chris nixon : nixonbyname.com

Trevor Carpenter posted the rather emotive challenge of responding to the following question.

Why do you think Jesus doesn’t have what it takes to be important in your life?

I normally shy away from all religious debate. I find faith a very personal thing and rarely discuss it, even with my own family. I don’t attend any church, so I don’t have a congregation of like-minded people to debate with every week. However, for one time only, I’m in. I hope that none of my views offend (and neither should they) but they allow you to understand how I feel about faith.

I am not religious, but I am not against religion. Each to their own is my feeling. I am, however a little more uncomfortable with large organised religions. Any system which gives people power and influence is open to the flaws of humanity. I believe vast majority of leaders are in it to impart their beliefs to their flock, but I don’t doubt that there are more than you would want in who are in it for their own agenda. Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

The holy bible is said to be “the word of god”. Once again, though, man gets in the way. The bible was written by man, and translated numerous times by man. Who’s to say that not one of these people had their own flaws. I’m sure that the bible is a great ‘guide to life’, but it surely must be taken that that advice is not perfect.

These are reasons why I don’t partake in organised religion, but that wouldn’t stop me being a Christian, right? I could go my own way, and pray to God and to Jesus in a way that makes me feel comfortable. The truth is I don’t have faith in that way. I need at least some scientific evidence suggesting that something may be true for me to believe something to be true, and there is no scientific evidence that God exists. I understand that that is the point in religion, and that you have to give yourself to your God with all your faith. If there were evidence you wouldn’t need faith, and it wouldn’t be a religion, just some dude in power who we could moan about every time somebody died senselessly.

I have heard the question; ‘If you have no faith, how can you have any morals?’ Well it’s simple. I set my own morals. Obviously I am influenced by my family, my friends, and by society as a whole…and as an extension by religion. Number one rule in my life is Be Good. From there everything pretty much looks after itself.

So back to Trevor’s original question. Why does Jesus not have what it takes to be important in my life? Well the truth is he is important in my life, and in the lives of most citizens of European, North American and South American countries, the majority of which have some denomination of Christianity as their “official” religion. We all live our daily lives influenced by him, either directly or indirectly. To me personally, all the evidence points to his existence, and that he was a great spiritual person, not only to the Christians, but to the Muslims and Jews. I don’t believe he was the son of God, but he was a great man.

I don’t mean to in any way diminish his impact, there is probably no other man who has lived that has made a greater impact on our planet. It’s just that there are many others who’s advice and leadership we should also respect to an equal level. All of this advice, leadership and influence should always be questioned though.

I have a lot of respect for Trevor for posting his question. Some people are dogmatic in their faith, and unwilling to hear-out, let alone respect what others believe. By asking questions about others faiths or belief systems, Trevor is re-affirming and strengthening his own beliefs. In my (extremely humble) opinion, an inability to question your own faith results in a very weak faith. In asking the question, Trevor has also asked me to look inward at my belief system. It’s a refreshing experience for which I’m very grateful.

[Photo: The Heart of Jesus Christ by Thomas Hawk]

In the next couple of weeks, I will buy my first Mac. My laptop has been playing up over the last few months, and I’m generally sick of Windows. I just want life to be easier. I thought I’d methodically look through what I actually do on my laptop, and what I want to do, and see if I can get some free advice (that’s a hint to you, dear reader) on what software I should use once the ’shiny thing’ arrives.

I spend most of my laptop time on the net. So I suppose I should think very strongly about what browser to use. There are two obvious choices in Safari and Firefox. I use Firefox just now, and one of the features I like most is the ability to sync my bookmarks across computers. From what I read, Safari is more stable than the current version of Firefox but I think I’ll stick with what I know (how very boring sounding) just now, and see how I get on.

I obviously do a fair bit of blogging. In the last couple of months I’ve really grown to like Microsoft’s Windows Live Writer, but what are the options on the Mac? Should I be going for free software, or should I fork out some dosh. I’m really stuck on this one. I use hosted WordPress.com blogs, so it’s important that whatever I use is compatible with that.

I want to be able to edit my photographs on my new laptop. I currently use Photoshop CS2 for Windows, but I’d like to use something different on the Mac. I find that the handling of RAW images in Photoshop is a bit clunky in CS2. Is this the same in CS3? I want to be able to edit my images, then export them as jpegs for sharing on Zooomr. What is the advice here? Should I stick with Photoshop, or should I be using something like Lightroom?

I currently use iTunes on the PC, so that is an obvious port across to the Mac. Is there an easy way to do this? I would like to retain my ratings and play counts as I have spent rather too much time getting these ‘just so’ and I don’t want to have to go through the process again.

Because my current laptop is an early Sony Vaio, it can’t play divx. Sony blame, and divx blame Sony. I get about 10 seconds into a divx video before I get a BSOD. I think it’s a video driver issue, and Sony refuse to update the driver, so I’m updating away from Sony. Do Mac users use divx video, or do they tend to use the newer H.264? What are the advantages? I’d like to do a bit of video editing on my Mac. Am I best to use the built-in software, or look elsewhere?

Well that’s enough questions for now. I’d really appreciate any advice that people have on these. I’m obviously going to do some research myself, but hearing real people’s real experiences much more valuable.

At the end of last year I started using a video sharing site, Vod Pod. It was a nice service that let me store and share the videos I found from around the web. It was partly a collecting thing and partly a sharing thing.

I enjoyed using it, but at the time I was blogging on Vox, and they didn’t play well together, so I stopped using it. I posted about my reasons for dropping the service briefly here.

I no longer use Vox, and so I thought it was about time to revisit an old friend. I’m really glad I did. It a great way to share video, especially here on a hosted Wordpress site, where if a video isn’t on YouTube or Google Video, it’s a real pain to post.

Vod Pod’s integration with Wordpress makes it a dream to post videos from every video sharing site I have tried so far, either from the site, or through a Firefox plug-in. It’s also simple to post to many other blog platforms

I’m not, however, just using Vod Pod to post to my blogs. It’s nice to share videos within the site itself. You search for videos around the web, and simply click to add them to your channel, or pod as they call it, in the same way you post items to Delicious. Other users browse your videos and they can make comments, or even add the video to their own pods.

I’ve created a few pods so far. One for each of my blogs (posted in the sidebar of both) one for my favorite music videos, one for random cool stuff, as well as another for videos I have made. Once you have signed up, it’s very easy to subscribe to other people’s pods, and follow what is being added to them. Vod Pod also allow collaboration on pods, which makes for a nice social experience.

Vod Pod works well. I’m visiting it a couple of times a day, and also regularly using it to post videos here (you may have noticed and abundance of vids being posted here and on Photografr.com recently). It’s ease of use makes me think I’ll be using it for a while to come.

Uploaded on Oct 2nd, 2007
by Chris Nixon

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