What do I need to add to my list of ‘books to read’? (list below)

Books I Want To Read

Fiction

1984 – Orwell
A Clockwork Orange – Anthony Burgess
Alas, Babylon – Pat Frank
Animal Farm – George Orwell
At the Mountains of Madness – Lovecraft
The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
The Brothers Karamazov – Dostoyevsky
Contact – Carl Sagan
The Crucible – Arthur Miller
The Death of Ivan Ilyich – Tolstoy
Dhalgren –  Samuel Delany
The Divine Comedy – Dante
Don Quixote – Miguel de Cervantes
Dune – Frank Herbert
The Engines of God – Jack McDevitt
Faust – Goethe
Fear and Trembling – Kierkegaard
Frankenstein – Mary Shelly
Galapagos – Kurt Vonnegut
Gateway – Frederik Pohl
A Good Man Is Hard to Find – Flannery O’Connor
Great Expectations – Dickens
Hamlet – Shakespeare
Infinite Jest – David Foster Wallace
King Lear – Shakespeare
Leaves of Grass – Walt Whitman
Light in August – Faulkner
Lolita – Nabakov
The Luzhin Defense – Nabakov
The Man in the High Castle – Philip K. Dick
The Master and Margarita – Bulgakov
Les Miserables – Victor Hugo
Moby Dick – Melville
The Name of the Rose – Umberto Eco
Nausea – Sartre
The Odyssey – Homer
The Old Man and the Sea – Hemingway
One Day in the LIfe of Ivan Denisovich – Solzhenitsyn
Pale Fire – Nabakov
Paradise Lost – Milton
The Pillars of the Earth – Ken Follett
The Plague – Camus
The Portrait of a Lady – Henry James
Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
Rainbow’s End – Vernor Vinge
Ubik – Philip K. Dick
The Rama Series – Arthur C. Clarke
The Road – McCarthy
The Sirens of Titan – Vonnegut
Slaughterhouse-Five – Vonnegut
Song of Kali – Dan SImmons
The Sorrows of Young Werther – Goethe
The Sparrow – Mary Doria Russell
Thus Spoke Zarathustra – Nietzsche
The Stranger – Camus
Stranger In A Strange Land – Heinlein
A Tale of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
The Trial – Kafka
The Turn of the Screw – Henry James
Watership Down – Richard Adams
Wizard – John Varley

Non-Fiction
[“(VSI)” indicates that the book is part of Oxford Press’ “Very Short Introduction” series.]

