Religious Lethargy

Some may see this video and think “lethargy” is the wrong word. You may see this and think fervor, ecstasy, ridiculousnous, stupidity, or hedonism is the correct word. About the end of this video I began crying in the middle of a Starbucks – nothing too crazy, but my anger turned to pity and fear.

I am so glad that there are people who desire to make encounters with God emotionally-charged. I wish there were more churches that sought to affect the emotions at least a little bit. So many congregations will view this video and have an allergic reaction so that they will never have any kind of excitement in their services. I will post later as to what are some problems with this, that I see. For now, just view it and leave your impressions in the comments section:

You Spin Me Right Round Jesus

Free Church Database

I came across a free church database system today. You can use it to track your church’s attendance, giving, etc. It actually looks like a it may be decent tool, and the “free” part is particularly good for smaller churches with the need, but not the finances. (My church bought a new database system a couple years ago, and we paid a ridiculous amount of money for something that probably does about the same thing.)

If anybody puts this to use, drop us a comment and let us know if it’s any good – www.churchmetrics.com.

i Get Things Done

Free program for you Mac users out there and who are keen on the Getting Things Done program. I downloaded it yesterday.

I Told You So…

Two days after the introduction of the iPhone, AT&T’s network goes down. Read more at MacCentral’s article.

Again, just so you know, I am a Mac man. However, I am disappointed that Apple went with an inferior network because it was not willing to compromise on it demands.

I say wait a couple of years, let the kinks get worked out, and wait until the iPhone gets on a better network.

$6000/year to Own an iPhone!?!?

Update: It will cost $6000 every two years, with three lines of service, and with unlimited data. My problem with it running off a slower network still stands. Thanks, Matt, for making me look at this again. Ah, the beauty of brotherly accountability.

This just in…do the math and you will be amazed how much this thing will cost you. I am a Mac man, but this is crazy. I like the new technology Apple is rolling out, but this kind of technology wedded to a network that cannot support the demands will be a loss for those who purchase this phone. Just so you know, the iPhone will be running off AT&T’s Edge network (not the faster broadband speeds of G3). That translates into slower download times, which translates into more frustration as you wait for your cool web page to load up.

Check out Mercola’s breakdown of the annual cost for a Family Plan with iPhone.

A Technological Messiah

I believe you will have to concede that what ails us, what causes us the most misery and pain – at both cultural and personal levels – has nothing to do with the sort of information made accessible by computers. The computer and its information cannot answer any of the fundamental questions we need to address to make our lives more meaningful and humane. The computer cannot provide an organizing moral framework. It cannot tell us what questions are worth asking. It cannot provide a means of understanding why we are here or why we fight each other or why decency eludes us so often, especially when we need it the most. The computer is, in a sense, a magnificent toy that distracts us from facing what we most needed to confront – spiritual emptiness, knowledge of ourselves, usable conceptions of the past and future. Does one blame the computer for this? Of course not. It is, after all, only a machine. But it is presented to us, with trumpets blaring…as a technological messiah.

[Added emphasis; Full Article: Neil Postman, German Informatics Society, 11 Oct 90, Stuttgart]

When Google Can’t Find What You’re Searching For

The computer, as we know, has a quality of universality, not only because its uses are almost infinitely various but also because computers are commonly integrated into the structure of other machines. Therefore it would be fatuous of me to warn against every conceivable use of a computer. But there is no denying that the most prominent uses of computers have to do with
information. When people talk about “information sciences,” they are talking about computers – how to store information, how to retrieve information, how to organize information. The computer is an answer to the questions, how can I get more information, faster, and in a more usable form? These would appear to be reasonable questions. But now I should like to put some other questions to you that seem to me more reasonable. Did Iraq invade Kuwait because of a lack of information?
If a hideous war should ensue between Iraq and the U. S., will it happen because of a lack of information? If children die of starvation in Ethiopia, does it occur because of a lack of information? Does racism in South Africa exist because of a lack of information? If criminals roam the streets of New York City, do they do so because of a lack of information?…

[Full Article: Neil Postman, German Informatics Society, 11 Oct 90, Stuttgart]

“Informing Ourselves to Death”

The problem with our society is not lack of information (as we saw in the last post), it is lack of moral fiber. We have way more information than we can integrate…so we trust bucket loads of information with no way to assimilate it into our worldview. Why? We have no anchor that holds within the veil of naivete.

