JoshTalks.com

@jason... thanks for liking that line... in all ho...

2009-07-16T22:28:16.302-07:00

@jason... thanks for liking that line... in all honesty, i think the first half of that line was ripped from Andy Stanley :)... you would like the slow motion coffee grab...

@jay ... thanks for being a big fan...we love you guys in Columbia too ... even though the most obnoxious football coach in the world works in your town.

@Newman... hehe.. thanks man - i'm thinking there are sometimes that you don't feel that way. Do you remember last Tuesday? :)

I know you say, you love working with us (your tea...

2009-07-16T17:25:39.387-07:00

I know you say, you love working with us (your team). And you're grateful for the people doing this with you. Well I'd just like to say, I've worked with some great pastors or ministers, and I'm having the most fun working with you and the guys at Connect Rome.

i am a big, big fam of connect rome and what God h...

2009-07-16T11:23:03.108-07:00

i am a big, big fam of connect rome and what God has done and is doing in you and through you!

josh, you are the man. and your hair is out of control bro...like you! love it!

glory to God!

fantastic video josh. Loved the line, "When our f...

2009-07-16T10:56:43.367-07:00

fantastic video josh. Loved the line, "When our faith collides with God's faithfulness supernatural things happen."

Also liked the slow-mo coffee grab and drink. very dramatic. :)

What a sweet boy! I can't believe that he is one ...

2009-07-11T15:31:03.158-07:00

What a sweet boy! I can't believe that he is one already...I really would love to meet him sometime:)

My response would be thank you, thank you, thank y...

2009-06-30T23:27:18.022-07:00

My response would be thank you, thank you, thank you. Your transparency and candor makes it possible for those who struggle with the same issues to feel less isolated and connect with someone who has been there- done that. God is certainly working through you to connect people to Him, open dialogue, and restore relationships. I am seeing first hand the impact that has on an individual- changing our city for the better- one person; one relationship at a time.

Any way we can repay your investment; just let us know- Thanks, Josh.

Awesome Josh. Still praying for you every Sunday M...

2009-06-22T17:51:54.761-07:00

Awesome Josh. Still praying for you every Sunday Morning...(other times too, but specific prayers each and every sunday)

God is good.

Josh, It's Casey Graham from Mountain Lake Church ...

2009-06-22T12:10:40.012-07:00

Josh, It's Casey Graham from Mountain Lake Church in Cumming. Hope you are doing well. I am trying to connect with you via email and can't find your email address on anything. Can you email me? cgraham@thechangegroup.tv

That is one cute kid!

2009-06-17T04:11:40.804-07:00

That is one cute kid!

What a cutie pie....those are great pictures!!!!!!...

2009-06-16T20:40:37.193-07:00

What a cutie pie....those are great pictures!!!!!!What a pretty mom!!!!!

Naturalpeace1984: we're good. We were good to be...

2009-06-16T14:07:58.849-07:00

Naturalpeace1984: we're good. We were good to begin with, honestly. Your response to what I do, and how I got here, is NOT uncommon at ALL, and I'm still hoping we get good exchange out of it.

There is some merit to not putting an identity out there and letting ideas just stand as ideas. But if you do that, you've got to be good with the ideas. Throwing bombs like "dumb" and "terrible logic" is just going to hack people off and make people think you're just stirring crap to stir crap. (Cross-reference: trolling.)

Scott, sorry to keep picking on you, but: when a guy uses the name Scott Graves and then sends messages both publicly and then back-channel through e-mail or Facebook and wants to keep the convo going face-to-face, that gives them credibility and THAT BY ITSELF makes the arguments more worth addressing. I have no way to know what your purpose is behind your alias.

If you really want to know why Christians do what they do better, ask good questions. If you really want credibility, give us a reason to give it. I think Josh has shown long before now that he knows why he's doing what he's doing. I'm really wondering why YOU are doing what you are.

The light of christian faith? Christianity doesn't...

2009-06-16T11:36:24.886-07:00

The light of christian faith? Christianity doesn't shed any light. What sort of revelations does christianity have for physical law?

Naturalpeace: I think it's a wierd request to ask...

2009-06-16T10:29:24.617-07:00

Naturalpeace:

I think it's a wierd request to ask someone to prove they know why they lead a church. First of all, it's immaterial because what a person believes is independant of reality. Even if Josh were to supply you with a reason, it would only be his prespective and not a demonstration of fact.

If Josh we're to say, "because I feel like it, gosh" in his best Napolean Dynamite voice it would be sufficient to establish that he has a reason for doing what he's doing. It also wouldn't advance the discussion one bit.

Josh- Natural Peace (how is that accurate?) clear...

