August 2007

ABC radio programme The Spirit of Things - 26August2007 - Space, Genes, Evolution and Religion interviews four thinkers in the area of science and religion: Ted Peters, Martinez Hewlett, Antje Jackelen and Jacques Arnould. It’s a fairly low key engagement with the topic, but worth a listen (and the web page has links to both the audio and other resources).

Related references:

Jackelén, Antje. “The Image of God as Techno Sapiens.” Zygon 37, no. 2 (2002): 289-302.
Jackelén, Antje. “What Is ”Secular“? Techno-Secularism and Spirituality.” Zygon 40, no. 4 (2005): 863-873.

Peters, Ted. Playing God?: Genetic Determinism and Human Freedom. New York: Routledge, 1997.
Peters, Ted. Science, Theology, and Ethics Ashgate Science and Religion Series. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2003.

Peters, Ted, and Martinez Hewlett. Evolution from Creation to New Creation: Conflict, Conversation, and Convergence. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2003.

The Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences
Zygon Center for Religion and Science

A friend (Hi Rob!) emailed me this links about a (free) Microsoft product - SteadyState - that allows you to manage shared Windows PCs, such as kiosk PCs or ones used by children.

See Parents take control with SteadyState - Security - Technology - theage.com.au

I guess it’s the (great?) grandchild of something like Apple’s old At Ease interface.

Short but helpful article by Darren at ProBlogger on How I Produce Video Blog Posts.

The NZ Privacy Commissioner has a press release out on what she calls “privacy pollution” caused by individuals and wider society being permeated by digital media and transactions.

“Privacy pollution is about the small privacy incursions that are annoying rather than harmful in themselves, but can accumulate and have widespread impact that can ultimately amount to a significant level of intrusion”

See: Private Word Issue 63, August 2007 - The Office of the Privacy Commissioner, New Zealand

Related links:

• Commissioner hits out at “privacy pollution” - Yahoo!Xtra News:
• Scoop: ‘Privacy Pollution’ erodes choices:
• Call for restrictions on ‘privacy pollution’ - New Zealand news on Stuff.co.nz:

Last week sometime my name-brand Windows anti-virus software beeped at me and said it wanted to upgrade itself to the new, bright and shiny version. ‘Aha!’ I thought, ‘it knows that the subscription is about to run out and it might be replaced with something else so it’s trying to coerce me into loathing it less.’

Anyway, I duly let it do its thing and, given the painful process of upgrading Windows software, got it running smoothly or so I thought. It turns out though that it seems to become more draconian about CDROMs being inserted into the computer. Before a CDROM would be inserted, be scanned briefly and then autorun. Now a CDROM is inserted and we can all go off and have dinner before the computer recognize it’s there and autoruns it. This *really* *really* annoys the kids running games off CDROM.

Options available

• Uninstall new version, reinstall previous version. May increase risk through not being able to update in future
• Stay with the current setup - grit teeth and bear it. At risk from irate offspring.
• Turn off the ’scan CDROM’ setting - increase risk
• Change anti-virus software to a new program - which may do a worse job at scanning etc.
• And so on…

The experience made me think about the church and how sometimes we run our own ‘anti-virus software’ at the door, in the service, in our small groups, in what we read, watch and listen to, and in who we befriend. It seeks to prevent ideas and people who might disrupt the community of faith from even breaching the doorway. In doing so though we may set our ’scanning’ options to be so aggressive that things that are normal and useful become hard to do for people in the community, and others from outside the community will not ever encounter Christ because of being ’scanned’ (and heaven forbid, ‘quarantined’ or ‘deleted’). Perhaps, we need to check what our settings are and take a risk at setting them to something less aggressive.

If you’re interested in the history of New Zealand comics then tune into TV One Sunday night (2 Sep) at 10:40pm for the broadcast of The Comics Show - documentary by Point of View Productions.

Hat tip to New Zealand comics on TV - Dylan’s blog

Related link: Artsville | TV ONE PROGRAMMES | TV ONE | tvnz.co.nz

Today is St Augustine’s Day. Augustine is the patron saint of brewers and theologians, so put a few bottles away in the fridge to drink later while pondering the things of God.

(For those of you in the “Chardonnay set” who were wondering about wine - the patron saint of vintners is St Amand (among others)).

A while back I wrote an increasingly long list of (predominantly Mac-based) writing tools - Greenflame · Thinking about writing tools.

