On the stupidity of pluralism

There’s an evangelical Christian quarterback in the NFL who paints bible verses in his eye paint. The stuff they put on their faces to avoid glare.

An American sportswriter can’t handle the idea that this quarterback believes that Jesus is the only way to avoid hell. So he wrote a feature on it. This is a triumph of pluralistic dumbness. The writer asserts that the player’s view that his way is the only right way is wrong – thus placing his own “enlightened” views over the players – and being the intolerant fool he is accusing the player of being.

If there’s one thing that annoys me more than the new atheists and their anti-dogma dogma it’s the pluralists and their confusing inconsistencies.

“But should we be pleased that the civic resource known as “our team” — a resource supported by the diverse whole through our ticket-buying, game-watching and tax-paying — is being leveraged by a one-truth evangelical campaign that has little appreciation for the beliefs of the rest of us?”

But wait, there’s more dumbness…

“But there’s a shadow side to this. If their take on God and truth and life is the only right one — which their creed boldly states — everyone else is wrong.

Really? You’re only just figuring that out. It’s pretty much what Jesus says. You know, the “I am the way” bit, where he says “no one comes to the father except through me”…

Not a mere abstraction, this exclusiveness sometimes morphs into a form of chauvinism and mistreatment of non-Christians. Witness the incident with the Washington Nationals baseball team in 2005, when the Christian chaplain was exposed as teaching that Jews go to hell.”

How dare the church teach that anyone go to hell… oh, but wait, that’s what the Bible says… you know, that those who aren’t Christians (which is their choice) go to Hell.

Freedom of religion does not make a value judgment on the religions people adhere to – all religions are not equal. All people have equal rights to choose what religion they adhere to. And the state shouldn’t make quality judgments on these religions (unless they’re pursuing them for tax fraud).

Our pluralism is a defining and positive reality of American life — but not one that is much valued by those who define the faith coursing through the veins of sports culture.

If America’s lifestyle is defined by pluralism and not freedom then they’re getting a lot of things wrong.

I don’t know why I read that article. I knew it was going to be stupid.

Driscoll’s apologetic

Mark Driscoll has been invited to write occasional columns for the Washington Post. In his first he was asked how to best present the gospel to atheists and skeptics.

His answer, as his answers always are, was beautifully Christocentric.

Q: What makes the best ‘case for God’ to a skeptic or non-believer, an open-minded seeker, and to a person of faith and Why?

Answer
Jesus.

Christianity is not first and foremost about a sacred place to pilgrimage to, a philosophical system to ponder, a moral code to live, a religious tradition to honor, or an impersonal god to experience. Rather, Christianity is about a person who claimed to be the only God and said he would prove his unprecedented claim by living without sin, dying for sinners, and conquering death through resurrection.

It’s a nice opener. The gospel in a nutshell. And he doesn’t shy away from addressing other areas, but he starts with Jesus. And that’s worthy of respect. More respect than others who like to sit on their blogs and throw stones because they don’t like his sense of humour…

His conclusion is helpful too…

“And so while there is no “best case” for presenting God, there are false ways of presenting God: as anyone in addition to or other than Jesus Christ. As Christians, our goal is never to lie to people by only telling them what they want to hear, or manipulating them to feel what they want to feel. Instead, we want to respect them enough to tell them the truth, and love them enough to do so in a way that is compassionate. We care more about the truth and the love than having the “best case.”

I’ve been wondering, given recent experiences with atheists right here, how to move the debate away from discussing theism/atheism towards Christianity/atheism. It’s a great tactic the atheists have adopted to avoid dealing with Christianity specifically. It’s much easier to dismiss a non-specific deity on the basis of dismissing all deities (Christians do something similar all the time, by rejecting all other Gods) than it is to actually dismiss the specifics of the deity people are actually putting faith in. But it’s a case of moving the goal posts to suit the game you want to win.

The temptation, when discussing the existence of God in the theism/atheism paradigm is to throw our lot in with other theists (Muslims, Hindus, Mormons etc) and see them as allies – when a better, more Biblically consistent model is the one Driscoll advocates. Using an apologetic based on Jesus.

That’s why I’m a Driscoll fanboy. That, and the description he gives himself in his byline on the article.

“A nobody trying to tell everybody about Somebody.”

How to host a book burning

I have a new ambition in life… I want to write a book and have it burnt by the Amazing Grace Baptist church. You do too. You may not know it yet, but you’d be in great company. And if you go along you get BBQ or fried chicken – because they’re not works of Satan.

This video has been doing the rounds. It’s a news report on the Amazing Grace Baptist book burning – their list includes books by Billy Graham (a heretic), Mark Driskol (sic) (probably a heretic), and any version of the Bible that is not a King James. Because it, and only it, is the inspired, infallible, and inerrant word of God. I’ve always wondered what research the KJV only mob do to come to the conclusion that it was produced by better translators than our modern translators. I think I’ll try to contact this pastor guy and ask him. He has a church of 15, so he’ll have time. After the book burning of course…

How to write a book

One day I’d like to write a book. With the help of the character guide I posted a while back, and this helpful plot flow chart, my dream is a step closer to reality…

More games in real life

Raving: all about Pacman

Who says people aren’t influenced by the games they play…

From here.

