What is in Kelvin's Head?

  • The Best Questions in the World

    We offer a course at St Mary’s every now and then called the God Factor. You may have heard me mention it. It works like lots of church courses in that folk gather around food and have a conversation. In our case we gather around the best pizzas in town which come from just across the road and most of the courses have chosen to meet on a Sunday lunchtime.

    However, the God Factor is different from a lot of courses that churches run because I can’t tell you what will happen exactly from one course to the next. I can’t give you the book. I can’t give you a plan for what those on the God Factor will all learn. Why so? Well, because the participants set the agenda. The first meeting is all about collecting questions from the group. Those questions are then grouped and tackled by the group over about eight weeks. The idea is that they get to use those running the course (clergy and laity) as a resource to try to find answers to the questions that have been logged at the beginning.

    For those who want a bit of pedagogy, this arises out of a situation where the Vice Provost is into Paulo Freire and the Provost is known to read Ivan Illich in the bath, but let us not be too technical and get too distracted by methodoloty right now. Because the exciting thing is that we’ve just got the questions for the course that is beginning at the moment.

    I think these are the best questions in the world to get a group to try to answer. See what you think below. Oh, and if you want to join in with this course and engage in trying to find the answers to these then get in touch with the Vice Provost using this contact form.

    The Questions – God Factor – March 2014

    Bible

    • Is it OK to disagree with some bits of the Bible?
    • Do I have to believe everything in the Bible?
    • What is the best way to read the Bible?
    • If the Bible was written in approximately 400 AD, how accurate is it?
    • Why are only some Gospels used today?

    Church and churches

    • How does the Scottish Episcopal Church choose its clergy?
    • Who are Episcopalians and how do they differ from Catholics and other Protestants?
    • What is the Church for? Couldn’t we do without it?
    • Why are there so many different denominations?
    • So few people go to church these days; will it change or simply die out?

    Doctrine

    • Is God male or female? Black, Chinese, White?
    • How will I know that God has accepted me? Forgiven me?
    • Can you lose your faith, find it and lose it again in your one lifetime?
    • Is there such a thing as condemnation?
    • Is ‘God’ a male?
    • Reincarnation – does it exist?
    • Do you think suicide is a coward’s way out?
    • Spiritual ‘dry spells’ – what to do during them.
    • What ‘sins’ cannot be forgiven?
    • How do we define sin?
    • Is there an afterlife? If so, what does it look like?
    • Is there a hell?

    Ethics

    • Why is the Church obsessed with sex?
    • Why does a message of peace and love end up causing war, suicide bombings and so much hatred?
    • Why so many different rules and regulations, e.g. on birth control and same sex marriage?
    • The Vatican = corruption? Wealth? I struggle with their beliefs – no birth control, third world women dying etc.
    • Was there any truth in the Da Vinci Code book?
    • Why do the different denominations of the Church always seem to be at odds with each other?
    • Is faith just for sad people and those who need a crutch?
    • Why are so many religions intolerant of different people, e.g. gay people, and contraception?
    • Should the Church be involved in politics?

    God and Jesus

    • Is Jesus God or just a way to God?
    • Why did Jesus allow himself to be crucified?
    • Will Jesus return?
    • Was Jesus God or human?
    • Does God exist?
    • Why does God not intervene on issues of poverty/hunger etc?
    • What does God look like/feel like?
    • Was Mary really a virgin when pregnant?

    Other faiths/religions

    • Why is Christianity different to other faiths?
    • Why are there so many different religions?
    • Why has religion caused so many wars?
    • Why is the Jewish religion so feared? Hated?
    • How should we respond to people of different faiths?
    • Relationship between Christianity and other faiths.
    • Is the Christian faith the only way? What about good Buddhists, Muslims and Humanists?
    • Is war and bad weather judgement from God?

