The Art of Apologetics

Blackalicious : Make You Feel That Way

2009-07-22T12:16:00.000-07:00

Money Quote...

All up in her vibe something coming over me
Summer days more likely that you notice breezes
Winter days more likely that you notice heat
When I'm warm more likely that you notice me
In the dark it's more likely that you notice light
In the light more likely that you notice night
Hungry more appreciation for that meal
Dead broke more appreciation for that grill
A bad day'll make you really notice ones that's good
And that'll make things a little better understood
Times I feel I wanna shout, man it's real that way
When I think of things that make you feel that way
Make you feel that way...(Blackalicious)

Logic and Relativism

2009-07-13T17:38:00.000-07:00

But one would have to believe in the objective standards of sound reasons and effective inquiry – i.e. “logic” – to advance such an argument in the first place. But the only way one can believe in such a standard is to also be convinced of its value. Which is to say, logic as a cognitive standard can only be rationally judged to be of any value if one is rationally satisfied that one ought to reason in such a way. But any claim of “ought” is ultimately an ethical claim. Any claim that one “ought” to reason logically is a claim about the Right thing to do, the Good form of reasoning, the Valuable method of inquiry.

Lest there be any lingering doubt, the above argument does indeed place various ethical propositions at the very foundation of even the possibility of reasoned inquiry. Before there can be science, before there can be logic, before there can be any concern for truth at all, there must first be an accepted axiom that such things are good. So any attempt to quarantine relativism to “merely” an ethical claim is doomed to have that quarantine shattered by the rational necessity of an ethical commitment to the truth. Gary Herstein

Patty Wickman, A Thief in the Night

2009-07-13T17:06:00.000-07:00

Patty Wickman, A Thief in the Night [1996], oil, 72 x 115.

HT: The Aesthetic Elevator

Gang Starr - Discipline

2009-07-06T20:39:00.000-07:00

Money Quote...

And just because I want to it don't mean I will
And just because I'm angry it don't mean I'd kill
And just because she looks good, it don't mean I'd hit it
And just because I'm horny, it don't mean I'm widdit
Just because I make records, don't mean that I'm gassed
And just because I'm rappin, don't mean I chase ass
And just because I'm whylin, don't mean I can't stop
I got discipline baby whether you do or not
Gang Starr

2009-06-19T12:08:00.000-07:00

The video is a artistic depiction of hell and then heaven as seen on a elevator ride. It's interesting how people's view of heaven is often hellish. In the video there is not much difference between heaven and hell. Case in point is that Arnold Swarchenegger has a prominent place in both. Anyway this stuff is fun to think about.

"Scientists" Concealing Information

2009-06-12T22:01:00.000-07:00

The "studies thus far find that between 8 percent and 21 percent of homosexually parented children ultimately identify as non-heterosexual," the psychologist wrote. "For comparison purposes, approximately 2 percent of the general population are non-heterosexual. Therefore, if these percentages continue to hold true, children of homosexuals have a 4 to 10 times greater likelihood of developing a non-heterosexual preference than other children."

However, those researchers who found such differences "nonetheless declared in their research summaries that no differences were found," the report said. Bob Unruh

HT Creative Minority Report

The Church and the Fiction Writer

2009-06-12T21:42:00.000-07:00

Henry James said that the morality of a piece of fiction depended on the amount of "felt life" that was in it. The Catholic writer, in so far as he has the mind of the Church, will feel life from the standpoint of the central Christian mystery; that it has, for all its horror, been found by God to be worth dying for.

To the modem mind, as represented by Mr. Wylie, this is warped vision which "bears little or no relation to the truth as it is known today." The Catholic who does not write for a limited circle of fellow Catholics will in all probability consider that since this is his vision, he is writing for a hostile audience, and he will be more than ever concerned to have his work stand on its own feet and be complete and self-sufficient and impregnable in its own right. When people have told me that because I am a Catholic, I cannot be an artist, I have had to reply, ruefully, that because I am a Catholic I cannot afford to be less than an artist. Flannery O'Connor

Leonardo DaVinci’s Last Supper

2009-06-11T16:20:00.000-07:00

Some interesting commentary on Leonardo DaVinci’s Last Supper.

The painting is a demonstration of how the brain works and a revelation of how belief conditions our senses of reality. It is not an attempt to illustrate one moment in time. That apparently was too simple for Leonardo. If you approach the work with the idea that it illustrates the words ‘one of you shall betray me’ all the figures in the painting assume poses that clearly respond to those words with shock honor and revulsion. One of the principles of Renaissance communication was that the position of a figure revealed character and emotion.

On the other hand if you shift the message you hold in your mind to the institution of the Eucharist, “Take this and eat: this is my body,” the meaning of the apostles’ gestures change before your eyes in response to this first call to communion. Think of it, two completely separate ideas in two different moments in time being simultaneously conveyed.

The mural is filled with irreconcilable contradictions. The table is too large for the space its in, yet too small to accommodate the apostles. Christ is enlarged (astonishingly this is almost never observed) so that seated he is as tall as Matthew and Bartholomew who are standing. Because Leonardo is interested in saying two different things at the same time, the painting can be read left to right where the apostles on our left have only heard the announcement of betrayal and those on the right are responding to the theme of the Eucharist. On the other hand, Christ is also speaking directly to us with his dual nature expressed in his two hands, his nervous right simultaneously referring to the treason dish and a glass of wine, his left offering redemptive self-sacrifice. It’s important to understand that the apostles are not aware of the entire gesture. They, after all, can only see Christ in profile. Only we can see how all the forms in the painting converge on the triangular form of Jesus to represent his divinity.

Of course for us the question is why would the most lucid mind in human history introduce so much ambiguity in a work that intends to affect its viewers? Ambiguity incidentally is a military term that means to be attacked from two sides at once. The answer may have to do with the way we process information. The human brain is a problem-solving organ, a characteristic that probably is at the center of our dominance over other species. The brain frequently remains inert until a problem is presented to it. In the case of The Last Supper, the profound ambiguity it contains alerts and stimulates the brain into action. DaVinci clearly believed that ambiguity was a way of arriving at the truth. As a result, the painting moves us in a deeper and more profound way than any direct statement. (Milton Glaser Inc.)