Some more juicy quotes from Neil Postman, German Informatics Society, 11 Oct 90, Stuttgart

“[George Orwell] remarked that the average person today is about as naive as was the average person in the Middle Ages. In the Middle Ages people believed in the authority of their religion, no matter what. Today, we
believe in the authority of our science, no matter what…

The world in which we live is very nearly incomprehensible to most of us. There is almost no fact – whether actual or imagined – that will surprise us for very long, since we have no comprehensive and consistent picture of the world
which would make the fact appear as an unacceptable contradiction. We
believe because there is no reason not to believe. No social, political, historical, metaphysical, logical or spiritual reason…

The point is that, in a world without spiritual or intellectual order, nothing is unbelievable; nothing is predictable, and therefore, nothing comes as a particular surprise…

There is no consistent, integrated conception of the world which serves as the foundation on which our edifice of belief rests. And therefore, in a sense, we are more naive than those of the Middle Ages, and more frightened, for we
can be made to believe almost anything…”

Neil Postman on Technology

My friend, Greg Gilbert, is guest blogging at Between Two Worlds this week and he asks some questions regarding theology and technology. Yesterday I read a great transcription of a talk Neil Postman gave to the German Informatics Society in 1990. For those of you not familiar with Neil Postman, he wrote a stellar book called Entertaining Ourselves to Death – which is a look at how entertainment has impoverished our thinking. This talk is related to this book as it is entitled, “Informing Ourselves to Death.”

An acquaintance of mine, Josh Sowin, peaked my interest in Postman by his numerous posts on him. You can find those here.

I have included some stirring quotes that capture the essence of what Postman spoke about.

Neil Postman, German Informatics Society, 11 Oct 90, Stuttgart

“Anyone who has studied the history of technology knows that
technological change is always a Faustian bargain: Technology giveth
and technology taketh away, and not always in equal measure. A new
technology sometimes creates more than it destroys. Sometimes, it
destroys more than it creates. But it is never one-sided.

The invention of the printing press is an excellent example. Printing
fostered the modern idea of individuality but it destroyed the
medieval sense of community and social integration. Printing created
prose but made poetry into an exotic and elitist form of expression.
Printing made modern science possible but transformed religious
sensibility into an exercise in superstition. Printing assisted in
the growth of the nation-state but, in so doing, made patriotism into
a sordid if not a murderous emotion.”

Thoughts on technology??

New Template

As you can tell, I have moved from the dark side to the light. I was encouraged to change the colors so as to be easier to read and so as to not be too depressing. Anyway, I will be tooling around with it some more because I want to have the sidebar be a different color, but I can’t figure out how to do that. Any help would be much appreciated. Feel free to look at my source page and let me know what I can do. Also, let me know if you like this template better…What would make it better?

Left Behind Video Game…Buy It Before It Flies Away

“In one cataclysmic moment, millions disappear.” So the title to the new Left Behind video game goes. I don’t hold to a pre-tribulation rapture. As I was writing my paper on Revelation this semester, I was amazed at how much people want to cling to a pre-trib rapture view. One of the commentaries I read said something to the effect, “Although Revelation does not talk about a rapture, we know that Paul does so we should chapter 20 in this light.” What!?!? I will share more on my paper later as I think it has helped me in my view of Rev. In any case, check out the link to the video game and drop your jaw…

Thomas Sowell on Scoring Points in the Media

Sowell has a good article on how the media crunches numbers in their own way to get the numbers they want in readership. The American public has been deceived by media and politicians doomsaying that the economy is the worst its ever been. Is this true? Think about these stats Sowell gives from the book, Myths of Rich and Poor:

As of 1970, for example, only about a third of American homes had both central heating and air conditioning, while more than four-fifths had both in the 1990s. Moreover, the homes themselves were more than one-third larger.Just over one-fourth of American households had a dishwasher in 1970 but more than half did by the 1990s. Only 34 percent of households had color television in 1970 but 98 percent did in the 1990s.

How could this be, with lower real wages? Were we just going deeper and deeper into debt? Actually the net worth of Americans more than doubled during those same years.

Was there some kind of economic Houdini who could perform such magic?

No. Actually a lot of the point-scoring rhetoric involves misleading statistics.

Food for thought…and time to get informed.