2009-06-16T06:50:44.987-07:00

Josh-

Natural Peace (how is that accurate?) clearly does not understand how ferocious you can be. How, at the drop of a hat, you will challenge one to take it outside for a scary round of thumb war, or worse, paper, rock and scissors.

Settle down, NP. Regardless of the words you spew, the attention will stay on Jesus.

So, nana, nana, boo boo.

Love,
Josh's Big Sis

@naturalpeace1984 You are no less anonymous w/ yo...

2009-06-16T06:32:37.575-07:00

@naturalpeace1984

You are no less anonymous w/ your latest comment.
But i'll respond. Obviously, you don't want to be known. There's a reason for that. My guess is you'd be a lot less bold if you were responding with your real name. My real issue with your last comment was not that we disagree. My issue is that you were disrespectful to chuck.

Ask Scott Graves. We disagree about most things (other than our love for our family), but we disagree respectfully.

I have no desire to make you look bad. Or talk bad about you. I don't even know who you are because you've chosen not to be known.

I'd respond to your statement "How about you prove you know why you lead a church?'... but i'm not sure what you are hinting at???

I'd love to continue this conversation, preferably in person.

Let's chat sometime... my email is joshtalks@me.com.

Yeah, Scott, we're into full-on meta territory now...

2009-06-16T04:21:33.512-07:00

Yeah, Scott, we're into full-on meta territory now. You're getting into Steven Jay Gould nonoverlapping-magesteria and all that - not necessarily that take precisely, but the territory that the concept was generated to address. I don't believe in keeping my science and my faith totally separate, but I believe that it's possible to do relevant and rigorous science in the light of Christian faith, rather than putting that faith in a box and only letting it out on Sunday.

Stay tuned. We'll figure out how to trade ideas In Real Life. With food, preferably.

Why do you think i'm a scaredy cat because I won't...

2009-06-15T22:31:47.899-07:00

Why do you think i'm a scaredy cat because I won't tell you my name? Do you need to know my name for a decent rebuttal? Or is it because if you know who I am, you will then be able to tell your friends how dumb and cowardly I am and just make me look bad instead of proving your theory on why your religion has it right? Don't be so defensive, Im just leaving a simple comment. I should have re-phrased my last comment to be a little less rude towards Dr Chuck; i'm sorry. How about addressing the subject instead of my alias. How about you prove you know why you lead a church.

Let me first say that I'd prefer to continue this ...

2009-06-15T21:23:58.712-07:00

Let me first say that I'd prefer to continue this conversation in person. This is a poor forum for exchange of ideas.

Dr. Pearson, you are not the first christian I've ever met with advanced scientific training. Indeed, I've met christians in all walks of life and levels of intelligence and education.

It's completely unsuprising to me considering the Pakistanis and (soon) the Iranians have the bomb. They do all this phyisics while laboring under the weight of thier Islamic superstitions. Clearly, you can go through the motions of the scientific method and get great results while accepting all manner of bizarre metaphysics. If you had to be an atheist to do proper science, we'd have never had a Newton or even a Darwin (for he was just as christian as the village vicar when he first set foot on the Beagle). It would have been impossible for science to lift us above superstition if you already had to be free of it to start with.

It would be just as possible for me to go into a church and go through the motions of eucharist and prayer. I think i'd be more capable than most at converting people because I have a better understanding of how it works.

But, if I were to do so I'd be living a lie. On the one hand I'd be extolling the virtues of religion and on the other i'd privately know that it's a huge flim-flam.

Scientists who practice science at work and then abandon all scientific princples in the church and the bible study group are living a similar lie. On the one hand, the scientific method does not allow us to go beyond the evidence in our claims to truth and on the other religion lauds accepting groundless claims (ie faith). These are two completely separate and diameterically opposed epistemologies that lay claim to the same ground of truth. It's plain intellectually dishonest.

Superstition may not deny a person access to the mechanics of scientific discovery, but it does deny one an appreciation of the stark, austre beauty of the universe as it is and not how we wish it to be.

I don't say these things to be provocative or disrespectful, it's just the world as I see it.

There is a way to turn them off, if they bug you t...

2009-06-15T20:54:45.476-07:00

There is a way to turn them off, if they bug you that much.

But I'm still on about what I said on Facebook: anonymous no, pseudonymous yes. A pseudonym is still an identity. A pseudonym can still build credibility, can still be useful critique. When I had the full-on blog and ran the comments, some of the best thinkers I got were from the folk I didn't know from Adam, and you ALWAYS want the thinkers. I don't get my theology in line without the thinkers, I don't see my blind spots and my stupid spots without the thinkers.

Full disclosure: Josh tipped me off to the anonym...

