Author: Nathan Campbell

Nathan runs St Eutychus. He loves Jesus. His wife. His daughter. His son. His other daughter. His dog. Coffee. And the Internet. He is the pastor of City South Presbyterian Church, a church in Brisbane, a graduate of Queensland Theological College (M. Div) and the Queensland University of Technology (B. Journ). He spent a significant portion of his pre-ministry-as-a-full-time-job life working in Public Relations, and now loves promoting Jesus in Brisbane and online. He can't believe how great it is that people pay him to talk and think about Jesus. If you'd like to support his writing financially you can do that by giving to his church.

Copywrongs

You know what is worse than Christians flagrantly disregarding copyright and intellectual property laws* (you know the whole “Thou shall not steal” bit of the Bible)… Christians flagrantly disregarding copyright for the purpose of bad commercial parody.

Making money by stealing other people’s intellectual property is much worse than just stealing their intellectual property for yourself. Making money by stealing someone’s material for second rate parody “Jesus Junk” is somewhere down the bottom. Here’s a story that made my stomach churn.

Jesus Junk - a really bad shirt

Trademark attorney Michael G. Atkins of Seattle said legal parodies of commercial trademarks are protected under the First Amendment, but such religious products generally don’t fall into that category.

“You could take Microsoft and change their logo around to make fun of Microsoft, and that would be legal,” he said. “But I can’t use the Microsoft logo to promote my Christian theme because there’s no real connection there. That’s illegal.”

Here’s what one of the creators and purveyors of Jesus Junk had to say for himself (as reported in the USA Today story)… Kerusso is the company responsible for producing a bunch of terrible shirts.

Kinnett views the commercial spoofs — which only make up 15% or so of Kerusso’s merchandise — as modern-day parables.

“If Jesus were here today would he make parody T-shirts? I doubt it,” Kinnett said. “But in his day, he did use parables. He used things that were common and recognized in everyday life to make a point or say something with a deeper meaning.”

* I still think Christian copyright holders should not “hold” their “rights” for the sake of the kingdom – but if they don’t then the end users have to respect that decision (and the law).

December 22, 2009

When I survey

This week the Sydney Morning Herald published yet another survey on religiosity in Australia. The results continue to show that the majority of Australians call themselves Christians while the minority are actually actively involved in church… how should the church fix that disparity?

The more conventional Christians, those who believe in – and occasionally worship – a personal God make up a neat 50 per cent of the nation.

There are some interesting demographic breakdowns…

Women are more certain that God created the world (27 per cent to 18 per cent) and wrote the Bible (40 per cent to 28 per cent) but aren’t so sure every word of the Good Book has to be taken to be literally true (25 per cent to 30 per cent). The least Christian community in Australia is young men; the most Christian are women of a certain age.

It seems that the “progressives” are gaining some traction.

They [Christians] are convinced (94 per cent) that Christ was a historical figure; fairly confident (91 per cent) that He was the Son of God; increasingly sceptical (72 per cent) about the Virgin Birth; and oddly – considering its key importance to the faith – uncertain that He rose from the dead (85 per cent). These beliefs are held very confidently. The Nielsen poll found almost nine out of 10 Australian Christians were absolutely or fairly certain of their beliefs.

Across all faiths and no faith 34 per cent of the population thought these texts were the word of God. A clear majority (61 per cent) thought they were written by man. Christians showed far greater confidence in the Bible (58 per cent) than other religions showed in their texts (35 per cent).

Then the findings just got a little weird…

Astrology
Christians seem hardly more likely (44 per cent) than the rest of us to put their faith in the stars.

Psychics
The Christians in our midst are markedly more likely (52 per cent) to put their faith in telepathy, clairvoyance, psychic healing etc.

The beliefs regarding science and the origin of life were also pretty interesting…

Most Australians believe God played a part in the process. That He created all life at a stroke about 10,000 years ago is believed by 23 per cent of us. That He guided a long process over time is believed by another 32 per cent. The beliefs of Australian Christians are even more dramatic, with 38 per cent supporting Genesis and another 47 per cent favouring the God of Design.

In the year in which the 200th anniversary of Darwin’s birth was celebrated around the world, only 12 per cent of Australian Christians believe his theory of natural selection. For all the talk of Darwin’s preeminence in modern science, attitudes to evolution remain the litmus test of belief and disbelief in Australia. Christians offer the most meager support, while 89 per cent of those who deny God’s existence back Darwin.

What do the other 11% who deny God’s existence back?

Heaven, hell, angels, witches and the devil get a tick from about 10 per cent of those who doubt or disbelieve the existence of God. A quarter support miracles; 27 per cent put their faith in astrology and UFOs; and a mighty 34 per cent believe in ESP. So a third of the nation’s atheists, agnostics and doubters have turned their back on God, but not on magic.

But it seems Australia is trending towards atheism. Nearly half of young men aged under 25 identify as atheists. Atheism is de rigueur for the angry young man.

Men outnumber women by two to one in the ranks of the deniers. They are joined by nearly half (42 per cent) of Australians under 25. But only a quarter of those over 55 are as sure that no God awaits them as their end approaches.

Here are the results for a similar survey in the US.