Unintended Consequences Wolverine Style

2009-06-02T20:21:00.000-07:00

[FYI... this video is gruesome and drops the F bomb]

This video is what I think of when I hear people being excited about the coming singularity between humans and computers.

Holy Shroud Dating

2009-06-02T20:01:00.000-07:00

Shroud of Turin

New transparent carbon dating testing should be done.

HT Mark P. Shea

Andy McKee - Into the Ocean

2009-05-28T17:03:00.000-07:00

I hope to create a life that is as beautiful to God as McKee's performance of this song is to me.

Literary Gaming

2009-05-28T16:58:00.000-07:00

Dante's comedy goes pop...

Yes, in 2010, as the frankly mad-looking trailer for Dante’s Inferno has it, you too will be able to “Go to Hell”.

Anyone expecting a faithful interactive representation of the Commedia’s sorrow and pity will be somewhat taken aback. Made by the developers of last year’s outer-space zombie shooter Dead Space, the game recasts Dante as a muscle-bound anti-hero, carving his way through the Nine Circles with a scythe and a cross to liberate his girlfriend from Lucifer.

As he lies around, “punishing” or “absolving” the damned souls surrounding him, the disembodied voice of Virgil provides instructive quotations from the poem. The creators have even promised to recreate the topography of the Inferno, an uncannily good fit for the levels of a computer game. In short, it sounds like amazingly good fun. Tim Martin

Meaningful Work

2009-05-28T16:53:00.000-07:00

This article really struck a cord with me.

A good job requires a field of action where you can put your best capacities to work and see an effect in the world. Academic credentials do not guarantee this.

Nor can big business or big government — those idols of the right and the left — reliably secure such work for us. Everyone is rightly concerned about economic growth on the one hand or unemployment and wages on the other, but the character of work doesn’t figure much in political debate. Labor unions address important concerns like workplace safety and family leave, and management looks for greater efficiency, but on the nature of the job itself, the dominant political and economic paradigms are mute. Yet work forms us, and deforms us, with broad public consequences.Matthew B. Crawford

Emotion and Rationality

2009-05-28T16:48:00.000-07:00

Here is a quote in regards to an error in the economic understanding of rationality.

The word "emotional" has overtones of irrationality, but actually emotion is at once a form of telescoped thinking (it is not irrational to step around an open manhole "instinctively" without first analyzing the costs and benefits of falling into it) and a prompt to action that often, as in the case of investment under uncertainty, cannot be based on complete or even good information and is therefore unavoidably a shot in the dark. We could not survive if we were afraid to act in the face of uncertainty. Richard A. Posner

Washed Away

2009-05-20T19:02:00.000-07:00

Some more old school for ya...

Money Quote...

Why we let them wash it away ?
Why are we allowing them to take what's good ?
why don't we teach our children
what's real ?
Why don't we collect and save what is real ?

Theology and Science Fiction

2009-05-20T18:57:00.000-07:00

This is what I refer to when my wife complains about me watching Star Trek season 1 on Netflex.

Outgrowing God is indeed a favorite theme of science fiction and fantasy. Evolution/technology/aliens/time travelers from the future/computers/what-not are always just about to prove that God does not exist, life after death is a fantasy, the soul is a function of matter, man is but a sophisticated meat machine, Jesus never existed, etc. And yet the astonishing thing is that science fiction and fantasy are absolutely awash in theological speculation. Lots of it is pagan, in the Chestertonian sense. That is, it is an attempt to reach God through the imagination, hampered by the inability to conceive of something truly outside the created world. The result is a sort of quasi-supernaturalism that acknowledges planes of existence beyond the human, but refuses to entertain the notion of angels and demons.
Mark Shea

HT The Sci Fi Catholic

Law, Economics, and Justice

2009-05-20T18:52:00.000-07:00

An interesting study...

The bottom line: students taught by economically-minded professors were both more selfish and more likely to see fairness as a form of kaldor-hicks efficiency. By contrast, students taught by humanists were more generous and also likely to see fairness as a matter of equity. Dave Hoffman

The Star Trek Gospels

2009-05-08T08:50:00.000-07:00

Since the new Star Trek movie is out I thought that I would post this quote.

When I think of Luke, I think of the Dr. "Bones" McCoy on Star Trek. He seems like your archetypical family doctor: down-to-earth, sensitive, compassionate, and thoroughly human. Matthew and his Gospel seem more kingly, like Captain Kirk. John and his Gospel seem more prophetic and philosophical and mystical, like Mr. Spock. But Luke seems more priestly and more doctorly, like "Bones" McCoy. Matthew emphasizes morality and the will. John emphasizes wisdom and the mind. Luke emphasizes compassion and the feelings. To complete the Star Trek analogy, Mark is the practical engineer Scotty. Peter Kreeft

I have also seen the Star Trek characters connected to the Myer-Briggs personality types. I wounder if this fits with Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John's personality?

Equality, Sanctity of Life, and Atheism

2009-05-07T21:25:00.000-07:00

To understand Singer, it's helpful to contrast him with "New Atheists" like Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett, and Richard Dawkins. The New Atheists say we can get rid of God but preserve morality. They insist that no one needs God in order to be good; atheists can act no less virtuously than Christians. (And indeed, some atheists do put Christians to shame.) Even while repudiating the Christian God, Dawkins has publicly called himself a "cultural Christian."

But this position creates a problem outlined more than a century ago by the atheist philosopher Nietzsche. The death of God, Nietzsche argued, means that all the Christian values that have shaped the West rest on a mythical foundation. One may, out of habit, continue to live according to these values for a while. Over time, however, the values will decay, and if they are not replaced by new values, man will truly have to face the prospect of nihilism, what Nietzsche termed "the abyss."

