Disqus - Latest Comments for dixonge

Re: “They Were Never True Believers” — The Convenient Dismissal Clause

Glenn — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 14:06:18 -0000

In Baptist circles this goes back to the whole "once saved, always saved" - notions of eternal security. Mainly this was just something to say to members whose loved ones had stopped attending church, usually either a husband or a child. In that world, you can't actually leave the faith, so the 'no true Scotsman' logical fallacy shouldn't apply.

And yet, I heard it all the time! Mostly it comes from people who never knew you when you were a believer. But it pisses me off because it presumes they know you. They picture someone who begrudgingly went to church but never really practiced the faith. They have a hard time when they find out that you were in church since you were six weeks old, studied apologetics, were enthusiastically christian and a preacher's kid to boot.

I've always said that you'd be hard pressed to find a more devoted, sincere christian than the old me. And I think there's an interesting correlation here.

Picture a scale, left to right. On the far left, hardcore atheist. On the far right, crazy sold-out believer. But nearer the middle of the scale you have two other positions: to the left of center, a person who never attended church or studied theology, and to the right of center a church-going person who enjoys it but also never studies theology much.

Those two center-most positions can swap back and forth a lot without too much effort. This is where the vast majority of change occurs, and people don't generally get too worked up about it. "Oh, did you hear so-and-so is attending church now?" "Oh good, how nice!" -- or vice versa.

But hearing about someone who is ultra-sold-out-for-Jesus becoming a solid hard-core atheist really rattles the faith! An explanation must be given, even if it is as lame as 'no-true-christian.' I guess the presumption is that the seeming faith was just a sham, a false facade, putting on an act. Because anything less would be to acknowledge that atheism is a valid alternative viewpoint.

And we can't have that, now, can we?

Apologies for the length of this, geeze!

Re: Blessed Is The Road On Which You Are Travelling Today

Glenn — Sun, 14 Feb 2021 13:28:29 -0000

In 2016 I first read this beautiful essay and was especially drawn to the poem from Neil's sketchbook. Today I ran across it from a Facebook post I made about it at the time. It prompted me to find and save this entire essay.

In reading it again, I shared pieces of it with my wife. I frequently choked up while doing so. I just wanted to say thank you for sharing this, and thank you to Neil for writing it and sharing this piece of his life and relationship with Bruce to the world. Here's to seeing more of Neil's writing in the world...

Re: Ask the readers: Commento or Discourse to replace Disqus (blog comments' system)?

Glenn — Wed, 27 Jan 2021 09:04:37 -0000

Wow. Scrolled down to see what other solutions may have been suggested, and here we are, a year after this article, and you're *still* using Disqus? LOL

Also, I had to TURN OFF my ad-blocker or Disqus wouldn't display at all... :(

Re: The Slowly Boiled Frog: Heck - I'll Answer Jim Garlow's Question and I'm Not Even a Christian

Glenn — Sat, 09 Jan 2021 09:29:37 -0000

Jim Garlow and his first wife attended our wedding, which was held in his church where we were members. Texas, not California. I am very surprised to read that he supposedly promotes 'conversion therapy' because many years ago he told a young woman that he had never seen any one actually successfully convert. She is still Christian, but in the MCC denomination.

I would agree with your observation about his degree of civility, to an extent. But his arrogance and condescension and fundamentalism override this in every way. He seems to have gone down the conspiracy rabbit hole.

Re: Threading - Bullet Journal

Glenn — Sat, 05 Sep 2020 09:52:35 -0000

I finally found a page-threading system that really works for me. It does require moving the page numbers out of the corner slightly, but I prefer this visually. Using this system removes the ambiguity as to which number is which (current page, previous, next, etc.) to the point where even a stranger looking at your page can tell what the numbers mean. Just a circle and one or two arrows.

Re: Turning iTerm in to a Quake style terminal on Mac OS

Glenn — Wed, 25 Mar 2020 17:21:16 -0000

Preferences has changed. #2 should read:

"From there, click on the “Keys” tab and then click on the "Hotkeys" tab..."

Re: Does Inception stand up to a second viewing?

Glenn — Wed, 18 Sep 2019 08:25:57 -0000

Nine years later, I concur. I noticed the same sand castle scene exactly as you described. Also the horrible aim of gun wielders. Still liked the movie, not as big an impact as the first time around, obviously.

Re: I’m Moving into a Traveler’s Notebook!

Glenn — Fri, 26 Apr 2019 11:05:57 -0000

"Although I loved the rings for the segmentation and organization, I just couldn’t get past the fact that I had to take the pages out individually to write on them"

I've never done that, but I instantly understood why you said it. I recently did a 'Marie Kondo' test comparing my Eccolo journal and my Tule-based disc systems. The nice flat Eccolo definitely sparked joy, the disc system not so much. Yeah, it's more practical, but I'll never keep writing consistently if I don't enjoy the process.

Which makes the traveler journal an interesting hybrid. Maybe you can't remove every page, but you can remove smaller notebooks. I'm officially intrigued! :/

Re: Install Linux Kernel 5.0 RC1 On Ubuntu / Linux Mint

Glenn — Fri, 15 Mar 2019 19:45:17 -0000

just to clarify - the install command should be...

sudo dpkg -i *.deb

Re: Eating meat causes cancer – let’s get this right

Glenn — Tue, 19 Feb 2019 17:34:38 -0000

A Big Mac weighs 215 grams. The meat weighs 90.8 grams. That's 42% meat, 58% non-meat. But not all of the difference comes from plants. The cheese is dairy, around 14g. The sauce is 20g, including an unknown amount of eggs. You *might* get 50% plant-based content out of that, but nothing near your 90% number, even if you include fries.

