVersion is a very cool idea that leverages Web 2.0 ideas and software to create an online Bible collaboration tool. YouVersion is still in beta, and there is a lot of functionality that isn’t up and running yet. Still, you can add text, links, audio or video to any reference or group of references you want. You can keep your ideas private or allow the entire community to see them. I wouldn’t count on this as a sermon prep tool at this point because of its beta status, but it is very cool nonetheless. One last thing that I consider important with any Bible study tool, YouVersion supports several high quality translations including: New International Version, New American Standard Bible, English Standard Version and Holman Christian Standard Bible. In addition, there are three Spanish versions as well as German, French, Swedish and Chinese translations.

A revolutionary online Bible that enables community and collaboration like never before.

• Organize - YouVersion empowers you to organize the content that’s important to you!
• Share - Simply share meaningful content with anyone, anytime, anywhere.
• Community - YouVersion makes it easy to connect and collaborate with others.
• Contribute - With YouVersion you have the power to share your content with your closest friends, family, or anyone online!

I have noticed a pattern in the arguments of the “New Atheists” that goes something like this:

Atheist Argument: “There are things we do for the welfare of mankind and this makes them right and wrong.”
Theist Response: “But without and objective source, and given the matter/energy makeup of the universe, there cannot be ‘welfare’ or ‘right and wrong’. After all, if it would have been more advantageous to the human race for Hitler to win would it have been ‘right’? etc. ad infinitum”
Atheist Response To Theist Response: “There are things we do for the welfare of mankind and this makes them right and wrong.”

In other words the atheist response is no response. If I could get something like, “The universe is meaningless as are our lives, but we create ‘meaning’ out of nothing as a safety net for our psyche much the same way that Christians do by belief in God.” At least at this point we would be getting somewhere. Then we could begin to explore the psyche etc. and try to answer the questions that arise from that point. As it is we just keep going in circles.

At this point I am often confronted with questions about the veracity of the Bible and other particulars of the Christian faith (which I am happy to discuss), but before these matters can be discussed in a meaningful way it is necessary for the atheist to step up and live the intellectually honest lives they claim to live.

When the atheist is willing to admit the utter meaninglessness of the universe and of their lives with the resultant removal of objectively based moral values the discussion can move on. After all, it is possible to be an atheist while at the same time accepting the fact that life without a Creator is meaningless, and all that remains is experience. Of course this ultimtely leads to Nihilism and nobody wants that. So, “There are things we do for the welfare of mankind and this makes them right and wrong.”

Taken from the August 2008 issue of America’s 1st Freedom.

One must wonder how far airport security has slid, given the recent detainment of a man at London’s Heathrow Airport. Brad Jayakody was stopped from boarding for wearing a “Transformers” T-shirt showing a cartoon gun. Bradley said the guard stated, “You cannot get on the plane because there is a gun on your T-shirt.”

Thank goodness he wasn’t a Ginsu salesman!

These are quotes taken from Thomas Boston’s, Human Nature In Its Fourfold State. The excerpt in full is found on the Providence Baptist Ministries website as provided by Monergism.com.

A man may bring as many buckets of water to a house that is on fire, as he is able to carry, and yet it may be consumed, and will be so, if he bring not as many as will quench the fire. Even so, although you should do what you are able, in keeping the commandments, if you fail in the least degree of obedience which the law enjoins, you are certainly ruined forever, unless you take hold of Christ, renouncing all your righteousness as filthy rags.

Objection 1: If we be under an utter inability to do any good, how can God require us to do it? Answer: God making man upright (Eccl. 7:29), gave him a power to do everything that He should require of him; this power man lost by his own fault…Now, we having, by our own fault, disabled ourselves, shall God lose His right of requiring our task, because we have thrown away the strength He gave us whereby to perform it? Has the creditor no right to require payment of his money because the debtor had squandered it away, and is not able to pay him?

But all this is needless, seeing we are utterly unable to help ourselves out of the state of sin and wrath. Answer: Give not place to that delusion, which puts asunder what God has joined, namely, the use of means and a sense of our own impotency. If ever the Spirit of God graciously influence your souls, you will become thoroughly sensible of your absolute inability, and yet enter upon a vigorous use of means. You will do for yourselves, as if you were to do all, and yet overlook all you do, as if you had done nothing. Will you do nothing for yourselves because you cannot do all? Lay down no such impious conclusion against your own souls. Do what you can; and, it may be, while you are doing what you can for yourselves, God will do for you what you cannot.