Nietzsche's argument is illustrated in considering two of the central principles of Western civilization: "All men are created equal" and "Human life is precious." Nietzsche attributes both ideas to Christianity. It is because we are created equal and in the image of God that our lives have moral worth and that we share the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Nietzsche's warning was that none of these values make sense without the background moral framework against which they were formulated. A post-Christian West, he argued, must go back to the ethical drawing board and reconsider its most cherished values, which include its traditional belief in the equal dignity of every human life.

What they haven't considered, however, is whether Singer, virtually alone among their numbers, is uncompromisingly working out the implications of living in a truly secular society, one completely purged of Christian and transcendental foundations.

Singer resolutely takes up a Nietzschean call for a "transvaluation of values," with a full awareness of the radical implications. DINESH D'SOUZA

Problem With Neurotheology

2009-05-07T21:18:00.000-07:00

Here is a quote but read the full article to the point.

Skeptics used to argue that anyone with half a brain should realize there is no God. Now scientists are telling us that one half of the brain, or a portion thereof, is "wired" for religious experiences. But whether this evolving "neurotheology" is theology at all is doubtful. It tells us new things about the circuits of the brain, perhaps, but nothing new about God. Kenneth L. Woodward

Quantum Phenomena

2009-05-07T17:00:00.000-07:00

Read the whole article but this is some amazing stuff...

Stranger still is entanglement. When two photons get "entangled" they behave like a joint entity. Even when they're miles apart, if the spin of one particle is changed, the spin of the other instantly changes, too. This direct influence of one object on another distant one is called non-locality.

These peculiar properties have already been proven in a lab and tapped to improve data encryption. They could also one day be used to build much faster computers. Some philosophers see quantum phenomena as a sign of far greater unknown forces at work and it bolsters their view that a spiritual dimension exists. GAUTAM NAIK

"It's realer than real, for real, for real"

2009-05-06T19:04:00.000-07:00

De La Soul is one of my all time favorite hip hop groups.

Money Quote:

Or the chalk might outline ya one day
You oughta try steppin' outside you one day
You circle round yourself like you the answer
To the question of your inner son
But keep ya falsehoods to a minimum

Rest of the lyrics here

"pointers to God"

2009-05-06T18:42:00.000-07:00

Collins says belief is ultimately a matter of faith—that God's existence can't, in the end, be proved by science. And yet he sees plenty of "pointers to God," natural phenomena that imply the existence of a biblical God. Here are Collins's "pointers":

There is something instead of nothing.

The unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics, which make simple and beautiful laws.

The Big Bang: out of nothingness, the universe came into being. That cries out for explanation, since we have not observed nature to create itself . . . it causes us to postulate a creator, and the creator must be outside of time or you haven't solved the problem.

The precise tuning of the physical constants in the universe. If gravity was a little weaker, things would all start flying a part. You can see a creator in these constants. Francis Collins

The Deadliest Catch

2009-05-06T16:53:00.001-07:00

The wife and I have been watching The Deadliest Catch to wind down the day. The series has gotten the two thumbs up. What makes the show fascinating is the type of people that have a calling to that kind of work. These fishermen are somehow able to give up control to the ocean. They are not normal. They work days with only a few hours sleep. They are constantly exhausted moving 800 lb cages in and out of the water. One false move and they are in the ocean with a high likelihood of death. You don’t last long in the cold water and survival highly depends on how well they work together. They do all this just to make a living. It takes a certain type of person to be able to thrive in that kind of environment and it shapes them all in very similar ways although I really can’t put my finger on how. I guess you can say that they are the salt of the earth type people.

I think by watching the show you can get a feel for what Peter and Andrew must have been like before they dropped their nets to follow Jesus. It also give some great insights into the metaphor of the bark of Peter. The ocean gives and it takes away. Maybe in some ways these men are more in touch with reality because the stakes are so high and they know that they are not in control, the ocean is.

Rembrandt's Jewish Bride

2009-05-04T18:26:00.000-07:00

(Click on Image)

She is weighing up the responsibilities of loving and being loved, of receiving and of giving. It is not by chance that her other hand rests upon her womb, since children are the ultimate responsibility of married love.

Love binds, love weighs, love is the most serious experiences that we can ever know in our life. It is Rembrandt's awareness of this profound truth, and the glorious visual beauty with which he makes it accessible to us, that makes the "Jewish Bride" so unforgettable. Sister Wendy Beckett

Prolife Movement Weakness

2009-05-04T17:13:00.000-07:00

In the Biblical story of David and Goliath, David initially put on a coat of mail and a brass helmet and girded himself with a sword: he prepared to wage a conventional battle of swords against Goliath. But then he stopped. “I cannot walk in these, for I am unused to it,” he said (in Robert Alter’s translation), and picked up those five smooth stones. What happened, Arreguín-Toft wondered, when the underdogs likewise acknowledged their weakness and chose an unconventional strategy? He went back and re-analyzed his data. In those cases, David’s winning percentage went from 28.5 to 63.6. When underdogs choose not to play by Goliath’s rules, they win, Arreguín-Toft concluded, “even when everything we think we know about power says they shouldn’t.” Malcolm Gladwell

The prolife movement is in the underdog position. As such it needs to acknowledge its weakness and chose an unconventional [indirect] strategy. The weaknesses as I see them and a quick answer….

It makes us uncomfortable to make others uncomfortable. (blessed are those that mourn)
We don’t want to look intolerant. (blessed are the meek)
We don't want to be judgmental. (blessed those who hunger and seek righteousness)
We don’t want to make people face hard realities and give up potential goals and resources. (blessed are the poor)
We fall for the compartmentalization of separation of Christian ethics from government. (blessed are the pure of heart)
We don’t like to fight. (blessed are the peacemaker)
We don’t want to further hurt those who have had abortions. (blessed are the merciful)
We don’t want to be hated. (blessed are persecuted for seeking righteousness for my sake)

The unconventional strategy should be to follow Jesus in the beatitudes without hesitation.

