More on chocolate’s dark side: Over a quarter of a million children are forced to work on cocoa plantations as slaves in West Africa.
What can we do about it? Lots of discussion happening here.
Micro-volunteering is smart (as long as it doesn’t replace actual volunteering). For pretty much no effort or cost, you can contribute to something big. I’ve already blogged 2 great sites, SearchKindly.org and FreeRice.com.
Now check out World Community Grid, where you can ‘donate’ your computer’s idle processing ability, which would otherwise be wasted.
Even when you are using your computer, it rarely needs to use all of its processing strength. And when you get up to answer the phone, or take a lunch break, or leave your computer on overnight, it just sits there idly. World Community Grid is one of several organisations which harnesses that wasted computer power for good, processing research data. (You might remember Seti@home, which was doing this years ago to look for aliens)
Basically, a small program works in the background when you don’t need all your processing power to process data, which is then combined with thousands of other computers. It creates a system with massive computational power, far surpassing that of a handful of supercomputers. Research time is reduced from years to months, and costs of research are slashed so money can be used more elsewhere.
I’ve been trying it out this week, and I’m very impressed. It hasn’t made any difference at all to my computer’s speed (and if you are worried about that, set the program to ‘low priority’ [or get a techie to do it] and when your computer feels the strain this program will be the first to stop using resources)
It’s smart, free, ridiculously easy, pretty quick to install, takes none of your time once set up, and even pretty fun. Why wouldn’t you get on-board?
(If you identify as part of CCEC, put ‘CCEC eXtreme‘ in your team name when you sign up. Being part of a team makes it more fun, so if you aren’t CCEC, find another to join.)
For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.
Astrophysicist Robert Jastrow
Its been cold. Might be time to bring back summer.
Ed Byrne Rips Into Alanis Morissette. I love his accent. I think I can recite this whole video by heart….
Imagine Richard Dawkins renouncing atheism. Something very similar happened in 2004. Antony Flew was, for several decades, a prominant atheist author and philosopher. In 2004, he announced that he had changed his views: he had become a deist.
Why? He said there was too much evidence.
His story is fascinating. In these videos, Lee Strobel (a Christian author who had originally set out to disprove Christianity before being convinced of the evidence himself) interviews Flew.
Why did your beliefs change?
The afterlife:
In the above video, just before halfway, Flew says something many atheists would think astonishing:
Strobel: “Bertrand Russell said there’s a lack of evidence, but you found enough to believe that there is an intelligence of some sort, so you’ve come further than he did”
Flew: “Yes, but circumstances have come further… I mean, there’s been a gigantic advance in the sciences since the death of Bertrand Russell.”
Isn’t that incredible? He says, in essence, that we must excuse Russell’s mistake, since he didn’t have access to the evidence we do. View more videos here
Last week there was a bit of discussion over souls when I posted an argument, based on John Locke’s, which seemed to show that even if souls exist they don’t have anything to do with who we are.
At the time I assumed, like most people, that as a Christian I had to believe in the idea that our identity is grounded in our soul. So I decided to write an essay defending the soul from this attack. (Ok, I had to write my uni assignment on something.)
Part of the attraction was that it is a very good argument. (Read it here, or in the rest of this post.) I’m no longer convinced the soul is necessarily a Biblical idea, but I decided to post my essay here anyway. I think I’ve successfully defended the soul, what do you think?
Teaser:
Having stripped the soul of association with a body and denied it unique personality and memory, it is no wonder it is found irrelevant. It has been define out of all those features which would make it relevant!
I’m warning you, its not the easiest read – a night-before job, and pretty badly written (and dense). But if you are interested, have a read below: Click Here To Read It ->
The discussion is raging on this post about fair trade chocolate and coffee. Keep discussing it on that post, but I just wanted to share an article I saw in the newspaper yesterday (Sun Herald) about the great impact one agreement has had.
I think sometimes the general arguments can overlook some very specific benefits of Fair-Trade. I bought a block of Fair Trade chocolate today, and it said on the back that it had come from that same cooperative.
(Note: I suspect the article was ’suggested’ by certain non-Fair Trade chocolate companies who, noticing the rising awareness of their practices, wanted to create an aura of positivity around chocolate-eating. These companies probably fit into this sentence from that article: “The other cocoa companies don’t pay bonuses so the farmers’ kids don’t have money to buy food or pay school fees.”)
