1 vs. 100 Review

On Friday Microsoft held it’s 1 vs. 100 beta, which is based on the now cancelled television game show, for Canadian live gold users.  So, I used one of my 1 month gold cards that I had been saving through out college to take part in this 2 hour xbox live event.

The pre-beta was rather confusing, there was no information on how to install the game and what needed to take place before.  I had set a reminder but was never informed about what else I had to do.  I actually had to go onto the website to discover that once I set my reminder the game installs automatically.  If I wasn’t excited about the beta I would never have tried figure it all out, and probably would never had played it.  It turned out not to be such a big deal because it did not stop nearly 10,000 people from playing the first beta.

For those who are not familiar with the game, allow me to quickly enlighten you (those who are can go to the next paragraph).  The game consists of 101 people, 1 person is the One and the other 100 are the Mob (mass of bodies).  The One plays against the Mob by answering each question correctly, each of the mob gradually go out as they get questions wrong.  The more people in the mob who go out the more money the One can win, if the One loses, the money is split between the remaining Mob.  At some points the One is given the opportunity to leave with part of the money or to continue playing.  The One (or a single Mob) can win the most money if they are the last ones left standing.  Microsoft added a ‘crowd’ element so people could still play along and gain points, increasing the chances of becoming The One.

Once in the lobby the voice of Chris Cashman came up giving everyone the heads up on the rules and how to play the game.  At the same time each player was paired up with 3 others.  This was a great move because it gave me a meter with which to judge my playing and made it a little more competitive while playing in the crowd (where I played for all of the sessions but one).  So in a sense there are 2 levels of competition – one with in the 3 people we are paired with and one with in the 10,000 that are playing with us.  Scoring is more than just getting the answer right too, speed is a big factor to getting a high score too.  Just to show how much speed matters, the top 3 were shown when the session came to an end, and even though in most sessions I was able to get all the questions right, the top 3 were still thousands of points ahead of me!

The game is fun!  I played with my wife next to me passing the controller back and forth and she is eager to play again this coming Tuesday.  It’s fast paced, moves smoothly and the questions are well varied but perhaps too easy.

On the bad side, there are ads.  Which I understand because when the beta is over there are some prizes up for stakes!  But the ads are very intrusive and obvious … basically it’s a television commercial break … some of them are videos, some of them are just words or a logo.  It’s a shame microsoft could not come up with something a little more innovative than what has been done for the last 50 years of tv.

Another flaw is that if you’re good you may be giving away answers!  One of the three I was against answered every question immediately without waiting for all the answers to be shown and I heard a chime when ever my opponents selected an answer.  Within 30 minutes I had a pretty good idea which answers were selected before I selected my own answer.  In more than one case I got questions I did not know right because of this little flaw.  For example, they start from left to right, so when the first potential answer is revealed and the chime immediately goes off I have a good indication of where some are voting, which is handy when I don’t know the answer.

On the forums others indicated problems with disconnecting and such.  I didn’t experience any of those issues although I did not hear Cashman for most of the 2 hours and when I did he would get cut off by ads or the game continuing regularly and in mid sentence.  His mic should have been set above the ads and even the game, it would have been more professional and given him more time to talk (there was often a couple second delay between him getting cut off and the ad/game starting).  One that note, a computer woman is the real host of the game, Cashman is more color commentary, this is alright but I found the computer repetitive and Cashman could easily have done both.

But in the end these are minor quibbles, and the game, even in it’s beta, is very fun and addictive.  There are some fixes that need to happen but this game alone easily makes the $5 a month for Live Gold very worth it.  If you live in Canada and didn’t try the beta on Friday, don’t miss out this Tuesday!  It will be well worth your time!

Sermon: April 5, 2009

This is a sermon that I preached on April 5th and in an on going effort to continually improve my sermons I’ve decided to post them on my blog as a way to invite critique, because if I don’t know what can be tweeked, there will be nothing for me to work on, and no improvement.  So here it is:

We’re going to go about things a little bit differently today. I want to give you two questions to think about while I talk, if you’ve had a year anything like mine you’ve already been thinking about at least one of these questions a lot. Maybe these questions have been answered a long time ago, maybe you’ve never really given any careful consideration to them. Maybe the answer to these questions are changing. They are however, two extremely important questions, they are:

Do I love Jesus?

What does Jesus want me to do for Him?

Why Brian McLaren is like my Palm Pilot.

An insightful, subtle piece of satire about the lure of false teachers and why those teachings will eventually fall by the wayside.