Divine Freedom

2009-05-04T17:06:00.000-07:00

"So What'cha Want"

2009-05-01T16:30:00.000-07:00

I'm feeling a little old school. Here is the money quote...

Let it flow like a mudslide
A when I get on I like to ride and glide
I've got depth of perception in my text y'all
I get props at my mention 'cause I vex y'all

So what'cha what'cha what'cha want (what'cha want?)?
A you're so funny with the money that you flaunt (that'cha flaunt)
Where'd you get your information from huh?
You think that you can front when the revelation comes?

YEAH
You can't front on that!

Practical Romance

2009-05-01T14:17:00.000-07:00

And the key thing is to be held to account for the risks and rewards of the romantic adventure. Chesterton writes: "If I bet I must be made to pay, or there is no poetry in betting. If I challenge I must be made to fight, or there is no poetry in challenging. If I vow to be faithful I must be cursed when I am unfaithful, or there is no fun in vowing. . . . For the purpose even of the wildest romance results must be real; results must be irrevocable." And marriage, he says, is the ultimate example of a real and irrevocable result. (BRAD MINER)

Evolutionary Pantheism

2009-05-01T07:14:00.000-07:00

Nevertheless, if we develop Darwin’s insight, we can see the emergence of purpose, as of life itself, by small degrees, not from above, but by small increments, from below. The first purpose was the organization of matter in ways complex enough to sustain and replicate itself—the establishment, in other words, of life, or in still other terms, of problems and solutions. With life emerged the first purpose, the first problem, to preserve at least the improbable complexity already reached, and to find new ways of resisting damage and loss. Brian Boyd

There is a line with evolution where you are no longer doing science and enter the realm of religion. The above quote is more theology than science. The author is constructing a modern creation myth. Anthropomorphising evolution as if it has a master plan to create purpose to solve problems is a lot like saying that gravity wants to keep me connected to the planet.

It is essential to keep theology separate from science. There is a tension between the two points of view that makes it more likely to question. Giving the why questions the same answer as the how questions makes the world one dimensional. If evolution becomes the only reality then there is no need to question. Any question that is asked has the answer of evolution and because of this there is no longer any need to think or question.

Mathematic Agnostic

2009-05-01T04:56:00.000-07:00

The unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics creates many intriguing puzzles: Does mathematics have an existence entirely independent of the human mind? In other words, are we merely discovering mathematical verities, just as astronomers discover previously unknown galaxies? Or, is mathematics nothing but a human invention? If mathematics indeed exist in some abstract fairyland, what is the relation between this mythical world and physical reality? How does the human brain, with its known limitations, gain access to such an immutable world, outside of space and time? On the other hand, if mathematics is merely a human invention and it has no existence outside our minds, how can we explain the fact that the invention of so many mathematical truths miraculously anticipated questions about the cosmos and human life not even posted until many centuries later? Mario Livio

Forecasts for the Future

2009-04-30T21:04:00.000-07:00

This stuff scares the shit out of me. Good thing I have my tinfoil hat, daisy bb gun air rifle and 20 year old Mormon food storage left to me by my mother in law. I'm ready for Armageddon.

Catechism of the Catholic Church on Torture

2009-04-30T11:57:00.000-07:00

2298 In times past, cruel practices were commonly used by legitimate governments to maintain law and order, often without protest from the Pastors of the Church, who themselves adopted in their own tribunals the prescriptions of Roman law concerning torture. Regrettable as these facts are, the Church always taught the duty of clemency and mercy. She forbade clerics to shed blood. In recent times it has become evident that these cruel practices were neither necessary for public order, nor in conformity with the legitimate rights of the human person. On the contrary, these practices led to ones even more degrading. It is necessary to work for their abolition. We must pray for the victims and their tormentors.

Sad state of affairs when you have to state the obvious. Torture is wrong.

Samurai Saints

2009-04-29T17:17:00.000-07:00

ROMA, November 26, 2008 – A samurai carrying the cross is not a conventional image. But there were some of these among the 188 Japanese martyrs of the seventeenth century who were proclaimed blessed two days ago in Nagasaki. There were noblemen, priests – four of them – and one religious. But most of them were ordinary Christians: farmers, women, young people under the age of twenty, even small children, entire families. All of them were killed for refusing to renounce the Christian faith.

The beatification of "Fr. Peter Kibe and his 187 companions" – as the title of the ceremony put it – was the first ever celebrated in Japan. The new blesseds joined 42 Japanese saints and 395 blesseds, all of them martyrs, elevated to the honors of the altar beginning with Pius IX.

The new blesseds were martyred between 1603 and 1639. At the time, there were about 300,000 Catholics in Japan, evangelized first by the Jesuits, with St. Francis Xavier, and then also by the Franciscans. Sandro Magister

HT Mark P. Shea

Religion involves the whole person

2009-04-27T18:22:00.000-07:00

Here is a quote for my anonymous buddy to freak out on in the comments section.

But religion, once the glow of conversion [to atheism] had worn off, was not a matter of argument alone. It involves the whole person. Therefore I was drawn, over and over again, to the disconcerting recognition that so very many of the people I had most admired and loved, either in life or in books, had been believers. Reading Louis Fischer’s Life of Mahatma Gandhi, and following it up with Gandhi’s own autobiography, The Story of My Experiments With Truth, I found it impossible not to realise that all life, all being, derives from God, as Gandhi gave his life to demonstrate. Of course, there are arguments that might make you doubt the love of God. But a life like Gandhi’s, which was focused on God so deeply, reminded me of all the human qualities that have to be denied if you embrace the bleak, muddled creed of a materialist atheist. It is a bit like trying to assert that music is an aberration, and that although Bach and Beethoven are very impressive, one is better off without a musical sense. Attractive and amusing as David Hume was, did he confront the complexities of human existence as deeply as his contemporary Samuel Johnson, and did I really find him as interesting? A N Wilson

Gianna Jessen

2009-04-26T15:13:00.000-07:00

Babies might be more conscious than adults

2009-04-26T13:59:00.000-07:00

Modern science has largely agreed, spending decades outlining all the things that babies couldn't do because their brains had yet to develop. They were unable to focus, delay gratification, or even express their desires. The Princeton philosopher Peter Singer famously suggested that "killing a disabled infant is not morally equivalent to killing a person. Very often it is not wrong at all."

