It is a truth universally acknowledged that if you put a bunch of blokes on a creek bed with an adequate supply of stones the group of blokes will throw said stones into the river for no clearly apparent reason.
Month: May 2009
Mens Camp Reflections: Intro
I’ve got a few things that I thought of and jotted down while on Men’s Camp on the weekend. Rather than mash them all together in one big post I’m going to approach each issue separately. Starting now.
LA Times on Atheism
I’m getting a bit bored with the whole atheism thing. While I haven’t engaged in any emailed debates for a couple of days the last 200 email saga is still playing itself out in my head. It just makes me angry. So angry that rather than beating my head against the desk I will share this recent opinion piece from the LA Times with you…
The problem with atheists — and what makes them such excruciating snoozes — is that few of them are interested in making serious metaphysical or epistemological arguments against God’s existence, or in taking on the serious arguments that theologians have made attempting to reconcile, say, God’s omniscience with free will or God’s goodness with human suffering.
What does strike me about the whole debate – and this article brought it home – is that atheists feel like they’re in the minority. In the US they may well be – it’s politically incorrect to be an atheist. But I’m not sure that the “religion” stats from censuses are anything to go by. And I’d suggest that in Australia being an atheist is the normal or default position (assuming that agnostics are just uncommitted atheists because most religions would suggest that if you don’t act like you believe in God, you don’t believe in God) – not the exception to the rule.
“A recent Pew Forum survey on religion found that 16% of Americans describe themselves as religiously unaffiliated, only 1.6% call themselves atheists, with another 2.4% weighing in as agnostics (a group despised as wishy-washy by atheists). You or I might attribute the low numbers to atheists’ failure to win converts to their unbelief, but atheists say the problem is persecution so relentless that it drives tens of millions of God-deniers into a closet of feigned faith, like gays before Stonewall.”
That’s certainly not consistent with my experiences where I would expect the majority of people I deal with to be either atheists, or agnostics.
I’m wondering why the whole debate bothers me so much – and I suspect it really is that somewhat selfishly I’d like to be taken seriously and not treated like an idiot for having “an imaginary friend”…
Atheists seem to assume that the whole idea of God is a ridiculous absurdity, the “flying spaghetti monster” of atheists’ typically lame jokes. They think that lobbing a few Gaza-style rockets accusing God of failing to create a world more to their liking (“If there’s a God, why aren’t I rich?” “If there’s a God, why didn’t he give me two heads so I could sleep with one head while I get some work done with the other?”) will suffice to knock down the entire edifice of belief.
Coffee roasting drill
Roasting coffee at home is fun. And it makes better coffee. Guaranteed. And as I’ve mentioned before it’s pretty easy to get green beans online – try Ministry Grounds – There’s a bit of a rule of thumb for most home roasters – from what I can gather – that the more elaborate your roasting set up (short of a commercial roaster) the better. There are a bunch of good ideas at coffeesnobs… But I haven’t seen one as elaborate as this:
There’s a free PDF set of instructions on offer from Make Magazine. Beautiful stuff. I might see if I can dig up some other novel roaster designs too.
Design brief
I’m thinking about changing my design again, it’s not that I’m dissatisfied with this one, I just like that I can.
Does anybody have anything they’d like to see incorporated in the new design – or lost from the current one?
Anti-pastor
I’m a “PK”. For those not familiar with the jargon it means the child of a clergyman. I can’t bring myself to say “Pastors Kid” – because I hate the word “pastor” as a title. I don’t know why. It just grates on me. I hate it. I will, when questioned about my “PK” status insist that the P is for Preacher.
Is my loathing of “Pastor” unreasonable? I’m sure there’s a Biblical argument for it, but it just sounds a little soft. Wussy. Which I guess in the scheme of things isn’t a bad thing – people in ministry are called to be servant hearted or shepherdly.
I just don’t like it.
That is all.
A bunch of links – May 18, 2009
- justice
- Why don’t the New Calvinists say anything about the US government’s torture policy?
- How To Easily Remove Old Drivers from Windows
- Make Homemade Yogurt with 20 Minutes of Effort [Weekend Project]
- 5 Awesome Do-It-Yourself Sites
- Manchester United Secure Title With Arsenal Draw
- Manly rounding ominously into form
uʍopǝpısdn
ɯoɔ˙ǝlʇıʇdılɟ ƃuısn ʇuǝʇuoɔ pǝɹıdsuı ǝlƃƃınbs ɹɯ ǝɔnpoɹd uɐɔ ooʇ noʎ
Translation…
You too can produce Mr Squiggle inspired content using fliptitle.com
Testing times
Lately I’ve been thinking about how churches should harness the power of PR a little more – particularly regional churches in cities like Townsville – where there’s a strong local media contingent and not so much clamour for media attention. I’ll probably turn that into a post all of its own at some stage – but for now, I have a case study for your consideration…
A group of researchers set out to conduct a series of experiments testing prayer. Their findings created a difficulty for those people who expect science to be capable of testing everything… both Christians, and atheists…
Christians who think science can prove God struggle because the people being prayed for fared worse than the people not being prayed for – and atheists because they’ll often argue that prayer should have a demonstrable psychological placebo effect – which it didn’t.
Christianity Today found a somewhat unpredictable spin to put on events. The study was conducted a few years back, but this article was produced pretty recently. Here’s a description of the study:
“STEP was simple and elegant, conforming to standard research norms and protocols: 1,802 patients, all admitted for coronary artery bypass graft surgery, were divided into three randomized groups. Two of the groups received prayer from committed Christians with experience praying for the sick. But only one group’s members knew they were being prayed for. The result: The group whose members knew they were being prayed for did worse in terms of post-operative complications than those whose members were unsure if they were receiving prayer. The knowledge that they were being prayed for by a special group of intercessors seemed to have a negative effect on their health.”