Fernando has recently written some more on than theme and on one of those tools (Scrivener), including some comments on how it helps manage his writing processes. See Fernando’s Desk » Getting It Down On Screen.

While I’ve seen various individual churches experimenting with various forms of online and offline social networking, e.g. speed dating, and various online companies have religiously-oriented services for meeting people, this is the first one I’ve seen that has the sanction of a Catholic bishop. See Singles site has bishop’s blessing - 23 Aug 2007 - Religion and beliefs news - NZ Herald

A few years back I heard a sermon from a guest preacher that used the example of Jupiter’s presence in the solar system decreasing the number of comets etc. that might hit the Earth catastrophically as a ‘proof’ of the intelligent design (by God) of the solar system (and by implication the whole universe). (For an example of this see: Reasons To Believe: Spokane Chapter Newsletter - June 2006 - Jupiter and Saturn: Miraculous Planets)

As someone who has a passing interest in astronomy (I did a couple of undergraduate papers at university) that example always seemed too neat - surely things were more complicated than that in the celestial mechanics of the solar system? And now, things do appear more complicated over at Is Jupiter a Bodyguard or Troublemaker? — Schilling 2007 (824): 3 — ScienceNOW. I guess it’s time for a sermon retcon for a few preachers.

Real Live Preacher has some good points about abuse of the New Testament over at Fighting Over The New Testament.

Seems to be a flurry of news articles in the past week or so about various organizations and institutions altering Wikipedia articles concerning themselves. Which shouldn’t surprise anyone really, should it? Anyone can edit Wikipedia articles and, indeed, is encouraged to, and that includes institutions. What might be more interesting would be some more analysis on what specific things are being modified. I’m with Russell Brown who notes that ‘it would be wise not to go off the deep end about it.’ (Public Address | Hard News | More Wikipedia Scanning | Aug 20, 2007 09:16).

Related links:

• Wikiscanner - System to identifying what organization or company is editing what on Wikipedia.
• CIA, FBI computers used for Wikipedia edits - Stuff.co.nz
• Howard’s staff edited Wikipedia - Stuff.co.nz
• Dark forces in the Wiki - FBI, CIA edits entries - 17 Aug 2007 - NZ Herald
• Erebus article censor found at Air NZ - Stuff.co.nz

Fred, over at slacktivist: Green evangelicals, points to an interesting article ABC News: Saving God’s Earth: Evangelicals Go Green which looks at the swing within American evangelicalism to recover a biblical view of creation care. Fred’s also got his own extended commentary on the piece which is worth reading too.

Related links:

Various stuff in Greenflame · Environment including Greenflame · Churches and creation care and Greenflame · Evangelicals and the Environment.

Today the electric kettle (jug) needed to be replaced. A trivial event, you think - simply go out an buy one. After all, all a kettle does is heat the water in it to boiling and, if you’re lucky, then turn itself off. Useful for making tea and all that.

So off I went (with fourth-born in tow) to various shops - having done the obligatory pricing research via the net. Now a kettle is a personal sort of thing. You start the day with it, you end the day with it. It tracks you through the day. Choosing a kettle is a matter of great reflection (more so if stainless steel), and so one needs to go and look at them, pick them up, pretend to be ‘mother’ with one, flick switches, check out temperature-dependent colour-change panels, and take lids off and put them on.

Ah, the lid. Many a kettle today tempted us with its sleek lines, vast capacities and filter funnels, but if you can’t get the blessed lid on and off quickly, safely and have it stay on securely then the kettle is useless to me. Filling the kettle is not some optional step (unless you only possess a kettle to look good on the kitchen bench and match the toaster and blender).

Some kettles had flimsy designer lids that will not last the distance (of all components we break lids most often); others had cool push-button, slow motion automated lid opening mechanisms (which fourth-born thought were great, and hence I relegated to the pile of kettles that might be treated unwisely as toys by children who are learning to use one); and several had lids I (with my multiple degrees) could not figure out how to open. I do not want to have to be trained to fill my kettle. Early mornings are bad enough without struggling to make the morning cuppa.

I left with high hopes of finding a new kettle to bring me to a place of heightened oneness with the universe (through the sacrament of tea) and instead left three shops a broken man and without a kettle. (Though I did pick up a new Pyrex bowl to replace the one I dropped last week).