Now, however, scientists have begun to dramatically revise their concept of a baby's mind. By using new research techniques and tools, they've revealed that the baby brain is abuzz with activity, capable of learning astonishing amounts of information in a relatively short time. Unlike the adult mind, which restricts itself to a narrow slice of reality, babies can take in a much wider spectrum of sensation - they are, in an important sense, more aware of the world than we are. Jonah Lehrer

Amen I say to you, unless you be converted, and become as little children, you shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. (Matthew 18:3)

Pieta by Cassy King

2009-04-26T09:00:00.000-07:00

My dad showed me this beautiful poem in the paper ceated by Cassy King.

Mary Grieves.

How hard it must be,
to balance the mangled body
between her knees
and in her mind.

Draped like the folds of her dress
he spills across her.
One arm hangs like a broken wing.

She sits because
she cannot rise,

what she holds in her mind
is more than a prayer
more than a plea

words, yes,
and memories
spill over the sides.

She longs to speak to
him
one more time
to wake him
have him brush her cheek
to tell him
all the thing whispered
when he was young

Things she taught him,
Things he learned on his own,
Things he just knew:

How to lace his sandals;
the meaning of woman
touching his garment hem;
His soul too large to cradle;

She wonders without thinking-
Alpha and Omega - Is this
the end or the beginning?

Deep Wounds, Brian Knep

2009-04-25T15:56:00.000-07:00

HT The Artful Manager

Review of In Bruges

2009-04-24T07:49:00.000-07:00

Last Judgment Workshop of Hieronymus Bosch (This painting is used give a Twilight Zone style ending to the movie)

The CD jacket said that In Bruges is a dark comedy. If it wasn't for this, I probably would not have known it was a comedy. It's like those British comedies that are sometimes on PBS late at night. I can feel the jokes flying over my head. The laugh track only highlights that I don't get it and it's quite frustrating for me. In Burges doesn't have a laugh track but I didn't laughed once during the movie. Due to my track record with British comedies, I can only assume the the problem resides in me and not in the movie.

Starting this review out with my little issue you would think that I didn't like the movie In Burges. The truth is that I liked the movie. The movie has a rich layer of meaning to analyze and it has a good ending that reminds me of the old Twilight Zone episodes.

In Burges is about two hit men Ray and Ken who hide out in a small medieval town named Bruges. They are hiding in Burges due to Ray accidentally killing a young boy while taking out the Priest he was paid to kill. The hit men's boss, Harry, tells Ken that the murder of the child caused too much publicity and he orders Ken to kill Ray for his mistake. While Ken is about to kill Ray he stops Ray from killing himself. Ray wants to kill himself due to guilt of having killed the innocent boy. Harry then goes to Burges to kill both Ken and Ray due to Ken refusing to kill Ray. Then the movie ends with a showdown. The movie is more complicated than this but this gives a quick overview.

In Bruges asks the question, in a post-Christian world how do you gain redemption? Ray goes into a confessional to kill a Priest that has a hit out on him. Ray shoots the priest and while the priest tries to run an innocent boy is hit in the cross fire while praying in a pew waiting for his confession. To me this was analogous to saying that by rejecting the Church you threw out the baby with the bathwater and the rest of the movie looks into how to you gain back what was lost.

Harry's means of redemption in the movie was to follow a strict unforgivable honor code but when he thinks that he has not fulfilled the letter of his own law he commits suicide. Kens means is to suffer and die for his friend but even by doing this he may not have the power to redeem his friend. Ray's only means is true remorse and trying to cling to the good. The movie doesn't give an answer to the question. It leaves the answer for the viewer to ponder. I have to give the movie props because it does ask the question in a honest way. There are some gruesome scenes but if you have a strong stomach I would say go see it.

Jimi Hendrix - The Wind Cries Mary

2009-04-23T09:23:00.000-07:00

I know this song is not technically about the Virgin Mary but about Jimi's girlfriend. I reserve the right to interpret and hear whatever suits me in art so for me the songs is about the Mother of our Lord. Anyway it's a great song and at the very least you will get a good laugh at the two white dudes with Afros.

Prisoner's Dilemma

2009-04-23T08:15:00.000-07:00

Economics as a science has helped improve the lives of many people and I am thankful for this. But economics tends to overreach science into the realm of ethics. The economic principle of "rationality" is one example of this. Rationality is defined by economics as someone acting to maximize their own "utility". That is, to act in their own best interest. On a scientific level this is not true. There are many times when people do not act in their own best interest but for a greater good. Since people don't always act "rationally" economics then moves from the level of science (what is) to the level of ethnics (how people should act).

From a Catholic perspective rationality requires the theological virtues of "faith, hope and love" because without these virtues it is not possible to see reality. If your not reasoning from the perspective of faith, hope, and love then the reasoning will be faulty. According to Christ there are times when we should act counter to our own self interest.

I want to look at game theories scenario of the "prisoner's dilemma" to look out how economics theory reasons how people should act. Here is the scenario...

Two suspects are arrested by the police. The police have insufficient evidence for a conviction, and, having separated both prisoners, visit each of them to offer the same deal. If one testifies (defects from the other) for the prosecution against the other and the other remains silent (cooperates with the other), the betrayer goes free and the silent accomplice receives the full 10-year sentence. If both remain silent, both prisoners are sentenced to only six months in jail for a minor charge. If each betrays the other, each receives a five-year sentence. Each prisoner must choose to betray the other or to remain silent. Each one is assured that the other would not know about the betrayal before the end of the investigation. How should the prisoners act? Wikipedia

There are a lot of assumptions to the argument which I will not quote to make the reasoning valid (you can go read them yourself) but here is the economic conclusion...