After Religion – Vattimo
After Theory – Terry Eagleton
Authentic Happiness – Seligman
Beyond Good and Evil – Nietzsche
Beyond the Pleasure Principle – Freud
The Birth of Tragedy – Nietzsche
Blink – Malcolm Gladwell
The Brain (VSI)
A Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
A Brief History of Time – Stephen Hawking
A Brief History of Western Philosophy – Robert Solomon
Christ – Jack Miles
Christian Spirituality – Alilster McGrath
Civilization and its Discontents – Freud
Confessions – St. Augustine
Consciousness Explained – Dennett
Critique of Religion and Philosophy – Walter Kaufmann
De Anima – Aristotle
The Death of God and the Meaning of Life – Julian Young
Desire – William B. Irvine
The Ego and the Id – Freud
Either/Or – Kierkegaard
The Elements of Style – Strunk and White
Enchiridion – Epictetus
Existentialism, from Dostoyevsky to Sartre – Kaufmann
Existentialism is a Humanism – Sartre
Finite and Infinite Games – James P. Carse
Flow – Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Freedom Evolves – Dennett
Freud and Beyond, a history of psychoanalysis – Mitchell and Black
God – Etienne Gilson
God, a biography – Jack Miles
The God We Never Knew – Marcus Borg
Godel Escher Bach – Hofstader
The Good Life – William B. Irvine
Greek Mythology – Edith Hamilton
Hegel – (Solomon or Kaufmann or Singer)
A History of Christian Thought – Paul Tillich
A History of Christianity – Paul Johnson
A History of Western Philosophy – Bertrand Russell
I Am A Strange Loop – Douglas Hofstader
I and Thou – Martin Buber
Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis – Freud
Jesus, a biography – Paul Johnson
Jesus Through Middle-Eastern Eyes – Bailey
The Koran
Man and His Symbols – Carl Jung
Man’s Search for Meaning – Victor Frankl
The Many Faces of Realism – Putnam
Mathematics (VSI)
Meditations – Marcus Aurelius
Metaphysics and the Idea of God – Pannenberg
Modern Philosophy – Roger Scruton
Modernism – Christopher Butler
Naming and Necessity – Kripke
A New History of Western Philosophy – Anthony Kenny
New Seeds of Contemplation – Thomas Merton
On Belief – Zizek
On Writing – Stephen King
Paul – N.T. Wright
A People’s History of the World
Philosophical Investigations – Wittgenstein
Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature – Rorty
The Philosophy of Science (VSI)
Postmodern Theory – Best and Kellner
Pragmatism – William James
The Pragmatism Reader – Talisse and Aikin
Principles of Mathematical Philosophy – Russell
Psychology (VSI)
Quantum Physics (VSI)
Rapt – Gallagher
Reading the Bible Again for the First Time – Marcus Borg
The Resurrection of the Son of God – N.T. Wright
The Right to Write − Cameron
The Secular Age – Charles Taylor
The Singularity Is Near – Ray Kurzweil
Sources of Self – Taylor
Spirituality for Skeptics – Robert Solomon
The Story of Christian Theology – Roger E. Olson
The Story of Thought – Bryan Magee
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions – Thomas Kuhn
Stumbling on Happiness – Daniel Goldman
The Symbolism of Evil – Paul Ricoeur
Tao Te Ching – Lao Tsu
Truth and Method – Gadamer
The Unity of Knowledge – E. O. Wilson
Varieties of Religious Experience – William James
The View from Nowhere – Nagel
Walden – Thoreau
The World as Will and Representation – Schopenhauer
Your Memory – Kenneth Higbee

Painfully funny…

I’m currently in the yellow. The tiny yellow, that is.

Some symbols to help with reading non-fiction

I can’t read (nonfiction) without a pencil in my hand. All of the reading I do is marked through with all sorts of scribble to help make sense of the structure and content of the writing later without having to reread every word. Over the past few months, to help with this, I’ve come up with a loose system for marking books to make them as useful as possible for later. No doubt this system will evolve the more I use it, but it’s been really helpful for me so far, so I thought I would put it out there for anyone who also has to read a lot and thinks such a system would be useful. So, here is a list of the symbols with a little explanation of how they are helpful and the rationale behind why that particular symbol is used that way (which might help in remembering them).

▽ – In symbolic logic, a common symbol for a conclusion of an argument (therefore) is a triangle of dots. The conclusion of an argument is most often the thesis one is trying to prove. So, when a main point or thesis is stated, to be followed by an argument for or explanation of that thesis, the upside-down triangle is used. Its pointing down lets you know that the argument or explanation follows.

▼ – If you feel that the explanation or argument for the thesis is satisfactory, fill in the triangle to show that the thesis has been completed in some way. Leave it blank if you find it lacking.

△  – The right-side-up triangle is used to mark a thesis or conclusion that has been arrived at, rather than one that is stated up-front, then defended.

▲ – The filled-in triangle functions the same as before.

➔ – The arrow pointing to a piece of text means something like “don’t skip over this” when you re-read it. It lets your future self know that, when scanning a text over again, where the must-reads are.

∈ – This is another logic symbol that translates as “is a member of a set” (where the set is then specified). So “Michael Glawson ∈ people with big, strong muscles” translates as “Michael Glawson is a member of the set of people with big, strong muscles”. Sets are really just lists of things though. I am on the big, strong muscle-y person list. So, this symbol is used to let you know that an important list follows. Normally for me that is something like a list of responses to an argument, a list of elements of some position, etc. I normally underline a word or two letting my future self know what the list is of. (If you can’t see it, think of a cross between a capitol E and a capitol C).