Michelle’s comment on this afternoon’s post about Fair Trade made me realise, as I somewhat suspected, that there is more to the ‘fair trade’ business than meets the eye.
I definitely need to do a lot more research! I’m still very new to the whole idea. Michelle, do you know if what you said applies to chocolate too, or is it mainly coffee?
She asked “if you stop buying slave-produced chocolate, the slave traders will just let them go? Or will they sell them into sex slavery or something worse?”
Good question. No answers at the moment, might come up with a few later. Anyone else want to comment? I really need to know more about the conditions of the slaves & industry before I can hope to answer that.
Here’s what I reckon won’t change:
Don’t stop caring about the poor and oppressed.
Do nag the big chocolate and coffee companies to stop exploiting workers.
Do keep eating Fair Trade. (It sends a message to the above companies that people care).
Do discuss the issue with your friends.
I’m becoming more and more interested in fair trade (and ending chocolate slavery. Coffee will be next)
Bono’s songs have a lot to say. They have a lot to say about life. I think this is the most important thing he has ever said.
It comes from the book Bono: In Conversation with Michka Assayas in which Bono talks to a French music journalist and friend who has been with the band virtually since the beginning.
This extract is taken from a conversation which took place just days after the Madrid train bombings in March 2004, which left 191 dead and more than 1,800 wounded. They were discussing how terrorism is often carried out in the name of religion when Bono turned the conversation to Christianity, expressing his preference for God’s grace over “karma,”…
Bono: It’s a mind-blowing concept that the God who created the universe might be looking for company, a real relationship with people, but the thing that keeps me on my knees is the difference between Grace and Karma.
Assayas: I haven’t heard you talk about that.
Bono: I really believe we’ve moved out of the realm of Karma into one of Grace.
Assayas: Well, that doesn’t make it clearer for me.
Bono: You see, at the center of all religions is the idea of Karma. You know, what you put out comes back to you: an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, or in physics—in physical laws—every action is met by an equal or an opposite one. It’s clear to me that Karma is at the very heart of the universe. I’m absolutely sure of it. And yet, along comes this idea called Grace to upend all that “as you reap, so you will sow” stuff. Grace defies reason and logic. Love interrupts, if you like, the consequences of your actions, which in my case is very good news indeed, because I’ve done a lot of stupid stuff.
Assayas: I’d be interested to hear that.
Bono: That’s between me and God. But I’d be in big trouble if Karma was going to finally be my judge. I’d be in deep s—. It doesn’t excuse my mistakes, but I’m holding out for Grace. I’m holding out that Jesus took my sins onto the Cross, because I know who I am, and I hope I don’t have to depend on my own religiosity.
~~
He’s spot on. I’ve scarcely heard a clearer explanation. How great is our God!
Read the rest of this part of the conversation here or buy the book.
Karen wrote a really moving, revealing, and insightful post last week. If you missed it, give it a read. But I want to focus on just one paragraph, in which she identified one major problem in churches:
It was around this time that I started taking Christianity more seriously. And I did feel like I belonged among Christians for, after all, Christians form a spiritual family with God as our Father. But there was still difference: I could feel it around the edges. Many of the Christians I associated with had Christian parents and had been raised as Christians—had been brought up in a culture of Sunday school attendance, church-going, beach missioning, house parties, conferences, Christian in-jokes, and so on. I felt the difference most acutely when I did something which was a little abnormal in their worlds—odd, perhaps erratic behaviour which they then politely ignored—and when I tripped on something I didn’t understand but which everyone else all seemed to understand. I belonged and yet I never felt at home.
This is one of the worst problems a church can have! We ought to be as welcoming as Christ, with whom even the worst sinners felt comfortable (and, conversely, the self-righteous felt uncomfortable).
Our church struggles with this, I think. Not only in the way Karen identified, but even just generally accepting people into the cliques. A small, homogeneous area, lots of people with similar interests, huge proportion go or have gone to the same school, tight youth group. Its great that we have formed a close community. I just wish I knew how to turn that community outward towards the community. I think one of the most important first step is being aware of it. Look out for this problem!
Have you noticed this, at your church or at another? How do you think it can be addressed? What has your church done about it?