In the classic form of this game, cooperating is strictly dominated by defecting, so that the only possible equilibrium for the game is for all players to defect. No matter what the other player does, one player will always gain a greater payoff by playing defect. Since in any situation playing defect is more beneficial than cooperating, all rational players will play defect, all things being equal. Wikipedia

In game theory you never pick a strictly dominated position. So in the case of both suspects being innocent, according to the game theory logic, you should still make up a story about the other prisoner so you don't get 10 years. The scary thing about this is that our legal system is actually set up to make this scenario with plea deals. The problem is that the question, "What is the right thing to do?" is not considered because it stands outside the bounds of economic, "rationality".

The other issue that I have is that by fitting real life situations into this model you lose perspective on unknown risks. For example, You could be haunted with guilt for ten years or after 10 years of plotting the betrayed prisoner will get out of prison and execute his revenge. Those "unintended consequences" are bound to turn up when you oversimplify a situation and fit it into an artificial economic model.

From the Christian perspective I think the following is true, "Blessed are those who pick a strictly dominated strategy for a greater good."

It is important to understand the economic principle taught by the prisoners dilemma. Lawyers, economist, and politicians are probably going to go with a dominate strategy and we should factor this in when making our decisions of what is the right thing to do. If not you may be faced with the Charley Brown Dilemma....

The Incarnation of Mercy

2009-04-19T08:51:00.000-07:00

...openness to Christ, who as the Redeemer of the world fully reveals man himself, can only be achieved through an ever more mature reference to the Father and His love. Although God "dwells in unapproachable light," He speaks to man he means of the whole of the universe: "ever since the creation of the world his invisible nature, namely, his eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made." This indirect and imperfect knowledge, achieved by the intellect seeking God by means of creatures through the visible world, falls short of "vision of the Father." "No one has ever seen God," writes St. John, in order to stress the truth that "the only Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has made him known." This "making known" reveals God in the most profound mystery of His being, one and three, surrounded by "unapproachable light." Nevertheless, through this "making known" by Christ we know God above all in His relationship of love for man: in His "philanthropy." It is precisely here that "His invisible nature" becomes in a special way "visible," incomparably more visible than through all the other "things that have been made": it becomes visible in Christ and through Christ, through His actions and His words, and finally through His death on the cross and His resurrection.

In this way, in Christ and through Christ, God also becomes especially visible in His mercy; that is to say, there is emphasized that attribute of the divinity which the Old Testament, using various concepts and terms, already defined as "mercy." Christ confers on the whole of the Old Testament tradition about God's mercy a definitive meaning. Not only does He speak of it and explain it by the use of comparisons and parables, but above all He Himself makes it incarnate and personifies it. He Himself, in a certain sense, is mercy. To the person who sees it in Him - and finds it in Him - God becomes "visible" in a particular way as the Father who is rich in mercy." (Pope John Paul II, Dives in Misericordia)

Doubting Thomas

2009-04-19T08:43:00.000-07:00

Doubting Thomas, Caravaggio

Thomas, called Didymus, one of the Twelve,
was not with them when Jesus came.
So the other disciples said to him, "We have seen the Lord."
But he said to them,
"Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands
and put my finger into the nailmarks
and put my hand into his side, I will not believe."

Now a week later his disciples were again inside
and Thomas was with them.
Jesus came, although the doors were locked,
and stood in their midst and said, "Peace be with you."
Then he said to Thomas, "Put your finger here and see my hands,
and bring your hand and put it into my side,
and do not be unbelieving, but believe."
Thomas answered and said to him, "My Lord and my God!"
Jesus said to him, "Have you come to believe because you have seen me?
Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed." John 20:24-29)

Spiritual Self Experimentation

2009-04-18T07:14:00.000-07:00

I am going to do some self experimentation to try to develop some virtue. Yes it's time to use science as a means to holiness. To biblically proof text what I'm doing Paul tells us to,
"Test everything; retain what is good." (1Thes 5:21) and that is what I'm going to try to do. Seth Roberts in this 10-minute talk has two main points when doing self experimentation.

1. You learn by doing not over thinking an experiment. You will learn what’s wrong with your experiments by starting to do them.
2. When you do something, do the smallest easiest thing that will help, that will tell you something you don’t know.

The problem that I want to address is my lack of progress in holiness. Every time I go to confession it is the same sins that occur at about the same incident of occurrence. This has been happening for the past 8 years and it is amazing to me how consistent my confessions have been. When I was younger I always thought that with age comes wisdom and holiness. All I needed to do was to go to church on Sunday and try to be a good person and I would continue to grow. It hasn't been working out like that.

So here is what I am going to do. Every night I am going to do an examination of conscious, record my sins using a short hand that no one but me will understand , and pray an act of contrition. In a month, I am going to go to confession and I will see if I made progress. I can tweak and tinker from there. There are a lot of types of spiritualities and devotions that I want to try out but for now I am going to stick with Seth's point number 2.

Rihanna - Umbrella

2009-04-17T11:02:00.000-07:00

I think people are really stressed out right now. If it's not the economy then it's the culture wars. If your wearing thin then listen and sing along with this song. This song is very meaningful to me when listening to it like Christ is singing the song. The lyrics are here if you want to sing along.

Here is my favorite part...

These fancy things, will never come in between
You're part of my entity, here for infinity
When the war has took its part
When the world has dealt its cards
If the hand is hard, together we'll mend your heart
Because

When the sun shines, we’ll shine together
Told you I'll be here forever
Said I'll always be your friend
Took an oath I'mma stick it out 'till the end
Now that it's raining more than ever
Know that we'll still have each other
You can stand under my umbrella

Review of Religulous

2009-04-17T10:26:00.000-07:00

I just wanted to point you to a review of Religulous that I really like. In the interest of full disclosure I wanted to say that review was written by my sister. It is still a good review even if I'm biased.