≣ – This is the tautology symbol. It means “is exactly the same thing as”. So, “Michael Glawson ≣ Your daddy” means that I and your dad are the same thing. To say that x is the same thing as y, though, is just to give a sort of definition of x. So, whenever a term is defined, this symbol guides you back to it. I normally circle the term. (If you can’t see it well, it’s just an equal sign, with an extra line – three lines on top each other).

⊗ – This is the “exclusive or”. In use, “x ⊗ y” means “either x is true, or y is true, but both aren’t true”. This just means that there’s some strong division, or distinction, between x and y. So, when two ideas, positions, terms, periods, etc. are distinguished from one another, I use this symbol.

⊥ – This is an upside-down t. (You noticed…) It is used, instead of F, to mean “false”, because F, if written sloppily, can sometimes look like a T. The upside-down t is clearer. I use this to indicate whenever the Author of the text is claiming or entertaining the possibility that some position is false, or that there is a problem with it. So, if the author says, “one objection to this argument is…”I put that symbol in the margin.

ϴ – I’m interested in religion, so whenever I find a passage that deals with religion or god, I mark it with a theta, the first word of “Theos,” the Greek word for “god”.

✓ – The check notes some passage that I feel I really understand, or resonate or agree with. It is my “yes” mark.

X – The X is the opposite of the check. It tells me that I think the passage is wrong, stupid, etc.

? – The question mark indicates that I don’t quite understand the passage, but want to figure it out. Or it signals that I have some specific, noted question.

(?) – The parenthetical ? indicates that there is an interesting or important question posed within the text. I normally draw a line to the answer to the question if there is one presented.

〮- The centered dot is placed next to some important point of an argument or position. Something that is, in some way, central to the point of the writing.

The last useful little notation works like this:  Sometimes you’ll come across a part of the text that you want to underline but, because of the author’s egregious usage of prepositional phrases (or parenthetical statements), or the like, where you wanted only to underline a simple sentence, the beginning and end of that sentence are separated by a bunch of crap that you don’t care about, and you don’t want to underline half the page. So, just underline the words you need, and, at the end of the first line, draw a little loop, then draw a loop at the beginning of the next line to connect them. In this case, there would be a little loop at the end of the line under “underline”, and another one at the beginning of the next line under “So,”. This lets you know to read that as one line of text, skipping the rest.

Hope this was useful. If you have suggestions, or additions from your own way of doing things, please comment.

Free brain-food

I’m all about some free book learnin’. Here’s some of that for you.

TED.com – Lots and lots of free, audio or video versions of (almost all) really good talks on tons of subjects; taken from the annual TED conference. Speakers range from Richard Dawkins to Billy Graham, and everywhere in between. You can download or stream.

Libri

vox.org – There must be ten thousand free ebooks on this site, most of which you can also download as audiobooks to read. An hour a night for a few months will probably get you through War and Peace.

Scribd.com – It’s like a library that lets you just download it’s books as PDFs. I’m not sure it’s all legal though, so use your conscience.

Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History (podcast) – It can be a little cheesy at times, but I now know a lot more about WWII thanks to his podcast on Hitler. Way better than the history lectures you’ve heard, probably.

Stuff You Missed In History Class (podcast by HowStuffWorks.com) – Little, 3-8 minute talks on some interesting bit of history. Did you know that 1 out of every 200 people alive today is a direct descendent of Ghengis Kahn? Yeah, well now you do. Don’t thank me. Thank them.

Nova Science Now (podcast by PBS) – Another podcast of short explanations/musings on some interesting facet of science. Niel DeGrasse Tyson is one of the frequent speakers, and he’s a lot of fun to listen to, and he’s probably the only large, black astrophysicist on the planet.

And of course, if you’ve not already subscribed to This American Life‘s podcast, well…you suck. All there is to it.

550 Free-to-watch Documentaries

At Snagfilms.com. (And, yes, it has Super Size Me :-).)

Thanks to Caleb C for the link.

Ever thought one of your profs might be insane?