But to be honest, the main issue is cancer risk, not macronutrient values.

Re: Sea Shepherd Receives Highest Military Honor

Glenn — Tue, 19 Feb 2019 07:30:22 -0000

I'm a little confused here:

1 - Fish are made of plants?
2 - Killing fish is bad, unless it is legal, then it's all good?

Re: How to enable Touchpad click on lubuntu 18.10

Glenn — Sun, 10 Feb 2019 07:24:53 -0000

Yes, thank you! This was driving me crazy!

Re: Lonnie Frisbee: The Sad Story of a Hippie Preacher

Glenn — Thu, 24 Jan 2019 17:40:59 -0000

I'll just say this - if non-evangelicals think they are somehow immune to having their ranks filled with closeted gays they are delusional. The world is skeptical for many reasons, including your denial and lack of love.

Lonnie was useful until he wasn't. If Evangelicalism was a product category, Lonnie would have held majority shares in three of the largest corporations in the field. Instead he died alone and broke, more like Nikola Tesla.

Re: Grav Development with GitHub - Part 2 | Grav

Glenn — Tue, 06 Nov 2018 22:44:22 -0000

Success! Even with the difference in Grav version since you first wrote this I got it up and running. Excellent instructions, thank you!

Re: Yes We Can – Feed 9 Billion with Organic Agriculture

Glenn — Sun, 30 Sep 2018 08:51:08 -0000

Glad I did a quick search before launching a detailed response. No offense, but I don't engage with climate change deniers. 'nuff said

Re: A Preacher’s Kid’s Deconversion Story

Glenn — Sun, 30 Sep 2018 08:24:30 -0000

This is how *all* people's theology changes. Only when they are forced to shun or lose a loved one do they suddenly 'see the light' about how certain scriptures might be interpreted differently. My parents are Southern Baptist so we've always been Calvinist, although the Arminian view works better for altar calls :)

Re: Death, Grief, Suffering, & Euthanasia

Glenn — Sun, 30 Sep 2018 08:17:03 -0000

Our blue heeler Tucker had a similar path in life. He lasted 17 years. We put off the decision until he could no longer stand up to go outside on his own. He was also mostly blind and mostly deaf. We should probably have ended his suffering earlier, but that is such a tough decision.

I completely agree with your comparison to human suffering. Some day humans will look back on our age with horror, much as we look back at the age of blood-lettings and inquisitions.

Re: A Preacher’s Kid’s Deconversion Story

Glenn — Sun, 12 Aug 2018 09:16:03 -0000

My lifelong-pastor father has had more difficulty with my atheism than yours. I've not been out-and-out rejected, but lately it has become obvious that all of his senior friends, even friends who have known me since I was four, are part of a sustained campaign to re-convert me. It's not overt, but it's rare to have a conversation that doesn't veer into really bad 'atheist talking points.'

So no, my father doesn't agree that this isn't something fathers and sons debate. He's just really bad at it. The only tactic that could possibly have an effect is to somehow prove that validity of the Bible, and frankly I consider that an impossible task, akin to proving the validity of the tooth fairy. So now our family visits end with a conversation that feels like a heavy-handed witnessing session, and each one approaches the conversation as if I'd never heard of Christianity, or ever used those same tactics myself for forty years.

And each time I'm left wondering how long I can continue to visit them and subjecting myself to the resulting emotional turmoil.

Re: Exit polls give AMLO the win; his rivals have already conceded defeat

Glenn — Mon, 02 Jul 2018 00:12:37 -0000

I know, right? Come on down!

Re: Yes We Can – Feed 9 Billion with Organic Agriculture

Glenn — Sun, 01 Jul 2018 11:32:37 -0000

If they can't feed people, then they can't feed animals, so they aren't being used for either currently. Removing animal meat as a consumer of plant matter would allow for all of that land (the vast majority of crop land) to be switched over to growing food for human consumption. Also, we eat a lot less calories than cattle. The average daily dairy cow consumption is 40 MILLION calories. Humans? Even a person putting on lots of weight is probably 3,000 or less. HUGE difference. We'll have land left over.

Re: Tesla CEO Elon Musk Seems OK With Trump’s Solar Tariffs

Glenn — Thu, 25 Jan 2018 09:07:35 -0000

Unless imports beat out last year's by 5X we won't have ANY tarrif. Total non-issue.

Re: Yes We Can – Feed 9 Billion with Organic Agriculture

Glenn — Fri, 19 Jan 2018 13:23:25 -0000

When we stop feeding cattle and instead use that same acreage to feed people, it makes feeding billions of people a lot more sustainable. Here's just one analysis of this: http://iopscience.iop.org/a...

Re: Yes We Can – Feed 9 Billion with Organic Agriculture

Glenn — Thu, 18 Jan 2018 09:13:07 -0000

No.

Re: Yes We Can – Feed 9 Billion with Organic Agriculture

Glenn — Wed, 17 Jan 2018 15:15:23 -0000

The more we can cut out the animals as middlemen between crops and humans, the better the numbers look. Still, climate change and overpopulation must be reckoned with.

Re: EGEB: Jacksonville solar manufacturing ?, 1.79¢/kWh no more!, Minnesota carbon tax final, more

Glenn — Mon, 08 Jan 2018 09:24:52 -0000

I think the high temp in Australia was 117, not 147!