    Worship

    • How can I learn to pray?
    • When during services do people ‘cross’ themselves and why?
    • Would Scottish independence be good for the UK?
    • Does God really love everyone? What about those who reject him?
    • How does prayer work? Is there a right and a wrong way to pray?
    • Why does it feel so incredibly peaceful in a church?
    • Why is incense used?
    • Why is the Eucharist important?
    , ,

4 responses to “Wiki?”

  1. Tim Avatar
    Tim

    Experience here is
    a) TWiki is amazingly awful to migrate between versions, requiring a fair bit of Perl knowledge
    b) Dokuwiki might be only written in PHP, but it’s an absolute joy to use, especially the plugin system (paste URL to zip-file into box, it downloads and unpacks it for you!)

    One of these I use for work, the other is rapidly becoming my general to-do-list / organization / life at home. Major plug for dokuwiki 🙂

    Reply
  2. Avatar
    Anonymous

    Docuwiki
    I’ll have a look at Docuwiki though I do have a working version of TWiki currently running at the moment. I know no Perl, and it was a bit of a challenge installing it in the first place.

    Reply
  3. Avatar
    Anonymous

    Docuwiki

    Well, I’ve looked at Docuwiki but can’t install it.

    Life is just too short for this:

    • Set up the correct permissions
      • Usually the webserver runs as a unprivileged user eg nobody, www-data or apache
      • The webserver needs to be able to write to some files and directories (so change the chown nobody to match your configuration e.g. chown apache …)
      • If you’re using access control, you need to change the group ownership permissions on the appropriate files and make them writeable by the web server user’s group (use group ownership, because as a user/web site admin, you’ll need to edit the files directly) – otherwise, users won’t be able to register, and you won’t be able to set ACL controls via the web interface, and you’ll get error messages; I always forget these steps when I do an install using ACL features, so that’s why I’m adding them here.
      • The group name the web server runs as is usually identical to the user name, except in the case of the “nobody/nogroup” combo – but check your server config just in case (just a user, TL)

     

    Reply
  4. muratore Avatar
    muratore

    molella discotek people molella discotek people serx serx midi file graqtis midi file graqtis cenangium cenangium sansui amplificatore sansui amplificatore le ragazze di viterbo le ragazze di viterbo nissan terrano autocarro nissan terrano autocarro torturatore torturatore akg terni akg terni mercedes 270 serie c mercedes 270 serie c rokepo zola predosa rokepo zola predosa totò peppino e la dolce vita totò peppino e la dolce vita la rubrica di costantino e alessandra og la rubrica di costantino e alessandra og effects processor pro 2 2 effects processor pro 2 2 ludmila radchenko ludmila radchenko officer officer ospedale umberto primo ospedale umberto primo le tre demo di lords of everquest le tre demo di lords of everquest magicolor 2450 magicolor 2450 santo domingo viaggio santo domingo viaggio back street boys non mi lasciare cosi back street boys non mi lasciare cosi haiduchii din tei dragostea haiduchii din tei dragostea comunita economica comunita economica tm net my tm net my paradise cracked trailer paradise cracked trailer lettori cd gemini lettori cd gemini consultazioni provinciali 2004 consultazioni provinciali 2004 at 160ml siracusa at 160ml siracusa certificazioni di qualita certificazioni di qualita ipod 20 accessori ipod 20 accessori forbidden colours forbidden colours depurazione delle acque depurazione delle acque limpbizkit behind blue eyes limpbizkit behind blue eyes localizzazione localization localizzazione localization snow bo snow bo diablo editor diablo editor speed (lazy dog software) v1 0 speed (lazy dog software) v1 0 shakira screensaver shakira screensaver scuole di regia scuole di regia computer cable computer cable siti lesbici siti lesbici maradino maradino milano teknival 05 milano teknival 05 prg torino prg torino trasporti piemonte trasporti piemonte honsen honsen trenet charles trenet charles chi ti dice chi ti dice testo e traduzione emon testo e traduzione emon muratore muratore muratore

    Reply

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