For­mer WBC cham­pion James Hoff­man has writ­ten an inter­est­ing post on the cost of cof­fee in your aver­age cafe… He makes an inter­est­ing com­par­i­son between the price of espresso and the price of other high mar­ket bev­er­ages… he makes the point that most reces­sion sur­vival guides sug­gest cut­ting cof­fee out of their diets, and lit­tle wonder…

“Let’s say a sin­gle espresso in Lon­don costs £1.50, which is a lit­tle high but not by any means unusual. Assum­ing it is a 25ml shot that works out at 6p/ml.

If you were to go to a pub and buy a pint of espresso it would cost you £34.08. Or you bought a wine bot­tle of espresso it would cost £45. That is a phe­nom­e­nal amount of money. Think about the drinks you can buy for that sort of price. They are either extremely deli­cious or extremely alcoholic.”

Which cre­ates its own problems…

The prob­lem is that a price tag like this is a pretty hefty promise. Sell­ing an espresso for this much implies that the expe­ri­ence will be of equal value. Sip for sip it should be as sat­is­fy­ing as a great cham­pagne. The prob­lem is that in this coun­try, in Lon­don, in the vast major­ity of busi­nesses — it isn’t.

Charg­ing this much and deliv­er­ing some­thing so awful as the aver­age high street espresso destroys any trust between the cof­fee indus­try and the gen­eral pub­lic. This kind of price/experience dis­crep­ancy makes peo­ple feel stu­pid. It makes them resentful.

He sug­gests that this equa­tion should lead towards the pro­lif­er­a­tion of brewed cof­fee, I’d sug­gest the best way to save money on cof­fee in a reces­sion (and any time in fact) is to roast your own beans and make your cof­fee at home.

• Who died and made you Queen?
• things not to say to an atheist…
• Schrodinger#39;s cat and all that!
• The Vil­lage Church
• The next Google

For those of you read­ing from the top of the page down — in the last post I men­tioned some com­ments from Dave on a pre­vi­ous post, you should read that… any­way, he also had this to say:

“I think it taps into broader ques­tions of what the role of the gov­ern­ment is. Lib­er­al­ism says the role of the gov­ern­ment is to pro­vide as far as pos­si­ble for the lib­erty of its cit­i­zens and should inter­fere as lit­tle as pos­si­ble with the choices cit­i­zens make. This depends on a shift from ‘gov­ern­ment’ to ‘indi­vid­ual’ as the cen­tre of moral deci­sion making.”

I’d be inter­ested in your thoughts on whether or not the gov­ern­ment ever had a role to play in “moral deci­sion mak­ing”… I would have thought that always essen­tially occurred via the indi­vid­ual because the gov­ern­ment is not oper­at­ing behind closed doors.

I prob­a­bly lean towards clas­sic “lib­er­al­ism” but not so far as lib­er­tar­i­an­ism as sug­gested by oth­ers in pre­vi­ous clean feed debates.

But you know who is a lib­er­tar­ian? WWE’s Kane. That’s who (or at least the guy who plays the char­ac­ter — Glenn Jacobs) — don’t ask me how I know this, but if you’re polit­i­cal views align with a guy who looks like this it’s prob­a­bly time to reassess…

Dave (Walker — there are far too many Daves for this just to be a first name thing) and I have been thor­oughly enjoy­ing a dis­cus­sion on the role of gov­ern­ment (and Chris­tians in rela­tion to gov­ern­ment) back on this post.

Dave, for the unini­ti­ated, is the same guy who spoke at a con­fer­ence in Bris­bane recently and made a joke about me with­out real­is­ing that very few peo­ple in the audi­ence knew who I was… this time round he’s called my doc­trine of cre­ation anaemic. I would have thought it was slightly lumpy myself, con­gealed perhaps…

Any­way, I was relay­ing the debate to my wife (who prob­a­bly agrees with Dave)… and con­sid­ered for the first time that while the gov­ern­ment in the New Tes­ta­ment era was far from demo­c­ra­tic, the model we see of Paul relat­ing to those in author­ity while on trial is almost, almost, an exam­ple of Chris­t­ian lob­by­ing. With Paul play­ing the role of the advo­cate. I would stress that the dis­tinc­tion I see is that he’s not seek­ing to impose Chris­t­ian moral­ity on oth­ers, but to pro­tect the rights and free­doms of Chris­tians. I’d never really con­sid­ered Paul in that light before. I see some incon­sis­ten­cies between this sort of advo­cacy, and that prac­ticed by the Aus­tralian Chris­t­ian Lobby.

Believe it or not tur­tles are fero­cious — but that doesn’t negate this being a pretty awe­some direct mail cam­paign from an insur­ance company…

“Based on the infor­ma­tion obtained in the research, they sent warn­ing plates, like those used for wild dogs, cus­tomized with the fam­i­lies’ pets.”