Well, bear in mind that intelligence and insanity often accompany one another, and I doubt university job interviews focus as much on the second as the first. So it may be that the occasional crazy Phd could sneak through the system, and start grading your papers. Read about just such a case here, regarding UT Arlington professor of philosophy and law, Keith Burgess-Jackson. I hope it serves as a sign to other students that, when your prof is driving you crazy, it may be because he already is.

*Note: be sure to follow the links within Leiter’s post. They’re even more elucidating.

Free education (part 2)

Get you some Yale action right here.

Download. iPod. Walk. Cd. Car. Learn. Chicken sandwich.

Rockin’ Reading List

A while back I was teaching a small group (and I mean small) for college and carreer types. The goal for any xian small group is, obviously, spiritual growth, and that’s what we aimed for. As Paul remarked though, that just can’t take place apart from the development of our mind. Disciples of Christ think and believe differently from others, and that’s part of what makes us what we are. To that end, I put together this list of books and websites and such that have helped me grow as a thinking, believing believer. Every book, website, and podcast (and whatever else may be on here) is worth checking out. I put a little intro at the beginning of the list because this was originally a handout for the people in the group. I’ve kept it for this post too, so here it all is:

……………….

One of the huge mistakes that I, as a reader, made early on was to think that there would be one book out there that, after reading it, everything would just click for me. I spent a lot of time looking for such a book, and bought a lot of books, which I read half of and then discarded after realizing that they weren’t ‘the one’. Some I read though because, even though they didn’t make everything make sense instantly, they at least helped me look smart.
Eventually I came to understand that the point of reading to grow is not to make everything click at once, and it surely isn’t to look smart or be entertained (actually reading is a pretty  boring thing for me a lot of the time). Intellectual and spiritual growth is a wide, gradual thing that involves coming to a whole way of seeing the world and life in all of their many dimensions, many of which we aren’t even naturally aware of. Growth doesn’t happen with a click, but comes through wrestling, anxiety, confusion, sparks of delight, and even the boredom that comes when we’re being something like intellectual cows, throwing up something we’ve already swallowed to chew it back over again and again.
All of these aspects of growing our minds into the mind of Christ are vital, and that’s the end to which this list of books is aimed. All of these books with bring you through all of the stages, from boredom and confusion, to anxiety and delight. And all of them will, in some way, help you (as they’ve helped me and others) to come to a wider, more detailed way of seeing the world and life in it.
So, here I’ve listed each book, with author, and provided a brief description of the book to help you decide if this is the one you want to pick up at the moment, but each of these is worth a read, and are written in a way that anyone can get something substantial out of it. I’ve also included a list of websites and podcasts that I’ve found beneficial. Enjoy.

The List

Books Worth Reading

‘Letters from a Skeptic,’ by Greg Boyd
This book is a compilation of letters between a very bright pastor (Greg Boyd) and his atheist father. In the letters, the father fleshes out his objections to Christianity (from the crusades, to the idea of a ‘god who hates sex’), and Greg responds with his understanding of Christianity, aiming to help his father see the goodness and reasonableness of the faith.

‘The Challenge of Jesus’ by N.T. Wright
This book will absolutely, fundamentally alter the way you think about Jesus. Without a doubt one of the most positively influential books I’ve read. I can’t recommend it enough.

‘Mere Christianity,’ by C.S. Lewis
This is probably the deepest, richest and most thorough overview of Christianity out there. It has parts complex and simple enough that anyone can read it and get a lot out of it. This should be at the top of the list, really.

‘Faith and Reason,’ by Ron Nash
This is a book on the relationship between faith and reason. Nash’s central aim in the book is to show that faith and reason don’t conflict with each other, but reinforce and refine one another. It is not an extremely easy read, and there will be parts that will be confusing because of terms he uses. It’s okay to just read through them and go on until you get what he’s saying though. That’s how I did it, and the book helped me a lot.

‘Screwtape Letters,’ by C.S. Lewis
This is a really enjoyable, fictional collection of letters between two demons who are discussing exactly how to tempt a certain man (probably C.S. Lewis) away from faith in Christ. Though it’s fiction, it’s incredibly insightful in it’s exploration of temptation and in showing just how intimately intertwined our faith and our everyday lives are.

