The Hard Questions Faced

My wife and I just started a new life group (aka small group, aka bible study) at our house and are very excited about the topic we will be discussing. We wanted a topic that would interest anybody that might come, whether a christian or not, so we decided to study the hard questions against the christian faith. We will be using Letters From a Skeptic by Gregory Boyd as a guide to our study and a help when we may become stumped. This book was read by my wife and I almost two years ago and we thoroughly enjoyed it. It is a collection of letters written back and forth between a father (the skeptic) and son (the apologist) about the father's objections against christianity.

I hope to be posting a summary of our discussions, or at least my opinions on the topics, and hope that you will enjoy following along. I welcome your comments and questions and will try to answer them as best I can. Here we go...

Pictures from Caleb's Birth

Book Review: The End of Reason

The End of Reason: A Response to the New Atheists by Ravi K. Zacharias

My review

rating: 5 of 5 stars
I thoroughly enjoyed this book! Ravi Zacharias writes a magnificent response to Sam Harris' scathing attack on religion, especially Christianity in his two books, "The End of Faith" and "Letter to a Christian Nation." Ravi clearly and definitively reveals the holes in Sam's logic and shows us where following his type of thinking has lead us before and will lead us again. He also does a great job of defending the reasonableness of the Christian faith as well as showing us the hope that it offers. I highly recommend this book to anyone who has been exposed to Harris' writings or talks along with anybody who is generally interested in the science vs. faith debate.


View all my reviews.

Book Review: The Mystery of Marriage

The Mystery of Marriage 20th Anniversary Edition: Meditations on the Miracle by Mike Mason

My review

rating: 5 of 5 stars
I thoroughly enjoyed this book! Mike writes this more as a meditative journal entry than a how-to book. He explores all of the wonderful mysteries of marriage and how they compare to the mysteries of knowing and being united with Jesus. I was especially intrigued by his chapters on "Death" and "Oneness". I would highly recommend this book to anyone who is married or considering marriage. It's a great tool to inspire meditation and reflection.


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Ben Stein Interview about Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed

This is an interview of Ben Stein by R.C. Sproul on his new movie, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, about how intelligent design theory is being suppressed in academia.

You can view the trailer for this movie here.

I for one can't wait to see this movie!

Baby's First Pictures

We just had our first ultrasound of baby! Doesn't baby look cute? You can see in the first picture that baby is waving to mommy and daddy.
(I still can't believe that I'm going to be a daddy!) Here's a shot of baby's big brain:
We decided not to find out the sex of our baby. We think it will be cool to be surprised at the birth. We're about half way through the pregnancy now and it sure did fly by! Baby will be here before we know it!

It was really cool seeing baby moving around inside there!

I'm Gonna Be a Daddy!

So I'm gonna be a daddy! We got pregnant in October and we are due around July 23rd. It's pretty crazy to think that I'm going to be in charge of another life! I'm going to be in charge of nurturing, protecting, and teaching another person. I will have a major influence on this person's life. I can influence their self esteem and identity and purpose. I will even influence what their likes and dislikes are such as what their favorite sport is and where they like to vacation. I will also affect their beliefs about life. I pray that God will help me to make all the right decisions and be the best father that I can be.

I am very excited about all of this as well! I'm looking forward to pouring out my love on this new person. I think I will enjoy protecting and caring for them. I want to share everything that I have learned in life with this person so that they can do even better in life than I have. I also can't wait to share good times with them doing various activities such as biking, backpacking, traveling, playing sports, etc. I also feel that it will be a privilege to introduce my child to my God.

I can't wait to meet this new person!

Scroggles!

My friend Theo (mathematician, philosophizer, programmer, Christian, blogger, pontificator) recently created his own website for blogging, journaling, ... etc. He invited me to join his blogging community and I thought it sounded like a fun opportunity to blog with people I know who also enjoy blogging. It will be cool to read their blogs and have them read mine as well.

I started a blog on his site called jason in real life. On this blog I mostly write down my thoughts on health, politics, news, religion, and other real life topics. I'm also co-blogging on a blog there about with a theme of science and creationism.

Don't worry, I plan to continue to blog on this website as well. I think I will mainly blog about more personal stuff on this site, but who knows. I could mix it up a little bit.

I hope you enjoy my new blogs! And be sure to check out the other scrogglers while you are there as well.

the wife doctor

I just wanted to share how proud I am of my amazing wife! On May 11th 2007 she graduated with her PhD in Chemistry! I have no idea how she was able to put up with 5 years of grad school, do research, write a dissertation on her research, and then defend it in front of 5 other doctors in chemistry. I am truly awestruck. She has amazing dedication and a very hard work ethic. She is incapable of giving up, even when up against the most difficult of challenges. And she did have many challenges during her career as a grad student, some of them very great. One of the HUGE ones was after developing a new chemical and doing more research on it for over a year, she discovered that the chemical wasn't actually what they thought it was and she had lost all that time spent on researching with it. She amazingly recovered from that blow only to be hit hard by another one. Her advisor's husband got a new job for the Northwest Renewable Energy Lab, so they had to move to Washington state!.... Which meant that Kendra was pressured to finish up her degree faster than she would have (it normally takes 6 years) and her advisor was thousands of miles away, not very convenient. Kendra was able to carry on in spite of this blow to her productivity and finish her degree a year early!



