1 Jul 2007

Tea Break 1

Right enough of the seriousness - here are some pics from my Caterday huntz! Enjoy:


IC Pt. 2

OK......we continue!

This double-blog posting came from investigating a website called Christianity Meme which has many essays citing Christianity as a meme & going into how the virus of Christianity is being proselytised for the detriment of society.


On this website, none of essays/articles are 'signed' by an individual - all collectively as just 'christianitymeme.org' - interesting but very much aloof. The website is divided into sections, including the Main Argument [against Christianity], Additional Content [articles from Richard Dawkins, Susan Blackmore, Don Baker, to name but a few], as well as some dialogue & reference information.

I looked at most of the information contained in the main argument section & there is some highly different 'theological perspectives' on Christianity, especially with young people:
"The young are especially good targets because they are easily manipulated and because of their life-long potential to proselytize and support organizations that further the Christianity Meme through money and their directed effort - not to mention their offspring."
Now this example appears to be a slanted take on how Christians do youthwork. It does, raise a question - if young people are 'easily manipulated', how should we as youthworkers use this knowledge?

Discipleship is now common practice for church-based youthwork - this [atheistic] theory would describe this as 'proselytising' [advocate or promote (a belief or course of action)] & as such this is a negative thing. This appears to come from the postmodern thinking as questioning everything, not holding onto any absolute truths, etc.

Having looking at most of this content, I have to say, I disagree with the point of view of the website - from a theological perspective. Wherever Christians would see their work as positive, this meme theory would see this work as negative. Wherever Christians use faith - the meme theory could not hold this to be true.

But of course, this is only my opinion - if you want to make up your own mind, or investigate for yourself - check out this controversial website for yourself: christianitymeme.org

Happy hunting!

Internet Confustigations

Morning bloggites! [ok it's more like evening but hey what the heck lol!]

Just for a change I have been un teh interweeb [shock horror] looking up some meme's. I always took this idea to be a bit of harmless Internet comedy [Internetus Humerous to give its proper Latin name] where some Internet catchphrase, for example the pic below from Lord of the Ring's [the scene is in Rivendell where they're trying to work out what to do with that darn one-ring] & Boromir says "One does not simply walk into Mordor". With the aid of Photoshop, a screenshot & some text brings in slightly new meanings, e.g.


or


Genius! However, what was quite disconcerting was that when I checked out Wiki for the actual meaning of the word 'meme' as a scientific term:

"A unit of cultural information that propagates from one mind to another as a theoretical unit of cultural evolution and diffusion."

This was a word was originally coined by Mr Richard Dawkins - a famous writer & atheist - in his book the 'Selfish Gene'. Now stick with me, my story gets better! In this book, Dawkins goes on to compare Christianity with memes, to the point that Christianity is a meme in itself.

To be continued...