On a whim I popped into a different store well out of our way. Serendipitously it was ‘the great kettle sale’ day there - 50% off! Bought identical kettle to the one that was retired today. No lofty heights of new kettle experiences for me - though I know how to get the lid off it with my eyes shut (so to speak - because that would be a silly thing to do, wouldn’t it?).

The Ideas slot on Sunday morning on Radio NZ National was about virtual worlds, including both positive and negative voices about their effects on individuals and wider society.

Audio available via podcast or from the link on the Ideas page. (Be aware that the default audio format is WMA. If you want MP3 then you have to change your audio preferences on the RNZ web site).

Couple of interesting links from PBS Religion and Ethics this week. One on the tension between therapy and enhancement in healthcare and the other on the continuing rise of the “prosperity gospel”. I can see a time when the latter might preach the ‘abundant life’ with all the material trimmings includes the genetic enhancements for believers and their offspring.

• Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly . Genetic Enhancement . August 17, 2007 | PBS
• Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly . FEATURE . Prosperity Gospel . August 17, 2007 | PBS:

Satirical piece over at LarkNews.com: Virtual Pastors please picky church-goers. I’d laugh more, but I can see it actually happening (given that congregations try to do it in real life sometimes).

Simon and Paul are back on virtualtheology.net. This time a series on the church. Go have a listen.

As part of some part-time work I’m doing at the moment I’m doing some distance/flexible learning implementation using Moodle (a free, open source course management system for online learning). So here’s a few links I’ve found useful over the past couple of weeks.

• Moodle: Teacher’s manual 1.6 (Introduction) from Lappia - The Municipal Education and Training Consortium of Kemi and Tornionlaakso (Finland). An older version of Moodle but still helpful.
• Course: Moodle Features Demo from @berNET (Aberdeen)
• Course: Introduction to Blogging in the Classroom from @berNET (Aberdeen)
• Teaching FAQ - MoodleDocs on the Moodle web site
• Using Moodle book - MoodleDocs on the Moodle web site. Again, an older book but some good examples of what’s possible.
• Moodle: Moodle 1.8 Teacher Manual from Sweet Briar College, Virginia

Sigh! If only as much effort was spent on engaging with the contents between the covers instead of with the covers themselves. See Gun-wielding Christians snap up camo Bibles online - 14 Aug 2007 - NZ Herald.

Based on my experiences in the past 6 months there’s definitely an element of truth in this recent post on JonnyB’s private secret diary.

Heidi posts a collection of links that track messianic expectation (of sorts) around Apple’s iPhone. See When Religion Meets New Media: IPhone = Jesus Phone?!?.

Reminds me of this from Kevin Kelly in his article, “The Third Culture.” (Science 279 (1998): 992-993.):

One would expect to see frenzied, messianic attempts to make stuff, to have creation race ahead of understanding, and this we see already. In the emerging nerd culture a question is framed so that the answer will usually be a new technology.

Also, on the cyberspace front a three books I’ve added to my “to read” list:

• Gaming Lives in the Twenty-First Century: Literate Connections by Cynthia L. Selfe and Gail E. Hawisher (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007). The chapters “Dungeons, Dragons, and Discretion: A Gateway to Gaming, Technology, and Literacy” and “Gaming and Spirituality”.
• Cyberspace Romance: The Psychology of Online Relationships by Monica T. Whitty and Adrian N. Carr (Palgrave Macmillan, 2006).
• Fans, Bloggers, and Gamers: Exploring Participatory Culture by Henry Jenkins (NYU Press, 2006).

Well, low tech in the sense that they don’t need batteries. Still need the internet to access the web pages that tell you about them and, in PocketMod’s case, create the file to print out.
PocketMod: The Free Disposable Personal Organizer
CreativeIQ: Discover PocketMod. The low-tech PDA.
Introducing the Hipster PDA | 43 Folders

A couple of blogs that explore science fiction and popular culture from a religious perspective that I’ve come across recently.

• The Sci Fi Catholic
• SF Gospel

Another comic to add to the religion and spirituality in comics collection. The Rabbi’s Cat is a comic from French creator Joann Sfar that engages in discussions about theology, philosophy and love from the perspective of, strangely enough, a rabbi’s cat whose acquired the power to speak.

See Pantheon Graphic Novels: The Rabbi’s Cat.