This one would not be out of place out­side our house — Franky (short for Franklin) is a par­tic­u­larly vicious lit­tle rep­tile. We took a video of him stalk­ing (and bit­ing) my fin­ger the other day that I’ll put up here one day.

I’ve been read­ing a bit of the back cat­a­logue of the Friendly Athe­ist, who is in fact a friendly athe­ist — it’s a same about his lunatic band of fol­low­ers who deface every mod­er­ate post with com­ments about why Chris­tian­ity should not exist… I’ve been doing this because I think engag­ing with just one or two posts from this sort of blog and get­ting all preachy in the com­ments is harm­ful. I like to under­stand con­text before I go off dis­agree­ing (yes my spe­cific athe­ist friends this is impor­tant to Christians…).

The Friendly Athe­ist, Her­mant Mehta, achieved some fame ebay­ing off his time with a promise to visit churches iden­ti­fied by the win­ning bid­der. He turned it into a book — which would no doubt be infor­ma­tive read­ing for any­body want­ing to look at church prac­tices from the out­side. He also used his expe­ri­ence to write a cou­ple of reflec­tive posts — one about things about church that are annoy­ing (and I agree with most of them) — as do many Chris­t­ian com­menters on the post (which is still get­ting com­ments almost 2 years later)… and this one — ten things Chris­tians do bet­ter than athe­ists — which is a bit less friendly. I guess because both tar­get the fringe parts of Chris­tian­ity that I per­son­ally have strug­gles with… Which in itself is inter­est­ing. I think the “ratio­nal” evan­gel­i­cal arm of Chris­tian­ity prob­a­bly spends a lot of time agree­ing with athe­ists and throw­ing stones at Chris­t­ian broth­ers rather than focus­ing on the unity we have with our “irra­tional” fel­low Chris­tians. Which is pretty chal­leng­ing. Espe­cially in the light of pas­sages like 1 Corinthi­ans 1 (inci­den­tally if you google the phrase: 1 Corinthi­ans 1 bible­gate­way esv — the third result down is a page on the MPC web­site (dad’s church for the uninitiated))…

18 For the word of the cross is folly to those who are per­ish­ing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. 19 For it is written,

“I will destroy the wis­dom of the wise,
and the dis­cern­ment of the dis­cern­ing I will thwart.“
20 Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made fool­ish the wis­dom of the world? 21 For since, in the wis­dom of God, the world did not know God through wis­dom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. 22 For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wis­dom, 23 but we preach Christ cru­ci­fied, a stum­bling block to Jews and folly to Gen­tiles, 24 but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wis­dom of God. 25 For the fool­ish­ness of God is wiser than men, and the weak­ness of God is stronger than men.

The more I grap­ple with, and try to con­vince my athe­ist friends of the ratio­nal­ity of the gospel the more I am con­vinced that this is the case — they’re going to read this and tell me I’m cop­ping out for falling back on a proof text writ­ten in order to jus­tify just this crit­i­cism — but that’s where I guess our “doc­trine” of Scrip­ture dis­agrees. If it’s a true rep­re­sen­ta­tion of God’s inten­tions why wouldn’t the Bible say it?

Craig linked to the arti­cle from the Friendly Athe­ist I posted the other day, with a wise dis­claimer encour­ag­ing Chris­tians to be sen­si­tive when post­ing — advice I per­haps failed to heed with my own com­ments — lest we give more ammu­ni­tion to the dis­dain these athe­ists show for Chris­tian­ity. It’s par­tic­u­larly per­ti­nent advice given some of the “drive by” evan­ge­lism that hap­pens in the com­ments on that blog — evan­ge­lism with­out rela­tion­ship is pretty futile. As per­haps best expressed by this Friendly Athe­ist post of advice for Chris­tians as they evan­ge­lise to athe­ists…

• The gift of an Enemy
• Have a Suc­cess­ful Garage or Yard Sale [Week­end Project]
• How To Save Your Key­board After A Spill
• More on Not Using Twit­ter Dur­ing Wor­ship Services
• Tweet­ing and Worship
• I am an Aatheist
• Look­ing for a Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Rock Star
• A La Carte (5/29)
• Dis­play Album Cov­ers With CD Art Display

Sadly it appears the game is up. Michel Robert is not play­ing my games any longer. Or so it would seem.

He sent me an obscure email — with the sub­ject line YES A JOKER.

I told him in no uncer­tain terms that I was not. And he responded:

“WHERE ARE YOU NOW?. I WAS EXPECTING TO RECEIVE THE MONEY SO I CAN GET THE DOCUMENTS”

I responded, unwill­ing to give up, request­ing the photo…

How can I send you the money?

I need your photo.

Get back to me with the details for the trans­fer and the photo as soon
as possible.

