Cartoon about church publicity

There's a funny cartoon about church publicity here. NB - I don't think churches should necessarily "get people in" to do the marketing; I think most non-dead churches have at least one person capable of putting together a basic website or blog about the church. It's easy!

Why a Good God Should Allow Suffering

There's a lot of rubbish spoken about the idea that God is infinitely good being incompatible with the truth that there's suffering in the world. There are a lot of good anaswers to it from a Christian point of view; the best ones centre on Jesus.

That's not what I'm trying to do here. I'm going to try to show why it's plausible that the idea of an inifinitely good God should lead to an expectation that there will be suffering in the world. I'm not saying these arguments are watertight - it's just to get people thinking. Oh, and they're mostly working from the writings of John Piper.

A) An infinitely good God would want others to appreciate his goodness, power, etc. to the greatest possible extent If God is infinitely good, then he will want people to have an accurate view of things, including his own nature, so that they can enjoy him.

B)God's goodness is most visible when you can also see the absence of goodness You can only see how good things are by comparing them. I used to think the school I went to was ok. It was only when I went into other schools that I appreciated how good it was.

A) and B) imply that a good God should permit the existence of things that are not good.

C) God's power and sovereignty are more visible in him working through and despite evil rather than just working in good. Makes sense. How awesome a god would be who could use even people and actions opposed to him for his purposes!

A) and C) imply that people appreciate God better when seeing him working though evil, and hence that an inifinitely good God should be seen to work even though evil events.

St James, Didsbury (C of E)

When visited:

27th November, 2005, 10:30am

Location:

Just off the big corner in Wilmslow Road, Didsbury

Reputation:

St James and the daughter church, Emmanuel, have a reputation as strong open evangelical congregations. St James is supposedly the more stylistically traditional of the two.

Type of Service:

According to the website, it should have been Morning Prayer, being the 4th Sunday of the month. The weekly notice sheet on the website did not indicate otherwise. Searching afterwards, I did however find a mention that it was a combined service at Emmanuel at the bottom of the monthly events planner thing (pdf rather than html).

What Happened:

There were four of us there - me, a bloke aged 20 or so and a young couple of East Asian extraction. The building was dark, quiet and locked, with no indication of why. The noticeboard showed only details of last week's services.

Website:

yes - it looks ok, but the "weekly" notice sheet has been known to be three months out of date.

Overall:

This is a church that is either actively trying to discourage new members or that has a grossly incompetent communications system. I might try again, but if I was looking for a church to settle at, I wouldn't go back here.

Oh yes, and while I'm at it...

As I seem to be in a mood for commenting on things that annoy me, here's another one. Real Player. It's just plain nasty. Oh, and the link goes to a set of articles which I pretty much agree with as to why.

Adults Acting as Children

No, not talking about infantile behaviour.

There seems to be an orthodoxy in filmmaking that if you want to get someone to look 16, you need to get someone who is 19 or so. That's complete rubbish. It really annoys me when I watch a film, and there are a bunch of 20-something blokes or women dressed in school uniform and acting as schoolkids. I know what teenagers look like; I'm a teacher. But what you get in most films, even some big budget ones, tends to look like adults dressed as teenagers. It's pointless and it's annoying.

If you want an actor who looks 15, get an actor who is 15.

Christian Dating

Here's 1 Thessalonians 4:3-8, using the NIV footnotes instead of the main text:

It is God's will that you should be sanctified: that you should avoid sexual immorality; that each of you should learn to acquire a wife in a way that is holy and honorable, not in passionate lust like the heathen, who do not know God; and that in this matter no one should wrong his brother or take advantage of him. The Lord will punish men for all such sins, as we have already told you and warned you. For God did not call us to be impure, but to live a holy life. Therefore, he who rejects this instruction does not reject man but God, who gives you his Holy Spirit.

So what does this tell us about dating (as just one application)?

