I went over to visit Gary Breitbard today and he helped me fix up Daniel's accordion a little bit so I can play it. We opened it up and mostly just loosened up a bunch of stuck reeds that weren't sounding right. We didn't do much tuning, which is trickier, but it will be good enough. He also gave me a tape and some sheet music with a few cool accordion tunes to learn, so that will be fun. Right now the glue is drying on the key that we stuck back on, so I haven't played it much yet. But I'm looking forward to being able to noodle around with it again.

Last night I went to hear Dr. William Lane Craig speak on "The Historicity of the Resurrection." He's a great speaker and it was really interesting, though not particularly new to me since I had read his chapter in Lee Strobel's book, The Case for Christ. It occurred to me, though, that a good way to sum up the approach of his argument is with a quote from Douglas Adams, of all people: "The impossible often has a kind of integrity to it which the merely improbable lacks." That seemed like just a humorous comment the first time I read it, but it makes a lot of sense in this context. You can come up with all sorts of alternative explanations for Jesus' resurrection which are technically possible but so highly improbable that belief in the "impossible" resurrection actually fits the facts much better. [This paragraph now branches into two alternative endings, depending on how sidetracked I want to get: ]

[Dr. Craig ending: ]
Overall, I think I agreed with all of Dr. Craig's points on the resurrection. Even so, it's difficult for me to just up and say "yes, I believe this actually happened." Partly because it is such an "impossible" event, but even more because I have to work out what other beliefs that would imply and how I would be able to accept or otherwise deal with them. That's something I'll have to think about.

[Douglas Adams ending: ]
This is something I really like about Douglas Adam's humor. Not only is it just plain funny, but there's intelligence behind it, too. It's humor you can think about, and yet still find it funny. I love it. I recently discovered a book called The Salmon of Doubt, which is a collection of various writings of his that people put together after he died. I've only read bits of it so far, but I highly recommend it. The introduction contains a short biography, which is also really interesting.