"...to find out what's true, has a value of its own."

Well I've been to Oxford today, had to wake up at 5.30am which was quite a job! But got there evntually and even found my way to the IFES office half an hour early because of my eagerness, and because of my ignorance of journey times! But anyway, I had a really nice day, met the lovely people who work for IFES and had my interview for next year. There was even time to pray together in the office and so I heard a bit about different things going on around the world with IFES: mainly we were thinking about Moldova, which was good because obviously... I went there last summer so I knew a bit about who we were talking about. But yeah, you may have seen on the news about the riots concerning the recent elections there and how students and young people have set parliament buildings on fire and all sorts so we prayed for peace over there, and also for the Christian students and staff of the IFES movement over there (CSC) to stand out for Christ.

When I had done at the office, I went back into town, my Dad had come with me so we went for some lunch at a cool place called "The Big Bang" (ironic considering what I'm going to move onto chatting about in a bit but still...) it was a really nice restaurant, although a bit expensive but..it is Oxford I guess... and they did loads of different kinds of sausages and mash and you picked a combination so I had a pork and apple sausage and a smoked bacon sausage with creamed mashed potato, which came with peas, red cabbage and fried/grilled onions... I'm not sure. Anyhow... it was good and I recommend it if you;re ever in Oxford! It was especially nice because the Oxford jazz festival started today, and we could hear live jazz music floating up the stairs from the room below, where there was obviously an audience too, I felt quite cultured!

And, I am immensely envious of people who get to study at Oxford, although I really wouldn't want to be a student LITERALLY there..i.e. I'm not clever enough and I'd never have the motivation to work as hard as those students probably have to... but the buildings are just beautiful and I'd just love the amosphere and the presitgiousness of being at Oxford. It's made me crave Harry Potter actually because they film some stuff there from Hogwarts in the films so I am very much up for some of that soon.... maybe when I eventually hit the summer.

Currently, there is MUCH much much much work to be done. I'm getting going on this essay I have to do for the Christianity, Science and History elective module I'm taking, or have taken...the lectures are finished now. There's a choice of about 30 different essay titles, and you pick one, read up on it, and write it...and then have a viva on it too. 4000 words. The title I've chosen is this:

Discuss the validity or otherwise of the views of Richard Dawkins towards religion in general, and Christianity in particular.

It's really interesting! I've finally started reading The God Delusion that Cell lent me goodness knows how long ago! But yes, finally I am on my way, and I'm actually quite enjoying it... bizarre as that may seem. Whilst obviously I don't agree with hardly anything of what Dawkins says, he is quite witty and easy to read, although it is taking me a while to get through it because just a lot of the content is quite heavy, but it's not his style!

I've just watched 'Expelled: no intelligence allowed" too, I bought my own copy a few weeks/months back but have never had the chance to sit down and watch it, I saw an edited version at a houseparty in January but it was great to have time now I'm at home to sit back and watch it, and take notes whih will be really useful for this essay. Reading the God Delusion is really helping me to understand Richard Dawkins I think, and where I used to get very annoyed with him in his interviews, I can now see more where he is coming from, and being more used tohis style of address, it's easier to feel sympathetic towards him when he puts his views across, even though they are very wrong views. Mainly because I think he's sadly misinformed.

Ben Stein aserts in the documentary towards the conclusion, that Dawkins is not against the idea of intelligent design, only against a 'God' designer. That includes Gods of any kind, but the way he seems to lean towards most, as portrayed in the documentary and in as far as I have read so far in the God Delusion, to be the idea of life being 'seeded' on earth by a "higher intelligence". Dawkins doesn't have a problem with the idea of other life being out there somewhere, more advanced than us even, as long as that is all they are, another form of life, not a God. And certainly not a God who has any kind of say in our lives.

Let me copy an extract from the book, you may know it already:

"The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully."

And so many other times too, he is just misinformed about what Christianity is. He refers to Athanasius as having been "splitting hairs" when he wouldn't agree with everyone else about Jesus not being of "one substance and essence as the Father"... because he doesn't understand or comprehend the significance and consequences to the message of the Gospel if that were true. If he did, he would see that as having been a HUGE issue. If we don't believe Jesus is God, we can't believe in the sufficiency of his sacrifice on the cross.

Yeah, so I think I've had a bit of a connection with Richard today lol, and am feeling quite sympathetic towards him. And I'm looking forward actually, to writing this essay, on something I am genuinely interested in!