He wasn’t recep­tive to my response…

“NO THE LAWYER WANT ME TO COME TO HIS OFFICE WITH THE MONEY AND HE SAID HE WILL CONTACT YOU AS SOON AS HE GOT THOSE DOCUMENTS READY”

I smelled a rat. Per­haps his uncles had caught up with him. I had to be sure…

You need to get me the photo. As soon as pos­si­ble. And I will send you the money — you are act­ing strangely. Prove to me that you are for real. I have $10,000 to wire you to get you out of the coun­try and into safety. BUT I MUST SEE THAT YOU ARE OK. That your uncles haven’t taken over your account. AND THAT YOU ARE PREPARED TO FOLLOW MY INSTRUCTIONS.

His response took me by surprise…

I TOLD YOU YESTERDAY TO SEND ME THE MONEY THROUGH WESTERN UNION MONEY TRANSFER ON MY NAME AND ADDRESS

MICHEL ROBERT
12 BP 4010 ABIDJAN 12
ABIDJAN
COTE D’IVOIRE
WEST AFRICA.

SEND ME THE TRANSFER CONTROL NUMBER AS SOON AS YOU SEND THE MONEY.

MICHEL.

He had done no such thing. So I called him out on this lie…

“No you didn’t. I’ve checked my emails — I have no record of that request.

I don’t think you are Michel.

I think you are his uncles — and I think you’ve killed him. I am going
to go to the police with­out proof that you are really Michel. I
under­stand you are under stress and might not be keep­ing track of the
emails you send.

I will send you 10,000 when I get the photo. Not before. Oth­er­wise I
will go to the police, and the lawyer, and the secu­rity com­pany and
inform them that Michel Robert has been mur­dered by his uncles. Run
away uncles. While you have the chance.

I will come for you — you have killed my Michel.”

And he brushed me off…

” which instruc­tion do you want me to fol­low?. I told you how impor­tant it is for me to leave here but you are ask­ing me to send you photo. in the first place, i have started won­der­ing if you are telling me the truth because it seems you are lying to me or you may want to play with me. i do not have money to snap the pic­ture and dont ever ask me to send you the pic­ture again because i have no means to snap the photo. if you dont want to help me, please go with you $10,000 and i dont need it. not intrested in your games”

Noth­ing makes me sad­der than this post on “the friendly athe­ist” and the tales of “decon­ver­sion” shared in the comments.

In short, he was much hap­pier being reli­gious. I think any­one would expect this, but the prob­lem is that I don’t think he has found any­thing pos­i­tive in athe­ism yet, and I think he’s find­ing it very depress­ing that there might not be a god. I don’t think that “bet­ter moral guide­lines” and “see­ing the uni­verse as it is” can out­weigh what could well be the loss of his entire fam­ily, at least not at this stage.

It’s sad that these athe­ists (the blog­ger in par­tic­u­lar) — make it their life’s ambi­tion to bring mis­ery to peo­ple in the form of “enlight­en­ment” — if they truly believe there’s no God — why pros­e­ly­tise aim­ing to decon­vert some­one and dis­rupt their family?

It’s also sad hear­ing tales of bro­ken lives dri­ven by bro­ken under­stand­ings of Chris­tian­ity per­pet­u­ated by bro­ken peo­ple. There’s so much anger and anguish under­pin­ning the gen­uine hurt many of these “decon­verted” athe­ists feel hav­ing “wasted their lives”. It also seems many of them have been ostracised by their “Chris­t­ian” fam­i­lies for doing so.

It’s sto­ries like this, repeated time and time again, that make me angry and sad. For all par­ties involved.

I come from an Evan­gel­i­cal South­ern Bap­tist strand of Chris­tian­ity so I think our sit­u­a­tions may be sim­i­lar. I was truly a war­rior for Christ — daily Bible read­ings cou­pled with prayer, tri-weekly Church vis­its and I made every deci­sion in my life based on the Truth I knew from the Bible. Of course I was still a teenager at the zenith of my faith so my deci­sions can’t truly com­pare to those made about a spouse or career.

I was 22 when I told my mother that I no longer believed Chris­tian­ity was valid and it ini­ti­ated the sin­gle hard­est time in my life. She effec­tively dis­owned me and we did not speak for sev­eral months. In her rage she told our extended fam­ily of my betrayal and even “outed” one of my friends to his own fam­ily. I was told that I was to no longer speak with my own brother.

Snooze but­tons are a non-morning person’s worst night­mare. Par­tic­u­larly if you’re a non-morning per­son with a 9–5 job or per­haps an 8.30 to 5 job that you’ve rein­ter­preted as a 9–5 job… anyway…

Here’s an alarm clock that you actu­ally have to stand on (as some sort of proof of life) for it to turn off. Fan­tas­tic. And clever.