‘The Meaning of Jesus’ by Marcus Borg and N.T. Wright,
This book is a conversation between a very liberal Christan (Borg), who would deny much of what conservative xians consider uncompromisable, and a much more conservative believer (Wright). Both are extremely well educated, thoughtful, and sincere in their approaches. They’re also good friends, and all that makes for a great conversation on the person they’ve both devoted much of their lifes work to. Each chapter takes a topic such as the virgin birth, the passion, Jesus’ teaching, etc. and they both write a short essay of their perspective on the topic. Worth every moment it takes to read, and an excellent introduction to the wide conversation about Jesus.
‘Love your God with all your Mind,’ by J.P. Moreland
This book aims to explore and instruct us on fulfilling the most neglected part of the greatest commandment. So much attention is given to loving God with all our hearts and soul, that very little is paid to loving him with our thinking selves, which feeds and directs our emotional and spiritual selves. The book’s aim is firmly built on his (at first)startling suggestion that, if you ever get to the point that you’ve asked all your questions, and sought answers in every place you know, and just can’t believe Christianity, you should walk away from it. At the end of the book though, you won’t want to do that.

‘Windows of the Soul,’ by Ken Gire
This one is written by a Christian literature professor who wants to show us how to read life itself in the way that we would read a good book, and so to see God’s love, goodness, and majesty in areas we normally wouldn’t. From what I’ve seen, girls tend to like this book a lot.

‘Words of Delight,’ by Leland Ryken
This book aims to show you how to read the bible well. That sounds pretty boring at first, but Ryken’s approach is really unique and interesting. His idea is that, to read the bible well, we need to understand literature well, and that, if we don’t understand literature, we will never understand the words of the bible, because they were written in a very literary way. He takes you through the different types of writings in the bible, from the often cryptic narratives of the old testament, to the religious poetry of the psalms, to the short, almost secular sayings of the proverbs, into the religious, biographical narratives of the gospels, the instructive letters of the epistles, and finally the visionary theologizing of the Revelation. This is an extremely eye-opening book, and will help you not feel lost or over your head when you read the bible.

‘How Should We Live?,’ by Louis Pojman
This book is a great, light introduction to ethics. It outlines various ideas about right and wrong, and helps you think through many serious moral questions. After reading this short book, you will be able to think through real life moral issues (such as abortion, homosexuality, etc.) much more naturally, quickly, and clearly. The virtue of the book is that, instead of giving you any clear answers to moral questions, it gives you tools so that you can answer them yourself.

‘The Universe Next Door,’ by James Sire
This book gives a short, but full overview of each major ‘worldview’ from Atheism  and Agnosticism, to Pantheism (the belief that everything is divine) and the New Age belief system. Very gook book to wake us up to see just how many options for belief there are out there besides Christianity, and show us how to talk with people who believe very differently.

‘Across the Spectrum,’ by Greg Boyd
This book has a chapter on pretty much every single issue within Christian theology that introduces the issue, and quickly explores each option within the issue. For instance, on the issue of predestination, it explores the different ideas of what predestination is – does God predestine every single event and choice? does God limit his/her control to make room for free will? does God self-limit so much that he doesn’t even know the future? This book is a great introduction to Christian theology for people who don’t get to take a class on it. Very readable.

‘Managing your Mind,’ by Gillian Butler
Though this is not a religiously oriented book, and is (obviously at points) not written by a christian, it is totally worth reading. It is geared toward giving you a good, non-technical understanding of the way your own mind works, and how to address various psychological issues that we all have, and which can cause major problems for our own mental and spiritual growth (for instance, a person who struggles with jealousy, or constant, anonymous anxiety may never even know it, and will never be able to calm their mind long enough to think seriously about their Christian life).