Related links:

• NPR : ‘The Rabbi’s Cat’ Wishes to Be Jewish Too
• BEST SHOTS: BATMAN #666, BLACK SUMMER, BUFFY, CRECY AND MORE - NEWSARAMA (Scroll half way down the page)

MONDOLITHIC STUDIOS - EcoHome - Artist’s impression (and accompanying text) on sustainable dwellings produced for National Geographic Kids.

MONDOLITHIC STUDIOS - An Earth Without Us - Again, artistic representation (& text) about how our technologized landscape might change if all human beings suddenly disappeared.

In the past I’ve used (and adapted) various of the Connect Bible Studies that were originally produced by Damaris in the UK. The studies pick up the theme that intersects with various facets of popular culture and the everyday world and runs with that for a few weeks. One of the best things about the studies is that they are (relatively) cheap and downloadable (saving on postage halfway around the world).

Anyway, today I noticed that the new owners of the series, Scripture Union (UK), have some new studies out based on the themes of the iPod, Climate Change, and Beauty.

See: Scripture Union - Connect

A list of older Connect material can be found here.

Both links have sample PDFs available as well as ordering links.

I’ll going to get the Climate Change one and see if I can integrate it with other things such as those from the Churches’ Agency on Social Issues (CASI) environmental resources, The Social Justice Commission of the Anglican Church, and DVDs such as Sleeping Giants: Climate Change - Science, Policy & Action.

A couple for recent Green Lantern links for all you fanboys and girls out there:

• Instructables: How to make a Green Lantern ring (including a glowing version!)
• Jim Kingman: Comic Effect @ SBC: Blackest Nights, Brightest Days: On Being a Green Lantern Fan

Henry Jenkin’s blog has a two-part interview with Kristin Thompson (film studies researcher) about the impact of Lord of the Rings films in cinema and the wider world. For Kiwi readers there’s an outsider’s perspective on their impact here.

See The Frodo Franchise: An Interview with Kristin Thompson (Part One) and The Frodo Franchise: An Interview with Kristin Thompson (Part Two).

Update:

The Frodo Franchise: An Interview with Kristin Thompson (Part Three)

Cynthia posits the question of whether how and why you blog links in with the notion of spiritual gifts. See Your Spiritual Gift Mix in a Blog

The article Wired: The World’s Most Advanced Bionic Arm précises the work being done to create “an artificial human arm that acts, looks and feels to its user like his native arm, and to do it with astonishing speed by the end of 2009”.

I can hear the Six Million Dollar Man theme music in my head as I’m reading it.

BAndy, one of the participants over at Napier Baptist: Topics for Young Adults was asking for discussion topics and ideas for a group of (young?) adults. If you have some, drop over and leave a comment.

A while back I read Stephen Hunt’s “Anyone for Alpha?”, a sympathetic sociological engagement with the ubiquitous Alpha programme. At the end of the book, Hunt offers ‘a rather shortened version of an introduction to the faith’ for those who have never even heard of Christianity, as an ‘Alternative Alpha Course’. Hunt argues that Alpha tries to be both a beginning for both believers and non-believers alike and serves those in the first category better. Hence his complimentary scheme.

It’s a range of topics that might be useful for BAndy and others trying to think of material to stimulate discussion, though each would require a bit of preparation. I also like the challenge to the assumption that most people have some rudimentary knowledge of Christianity. Having been a youth group leader, house group leader and theological lecturer I’m no longer surprised by what people do or don’t know about their faith.

Week 2 Who is God? Who is Jesus? What is the Bible all about?
The Word needs to be explained, mysteries explored. It is assumed that people have rudimentary knowledge. This ain’t necessarily so.

Week 3 Christianity and other religions
What do other faiths believe? What is special about Christianity?

Week 4 The Christian life
How should people lead their lives? How do they deal with ethical issues and moral dilemmas?

Week 5 Suffering and the lot of man (sic)
How did suffering get here and what can Christians do to ease suffering in the world?

Week 6 What do we make of Church history?
Why has the history of the Church been a bit of a mess? What are the lessons to learn?

Week 7 Why do Christians disagree?
Why do they bicker so much? Why do some think that they have got the truth while others have an incomplete bit of it?

Week 8 Christianity in the world today
Where does it all go from here? Where would you like to go?

• HLSS - School of Sociology - Stephen Hunt
• “The Alpha Enterprise: Evangelism in a Post-Christian Age” (Stephen Hunt)