Archive - September, 2009
Does God exist?
I’ve been following a number of online debates recently that have sprung up around the ‘Jesus: All About Life’ campaign, the ‘too brainwashed to read the Bible’ campaign, and a post that received a lot of attention this week, when a blogger wrote on the topic ‘5 things that would make atheists seem nicer‘. You can check out links to a number of these forums in the post ‘Two media campaigns reveal Australia’s perceptions about Christianity‘.
In these debates I’ve read lots of reasons why people dismiss God and Christianity, but one particular thread that caught my eye is reflected in comments such as these:
“I have as much belief in the god of the bible as you have in the existence of Odin, Zeus, and the Flying Spaghetti monster.”
“The God invoked by so many Christians is a logical impossibility. Consider the traits of all-powerful, all-knowing and all-loving and the concepts of Heaven and Hell. I’m sure you can see the inconsistencies.”
The basic argument that I have heard numerous times is this – believing in God is intellectually stupid, i.e. believing in God is incompatible with having a brain.
I came across the Apologetics 315 website that has a range of debates, book reviews and articles on the topic of the existence of God (along with other apologetics topics). Below are some links to audio files and articles on this topic:
- ‘Does God exist?‘ – William Lane Craig vs George Williamson debate
- ‘5 reasons God exists‘ – William Lane Craig
- The probability of God test (short and detailed)
- The moral argument for God’s existence – William Lane Craig
- Does God exist? – Douglas Groothius
- Does God exist? – Phil Fernandes vs Eddie Tabash debate
I’ve listened to the audio file for only the first debate so far (I’m downloading the others as I write and will work my way through them). In this first debate I learnt a lot – about logic, philosophy, objective moral values, and more.
I was also impressed by the polite yet rigorous debate that Craig and Williamson engaged in. It’s an example that such debates can be conducted with civility – something both Christians and atheists sadly seem to struggle with in these kinds of online debates. It makes me wonder whether conversations (debates, if you will) on these kinds of topics can be had online between unseen people, or if they should only be conducted face to face, where it’s impossible to forget that we are engaging with real people.
You can check out all posts with the tag ‘existence of god’ here.
Of course, the most compelling argument for me is that I have a personal relationship with God himself, made possible by the death of his son, Jesus.
Feature image: sourced from The Telegraph, more stunning space photography at Smashing Magazine.
Yes, your church website does need to look good
Whilst catching up on my feeds I came across a great article from one of my favourite websites – Smashing Magazine. Barely a day goes by without a helpful resources being shared on Twitter, or a useful article being posted on their website. Thanks Smashing Magazine.
The article that caught my eye is entitled ‘10 useful usability findings and guidelines‘ and lists the ways that people use websites, and how this should impact on how websites are designed. This includes information such as: blue is the best colour for links, faces on a web page attract attention (and the direction of the faces draws our eyes in that direction – interesting!), and how white space improves reader comprehension – along with seven other insights. It’s fascinating stuff.
Point 3 really caught my attention and it is this: ‘Quality of design is an indicator of credibility’. Several research papers are listed with the following conclusion:
One interesting finding of these studies is that users really do judge a book by its cover… or rather, a website by its design. Elements such as layout, consistency, typography, color and style all affect how users perceive your website and what kind of image you project. Your website should project not only a good image but also the right one for your audience.
Other factors that influence credibility are: the quality of the website’s content, amount of errors, rate of updates, ease of use and trustworthiness of authors.
On one level, it’s not particularly revolutionary – a beat-up car doesn’t give you a great deal of confidence that it’s going to deliver you safely down the highway. And yet, only a cursory glance at many church websites (at least the ones I often come across!) suggests that the importance of design (and the basic concepts of usability) haven’t been taken into consideration.
Here’s a question for you to consider, whilst looking at your church (or ministry) website:
Q: How might the design of your church/ministry website affect how visitors perceive your church or ministry? Try and put yourself in the shoes of those who have no idea who you are and what you’re about – if they judged a book by its cover, what would they conclude?
It strikes me that it is possible for the design of our sites to be doing more damage to our credibility than if we had no web presence at all.
Are Christian creatives undervalued?
An interesting conversation has been had this week in the blogosphere about valuing Christian creatives. Here’s how it went down:
- Rick Warren launched a contest to find a design for the cover of his latest book.
- Church Marketing Sucks wrote an open letter to Rick about spec work, explaining why they think this is a bad idea for Christian creatives.
- Michael Buckingham from Holy Cow Creative followed this up with a post entitled ‘It’s not about a contest‘.
- Church Marketing Sucks wrote a follow-up to the debate (sadly notifying that the comments had to be shut down).
There’s a lot you can read on those posts about the challenges and opportunities of spec work (i.e. running contests where there’s only one winner). I’m not keen to open up that conversation again here, but you might like to check out the conversations at the links above.
What I am interested in discussing is this – how can we best value the Christian creatives in our churches and ministry organisations?
These people do such a wonderful job, and our communications materials, websites, outreach activities etc. would be all the worse without their eye for design and skills to match. I am so grateful for the creatives at my church who do a stellar, God-glorifying job. I thank and praise God for you.
I’d love to hear how we can ensure these people in our churches are valued, appreciated and encouraged. Any ideas how we can do this?
PS – wow, there were a lot of contest entries! Check them out here.
JAAL poster visible from Harbour Bridge!
Today I went for a jog across the Harbour Bridge and noticed a JAAL poster visible from the window of an apartment next to the bridge (click on the image to enlarge)! This apartment usually has a poster in the window (I think it says “One way Jesus” – but my memory is fuzzy) – and it was cool to see this banner, especially given how much traffic drives past that apartment each day! Have you spotted any high profile JAAL banners or posters?
By the way, I used a tool by Aviary called Falcon to very quickly edit the image and add an arrow – all online. Check it out – it’s fun! And Aviary has some other cool tools that you can check out too.
