Earlier today, for the period between twelve and five hours ago, this website and blog may have been difficult (or impossible) for you to access. I’ve been discussing it with my tech friend, and it appears that somebody with an address locating them at Oxford University (i.e. ending with ox.ac.uk) has been engaging in malicious activity against the site, at one time hitting the blog 1599 times over four hours until the server was unable to cope. They were not alone, but this particular user/system was the main offender.

Of course it’s nice to attract attention from that particular part of the world, but this isn’t quite the sort I’m after! Some upgrades have been made to the server so this is less likely to have the same effect in the future should similar actions be taken. The IP address in question has been blocked.

Whenever security measures are upgraded, some innocent parties are affected. If you know of anyone who is having difficulty accessing the site, please let me know (or ask them to let me know). Email me: peoples dot glenn at gmail dot com.

(1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)

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OK, I thought I’d give this a try. You see that area over to the right where all those buttons are? I want to push those buttons down and I want YOU to be right there, above them.

As a way of keeping the bills at this site paid and as a way of promoting your blog or site, I’m putting ad space up for rent. This site gets plenty of traffic these days. It was New Zealand’s fourth ranked blog in January, so if your ad is here, it will get seen. As this is my site, I obviously reserve the right not to run any given advertisement. Your ad can be for anything at all, subject to my discretion. Ads that are for something at least remotely related to the subject matter of this website will likely get preference, but there’s nothing stopping anyone from asking.

The cost is $3.50 (US) per month, purchased in 3 month blocks. Your ad will need to be no bigger than 135 x 135 pixels, and I’m more than happy to make one for you (that’s free). The ad will hyperlink to your website/blog in a new window. There will be a limit of four ads up at any given time, but it’s a little optimistic at this stage for me to suppose that there would ever be a waiting list. So if you’d like to support the site and you have something to promote, drop me a line.

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I mentioned not long ago that I had some contact with Jim Spiegel of Taylor University. Jim kindly offered to have a copy of his new book The Making of an Atheist sent to me, and I’ll be posting a review here. I’m not alone, actually, and a number of really good blogs on Christian apologetics and related subjects will be having their say on the book too. They are as follows:

Do check these blogs out as the book does the “blog tour.”

(3 votes, average: 4.00 out of 5)

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This announcement arrived in my inbox today:

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Call For Papers: Religion in the Public Sphere

18th Conference of the European Society of the Philosophy of Religion

Merton College, Oxford, August 26th-29th 2010

Keynote Address: Professor Nicholas Wolterstorff

Speakers: Stephen Clark, Elisabeth Grab-Schmidt, Oddbjorn Leirvik, Michael Moxter, Anne Sofie Roald, Roger Trigg, Henk Vroom, Theo de Witk

The conference will bring together questions in the philosophy of religion with basic issues of political philosophy. Contemporary liberalism often wishes to treat religion as a private matter, and considers religious reasons cannot be ‘public’ reasons. Science is acceptable in the public sphere in a way that religion is not. The Conference will consider how far law, and politics, should give greater recognition to the role of religion in public life. The main conference subtopics are:

• Religion and Law
• Religious Freedom
• Multiculturalism and Pluralism in the Secular Society
• Blasphemy and Offence

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I should be at that conference. In 2008 I graduated with my PhD in philosophy, writing on the subject of religion in the public square. I have a couple of as yet unpublished papers in this subject area that would be ideal for presentations at this conference. As far as I can see, it will not be possible for me to make the trip. Such luxuries are for those who are working in academia (which, as you’ll know, I also wish I was doing). However I am going to submit a paper anyway. If I submit a paper, and it actually gets accepted (no small hurdle for an event like this!), then there exists an almost nonexistent possibility that I will attend. I don’t know how, but it’s still possible (many crazy things are possible). If I do not submit a paper, then there exists no such possibility. So it’s a no brainer.

(1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)

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Each month Scrubone (I strongly suspect that this is not the name his parents gave him) produces a ranking of the top (read: mopst popular) 200 blogs in New Zealand according to a bunch of fancy shmancy statistics. Why does he do it? Who cares, he does it, and the blogosphere should be very grateful. His blog is Something Should go Here, Maybe Later but gets referred to as halfdone because of the address. Many thanks Scrubone!

No sooner is the month over, the rankings for January 2010 are out! Efficient, no? In November and January Say Hello to my Little Friend ranked fifth in New Zealand. In January it ranked fourth, right behind my good friend Matt and Mads over at M and M who ranked third. Hey, there are two of them!

Also, I have just joined a fellowship of bloggers called Biblioblogs. It’s a list of blogs that cover, among other things, biblical studies. Oh, and John Loftus’s blog is there too. I’ll add their button to my site as soon as I have made a version that’s not ugly. Their ranking for January is out now too, over at Joel’s Free Old Testament Audio site. As a new member I’ve debuted at number five, which isn’t too shabby. In the number four slot, you guessed it, M and M. Again. There are two of them. What do you expect?

As always, I have the readers to thank for any success or popularity that this place enjoys. Thank you, and please come back regularly. Bring a friend. Or ten.