‘Does God Have a Future?,” by John Sanders and Chris Hall
This book is another collection of letters (actually emails) written between two very bright and down-to-earth theologians concerning a particular theological issue that they differ on – whether or not God knows the future. The benefit of reading this book is not so much in the fact that you will be able to discuss this issue. Rather, the great thing about this one is that is takes a particular issue that we’ve all presumed to have a good answer for (don’t we all just naturally think God knows the future?) and shows us just how multi-dimensional the question is, and just how quick we have been to assume one answer without considering the question. This discussion with make it clear that this is the way almost every question in Christianity is, but the book is a safe way to see that because, whichever way you come down on the question, you haven’t ‘fallen away’ from Christ. Ask Shane what he thinks about this one.

‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’ by Oscar Wilde
Fiction gets underplayed regarding its educational and inspirational value. What’s worse, modern Christians seem to be the worst writers of fiction on the planet. In this, Wilde’s only novel, you get a great story absolutely full of though-provoking dialogue. Every human should read this book. It’s morally challenging though. One character, Henry Wotton, is literally trying to turn you evil, and he’s pretty brilliant.

‘Reading Between the Lines,’ by Gene Veith
This book calls itself ‘a Christian guide to literature,’ which is about the most boring, thin summary of the book imaginable. Publishers do that to sell books to snooty college-types. What the book really is is an incredibly eye-opening guide to reading books (including the bible), watching movies, listening to music, and engaging the culture of our world as a follower of Jesus. Great book.

‘Postmodern Times,’ by Gene Veith
Another great book by Veith in the same spirit as ‘Reading Between the Lines’. This one focuses on our modern culture. It has great, enjoyable discussions of modern art, politics, philosophy, and a great historical explanation of just how and why people in our day think and act the way they do.
Other stuff
Bible Study Helps

Commentary Series

New American Commentary
About as Baptist a commentary as you can get, but very well-written most of the time, and full of good scholarship.

Every Man Commentary Series by N.T. Wright
Bishop N.T. Wright is one of the best readers and scholars of Scripture alive today. He’s very engaging most of the time, and has revolutionized biblical scholarship in a lot of ways. This series is a popular-level version of his more scholarly work. It’s very readable and down-to-earth with lots of interesting historical information and clear explanations of the greek words used. The Romans commentary is especially good.

William Barclay’s Commentary on the New Testament
These are the most readable commentaries out there. I generally despise reading commentaries, but these are so well-written and interesting that you can read one like any other book. He gives his own translation of the passages in the book so you don’t have to keep a bible with you. They’re also good because Barclay is not the most conservative scholar out there (though he’s not a God-hating pagan either), so it’s a bit out of the box without being too painful.

Hermeneia Commentary Series
For serious, in-depth bible study this is the best commentary I’ve ever read. It includes the most cutting-edge scholarship, and each book is written by someone who has spent years specializing on that one book of the bible (or section of the bible; the commentary on the Sermon on the Mount is well over seven hundred pages long). For scholarly-technical commentaries this is definitely the most readable. Be careful though, most of these guys are willing to question everything about the text.

Baker Exegetical Commentary of the New Testament
A good, solid series written from a conservative perspecitve.

New International Commentary on the OT (“ NT)
Another good, conservative series.

Study Tools

E-Sword/Mac Sword
These are computer programs that include several translations of the bible, commentaries, and lexicons (hebrew or greek dictionaries) that are downloadable and easy to use, and, best of all, they’re free. Don’t be intimidated by the idea of a lexicon. Even though you can’t read the original languages, the lexicons are programmed to link an english word in the bible (say, ‘brothers’) to the word in the original language (adelphoi, in greek) and give you the definition of that word. Just google the name of the program and you should find the site easily.

Holman Bible Dictionary
A great big dictionary with good articles on nearly everything in the bible that you might be curious about. Want to know who the Gamaliel guy that Paul studied under was? Interested in finding out more about the Passover feasts, or maybe you want to see what the Tabernacle or Temple would have looked like? Its probably in here.

Other Authors to Check Out

Peter Kreeft – a Catholic philosopher who is interested in addressing the most important questions (happiness, death, sex, etc.) in very fresh, interesting ways. One of my favorite guys out there.

Ravi Zacherias – a protestant Peter Kreeft.