YouTube Tuesday: the Auto Tune edition

Better late than never…

Some science… with Stephen Hawking and Carl Sagan

Some news…

Some advertising…

And finally, a joke you can play on your minister…

Terminated science

There's stupid research with no grounding in the real world and there's stupid research that gives credence to conspiracy theorists everywhere.

This particular research takes the cake…

In layman's terms the Large Hadron Collider's frequent misadventures (it's still not working) are being attributed to possible sabotage. From time travelers. Sent back in time to prevent it firing up and destroying our future…

Some scientists have produced papers outlining possible tests to make the process of sabotage easier – involving drawing randomly selected cards that say either "close the collider" or "keep running it"…

I'm not joking. Here are links… to the first study, and the second.

Grammar tips from Strongbad

I must confess that I haven’t watched a StrongBad email in a long time (possibly three years) I look forward to a day or two spent catching up on the archives. But StrongBad has been indelibly itched into my psyche whenever I’m trying to decide where to use apostrophes… particularly in the case of its v it’s.

Here’s a little song that will help you remember that when its is possessive it’s just i-t-s and when it’s a contraction it’s “i-t apostrophe s”.

That’s from this little collection of grammar songs.

I think I’ve posted this before (some time ago) – but it continues to be useful.

MasterCh(i)ef

I made that little picture myself. I thought it would’ve been done to death, but I found no evidence of that online…

Did everyone catch Anna Bligh on celebrity Master Chef last night. What a laff. Queensland produce was centre stage… right up until the second ad break. When the Queensland LNP took out a sixty second (I think) ad calling the Labor Party a pack of liars – with a nice, intense close up of a nice, intense looking Anna Bligh.

Unfortunately they couldn’t really capitalise on their ad. The call to action was the LNP website – sadly it seems to have been hacked. If you google LNP google gives you all sorts of warnings about the site not being safe. And you eventually get to an LNP holding page announcing maintenance.

Here is the graphical evidence…

Ways to skin a cat

Here’s a great book from Awful Library Books… if anyone can track down a copy I will pay real money for it…

A posterous idea

Posterous seems like a pretty nifty service.

Ok, I’ve tried it, it seems to work.

Posterous lets you essentially blog by email – it hosts all media files and syncs with just about every online service I can imagine… like WordPress.

I’m thinking it will be a very useful tool. So useful I’ve set up one account for blogging purposes, and one for personal use, which will probably end up being a scrap book for blogging.

I’m also thinking I might reduce the amount of personal stuff I put up here – so that when tribes of angry atheists come marching through and insulting me they have less stones to throw. Posterous might fill that gap.

Having said that – feel free to check out my posterous page here

Bookkeeping

It’s been a while since I plugged booko. It’s very handy. You can price match on books from online retailers. And it’s an Australian site…

I bought a batch of books last week – including Ratio – the conceptual cook book Simone was looking for many months ago

Giving notice

I was a little bit surprised that so many people spoke out in defense of announcements at church. I want to be clear that I’m talking about things that are generally covered in the “news” section of a church bulletin, and hopefully these days the church’s website and Facebook page*.

Announcements are dead wood. They should be cut. Like a pine forest. They should just be printed on literal dead wood.

I don’t buy into the whole “seeker sensitive” style service where everything is run for visitors and the people who are part of the church family are ignored. But if you’re spending 10 minutes reading out the handout that everybody is holding already** that’s 10 minutes of wasted time. You could, though I wouldn’t, fit three more songs or one long prayer in that time. There are myriad things that can be done in ten minutes that are more beneficial to church life than boring advertisements for things that are no doubt already boringly described in your boring newsletter.

You know what happens when church is boring – people fall out of windows and die. And Paul isn’t going to pop in and resurrect the poor souls that expire during your overly long promo of the church working bee.

* Here are some great tips from Mikey for how churches (and in fact any organisation) should use Facebook. He’s much better equipped than me to comment on this matter… I’ve only got 27 fans on my Facebook fan page after a week of relentless self promotion… you could become one now. It would make me feel special…

Here are some more Facebook friendly resources I found through Church Marketing Sucks… an e-book called “Facebook for Pastors” and a set of general principles on using Facebook for your business.

**And while I’m on that note – what’s with churches (not just ours, though it’s guilty here) being so miserly about the number of handouts they print. One per couple? Per day? Are you serious? My attendance isn’t worth 5 cents to you? You’re expecting me to “give generously” when the offering comes around and yet I have to share the handout…

I also miss handouts with sermon outlines written in them.

On simplicity

A nice reminder that perhaps you don’t need to pad your product or service with every feature imaginable.

This is how I think church services should be approached too. Get rid of the clutter and noise (like announcements) and just do the essentials.

From stuffthathappens.