Money can't buy happiness or security

But it can buy you a bike and a bike lock! I'm quite excited, I have 2 wheels again. My walk from college to tyndale is usually 50 minutes round trip, so this will save a LOT of time!
Peace,
Chris

Getting settled

We had worship this afternoon here at Tyndale, a rousing talk about Jeremiah. I've devised a potential schedule for myself, so all in all things are going okay. Today I go to an OT paper class today. We'll see how things go, one day at a time and all that rot.
Peace,
Chris

In Cambridge

Sorry I haven't written for a while. I'm in Cambridge, living above a library, chilling with bright people from all around the globe, and I haven't been on a computer that allows Blogger's Word Verification in a while. Let's see if I can catch my readers up?
I forgot my Student Visa so Home office detained me at Heathrow and then sent me to Chicago.
I made it to England a bit late. I stayed at St. Mark's for a few days. I moved into Tyndale House and have checked out my desk there. I went to St. Ed's matriculation ceremony, which included me dressing up in a college gown, a posh meal, and good company.
Today I went to a URC church and tonight will go to a quiz night put on by St. Ed's. And tomorrow the studying begins!
Peace,
Chris

I'm healthy as a horse, fit as a fiddle, and off to England!

I went to my heart Check-up today. I'm doing well. They said "get out of here kid, this place is for the sick."
Also, here are the two places I might live. 28 Histon Road, or Tyndale House.
I chose Tyndale.
Peace,
Chris

Heart Check-up today

I'm having my heart check-up at the Mayo Clinic here in Rochester in an hour or so. Thoughts and prayers would be appriciated.
Peace,
Chris

Check out the Church Website back in the UK

Now that the URC back in Saffron Walden has a pastor they also have updated their website. It looks really nice!
Peace,
Chris

Torture, don't do it!

I've been thinking a bit about torture. On one hand Sam Harris author of "The End of Faith" makes an argument that torturing religious folk is acceptable, as they are fanatics and you have to measure the common good versus individual human rights and realize fanatics with nukes should be tortured to get information that will save many lives. He compares torture to war and points out that war is much worse. That said he has a whole section about how torture during the inquisition got a lot of false witches and was one of the worst things to happen in history. So is seems to Sam torture by religious folks is bad, torture of religious folks is good. Obviously this position doesn't seem right to me by any stretch of the imagination. On the other hand there is this Ivin's column. It makes me want to do some sort of civil disobedience, but I don't know if I have time to as I'm traveling all over, doing a heart checkup, and flying out of the country in a couple of days. Also I am not familiar enough with all the positions out there, specifically I am very annoyed with my party because they're views on torture don't seem to be getting the same kind of press that the McCain/Bush bash is. Any thoughts on torture would be appreciated. Peace, Chris

A joke for the times we live in

So Jesus and Moses walk into a bar. They take a moment to look around. After a moment they look at each other and breathe a sigh of relief. Moses looks at Jesus and says, ‘Thank God that Mohammad isn’t here. This joke could have led to riots.’

Admitted!!!

So, I am no longer "accepted" in the M. Phil. program at Cambridge, instead I am admitted. Practically speaking what that seems to mean is that I can now look into getting a place to live at St. Ed’s itself!
Oh, and for those trying to track where in the world Chris Halverson is, I am currently at Thief River Falls Minnesota. I went to a family reunion today. Good fun. Everyone kept commenting on what nice hair I have. I couldn’t figure out why that was, so I asked my mom. She reminded me that the last time any of the these people had seen my I was in my "dreadlocks stage." Apparently wavy fluffy blond hair is more attractive to little old Scandinavian ladies than gnarled up grey-blond dreads "set" with yogurt. Who knew?
Peace,
Chris

A friend's boyfriend's blog

I vaguely remember a quote from spaceballs:
"I'm your aunts, cousins, father's sister's uncle."
"What does that make us?"
"Nothing"
Then he throws him out of the spaceship.
Not so with Alex though, he's a good guy, check out his blog.
Peace,
Chris

The USSR vs. Islamo-facism

I think this comic does a good job pointing out that the Soviets were not always that rational/deterable etc, and also were a far greater threat than the current folk who are after us.
I read "The End of Faith" and "The Twilight of Atheism" recently. Both of them made me realize how frightening the USSR really was. TTOA says that 100,000,000 people were killed by the USSR. Sometimes we forget how atypical life in America is.
Peace,
Chris

"I want to bring to the attention of the British people that Dr. Brydon won't be returning to India this time."

Ayman al-Zawahiri is no Monty Python, but one has to admit, if what he was talking about wasn't the killing of British soldiers, it would be a rather funny statement.
Peace,
Chris

I now have permission to post about the wedding

And... all I can say off hand is that those two were obviously meant to be together. Congrats guys!
Peace,
Chris

The Temple of Reason

This Sam Harris fellow seems to be an Enlightenment junky, both in the Buddhist sense, and more to the point, in the sense of the historical time period by the same name. This means he is a Modernist of sorts. He views religion as, a dangerous thing filled with irrational absolutes that get in the way of the common good and tolerance, the single most divisive thing in existence, and consequently the major cause of suffering in the world.
To maintain these claims Mr. Harris paints religion with a very broad brush. He tends to define religion on one hand very stereotypically- for example, the threat of hell is the only motivator that forces believers to act morally- and on the other hand very generally- really each time he says religion he should be saying ideology.
He also assumes that at base religion is nothing more than experience (which one must admit is no small thing). He is obviously influenced by Varieties of Religious Experience a book that compiled a lot of different examples of religious experience. In fact, some who follow this line of thought believe that they have found the part of the brain that only needs to be stimulated and a religious experience will occur.
As a sort of side note this line of thinking about religious experience, specifically the universality of religious experience and mysticism, is one of the issues that bible literalists are dealing with when they rely on the infallibility of the text. After all if Christian mystics and Muslim mystics are having the same experiences then it is of paramount importance to establish what is actually from God and what is simply a phenomenon. Their solution is Biblicism.
While Harris’ stated goal is a world where everyone is tolerant, since religion is the main obstacle to tolerance, he seems rather intolerant himself (which he would freely admit). At one point he suggests that fundamentalists should be undercut at all costs, even forcing moderates (in this case Muslims) to go to war against them. He’s saying his utopian atheist world is desirable at pretty much any cost, including inciting civil war. That seems to me to be an irrational absolute.
Being a pre-modern post-critical moderate evangelical Lutheran I can’t agree with Harris. Being pre-modern I believe that myth (properly defined) isn’t a bad thing, narrative is, if nothing else, a more soulful way to express truth than Harris’ cold science. Being post-critical I must concede that Harris is reacting to the realities of a post-9/11 world and attempting to combat what he perceives as the latent cause of those terrorist acts and prevent even more deadly attacks, for that I laud him. Being post-critical I must also affirm that Harris is failing to understand the complexity of faith, the worldview of the believer, and that his stereotypes are little more than paper tigers burnt only to illumine his views, for that I shame him. Being moderate and Lutheran I am horrified by his callous disregard for human life as exemplified by his advocacy of civil war in the Muslim world. Being an Evangelical I feel, to quote Jim Wallis, "the proper way to combat bad theology is good theology, not no theology."
At the end of the day Mr. Harris is pointing out the fact that religion is awful, in the truest sense of the word. It is powerful, it is awe inspiring, it can make a man strap explosives and nuclear fissile material to his chest and blow himself up in a crowded place, or give up all his possessions and feed the hungry.

Where my parents are right now

So my parents are barreling through Canada. They just stopped at the Worlds Largest Mall (see pics above).
Peace,
Chris