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.

PZ Myers killed my blog

So, Christians have been pretty guilty of wrongly accusing atheists of doing bad stuff before – but the prominent atheist PZ Meyers wrote a rebuttal to yesterday’s post, linked to it, and I was flooded with angry commenters.

I’m trying to keep up with moderating the comments (most of which seem to assume I’m an American writing for an American audience).

I’m getting there – but the traffic and comments were the straw that broke the camel’s back with regards to my webhosts, so I’m currently moving.

I’ll flick the switch soon. In the meantime – try to hold off on commenting because new comments and stuff won’t come through.

See you soon.

September 28, 2009

Five things that would make atheists seem nicer

I am trying really hard to cut down on generalising and bagging out “atheists” rather than specific people and streams of atheism.

They’re not all the same – and they aren’t all out to eat your babies. But atheists (general) keep giving me reason to think bad thoughts about them. Like the two who hijack this thread on Communicate Jesus.

Here are five tips for my atheist friends to help them seem nicer and more reasonable.

  1. Stop being so smug.
  2. Don’t assume every piece of Christian evangelism is directed at you – we want the undecideds, not the decided-uns.
  3. Admit that the debate about God’s existence is complex – and that it can, depending on your presuppositions, be quite possible for intelligent and rational people to intelligently believe in an intervening deity who communicates through a book.
  4. Admit that the scientific method – which by its nature relies on induction rather than deduction (starting with a hypothesis and testing it rather than observing facts and forming a hypothesis) – is as open to abuse as any religious belief, and is neither objective nor infallible.
  5. Try to deal with the actual notions of God seriously believed in by millions of people rather than inventing strawmen (or spaghetti monsters) to dismiss the concepts of God – and deal with the Bible paying attention to context and the broader Christological narrative rather than quoting obscure Old Testament laws. By all means quote the laws when they are applied incorrectly by “Christians” – but understand how they’re meant to work before dealing with the Christians described in point 3.

September 27, 2009

Salt: a book

I planned to do a lot of reading this week. And I failed. We watched too much West Wing – it’s as intellectually stimulating as reading.

I did however manage to almost finish one of the cleverest books I’ve read for a long time. It’s all about salt. It’s fascinating. I will no doubt blog a lot about salt in the next two weeks as I think back through the interesting bits.

Salt is the bedrock of civilisation.

You should read this book.

September 27, 2009

Unmitigated soppiness

This post should potentially come with some sort of gag warning. But I’m sure all my female readers will appreciate it – and single guys can probably learn something from it…

We watched the Baz Luhrmann version of Romeo + Juliette this afternoon.

Now that I’m married I enjoy romantic tragedies even less than before.

Speaking of which, we had our two year anniversary this week (on the 22nd). And my wife is still wonderful. I don’t normally go for soppiness online – it falls into the category of sharing information people don’t really want to read (oversharing).

I do love my wife very much though, and I’m happy for this fact to be published.

September 27, 2009

Holiday snaps

I took lots of photos during our holidays – most were at a wedding and will be boring to all of you. Some were at the beach. Like these (and whatever else I eventually upload to this album).

I’ve been having a lot of fun playing with aperture and exposure settings.

And here’s the dust storm on the Sunshine Coast.

September 27, 2009

Back

Holidays are almost over. We’re back in civilisation today. We had lunch with Andrew and Simone.

Which reminds me of the news of some import that is worthy of note.

Last Monday we had our interview regarding candidacy with the Presbyterian Church of Queensland – we passed. We’ll, if all goes according to plan, be studying at QTC and working at Clayfield (with Andrew and Simone) next year.

September 27, 2009

Holidays and weddings

Were still on holidays, but Ive got a blogging itch, which Im scratching using my iPhone while I sit in a church waiting for a wedding to start.

Were early because Robyn is an usher.

Ill return to normal posting over the weekend.

September 25, 2009

Focal point

Someone wise (I cant remember who) once told me that you can tell what a church’s priority or point of difference is by what they have literally occupying centre stage. For some it’s the drum kit, for others a baptismal pool, and for others the pulpit.

Ive started paying attention when visiting churches, its quite telling.

September 25, 2009

One way to annoy people less via email

In the spirit of my “let me google that for you” post recently, let me share with you another little piece of online etiquette that is bound to make you less annoying to friends, family, and coworkers.

It’s called Snopes.com. And it’s the place to go before sending on any forwarded warning/sob story/wealth generating chain letter.

If you send me a stupid forward about a missing child who needs prayer, or a sick kitten, and I find it on snopes, I am going to mercilessly call you out on your stupidity in the hope that you’ll learn your lesson. These letters are designed to clog up the Internet.

You don’t even have to go to snopes – a quick google will normally kill any stupid internet rumour.

September 21, 2009

One stop informercial shop

Remember those really exciting little videos about technology these days? You know, the ones that boggle your mind with the sheer size and amount of information floating around. Figures like the ones in this picture (found here):

Here are a bunch of the videos, including a couple I hadn’t seen before, in one easy post. Watch them before your next dinner party.

September 21, 2009

Saw melon

I saw this watermelon art a couple of days ago – and it’s been floating around waiting to be posted (and possibly haunting me in my dreams since… seriously). There are more of these here. It makes my head hurt.

September 21, 2009

Settling the great geek debate

A while back I was trying to figure out the difference between nerds and geeks. My hypothesis is that the terms are not interchangeable. I think the matter is settled once and for all by this Venn Diagram…

September 21, 2009

Doughy Ads

Play Doh is one of those play things that has no doubt suffered because of the sheer awesomeness of modern toys. Have you seen the new Transformers toys?

Play Doh’s marketer obviously has – because this new campaign they launched in Singapore is pretty awesome. And edgy. Here are some of the print ads.

September 21, 2009

Journalistic hazards

I deal with journalists frequently. They are often a cause of professional frustration. But it can be a tough job. Especially when your screw ups are very public, and live. Like these.

September 21, 2009

Oscars and Lucinda

So you’re producing a movie. You want it to win an Oscar. Where should you set it? It’s one of life’s great questions.

A question finally answered by this infographic.

If you were writing a movie about the sugar industry you could set it in North Queensland, in Lucinda, and this title would then make sense.

Here’s a picture of Lucinda.

From here, via bookofjoe.

September 20, 2009