2009-06-15T20:42:28.782-07:00

Full disclosure: Josh tipped me off to the anonymous comment before it came up. I don't think he was totally keen on posting it (in fact, given his ruffled fur on the latest post, I'm pretty confident he wasn't keen on posting it). I'm cool with it because I'm pretty sure that wasn't an uncommon response to reading that (oh, look at the fundie who is doing science for Jesus and is everything wrong with how science gets done) and it's worth a fire-back.

So, responses:

To both Scott and anon-guy: Of COURSE being snubbed by people is a lousy reason to make a faith decision of any sort. Please note that going in, for very different reasons, I was going to get very serious about making the opposite faith decision because bible-belters where I grew up were stupid. If different groups had done the snubbing during that first year, the story would have come out very differently. My brain is STILL churning over that. I don't have that one fully answered yet, and it's 20 years on.

And again: please note what question I answered. The acceptance and the grace shown to me was NOT the reason I accepted the story of Christ. That's only what got me in the door. Dealing with Jesus - and I don't mean just saying "oh, hooray, God must be real!" but actually confronting the absolutely ludicrous idea that this person was once dead and then came back to life - was another issue entirely, and if I'd been dependent on other people for that knowledge, once those people were gone I would have found some other group of cool kids with cool takes. Honestly, the whole irony of the story was how hard it is to find Christians who ARE friendly, no matter how much they "have to be" - and trust me when I say I've watched way more people walk away from Jesus because the Christians are jerks than I have encountered people who genuinely were impacted by the kindness of the bible-belts. Mine's a pretty rare story, truth be told.

But how I dealt with Jesus is another post entirely.

Anon-guy: Christians do rigorous science. The media storyline talks tons about the evangelicals who walk away from scientific life because they can't make their faith fit around it and how absolutely incompatible the two are. Honestly, that's what I expected going into grad school. I got hit over the head with the clue stick on that one, repeatedly. Not only did I find way more Christians than I *ever* expected, but tenured faculty doing serious work at every level, getting the publications out, advancing the basic research and the public good. Yeah, there was some bickering over origins, but evolution is the dominant paradigm in the sciences *for a reason*. Again: there was a ton to work out in how to put the two together and make sense of them. Different post, but probably a question that needs to be answered. Quick summary: I love intelligent design theory, I want to see an intelligent design theory that works, right now there just isn't one and the modern evolutionary synthesis is the winner and still-for-150-years-champ in the scientific debate, and yet I still believe that there's another answer out there to be had.

Scott: Genesh, hrm? I admit that I don't know much about Hindu deities, which of course leads me to expected appearance critique. Elephant head? Seriously?

(For the uninitiated: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ganesha )

That didn't answer every question, I know, but I actually want to sift through more of this territory in future things I fire to Josh. I'm on Facebook. Anon-guy especially, don't hesitate to send the message that way and follow up. I don't just like this sort of conversation, I need it to keep me in check.

Dr. Pearson: Being snubbed by some people is a ve...

2009-06-15T19:13:23.268-07:00

Dr. Pearson:

Being snubbed by some people is a very poor reason to stop being a free thinker. Accepting the world as it is is not about joining a club, it's about intellectual honesty and having an inextinguishable love for the truth. It's about following the evidence where it leads and not living your life by what "feels right".

I'd also suggest that subjective "experiences" of a relationship with Jesus is a poor source of evidence for the existance of Jesus. Genesh is just as real to some people for the same reason. I'm sure you'd not accept subjective experience as evidence for the existance of Genesh.

So let me get this straight: You were a very brigh...

2009-06-15T13:22:10.864-07:00

So let me get this straight: You were a very bright science major that couldn't find friends at regular fraternities, and since the bible-belts were friendly because they "have to be", you decided that they were right and that God is real. Trying to fit in did not work out like it was suppose to. So you went to the place where all the goody goody kids like everyone because thats what someone wrote in the Bible that Jesus said to do or they might not get into Heaven. Sounds like terrible logic to me. There is a reason that you once doubted God. Big, omniscient, and free-will granting space-God that that isn't in space or the clouds, but just somewhere out there. Or better yet, he lives in our hearts. You should be nice because it's the right way to act, and you should help humanity because that's what will help progress civilization and create a better world for us. THAT makes sense, without adding some crazy prehistoric belief that holds science back. Do work, Doc.

Josh...excited to see your church growing and maki...

2009-06-12T10:09:48.544-07:00

Josh...excited to see your church growing and making bold moves.

Cheering for you and the unchurched in Rome and beyond!

Great leadership!

Those kinds of series are always good. They tend t...

2009-06-12T09:38:35.141-07:00

Those kinds of series are always good. They tend to connect really well with people.

Thanks Dr. Pearson for sharing. Good Read.

2009-06-11T19:12:17.762-07:00

Thanks Dr. Pearson for sharing. Good Read.