(2 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)

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Each month I’ve been getting annoying emails from my existing website host telling me that I’ve exceeded my bandwidth limit. Most of that is caused by the popularity of the podcast, which is nice. But the upshot of my wild, out of control runaway success (as well as the all too frequent downtime) is that I have to invest in some upgrades. I’m about to change hosting providers, so the ride might be a little rocky over the next few days. Sit tight and everything will be back to normal soon!

(1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)

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It’s an unfortunate fact that New Zealand lacks a strong cultural niche that recognises and promotes theologically conservative Christian scholarship of excellence in the humanities, specifically philosophy and theology, apologetics and biblical studies that interacts with some of the radical scholarship of recent decades? The choice here seems to be between denominational/theological partisanship that paints itself into the corner of irrelevance on one hand and liberalism where scandal and smugness is more important than truth on the other.

Are there people out there in this small pond who aren’t like that? Yes. But is there anything out there to encourage them? Is there anything to aim for? Are there parachurch organisations with this sort of scholarly orientation to aspire to be involved with, as there are in other countries? Not at all, as far as I can tell. Do we have colleges of higher learning with this sort of emphasis? Well we have Christian colleges of higher learning, but none who seem to taking any steps in this direction (one of them has made some muted murmurs about future possibilities, but that is as far as it goes). Are there networks through which Christian scholars can connect to others in their position? Not really, no. Do secular universities look kindly on those qualified people with primary interests in these areas? Well, there aren’t many Universities in New Zealand anyway, but the answer is still no. Were I a vocal sceptic I would have better chances – sad but true. Does your own church have enthusiasm for the unique contribution someone in this position can offer in its teaching programmes? Not in my experience.
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I recently installed a new “Most Popular Posts” widget in the sidebar. It measures popularity by pageviews, not by the number of comments. The trouble is, it only started measuring a few days ago when I installed it, so the posts currently showing as the most popular are really only the most popular posts iver the last few days – namely the newest posts. However, in my Wordpress control panel – the one you can’t see – it lists the posts that got the most attention over the last year. The most visited post was my anouncement that William Lane Craig had debated Christopher Hitchens and that the mp3 was available online – only to have to later point out that it was not going to be online after all due to copyright issues. After that one, here are the posts that were visited the most:

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Let it never be said that I think all hockey stick graphs are wrong. This one is actually genuine! This is what traffic at the blog looked like over the last year (this doesn’t take into account people who access the podcast via the iTunes store).

Well, genuine apart from the dirty great hockey stick in it! Traffic at the blog has been rising steadily over 2009, and then at the end of October/beginning of November I reduced my hours at work and started spending a day each week focusing on blogging (among other things). If the upsurge in traffic beginning in November is anything to go by, then this has certainly made a difference.

It’s encouraging to see that the blog’s (and podcast’s!) popularity has continued to grow. I want to thank everyone who visits, comments, heckles and participates here at Say hello to my Little Friend, and may you have a blessed and prosperous 2010!

Happy new year.

EDIT: On a similar note, Halfdone’s rankings for December 2009 are out, and Say Hello to my Little Friend remains unchanged at 5th overall.

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Today (what’s left of it) or tomorrow I’ll post the blog entry that I referred to last time, where I discuss an issue related to ethical naturalism/non naturalism and theologically grounded ethics.

For now, however, I want to let you know what to expect in the subject matter of this blog. On the whole it won’t change of course, and any time something interesting and current rears its head or gets my attention in the subject areas that I tend to write on, I’ll blog on it. As I’ve mentioned in the past however, I’ve started gradually chipping away at a book project on the moral argument for theism. It’s more productive time-wise to blog on things that I’m currently working on, so the dominant themes you can expect to see popping up at this blog as I work my way through the blog are the ones that I will be including in this project.

At this early stage obviously the final table of contents is subject to change, but the book will start out in the history of philosophy and historical theology, covering historical versions of the moral argument (e.g. Aquinas, Locke, Kant, C. S. Lewis then contemporary writers). It will look at the way that detractors of the moral argument have treated those versions of the argument, and whether or not those treatments stand up to scrutiny.  Next, I look at the work of sceptics who I will regard as hostile witnesses for the moral argument; moral nihilists like Nietzsche and J. L. Mackie and (very arguably) David Hume (along with my former lecturer and PhD co-supervisor, Dr Charles Pigden). These men do/did not argue for theism, but do give reasons for thinking that metaphysical naturalism requires the nonexistence of moral facts. I will use this as a springboard into an explicit defence of the moral argument that really has not been made in the literature as far as I can tell; one that draws on the burgeoning 20th century literature on meta-ethics. I’m not yet sure if I will include an extended discussion of divine command and natural law ethics.

The order in which this stuff appears at the blog will not likely reflect the order given above. So while you can still expect to the same old subjects (and perhaps all new ones!), a general theme revolving around the combination of philosophy of religion, history of philosophy and meta-ethics is going to be somewhat dominant for the foreseeabe future. Incidently, recent (and future) discussion surrounding ethical naturalism has arisen for precisely this reason.

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