The Great Debate


Atheism vs. Theism is back in the news. This is probably prompted by the recent books "God Delusion" by Richard Dawkins and "Letters to a Christian Nation" by Sam Harris.

Christianity today has a series of articles here. It is a conversation between Christopher Hitchens and Douglas Wilson. I have heard of Hitchens before - he's kinda cranky - a libertarian who would be good as Bill Maher's best friend. I have never heard of Wilson before but he seems to do a good job of responding to Hitchens.

The second entry of "the great debate" was last night on Nightline. Child actor Kirk Cameron from Growing Pains is now an evangelist, with a guy named Roy Comfort. They debated the founders of the blasphemy challenge. This is a challenge for atheists to publicly deny the existence of the Holy Spirit - spurred on by the Bible's admonition that whoever blasphemes the Holy Spirit will not be saved.

The atheists looked like Wiccans, and descended into mockery fairly quickly in the debate. I don't think anyone won the debate last night, but I was glad it was on tv.

School's going well - It's actually not that difficult, but does require careful listening and completing the work. It's nice being so close to home - I can come home at lunch eat something and wrestle around with Adam.

I became a volunteer at the Roundhouse today - should be fun.

I thought I had my regular interns meeting tonight, out in Surrey. I jumped on the skytrain - 3 stops down there was a fire or something on the tracks - we all had to get down and I was smelling the most foul smoke smell I had ever smelled. - it reminded me of when I was in heavy polluted traffic in Mumbai.

As I got off on the platform, I checked my voice-mail and I was reminded that there was NO INTERNS meeting tonight. So I crossed the tracks and headed home.

What is it with me and the skytrain? Dead bodies, fires....

Comments

Anonymous said…
I think there are a few of us pastor types who have to fill in the blanks as ESL teachers.

After I graduated from Regent I applied at quite a few schools, took a while for one to bite (even thought I taught in Japan and had the degrees and the certificate.) But I've been there 3 years and it's been pretty good.

Anyway, if you ever have any questions about the business or decent schools to apply to, I'd be happy to share what I know.

Say hello to your lovely family!

cheers, joèl amzil
2:04 PM
Anonymous said…
I have to underline Joel's offer - if you are going to teach overseas you need to have someone on the inside to give you good info about the school you are going to and the organization you are going with. The experiences I had with Chinese, Japanese and South Korean universities were very positive and I believe it was because I knew people in the area that gave the thumbs up to the schools and a warning of what to watch for.

Promises can change drastically from one side of the ocean to the other so it is best to have somebody on the inside (if possible).

Migwec
Jeff

PS see you next week Santosh!!
3:42 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Whine and Geez

Image
Last night we hosted a wine and cheese party for our floor. Out of the 11 other people that live on our floor, 5 came over. It was really fun. We had 3 kinds of cheese, crackers, red wnd white wine, baklava, fruit and other goodies. It was really great getting to know some of the folks on our floor. We have always talked about doing it so it was nice to finally pull it off. One of our neigbours is a concierge at the 4 seasons. She said one of the oddest guest requests was a guest from Texas who wanted 100 A&W ketchup packets. He said he really liked their ketchup - I guess. Finished " Joyful Exiles " so unfortunately no more excerts for you - buy the book. Have moved on to " A Grief Observed " by C.S. Lewis . This might seem like an odd choice - I'm not really grieving the death of anyone or anything like that. I just have a personal goal of reading everything Lewis wrote. In the past few weeks I've finished Miracles and Mere Christianity (sorry - I got
Read more

Coaster goes up (a little)

Image
Unused photo from the Globe and Mail shoot. So, last night and all day today I was on the top floor of the Hyatt Regency Hotel in downtown Vancouver. Quite auspicious surroundings for church council/pastors meetings! there were stunning views of the North Shore mountains, Stanley Park and the downtown buildings. The meetings were lengthy, exhausting and a lot of work. Basically, FBC has been on a year long journey of crafting its vision statement and core values - we did it with the assistance of a coach from Outreach Canada. We are coming down the home stretch and needed to hammer out everything for presentation to the congregation. Today was the first day that I have begun to feel lighter and ready to resume the work. Although still feeling wounded from this whole mess, I'm ready to limp on. It's true: Sunday,Monday - elation at finally reaching a goal of holding a first@night service in a trendy nightclub - excitement at getting press coverage - even thoug
Read more

Christmas in Vancouver

As you can see I've been fooling around with different templates, fonts, colours, etc. I like this one - Carla was using it, so I've followed her lead. The font appears small - I've enlarged it on this post. By the way - I've lost my site counter!!! When I made the template shift, it disappeared. I have had a difficult time adding a new one. this is a bit frustrating as I like to see how many people are reading this thing. Any techies out there able to help me out? Anyways - had another does of Christmas in Vancouver. Went on the bright lights train in Stanley Park. This was actually pretty good. The train goes for about 15 minutes through a well decorated part of the Park. There were a few odd images - along with Santa, snowmen and a nativity scene, there were also native americans and a leprechaun. The train took a turn into Bizarro world, when a dancing cowgirl on stilts came out and did a little jig. This was a real live person on stilts dancing around. I was wonde
Read more