Website Seeing

These links on the sidebar are those nonblog sites that I particular appreciate. I may add more as time goes by, and if so, I'll update this post accordingly.

I've listed some sites which deal with Christianity and culture that are definitely worth your time. Christianity Today is also a magazine, and both it and their website is good, although my main reason for listing them is because of their more academic efforts, Books and Culture and Christian History and Biography. Another excellent source (also a magazine) is First Things, which is more academic than CT. They get their title, I think, from an essay by C. S. Lewis of the same name about getting our priorities straight. Third is a purely online resource called Leadership U. They have plenty of articles on religion and culture, philosophy, science, etc.

I've also listed several sites that deal chiefly with religion and science. The Counterbalance Meta-Library has a bunch of lectures and articles by leading scientists and philosophers of science, arguing most points of view. It really is an excellent resource. Another site is Reasons to Believe, a Christian ministry. I've belonged to a local chapter of it, and they also do an excellent job. However, as I noted here, I'm very open to accepting biological evolution, while RTB does not. Nevertheless, that is pretty much the only point where they conflict with contemporary science; most of the site demonstrates how modern physics, astronomy, and cosmology not only fit within the Christian worldview, but support it, often to the exclusion of other worldviews. Two more sites, founded by RTB's own people, are God and Science and Sword and Spirit. There are a lot of good things in both places, although they also reject evolution.

Two philosophers' websites are also included. Dallas Willard is a professor at USC, and is an expert on the philosophy of Edmund Husserl, the founder of phenomenology. His site includes most of his philosophical essays. But Willard has made a name for himself in the Christian community by writing some incredibly insightful books on spirituality and Christian living (I wrote about one here), and his site also includes a large collection of his essays on these subjects as well. If you're a Christian, I can't recommend strongly enough that you get to know his writings. The other philosopher is William Lane Craig, and his site Reasonable Faith. Craig is, in my opinion, one of the top living philosophers, and his contribution to academia is primarily defending Christianity. He has participated in plenty of debates, and has written numerous articles on philosophical proofs for and against Christianity, as well as issues regarding the historical Jesus. I wrote about Craig here. Reasonable Faith is his new site, and you have to have a username and password to access much of it. If you don't want to do that, his old site (run by Leadership U) is still up, and has most of the stuff available from the new site.

Two sites that promote space exploration and getting permanent human colonies on other solar system bodies besides the earth are the Mars Society and the Moon Society. You can probably guess which bodies they have in mind. They are actually in slight conflict, since the Mars Society advocates their Mars Direct program to go directly to Mars without first setting up stations on the Moon.

This leaves us with two sites. The first is Homestar Runner. If you don't already understand why I'm linking to them, any argument would be futile. It's the source of my [former] nom de plume, Tragic Clown Dog. Actually, it was a toss-up between that and Mushy Chamberpot, but my wife nixed the latter. [Update (12 Sep.): I've since changed to simply Jim S.]

And finally, Things of Interest. I discovered this right before I started writing this blog. This guy writes all kinds of stuff, but the most interesting is his short stories. He is reminiscent, to my mind, of Fredric Brown, who I consider one of the better SF writers around in terms of short stories. I write short fiction too, and frankly I was starting to get a little impressed with myself before I read this guy's stuff.

Update (10 Mar 2008): This is late, but a few months ago I added Bede's Library, the apologetics site of James Hannam, a philosopher and historian of science. James invited me, and a few others, to join him on his blog Quodlibeta (formerly Bede's Journal), and I thought I should draw attention to his excellent website which, among other things, explodes many of the myths surrounding the alleged conflict between science and Christianity. It's divided (with some overlap) into articles on Christianity, Science, Philosophy, History, and Book Reviews. Very worthwhile.

Update (21 Mar 2010): I've added the Planetary Society and a site that provides links to nearly all of William Lane Craig's debates.

Update (5 June 2010): I've added the National Space Society.