Friday in the wild - October 21, 2005

After a week's hiatus, Friday in the Wild returns with a vengeance. Here's the stuff that made the blogosphere a better place this week.

Ryan DeBarr missed out on a visit by über-fundy David Cloud to Southern Baptist Theological Seminary:

Once again, while some of his points have a dash of truth to them, he is up to his usual game of leaving out important facts and speaking without full knowledge. However, I am encouraged to see that he is finally admitting that Southern Baptist seminaries have substantially changed.

[Read David Cloud was in town.]

Ryan points out how Cloud, in his usual hyper-separatist way, misses the forest for the trees. He criticizes the bookstore for carrying "heretics" like C. .S. Lewis, F. F. Bruce, and Kurt Aland, as though he can't reasonably expect seminary students to be able to critically evaluate what they read. He plays the "guilt by association" game by linking faculty members such as Albert Mohler to the Evangelical Theological Society and thereby to heresies such as Open Theism, but ignores Mohler's own efforts at opposing that doctrine. In short, David Cloud is representative of everything that is wrong with psycho-fundamentalism.

Cindy Swanson wants to know what we're supposed to make of Hallowe'en. Of course, it's that time of year again, and there's a lot of it going around:

As I see it, there are different ways of dealing with what has become second only to Christmas as the favorite family holiday. Some Christians think it's perfectly harmless, and joyfully enter into the fun...others decry the dark pagan roots of the holiday. Some provide alternatives like Harvest or Hallelujah parties. How do you feel?

[Read What do you do with Halloween?]

Meanwhile, over at Pros Apologian, James White just started a series on the theology of The Da Vinci Code. He began by answering the criticism that it's only a novel, and not worth the time:

You will see that the story of this book reflects Brown's own "research" on the subjects. You don't do "research" for years on material that is merely "fiction." Instead, the book is presented as fiction based on facts. The book itself begins by stating that what it says about art, architecture, and documents, is authentic. Authentic is not a synonym for "fiction." And that brings us to the key issue: no one is arguing Langdon or Teabing actually exist. They are the fictional characters. But the assertions they make, in the guise of setting the foundation for the central conspiracy theory of the book, are presented not as fiction, or mere speculations. They are presented as unquestioned historical facts.

[Read First Objection: It's Fiction, Dummy]

(BTW, readers interested in a good conspiracy theory are directed to the book Holy Blood, Holy Grail by Baigent and Leigh. But take it with a grain of salt. Incidentally, the authors are suing Dan Brown, apparently for plagiarizing their "non-fiction." Heh.)

Albert Mohler notes that today is the bicentennial of Admiral Nelson's combined defeat of the Spanish and French navies at Trafalgar. Take that, frogs.

While the Parableman blogs his search queries but he tries to help the searchers, I prefer to alternately boggle or laugh at them. Here's this weeks silliness:

• "emma watson" cleavage 2005: You mean to say you can get it by subscription now?
• Of course, "Emma Watson's phone number" continues to elude the pervies.
• But what's up with emma watson's aptitudes? You mean, like, acting?
• short skirts images: What is this, a fashion blog?

Until next week . . . enjoy!