Review of Let The Right One In

2009-04-17T09:16:00.000-07:00

The movie, Let The Right One In, starts with a 12 year old boy named Oskar who looks to be on the path of becoming a serial killer. Oskar is a vulnerable boy and is mercilessly harassed by bullies. Oskar's cereal killer type fantasies come from a desire to get revenge and gain freedom from the bullies. A young girl, Eli, moves into Oskar's apartment complex along with an elderly man. The girl turns out to be a vampire and the elderly man kills people for blood to keep Eli alive. Eli and Oskar become friends and through their relationship Oskar is able to grow and defend himself against the bully. The closer the relationship between Eli and Oskar becomes the more healthier Oskar seems to get. The old man get's caught. Eli kills the bullies and Oskar takes on the new role that was left void by the old man's death.

The movie is not scary, as in I didn't have a fight or flight reaction when watching it. There was some gruesome scenes but this is not the true source of the horror in the movie. The horror came 5 minutes after the show ended when something was nagging at me. After getting emotional connected to Oskar and Eli's relationship and even cheering them on, the horror then came with the realization that the movie was about pedophilia. The movie is told from the perspective of a sex offender and how the offender rationalizes the process of grooming a victim. The horror comes from the moral level of cheering on a sex offender.

Vampire movies are about sex. The Vampire's taking of blood symbolizes the lust of making someone a piece of meat for ones own desires. The tension always comes with how this is violently opposed to how Christ, gave his blood, by laying down his life for his bride the Church. From the view of a sex offender everything that is done is good for the victim. Oskar was vulnerable and really had no one he felt he could turn to until Eli came and used this vulnerability to groom Oskar to be a victim. It was Oskar who let Eli in, yes he was open to it, but to truly believe this you have to rationalize and ignore what Eli did to groom Oskar to get to that point. This is what a pedophile and sex offenders do. At the end of the movie there is a quasi-baptism scene. Oskar is held under water at a swimming pool by a bully and is about to die. Eli then comes to be the savior and kills the bullies and brings forth Oskar to a new life.

The point of view of the movie is that of a pedophile and as such the movie is sick.

There are some things that can be learned about sex offenders from the movie that can be used to protect children.

1. Looks are deceiving. Eli looks like an innocent 12 year old girl. The reality is that she was hundreds of years old and that her motives were anything but innocent. Sex offenders like religion because they can use it to easily gain trust to gain access to children. Anything that has power for good has the power for evil. That is why, as someone once said, the corruption of the best is the worst. We need to be aware that there will always be a Judas in the Church.

2. The process of grooming a victim. Sex offenders spend a lot of time fantasizing about how they are going to perpetrate. Sex offenders are very good at manipulation and they know how to use people's weaknesses to get what they want. An analogy of how it works it that they hand the victim a hand grenade and pull the pin. This puts all the pressure off the perp and onto the victim. The victim and the sex offender know that no matter where the victim throws the grenade that the truth is going to hurt someone. As parents we need to make sure that our children are supported and love so they are not as vulnerable to sex offenders. As parents we need to make sure we let our children know that it is ok for them to tell us anything and that we can handle it and take care of it. If we do have reason to believe that a child is being abused we need to contact law enforcement or child protective services.

3. Sexual perpetration is repetitive. The movie shows how Eli got ride of the old man. The old mad poured acid on his face when he got caught so no one would know who he was to protect things from getting back to Eli. Eli went to the old mans window at the hospital. The old man willingly came to the window for Eli to drink his blood. She then disposed of him by throwing him out the window to his death. The movie gives clues that this process had happened repeatedly in the past. It is possible for sex offenders to stop but they will always have a strong temptation to do it again. The temptation will not go away in this life time and because of this perps should never have any access to children. It also means that if one victim is found that it is highly likely that there are a lot more.

If your are wondering why I know so much about sexual assault the reason is that I'm a social worker and I have conducted sexual assault investigations.

The only serious argument against God

2009-04-15T20:03:00.000-07:00

Two Reasons Not to Give Up

2009-04-15T19:19:00.000-07:00

With the constant chattering about gay, "rights" I think it's important to remind ourselves what we are fighting for. Here are two reasons not to give up on the fight against same-sex marriage

The Theological Virtues and Reason

2009-04-04T16:50:00.000-07:00

Atheist seem to set up a false dichotomy between faith and reason in a very similar way that Protestants make a false dichotomy between faith and works. The reality is that you can't separate faith and reason just like you can't separate faith and works. The categories overlap. Faith without works is dead because we need faith working through love. The same is true with faith and reason. Any basis of reason has to have a starting point that is unprovable, reason requires faith. Human reason is connected to not only to faith but also hope and love. It is impossible for humans to see something without placing value upon what is seen. You don't just see a tree but a big or small tree, a beautiful or ugly tree. Reason requires not only faith but also hope and love. This is because without faith, hope, and love humans are not able to see reality. Reality that has its foundation in Christ.

Atheist, Nones, and Religion

2009-04-04T10:24:00.000-07:00

My sister brought this to my attention. I think it fits into the, how not to be a turkey, as a Church.

Trapped in the Drive-Thru

2009-04-04T08:07:00.000-07:00

Life can get too serious so here is a Weird Al song to groove to. Weird Al always improves the song that he parodies.

The Miracle of Life

2009-04-02T20:21:00.000-07:00

From Catholic Media House

The Degradation of Art

2009-04-02T19:25:00.000-07:00

Conversely the degradation of art has never been more apparent. And the most widespread form of degradation -- more widespread even than the deliberate desecration of humanity through pornography and gratuitous violence -- is kitsch, that peculiar disease that we can instantly recognise but never precisely define, and whose Austro-German name links it to the mass movements and crowd sentiments of the 20th century. ROGER SCRUTON

And later...

