Page views and world views

Sydney (Google Images)

December 28, 2011

Best of the Christmas Season and Happy New Year.

A. Page views

I do reason that Blogger keeps more accurate blog traffic statistics than does Statcounter or Site Meter, and my Blogger numbers are higher. I think Blogger will better keep track of traffic arriving on its on sites than will the other two programs. I also know empirically from past commenter experience that Statscounter and Site Meter have both failed to track the experience of certain commenters. Therefore, I take it that my higher traffic and page views numbers on Blogger in comparison to Statcounter and Site Meter are generally accurate, but the Blogger statistics program application is rather new and not as detailed.

However, and not surprisingly, according to Statscounter my statistics for 2011 show that my satire and theology page views are down around 12, 000 from 2010 and my Dr. RNM page views around 10, 000 from 2010, so overall about 22, 000 from 2010. Is this because I have gone from two-three posts per blog per month to only one per month? Perhaps, but I doubt it. I think it has to do somewhat with the use in the Western World of Facebook and Twitter and other which are quite simply easier social media to read and use than Blogger and other blogs. Many Bloggers/bloggers, including Christian ones in the West may spend more time concentrating on social media such as Facebook and Twitter and less on Blogger or another type of Blog.

This is also quite understandable considering how much time blogging takes for the lousy pay.

Both my blogs have had a rise post-summer in page view numbers to 2010 levels which are better than 2009 and 2008. There appears to be a Blogger Blog growth in South America, Latin Europe, and Eastern Europe and my interaction with that (as sadly finding Western evangelicals on Blogger and other to blog with has often and usually been difficult) is positive. Hopefully I can find a job posting related to my degrees, or if not right away, at least have the use of my Doctorate to promote my work as I work in another field and still send out CVs. I still will have an overall increased amount of blog articles extant on the web. I should have a gradual increasing number of reciprocal Blogger followers, Facebook blog followers, and reciprocal links.

I therefore still reason my blogs will slowly increase in readership size over the years.

God willing.

The idea of writing more posts is a reasonable one to generate more traffic but I am not good at maintaining the quality of my blogs with more posts. I cannot at times arrive easily with the ideas and I will not force them. As well, I like the comment interaction and as stated previously do not like zero comment posts personally.

Vancouver (Google Images)

B. World views

MPhil 2003

God to Blame?

In McGrath’s second chapter entitled Blaming God he mentions some prominent modern twentieth century philosophies and discusses some of the results of these world-views. He noted that atheistic communism and western liberalism had failed to deal with the harsh realities of life that had taken place in the twentieth century, particularly during World War II. Communism and liberalism removed God from the equation, however, to McGrath, it caused more evil to take place. He stated: "Belief in God is a vital restraining factor. It curbs human evil by stressing God’s condemnation of those who inflict suffering on others." McGrath (1992: 11). McGrath believed that neither communism nor western liberalism had eliminated suffering, and thus their disbelief in God was not on strong intellectual footing.

To him, the great suffering which occurred in the twentieth century indicated there was something wrong with human nature, and that many people who attempted to blame God for those woes should, instead, have looked at world philosophies such as communism and western liberalism which ignored God. McGrath stated these philosophies that overlooked God, at the same time, overlooked his love. He noted: "Occasions of history are stained by the tears of our God who was working to bring about the day when ‘there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain.’ (Revelation 21:4)." McGrath (1992: 14).

I am in agreement with McGrath that the sinfulness of human nature was overlooked by communist states such as the Soviet Union. In fact, the utopia of socialism actually led to the Soviet Union committing acts of violence in great numbers against their own citizens and those of other nations.

Communism is faulty in that it depends on the state forcing equality among people. This, however, does not end the evil of poverty, for example, but simply takes away initiative from people to advance themselves economically, and gives economic and political power to a select few government and military officials. At the same time, tyranny takes place as these select few must strongly enforce the equality that they see as necessary in order for the communist state to advance.

Christianity, on the other hand, favours shared equality. By this I mean people willingly sharing some, and sometimes all, of what they possess. But the idea is not that a state or ruling counsel should dictate this, but that it should be done willingly in love. With this world view, people have the freedom to willingly help others.

Now with western liberalism, I think it can be argued that, unlike Communism, it does have some major social benefits because it still allows for individualistic human thought which can lead to creativity. When this is taken too far, however, it can be seen that without God, human creativity can only solve few problems because human beings are fallen and imperfect and will still commit evil acts. A person who does not believe in the God and follow Him, can make social progress, but this will be limited because social ethics can make him/her moral but cannot make him/her spiritual as in believing in and following Jesus Christ. A spiritual person seeking God’s guidance should, at least, be theoretically more open to loving and caring for others, to show other people the love God has shown each of them. God’s love being shown within someone should take them beyond morality to a personal concern about the spiritual state of others.

To play devil’s advocate, a critic could claim that Christianity has not solved suffering any better than Communism or especially western liberalism; however, I think McGrath is correct. A belief in God in society and better yet a spiritual relationship with Christ leads to the tempering of evil in a nation and the world. Christianity’s ultimate answer to evil comes through revelation, but at least that has historical evidence of Scripture behind it. Christians are disobedient to God, just as nonbelievers are, and this is probably part of the reason Christianity has not made more social progress. But I still agree with McGrath that Christ’s atoning work and resurrection is the only ultimate answer that remedies evil. This work has, of course, not been completely culminated, but I think the Scriptural evidence supports the idea that Christ will return to restore his creation.

Western liberalism shares some of Christianity’s positive views on sharing and even love, but it depends too much on the goodness of humanity. The twentieth century demonstrates that social evolution in humankind is good, but always limited. This is part of the reason why the advanced, modern, western world still produced a nation like Nazi Germany.

These people were cultured and socialized, but still spiritually blind.

C. The Non-Conformist of the Year Award 2011

For previous reviews please see last year's post.

2010

2011-Chucky!

Saint Chucklins are you fattergasted by this award? You deserve it by your dedication to let us state the mythical Chuckastinian Monastic Order which supports strongly libertarian political causes, honouring of thy Mother, assisting friends for free, driving around family members, booping a computer for fast cash, counting the church's cash, being a choir boy, playing the target for martial arts weapons sparring, posting 'freaky Friday' night photos of you, taken by me, for your Facebook profile, being a Mennomonk and honouring thy Mother.

Bobby Buff-10x winner
Chucky-3x winner
Documentary Man-2x winner
Jeff Jenkins-2x winner
Zombie-2x winner
Cousin Buff-1x winner
Manson-1x winner
PMH-1x winner
thekingpin68-1x winner




Something for Christian philosophers to consider as well...


Well, at least I have four earned degrees...

McGRATH, A. (1992) Bridge-Building, Leicester, Inter-Varsity Press.
McGRATH, A. (1992) Suffering, London, Hodder and Stoughton Limited.