My very short take on the debate … so far …

Now, I haven’t watched the whole debate (I’ve posted it’s entirety on my blog a few blogs back). I got through the actual debate and one question section and have yet to watch the rest as of yet. But judging by the sections I have watched I think that it is a very close debate. Both Hitchens and Wilson are incredibly intelligent men! However, I don’t think Hitchens’ arguments are as good as he may think they are. For example when pressed why the Universe should care if a race of people were destroyed his answer was along the lines of, “if I was that race I’d care” but the question wasn’t about whether the race cared, it was about the universe. And a problem that is inherent within the atheism debate is the problem of ‘meaning’. Everyone feels it to some extent and yet few can define where it comes from or why we have it. Things like beauty and reason are very difficult concepts to make sense of in the atheistic worldview.

Overriding Faith

I don’t know how any of you process your faith …

Actually, to be more accurate I might have to start with, “I don’t know if any of you process your faith.” I’m not trying to be demeaning by saying that, some people may see no need to go through what they believe and find out if they still believe it (or if they want to believe it). After all, it’s a nerve racking process to question the very core of how one lives. Other people may just throw reason to the wind. While reading the comments posted on an N.T. Wright article (most of the comments are very antagonizing) I came across one that simply read, “Faith overrides evidence and Jesus is truth.”

Some will most likely say ‘amen!’

I got a knot in my stomach

I process my faith. Some would call me faithless because I require answers for nearly everything, I would say that makes me faithful. I’ve been through different stages of my Christian doubting – some more serious then others. But through those stages I’ve learned that Christianity is based on historical moments where God has acted so other people can see.

Then I read a quote like the one above, “Faith overrides evidence and Jesus is truth.” And at first, I almost want to admire the person. Life would be so much easier if I could think like that, but then I wouldn’t really be thinking, would I. I know what the world thinks about such quotes, they’ll no doubt stereotype the person as a Bush voting, Bible thomping, Christian fundimentalist – then, based on that information, right the whole thing off!

And I start to wonder what god thinks about that. If He feels something like a knot in His stomach when such claims are made. Because ultimately, it’s a lie. Sure the last part is true but the first part? complete lie! Christianity is not based on some ‘metaphysical’ truth that makes it irrelevant whether the history recorded in the Bible really happened. It’s based on god acting in history, and if that history did not happen, Christianity becomes powerless.

It’s fitting that the article in question had to do with Jesus resurrection because when the Discovery Channel’s documentary about discovering the bones of Jesus (which was a complete joke!) came out I asked the question, “If it could be proven, unequivocally, that Jesus’ bones had been found, would you still be a Christian?”

The answer everyone gave me was, yes.

I was shocked … i had the opposite answer.

So I guess the question is this, when does evidence over rule faith?

Collision

There isn’t much on the site yet but here is the link to the Collision movie featuring the debate between Christopher Hitchens and Douglas Wilson.  It should be good!

Hitchens vs. Wilson Debate

There is a documentary of Christopher Hitchens and Douglas Wilson debating the existence of God coming out later this month – when exactly and by what mean, I don’t know.  Hitchens is an esteemed journalist and writer who wrote the book, “God is not Great”.  And Wilson is a pastor and renowned Christian author.

One of the stops on their debating tour was Westminster Theological Seminary and they have been kind enough to post the debate, in it’s entirety, on Youtube.  So I’ve taken the time to post the videos of the debate in order here.  Enjoy.

God, Slavery and Ethics

I’ve been listening to William Webb recently as he has brilliantly brought some insights on finding God in the tough texts. So I thought I would take the time and share what he refers to as the ‘Redemptive Movement Hermeneutic’. This way of interpreting the Bible does not seek to find the ultimate ethic with in the static scripture, but finding the direction of where God is moving the ethics to.

Most will know that if you listen to the critics of the Christian faith for long enough you’ll no doubt be dragged through the law of Moses to be shown the hypocrisy of God. How could God love everyone if slaves and women are treated so poorly! A couple such verses may be brought to your attention:

When a slaveowner strikes a male or female slave with a rod and the slave dies immediately, the owner shall be punished. But if the slave survives a day or two, there is no punishment; for the slave is the owner’s property. Ex. 20:20-21

or

If the ox has been accustomed to gore in the past, and its owner has been warned but has not restrained it, and it kills a man or a woman, the ox shall be stoned, and its owner also shall be put to death … If the ox gores a male or female slave, the owner shall pay to the slaveowner thirty shekels of silver, and the ox shall be stoned. Ex. 21:29, 32

In both cases, the penalty of the master for killing the slave is minimal. In the second example the slaves are definitely not on the same level as free people. The problems with these verses (and similar ones) are so evident that they are offensive in today’s society.