• We should always act in a way that is holy
• We should act in a way that is honourable
• We shouldn't be driven by passionate lust
• We shouldn't wrong others
• We shouldn't take advantage of others

Now whatever you think of dating, and for my part I think that the whole Josh Harris thing is largely just semantics, this seems like very good advice.

Relativism and Atheism

It's important to be clear what we're talking about. I'm using the following definitions:

atheism - the belief that God does not exist

relativism - the belief that no one point of view is more valid than others

agnosticism - not being sure whether God exists or not

When two or more people have a discussion or an argument, they are usually coming from different points of view. Each of them will have their own experiences; each of them will have their own backgrounds; their own reasons for believing what they believe. Sometimes one point of view will be "better" or "more valid" than another For example, the view of a professor of engineering on how a car engine works is probably going to be better than the view of a six-year old child, because they have had more opportunity to become well-informed, and to experience the car engine itself.

But sometimes neither person is in a better position to know, and then it just comes down to people's background, what they assume and what they believe. If we find ourselves in that situation - where the only reasons for disagreement are background and assumptions, then it is a good idea to admit that at the end of the day we don't know, we can just have an opinion.

If God doesn't exist, then no-one can have a "better" or "more valid" experience of God than anyone else, which means that we are all groping in the dark. We could have two people meeting one another and one of them believed in God, and one didn't believe in God. Neither of them could have any real evidence for their claim; they would both be believing things entirely on the basis of their backgrounds and assumptions. But that means that we couldn't tell who was right.

At the end of the day, the only way that Atheism cannot explain why many people do believe in God is by saying that people sometimes believe wrong things because of their experiences, or because they want it to be comfortable to them, or something. But whenever they admit that, they are cutting the ground from under themselves, because if those reasons can make other people wrong, it can make them wrong too.

If an atheist is being logically consistent, they can never be sure. They can never say categorically "God does not exist" - it can only ever be "I can't see how God can exist" or "I don't think that God exists". But I wouldn't call that atheism; I'd call that agnosticism, as it's saying that at the end of the day, you're not sure.

Does God Exist?

This is hopefully going to be the master index for a series of things I'll write on the topic. If the links below don't work, that means I've not written that bit yet!

• Why you can't be sure the answer is "no" (Relativism and Atheism)
• Why Suffering Doesn't Disprove God 1
• Why we might be able to know
• Why the universe doesn't make sense otherwise
• Why the arguments don't work
• Who to Trust?
• Why I am a Christian
• Why Doesn't God Make Himself Clearer?
• Hope
• Theism
• By this all men will know...
• A review of Alister McGrath's (very good) book The Twilight of Atheism

Da Vinci Code, etc

• The Golden Ratio, φ
• rubbish, including a Dan Brown plot generator

A review of a book, which shows why Dawkins' arguments against God don't work.

A discussion of Pascal's Wager (aka why it's a better bet to be a Christian than not)

The "Problem" of Evil

Thoughts on Psychology

This is another one of those index pages I'm trying to use to provide some middle-term structure to this site.

Psychology of Communication

• Scott Adams on ID and cognitive dissonance
• Power and Jesus - thinking about whether speaking to people about Jesus means claiming power over them

Reflecting on how people tick (or should do)

• Anthony of Egypt - madness
• Brokenness
• Self-Acceptance
• Personality Tests
• Scars
• Rejoicing in what God is Doing

Opposing people

Teaching Deficiencies

Synthesis

Hope

Theism

Random Stuff about me

• Big Five Test (used on me)
• Stuff I don't like: Bills | The Miracle Maker | Painful Mind Games | Being forced to watch TV
• Missing School
• Why I didn't drive
• Liking Sad Films
• Why Revision is Cheating
• All Change!
• Seminal Semantics
• Driving - Random Thoughts
• Advertising
• The Power of Community
• Father Christmas

Scott Adams on Intelligent Design

Scott Adams (author of the Dilbert comic strip) has written an interesting article on the subject of the Intelligent Design / Evolution debate. I think it's especially interesting because it reflects my disillusionment a few years back with a lot of the debate...

Adams' original article.
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