Here’s the Christianity Today editorial on the results:
The real scandal of the study is not that the prayed-for group did worse, but that the not-prayed-for group received just as much, if not more, of God’s blessings.
It’s an odd interpretation of the results and doesn’t seem to mesh well with the study itself.
Here’s the Harvard Medical School Media Release on the study – and a better description of the methodology… You’ve got to wonder who set these parameters and actually thought they’d work. This doesn’t seem to come close to any Biblical picture of prayer…
“The researchers standardized the start and duration of prayers and provided only the patients’ first name and last initial. Prayers began on the eve or day of surgery and continued daily for 14 days. Everyone prayed for received the same standardized prayer. Providing the names of patients directed prayer-givers away from a desire to pray for everyone participating in the study. Because the study was designed to investigate intercessory prayer, the results cannot be extrapolated to other types of prayer.”
Sadly, the whole report is now going to be used by misguided atheists to bash all Christians over the head as they call for amputees to grow arms.
Bad movie plot: Mormon Theology
Here’s a fairly old piece of orthodox Christian criticism of Mormon theology… Interesting viewing, this, along with a South Park episode, and some segments of John Safran vs God, forms my understanding of the teachings of the US-centric religion. It’s really not at all linked to Christianity – despite what your friendly neighbourhood doorknocker might tell you.
Helpful Atheists
I’ve been challenged by my recent conversations with my atheist friends to consider my comments on morality – apparently atheists find the suggestion that Christians are more inclined to act morally somewhat abhorrent and arrogant – they argue that there are plenty of nice atheists. Which is true.
I made my suggestion in what I thought was a logical and coherent manner. If atheists are prepared to acknowledge that Christianity – in its pure, biblical form complete with love and an other person focus, is a force for good – then it follows that Christians must be gooder than average. I thought that made perfect sense. It lead to vitriol and condemnation.
I may have countered the standard accusation that “religion” has killed lots of people and done bad stuff by breaking Godwin’s Law – and invoking Hitler, and other terrible atheists who have killed many more people throughout human history as a response. This is altogether another argument and worthy of a separate post – this line was rejected on the basis that they weren’t motivated by their atheism. I disagree slightly, but take the point… anyway, that’s a rather long intro to this little story about a nice, helpful atheist who has agreed to help out those Christians who subscribe to rapture based theology. He’s going to send mail on their behalf, post rapture. You can choose from a series of letters and greeting cards… like this one…
So there you have it. Atheists can be nice people after all…
Fade to Black
I trust you all enjoyed my wife’s musings in my absence. If so – please leave a nice encouraging comment so that she’ll contribute more regularly.
While she may have indulged in some typical male caricatures she wasn’t far off the mark.
It is with some sadness that I must announce the retirement of my favourite novelty shirt – the subtle “Black T-Shirt””… It has served me well for many years. Since its purchase from Chermside’s Trade Secret for the low, low price of $9.99 the shirt has accompanied me around the country. Its iconic status recognised by many.
Sadly, the shirt is now a faded dark grey, slightly threadbare, and somewhat permanently on the nose.
Well, it smells ok straight off the washing line – but add any moisture and some sort of chemical reaction occurs, releasing a previously undetectable aroma. A putrid smell. So, with some sadness it will venture out into polite company no more. Farewell, good and faithful servant.
The silver lining to this dark (but fading) cloud is that it reduces the total number of novelty t-shirts in my wardrobe – and thus no doubt frees me up to replace it.
Different strokes
I am back. Camp was good, more on that shortly.
But first things first – I was reading through my unread items in Google Reader and game across these gems – right next to each other.
Two media organisations reporting on the same set of circumstances with vastly different interpretations of the facts:
ABC – Ex-Sharks Player denies involvement in sex scandal
Fox Sports – Former Sharks player Daniel Ninness admits role in group sex incident
In fact – both stories report almost exactly the same statement from Ninness – without making any editorial judgment on his stance, except in the headline.
How is this so?
Reclaimed
He’s back. Thankfully he doesn’t stink too much.
The fishes are still fine and the turtles are back to their regular routines.
I realise that the weekend isn’t yet over but the opportunities to complete my task list are. So, here’s the report card I’ve written for myself.
1. Hijack Nathan’s blog. A
I briefly considered changing the passwords of his blog and holding them at ransom. That would have been fun – for me anyway. I’m sure some of you out there are looking forward to hearing less of me and more of Nathan. It’s been fun having some virtual friends over the weekend. Special mention goes to my sister and queenstuss for commenting. You made me feel special.
2. Master Greek E
Apparently eating Greek does not count towards learning Greek. This is a shame really, because we’re going to have some tonight. No time for Greek this weekend. I thought about it though.
3. Finish my 1st grade violin book. C+
Technically I didn’t finish the book but I did make some great progress. And I got a compliment. Nathan’s really looking forward to his little concert.
4. Design an outdoor setting which I could possibly build. B
If the emphasis was on the design I completed the task well. However, I’ve decided that we don’t have the skills, tools or space to build something even as simple as a table. There’s not much you can build with a heat gun and screwdriver. I actually found a webpage with detailed building directions but I didn’t understand 80% of the jargon so I don’t think I’m quite ready for the task.
I love writing report cards.