A reader's guide to The Confessions

Zach Howard at Desiring God has put together a basic but helpful reader's guide to Augustine's The Confessions. If you want to compare different English translations, then this post might prove useful. The Latin text of The Confesssions is available here.

The "angry Calvinist" trope

Context: Michael Brown plugged Steve's post "Straining Trumpian gnats while swallowing Democrat camels", in which Steve defends Michael Brown against Randal Rauser's criticisms, then out of the blue someone named Stephen J. Graham decided to call Steve an "angry Calvinist". See here:

https://twitter.com/DrMichaelLBrown/status/1227774795812626432 or https://twitter.com/sjggraham/status/1227856666605039616

I'd add:

Suppose my "normal description" of Graham, who is Irish, is that he's a drunken Irishman, simply because "it's the most fitting", even though there's no reason for me to think Graham is drunk. Suppose I just assumed Graham is a drunken Irishman whenever I read a tweet from Graham, even though there's zero evidence his tweet was sent in a state of inebriation. That would be unfair of me to do, to say the very least! Yet that's evidently how Graham treats Steve: Graham's default setting is that Steve is an "angry Calvinist" even in writings or works which have nothing to do with Calvinism.

Also, ironically, many freewill theists call for universal love, but they defame and malign Calvinists for no good reason.

Mr. Nobody

The film is a useful illustration of the theodical principle that every alternate timeline (or possible world) may have tradeoffs. There's no one best possible world:

https://epistleofdude.wordpress.com/2019/03/18/mr-nobody-an-explanation/

The Bridge of Reason

The Epistle of Dude reviews The Bridge of Reason: Ten Steps to See God by Joshua Rasmussen.

"Quick rebuttals to Carrier's claims"

"Quick rebuttals to Carrier's claims" by Epistle of Dude.