Rotundus.com

I've been debating acquiring some some of recorded lectures available through the Regent College Bookstore, but given that I'm currently trying to save money I instead did a little searching around on the web to see what else was available.

I figured that I would share with you one of the resources that I've discovered thus far: a set of lectures on Church History. At the moment I've grabbed all of the MP3s corresponding to the apostolic church, the early church, and the period wherein Christianity was officially adopted by the Roman empire.

I was reading through Christian Renewal this afternoon, and I noticed a block titled "Relativism now the majority view in America."

Anyways, the answer a survey turns out is often representative more of the organization conducting it, than of the truth of the matter (it's all about how the questions are phrased). I'd consider myself a believer in absolute morality, but in that survey I'd probably classified a relativist. I think that whether an action is right or wrong does vary according to circumstance, albeit in a controlled fashion.

• Case 1: Consider some action, X, that is in the absolute sense not immoral (is it a sign that I've been in school too long when I start defining variables in my sentences?). If a person, Y, believes that God says that he/she should not do action X, then I believe that if Y does action X then they've done wrong (as they've acted contrary to what they believe that God demands of them). That said, this does not excuse a person who performs an act that they believe is either morally-neutral or morally-required, but which is in the objective sense immoral.
• Case 2: This is the relatively common example given of where person A can save person B's life is by stealing C (needed medicine, food, etc) from a closed drug/grocery store when they can't find the owner, otherwise person B will die.

I'm not quite sure what position to take on the issue in case 2. I don't think you can really find some point when B is nearing death beyond which the action of breaking into the store would become moral. Consider Jesus' words in Mark 2:23-27 as a possible example of situational ethics.

So, what are your thoughts on this issue? Am I just missing a distinction between morality and ethics?

I posted a couple of digicams before, but now I've pretty much settled on a list of 3 digital cameras that I'm considering, and I figured that I'd spit out the list and see if you had any feedback to offer. All of the cameras below have roughyl 5 megapixel sensors:

• Canon Powershot A610 - this is a new camera from Canon, coming out about now. It's got a 4x zoom lens, which is a little longer than the others. It's the most expensive of the models I'm considering, but when you compare costs of memory cards, it might work out roughly the same as the Sony. I'm still waiting for reviews of this, but it sounds like a fairly nice camera.
• Konica Minolta G530 - My sister has the 4 megapixel variant of this camera, and the results it's produced haven't been bad. It's also got the fastest startup time I've seen for a digital non-SLR (0.8 seconds). Henrys.com, where about half of my lenses have come from, is actually auctioning one of these on eBay at the moment. An auction they did of the same camera the previous week ended at about $250CDN, so this might end up being the cheapest if the auction ends at the same price this time. It's downside, though, is a proprietary battery, and from what I recall it's only good for a couple of hundred shots (the other two cameras both use AA NIHMs).
• Sony Cybershot DSC-W5 - Very impressive battery life for a digicam, and what should be a good lenses. Also relatively fast startup time for a digital non-SLR, but easily beaten by the G530 in that respect. The downside, as mentioned before, is that it only likes memory sticks.