  • 82% of American adults believe in God
  • 76% believe in miracles
  • 75% believe in heaven
  • 73% believe Jesus is God or the Son of God
  • 72% believe in angels
  • 71% believe in the survival of the soul after death
  • 70% believe in the resurrection of Jesus
  • 45% of adults believe in Darwin’s theory of evolution
  • 40% believe in creationism.
  • 61% of adults believe in hell
  • 61% believe in the virgin birth (Jesus born of Mary)
  • 60% believe in the devil
  • 42% believe in ghosts
  • 32% believe in UFOs
  • 26% believe in astrology
  • 23% believe in witches

December 22, 2009

YouTube Tuesday: Goal

FIFA’s goal of the year candidates are pretty special. You

December 22, 2009

Studying Pokemon leads to exam failure

I’m not a Pokemon fan at all. That’s one Japanese fad that passed me by. I do know that drawing Pokemon characters on your exam paper is not a shortcut to success. Especially if your teacher can out fox you (or out Pokemon you) as was the case for this mathlete…

December 21, 2009

Beware the unbread

This zombie toast statue looks like it should be blasted with a shotgun – and definitely not purchased.

December 21, 2009

How I write complaint letters

You may, if you’re a regular reader, be wondering what became of my complaints to Cadbury and Jetstar.

Well.

Cadbury sent me a voucher for $5 to spend on Turkish Delight and Jetstar sent me $100 to spend on my next flight.

This complaint letter thing is fun and rewarding.

Here are my six tips for writing a complaint letter that gets read…

  1. Establish a connection with the company – tell them that you’re familiar with the product you’re complaining about. Being a regular customer who is sold on the brand will give you credibility with the reader – and make them want to help you out.
  2. Find the right person to contact – for the Cadbury one I phoned Cadbury rather than using an anonymous web form, for the Jetstar one I emailed it directly to the Customer Service manager as well as posting it. The more senior the person you address the letter to the better.
  3. Give good details – tell the reader exactly what your experience was from start to finish. Set the scene. Help them to pinpoint the nature of your complaint.
  4. Use the right tone – be polite – don’t complain about rudeness by being rude. Try using humour – it’ll make your letter different to the hundreds of other letters they receive. Be memorable.
  5. Have a call to action – give the company some recourse – let them know what you expect in return for your letter. Do you want a reply detailing what went wrong and what they’ll do to fix it? Do you want a refund? You won’t get exactly what you want without asking for it.
  6. Be contactable – give good details for follow up – you won’t get free stuff if the company doesn’t know where to send things.

Those are the things I do – how ’bout you? What are your tips for writing complaint letters that bear fruit.

December 21, 2009

Resignation Limerick

I told my CEO verbally that I’d be leaving three weeks ago. Our policy requires that resignations be delivered in writing so today I wrote this resignation limerick…

It is with sadness and regret,

But conditions must be met,

And so now I resign,

In verse, and five lines.

But I won’t be leaving just yet.

It’s not as cool as these resignations… by cake, and by game… but I didn’t want a boring write by numbers kind of deal.

December 21, 2009

The problem with surveys

You know what I hate more than anything else in TV news bulletins. The viewer poll. The viewer poll is not news – nor is it indicative of the public’s actual thoughts on an issue. It is a revenue raiser. A tax on those stupid enough to phone or SMS an expensive number.

You can write a survey and skew a question any way you want. For polling to be legit it needs to be carrier out objectively by a company that can produce and moderate results to ensure a proper sample of the community is represented – and it needs to include the number of people who didn’t care enough about the issue to respond either positively or negatively.

Dinosaur Comics explains…

Here’s a completely unrelated Dinosaur comic that made me laugh…

December 21, 2009

Well, well, well

Dave Miers is raising money to buy wells in Cambodia. You should head over to his blog and read the post and think about donating.

Once you’ve done that you should do your last minute “really useful gift” shopping at the St Eutychus Store. Buy some food for some kids who don’t eat good…

There isn’t enough time for cards to be sent out before Christmas – so you’ll have to do the environmentally responsible thing and select an e-card.

December 21, 2009

Christianity doesn’t kill people, people kill people

I’m sick and tired of atheists blaming Christians for killing millions of people or condemning the God of the Bible for doing so. It’s not actually a logical position for them to take.

If religion, as they see it, is a baseless form of social control invented by our survival driven minds to make people be nice to each other then it’s not actually “Christians” killing people, or God killing people. It’s people killing people.

If the Christian God is a baseless myth how can he be accused of killing people? If Christianity is a delusion then surely the defence of insanity works for those who allegedly killed in God’s name.

Christianity can not, by itself, be responsible for the death of anybody. It can, at best, be the justification used by a killer for their actions either from a deluded sense of duty or because they’re looking to act in a sinister manner and need a scapegoat.

On one hand atheists will often assert that there is no such thing as evil and on the other they’ll call religion (and especially Christianity) evil on the basis of a few conflicts throughout history that were pretty clearly the actions of depraved and power hungry individuals disguising their ambitions in a cover of religiosity.

The “new atheist” will also claim that all the good stuff we take for granted – like the end of slavery – was won through the “enlightenment”. What they fail to mention is that more people were killed during the enlightenment’s French Revolution (16,000 to 40,000 during the “Reign of Terror”) than during the Spanish Inquisition (3,000 – 5,000).

December 20, 2009

A purpose – driving life

I like this little comic.

December 19, 2009

Mech Pram

Worried about the impending robot apocalypse? You know, the one with the Terminators running around with bad Austrian accents?

This pram will turn your offspring into lean mean robot killing machines.

December 19, 2009

The coolest video you’ll see tonight

Without question – provided you’ve only watched the videos I’ve posted and not some pre-release footage of Iron Man 2… without further ado (this is awesome in full screen).

December 18, 2009

Rhapsody in iPhone

I thought having two iPhones was excessive – check out what this guy can do with six.

Via Human3rror

December 18, 2009

Running rings around earth

Wouldn’t earth be cool if it had rings like Saturn. I’d totally live on a planet like this…

December 18, 2009