So what do we do with them? In comes “Redemptive Movement Hermeneutic”. The argument for this hermeneutic is that humans do not change quickly and require long periods of time to get out of former ways of thinking.  Second hand smoke is a prime, modern-day example. We’ve known that second hand smoke kills people for 50 years and yet (in Canada) smoking in public places has only been banned within the last ten years and meanwhile many of the States have no such law!  Still, it’s been proven for over 50 years that it kills people!!  Why the delay?  People do not change easily.

When the Bible is read it is usually read within the understanding of the reader (in my case, white Canadian 21st century male) instead of being read with the understanding of the writer (in Moses case, Ancient Near East nomadic tribe).  Therefore the text is not read correctly even though the words on the page are read the understanding is not there.

Through out the Biblical text God is moving the human race towards an ultimate ethic one step at a time.  In every other Ancient Near East nation at the time of Moses slaves had absolutely no rights.  The killing or beating of a slave would have been met with no punishment.  But in Israel’s case that was different.

In another example, any Ancient Near East slave owner could maim and disfigure their slaves (it was a form of intimidation so slaves wouldn’t run away!) while in Israel if a slave was maimed the slave was freed!

As well, foreign slaves were rejected from other nations while Israel was commanded to accept them (all of Israel became a ‘city of refuge’).

So although the treatment of slaves by Israel in our standard today was horrendous it was a big leap from how slaves were treated in every other nation in the Near East.

In Redemptive Movement Hermeneutics the ‘fossilized’ law is not the focus, the focus is on the movement of where the law is pointing.  In the case of slavery, the Bible does not speak directly against it but has pointed the human race in that direction.  So the Bible is not the ultimate ethical handbook, it’s history that moves us towards the ultimate ethic.

The Ad Campaign

The campaign is in England and they have been trying the same thing in Edmonton, atheists are buying ad spaces on buses that read, “There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.”

To the horror of a lot Christians, I have little problem with the ad campaign. I live in a free country, people can say what they like. I’m not going to get in the way because I don’t want anyone getting in the way when I talk to someone about Jesus.

But there are 2 things that I’d like to point out about the ads, each one expresses a certain amount of hypocrisy. And before I start it needs to be noted that it is not agnostics putting up the ads, it is atheists.

First, The ad claims that people who struggle to believe in God worry and don’t enjoy life – so they should give up that struggle. The problem with this is that first it’s a gross generalization also the head of the campaign in England (Richard Dawkins) is a scientist who would champion the quest for knowledge and truth, not give up on it – like the ad suggests.

Second, the slogan uses the word ‘probably’. This is equivalent to a Christian saying, “Jesus probably died for our sins”. These are atheists and yet instead of advertising what they really believe they’ve softened it up.

Why?

Well, agnosticism is an easier sell and because, just like theism, atheism is impossible to prove. They may have felt that they’ve taken the intellectual high ground, but they’ve compromised their beliefs to sway people to their ‘acceptable’ standard instead of their ‘ideal’.

Here’s my suggestion: If your going to put out an ad campaign sell your own brand (atheism), not someone else’s (agnosticism)

My Favorite iPod Touch apps

Ok, I’ve had my iPod touch since November and I’ve had lots of time to explore what’s out there for apps. So this is a list of my favorite iPod touch apps.

Bible/Holy Bible – I have two. One is by lifechurch.tv and lets me get NASB with a wifi connection over the net. The other is by Paul Avery and it’s the only ipod bible app I’ve seen that has original languages. So it’s a draw, and I use both …

Comiczeal – This is the best comic viewer on the touch. It’s not perfect and requires some effort to get your own comic collection on it (2 extra downloads on your computer are needed) but if you need your comics on the go it’s the best thing out there!

Flixster – a great movie app. I use it constantly to find out what movies are playing in our local theaters. Has a favorite theater function and access to trailers and reviews! A great little app when deciding if there is anything worth seeing.

Wikipanion – The best looking wikipedia app, IMO. They’re almost all about even but I find this one slightly easier to use.

Shakespell – Like boggle. It’s the most polished game I’ve seen done for free. Integration with Facebook is nice and games are easy to start with other players.

Subway – A very smart, original puzzle game. I love it. Currently on level 38 of 91.

Rolando – A great game. Period.

Cambio – The best free unit converter I have seen so far. Very simple, very easy to use. Has currency conversion as well.

Facebook – I rarely go on to Facebook any other way now.

Stanza – Not only is this a great e-reader but it also has the options to download a wide variety of free books from a variety of sources! I even found Orthodoxy by G.K. Chesterton!

These are just the apps I’ve used, which apps are your favorite?