Apologetics Weekend at Saddleback Church

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The Apologetics Weekend at Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, CA (Rick Warren’s Church) on September 5 and 6 has a great lineup of speakers.

Time and Topics:

Sat 4:30:  Darrell Bock:  “How is Jesus Unique?”
Sat 6:30:  JP Moreland:  “Has Science Made Belief in God Obsolete?”

Sun 9:00:  Norm Geisler:  “If God, Why Evil?”
Sun 11:15:  William Lane Craig:  “How Did the Universe Begin?”
Sun 4:30: Dinesh D’Souza:  “What’s So Great About God?”
Sun 6:30:  Gregory Koukl:  “Why Does Faith Matter?”

• When:9/5/2009
• Where:Worship Center
• A Lake Forest Campus Event
• Start Time:4:30 PM
• End Time:6:30 PM
• Price: Free

Attending ETS, EPS, and SBL on a Budget

Great advice here by Mark Goodacre at the NT Blog on attending SBL on a budget – which also applies to the ETS/EPS annual meeting.  The most disheartening but ultimately true caveat,

Don’t visit the book exhibit. If you do, you will probably end up buying books. You know you can’t afford them, and you run the risk of weighing down your bags so much that you have to pay extra at the airport for the journey home.

Here are numbers 1 – 3.  Wise words, although he should give grits a second chance. : )

1. Find a cheap flight. This has to begin pretty early, like a month or so ago. It’s a good idea to use an aggregator site like Kayak and to watch the prices daily. I have managed to find a $216 flight from Raleigh to New Orleans after having watched the site for the last few weeks, and I am feeling quite chuffed about it.

2. Room-share. The SBL hotels are all pretty posh and pretty expensive. The only way to stay in one of those hotels and keep the price down is to room-share. Of course you need to have a person or people that you can cope with for several days, but the lucky ones among us will actually enjoy the SBL a great deal more because of the company they keep.

3. Breakfast trough-out. The cost of food is a big problem, and four days of conference-attending can put the strain on your budget. What I suggest is to get to one of those great American breakfast buffets every morning and eat to your heart’s content. Don’t be put off by earnest looking professor types who only visit the buffet once. Keep going for as long as you can. Eat so much that you won’t want lunch. You can then make it through to the evening when you’ll be just peckish enough to enjoy something else.
Birmingham never gave me enough to travel, and so troughing my face at breakfast was my standard survival strategy. The American breakfast buffets are great, though for Brits it can be a little off-putting to see Americans putting their fruit on the same plate as their sausage and bacon, or worse, putting corn syrup on their scrambled egg. So Brits abroad may need to avert their eyes. There is also an unappetizing pastey coloured concoction called “grits”, which is to be avoided.

Into the Fire Cultural Engagement Conference

If you happen to live in the Southeast, you may be interested in this cultural engagement/apologetics conference sponsored by the Fixed Point Foundation.  Here are the details:

January 13-16, 2010 will see the first Seeking 7 endeavor-”Into the Fire.” Held in Birmingham, Alabama, this conference will address such topics as Radical Islam, the Authority of Scripture, the Gospel in the Marketplace, the New Atheism, and the Science-Religion debate. Rather than the typical break-neck conference schedule, we have set aside time to exchange ideas and fellowship with other believers, but without compromise to the overall content of the experience. Bookending each day are sessions featuring some of contemporary Christianity’s best speakers and thinkers.

Western Conference of the Society of Christian Philosophers

Western Conference of the Society of Christian Philosophers
PAPER DEADLINE: Saturday, August 15

October 22-24, 2009, Durango, Colorado
Featured Speakers:

Michael Bergmann “Commonsense Skeptical Theism”
Wes Morriston “Divinely Mandated Genocide and the Limits of Human Knowledge”

CFP: The conference has no particular theme, and papers on any topic of philosophical interest will be considered.  The SCP welcomes both Christians and non-Christians as presenters, commentators, and participants.  Submissions should be 3,000 words or less, prepared for blind review, and saved in an accessible format (e.g. Word, PDF, RTF, etc.).  Please indicate in your cover letter whether, should your paper not be accepted, you would be willing to serve as commentator.  For further information on both conference details and Durango attractions, visit the conference website at: philosophy.fortlewis.edu/scp.html

Submissions, inquiries, and requests to comment can be sent to Justin McBrayer at mcbrayer_j@fortlewis.edu.