I did get to go to her defense and watch and support her. Her thesis was on something about Synthesizing Nickel(I) and Nickel(II) Diphosphines... whatever that means. Actually, I did understand a fraction of her dissertation because she practiced her defense for me several times. I was very impressed that she had any clue what she was talking about though. Most of it was a different language to me. She had lots of impressive diagrams of molecules as well. AND she didn't seem nervous at all while she was presenting. She did a very professional and excellent job of presenting her defense. She also handled the questions that I got to watch with grace and class.



Well, as you can tell, I am very proud of my wife. I also think it is very cool that I get to call her doctor now. I think she might be the first doctor in both of our families! I better go get my PhD now so she doesn't show me up... actually, I kinda like being out-ranked and out-educated by my spouse. :-)

Praise God for giving me such a smart wife and for helping her to get through her grad school experience successfully.

bonehead

I made a bonehead move last friday night. I was on my way home from work with my road bike on top of my car and I forgot it was on there and drove into my garage. I even remembered my bike was on top when I pulled into my parking lot, but by the time I reached my garage I had totally forgotten. The collision caused my bike rack's front bar to get knocked off of the car and twisted the bike rack's tray. The tray also got pushed into the roof of the car and scratched Kendra's car pretty bad. My bike fared pretty well, considering. The bike seat was broken off of its rails and my handlebars were a little scratched. That's all I've found so far. Hopefully there isn't any hidden structural damage to my frame. I was able to put the bike rack back onto the car and I think it will still work. There didn't appear to be any major damage to the car where the rack attaches. I felt like a huge bonehead and loser after this happened. However, Kendra got home shortly after this happened and reassured me that I wasn't a bonehead or a loser. She is wonderful. My bike is out of commission for a little while until I can get a new seat. Huge bummer. I guess I'll have to ride my mountain bike in the mean time. At least it's not as bad as it could have been.

TV 'a la carte'?

This article in BusinessWeek talks about how many consumer groups want to see 'a la carte' cable programming available to consumers. If this became a reality, cable customers could purchase only the exact channels that they want to come into their household.



I think this is a great idea and should be implemented by the cable companies. I do not currently pay for any cable because I feel that most TV watching is a waste of my time and a cluttering of my time as well as being fairly expensive. There are a few things that I miss not being able to watch on TV in my house such as Football, Baseball, and Cycling. If cable channels were available 'a la carte' I think I would pay to recieve ESPN, Fox Sports, OLN, and possibly Fox, ABC, CBS, and UPN because they carry football and baseball, but I might decide to not get them because the rest of their content leaves much to be desired.



What do you think?

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The Post

As you know, I work for Ball Aerospace in Boulder, but recently that changed. I now work for Ball Aerospace in Broomfield. They just moved me down to their south campus! This move has both some benefits and some disadvantages.



Benefits: They moved our whole team down here and we are in one large room together so we can all talk to each other easily when we need help or input or just want to talk. I also enjoy the rubber band fights that ensue every now and then. My cubical is an upgrade from my last one (more desk space). There is a sweet cafeteria in Broomfield with cheap food (including breakfast burritos) and 50 cent coffee. The building is a lot newer and nicer and doesn't have asbestos in it like our old one. AND our new building has showers and lockers in the bathroom which is excellent for running and biking at lunch or biking to work. We also have a sweet filter for drinking water that also puts out HOT drinking water. And my awesome friend Derrick sits right next to me and we can talk through the cube partition and shoot rubberbands at each other off the ceiling tiles.



Disadvantages: Location (the drive takes about the same amount of time, but the distance is further so biking to work is a larger task). With this cubicle furniture I have to stare into the corner and face my back to the entrance. I also have a large structural post in the middle of my cube.



Since there is a large post in my cube, I think I should probably name it. Any suggestions?

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Being Married Rules!

So, I got married on October 8th to the most amazing girl in the world! (That's one reason why I haven't been blogging much lately.) The wedding was wonderful, I had a great time and everything turned out great. A few things didn't go as planned, but they were only minor things that nobody noticed but us. One bummer was the cold weather, but we didn't let it bother us much. We still put the top down in our convertible car that took us from the church to the reception.

The reception was great. We had a good dinner and a great party with a good band and dancing. It was a lot of fun, but flew by way too fast. We didn't even get to say hi to everybody we wanted to. I really want to thank all our wonderful friends though that helped us make everything happen and supported us through it all. My best man gave a great toast and all the groomsmen were a huge help. The maid of honor also gave a great toast via CD. I also want to thank our parents for supporting us and helping to make everything happen and helping us to survive our lives up to this point. Also, our photographers did an amazing job. Click on these pictures to see their website and our pictures.



Married life is amazing! It is wonderful to be able to live with the person I am most fond of and not have to say goodbye every night. It is also great just living life together and supporting each other. I love making dinner and breakfast for Kendra and really love the lunches she makes for me. It has also been awesome getting our house all put together and fixed up the way we want it. I'm looking forward to the rest of our lives together!

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I'm an uncle!

Nathaniel, our new nephew

As soon as I married Kendra, I became an uncle for the very first time. Crazy! Isn't he cute?

Our Honeymoon in Hawaii

honeymoon