N. T. Wright – one of the most highly-respected scholars out there. He was a bishop in England, then he started writing books and blew biblical studies professors away. He recently started writing books for lay-readers and they’re excellent. He now has books on death, resurrection, evil, heaven, and the heart of Christianity.

Eugene Peterson – this is the guy who brought us The Message bible translation. That book has gotten a lot of flack, because people assume he’s just paraphrasing the bible in whatever way he wants, and is getting rich. In reality he is rich, but he can also read greek and hebrew the way we read comic strips. He’s written several books about the christian life and they blow away 99% of the christian inspiration section in the book store. He’s eloquent, insightful, informed, and very sensitive. Women seem to especially like him.

Soren Kierkegaard – he was one of the most radical thinkers in Europe in the seventeenth century. One of the most passionate people to have written on faith and living. Everyone I know who has read him has become infatuated. The Diary of a Seducer is especially interesting.

Walter Wangerin – a great writer with a terrible name. His specialty is Christian fiction, which is normally pure cheese. He seems to do it fairly well though.

Annie Dillard – ten times better than Wangerin.

Ben Witherington III – a good thinker and scholar. At least check his blog out. He often has good movie reviews on there.

Clark Pinnock – a very powerful writer. Full of passion, and great at thinking outside the box. You’ll find yourself caught up and excited about a point he’s making, then realize that he’s saying something you used to think was out of bounds. If anyone out there has allowed his own beliefs to be challenged and changed, it’s Clark Pinnock. He used to be the number-one guy for theological positions that he now writes passionately against, namely Calvinism. A good eye-opener.

Marcus Borg – a very devoted, well-educated, ‘liberal’ christian. Friends with N.T. Wright, who is in many ways his opposite, Borg is a good picture of how someone can be seriously devoted to Jesus, but believe some very different, even troubling, things about the nature of Christianity. Before reading his personal stuff, I would suggest picking up the book The Meaning of Jesus, which he wrote with Wright. It will give you a good intro to his thought, but Wright will be there to shut him down when he makes a dangerously bad point so that you don’t feel helpless.

Websites

http://www.peterkreeft.com – audio and writings by Kreeft.

http://www.reasonablefaith.org – website with audio and writings by a major defender of the Christian faith.

http://www.earlychristianwritings.com – you can read tons of writings from the new-testament period and just after that had a heavy influence on the thinking of the first christians.

http://www.ccel.org – another cool library of early church writings.

http://www.jesuscreed.org – a blog by Scot McKnight, the NT scholar that I first heard explain the Adam/Ish/Isha thing.

http://www.veritas.org – an organization devoted to bringing great thought to lay people (particularly in universities). They pay Christian professors to give insightful talks to college students. Their website probably has a few thousand free lectures and videos to download that focus on almost any topic that is relevant to Christian life imaginable.

Podcasts

Any of these podcasts can be found by searching for the titles or authors in the iTunes store.

“Let My People Think” and “Just Thinking” – these are Ravi Zacherias’ two radio broadcasts. They are free and are full of good, solid Christian teaching.  http://www.rzim.org/USA/Resources/Listen/JustThinking.aspx

Peter Kreeft’s podcast – purely excellent.

“Stand To Reason” by Grek Kokul – a good show that seeks to explore how Christianity impacts the world and the lives of individuals.

William Lane Craig’s “Defenders” and “Reasonable Faith Podcast – you may know more than your pastor about theology and apologetics when you get done with these. Not extremely difficult, but not extremely easy either.

“Emergent Podcast”- a vibrant exploration of “emergent” Christianity.

The Veritas Podcast – as good as the site.

‘Philosophy Bites’ – a podcast that takes some interesting, deep topic and has a famous thinker dialogue with the hosts on it for fifteen minutes.

‘Philosophy Talk’ – two Stanford phil profs talk about some topic for an hour. Topics include sex, religion, morality, truth, basketball, and so on.

‘Entitled Opinions’ – Robert Harrison, a very eloquent, profound thinker, interviews an authority on some interesting topic. Worth listening to for the opening monologue alone. Please check this one out. Harrison seems like he might be a xian also, but probably doesn’t want to make it very public, since his university (Stanford) is quite a liberal environment.