Simply put, kitsch is a disease of faith. Kitsch begins in doctrine and ideology and spreads from there to infect the entire world of culture. The Disneyfication of art is simply one aspect of the Disneyfication of faith -and both involve a profanation of our highest values. Kitsch, the case of Disney reminds us, is not an excess of feeling but a deficiency. The world of kitsch is in a certain measure a heartless world, in which emotion is directed away from its proper target towards sugary stereotypes, permitting us to pay passing tribute to love and sorrow without the trouble of feeling them. It is no accident that the arrival of kitsch on the stage of history coincided with the hitherto unimaginable horrors of trench warfare, of the Holocaust and the Gulag -- all of them fulfilling the prophecy that kitsch proclaims, which is the transformation of the human being into a doll, which in one moment we cover with kisses, and in the next tear to shreds.ROGER SCRUTON

Handing Out $5 Words: Kitsch

2009-04-02T19:19:00.000-07:00

Kitsch

(/kɪtʃ/) is the German and Yiddish word denoting art that is considered an inferior, tasteless copy of an extant style of art. The term kitsch was a response to the 19th century art whose aesthetics convey exaggerated sentimentality and melodrama, hence, kitsch art is closely associated with sentimental art. Moreover, kitsch (art) also denotes the types of art that are like-wise æsthetically deficient (whether or not it is sentimental, glamorous, theatrical, or creative) making it a creative gesture that merely imitates the superficial appearances of art (via repeated conventions and formulae), thus, it is uncreative and unoriginal; it is not Art. Contemporaneously, kitsch also (loosely) denotes art that is æsthetically pretentious to the degree of being in poor taste, and to industrially-produced art-items that are considered trite and crass. Wikipedia

Counter Arguemnt for Barbell Strategy

2009-04-02T18:54:00.000-07:00

A couple of posts ago I talked about the Barbell Strategy which was to put 90% of your efforts into hyper-conservative efforts and then put 10% into highly risky. I have recently read the following quote that would challenge this idea.

Courage is the mean between recklessness and cowardliness. Here, narcissists are also at both extremes, never in the mean. Indeed, they are often bold or inordinately daring. Their inflated sense of superiority propels them to recklessness; for they are subject to fantasies of omnipotence and unequalled brilliance, and they feel that they are above the law. And it is this sense of superiority that allows them to underestimate the intelligence and determination of their adversaries.20 But they are not brave; they are cowards at heart. They lack the courage to gaze upon the dilapidated specter of their true selves, nor can they bear to look into the eyes of one who has discovered their true nature. They inspire terror only because we recognize that the inhibitions that govern the impulses of normal healthy persons are completely lacking in the pathological narcissist. They are psychopaths.21 The terror they inspire is a source of narcissistic supply that contributes to their sense of existing, which they need to counter the sense of their own nothingness, created by their immoral and unrepented choices.DOUGLAS MCMANAMAN

Not a good sign that the type of strategy that I just described in my barbell post is similarly described in reference to narcissism. Especially when reading Taleb's book I felt that there was a touch of narcissism to his writing.

I think Taleb's answer would be that the problem is that we do not know the scale of risk. It is unsure where the center point is between recklessness and cowardliness. It isn't even sure if there is a true linear scale. Because risk is fundamentally an unknown, making the center unknown, this is the precise reason the barbell principle is needed.

The other problem is that this theory doesn't really work for depicting Jesus' life due to him knowing the risk and were real courage resides. So my answer is that I don't know. I am going to have to think about it.

absence of the personal God

2009-04-01T11:15:00.000-07:00

A quote...

For related reasons, Europeans seem also to be living in a postreligious fantasy. Very few go to church or think of themselves as members of a church. Hostile to the various forms of repression caused by their nations’ religious past, Europeans generally see religion as little more than a source of injustice and repression, a multifaceted affront to the person and his rights. Just a few decades ago, European intellectuals prided themselves on being full of existentialist anxiety in the absence of God—but the contemporary European claims to be too enlightened to be moved, as a person, toward any kind of illusory transcendence. He refuses either to believe in God or to be haunted by His absence. But the longings that make a person more than a merely biological being remain just beneath the surface. The person remains miserably disoriented in the perceived absence of the personal God. Peter Augustine Lawler

Free Thinker

2009-04-01T10:57:00.000-07:00

I have seen people categorize themselves as free thinkers as part of an argument for a certain point of view. This is a neat word trick on many levels. It's always cute to name your own position something that you would have to be crazy to disagree with. Who wants to be a slaved thinker or a brainwashed thinker? The term free thinker is used here to make the category do the thinking for us. Someone will say that I don't believe in God because I'm a free thinker. If you are not free to think that there is a God seems to me that this is a position that is less free. It's being used to limit the thinking options. If you are using the category of free thinker to discount a position before you actually think through a position then you are actually less free and actually doing very little thinking. People who use this term are really trying to limit thoughts and beliefs to a certain type. This term is used as a herding mechanism. Kind of iconic in that they are doing that which they usually accuse the Catholic Church of.

Lets think through the possibility of being a faithful Catholic and a free thinker.

We need to look at the nature of freedom. Freedom does not mean having no limits. If you put me into outer space, free from the restraints of gravity, I would have little freedom to get around. I would not be able to control my direction at all. Scientists are not free to think whatever they want in regards to the data of an experiment. If they do, they are no longer doing science. Artists are not free to draw a picture of a giraffe with a short neck because then it would not be a depiction of a giraffe but something else. So freedom of thought needs some level of restraint, a strong foundation, a starting point to get from point a to point b for thoughts to have any freedom and practical use.

Thinking is a lot like flying a kite. Your thoughts need to be connected to true data for them to be useful. A kite needs to be connected to a string that pulls back. If you let go of the string the tension comes off the string and the kite will fall to the ground leaving no freedom. The wind is like every day life and there is some freedom to move back and forth, up and down, but this freedom comes from the string providing tension.

The question then becomes how do we get access to the data that will give the tension for free thought. The secularist will answer that the data comes from science and personal experience. There is a couple of problems with restricting the data to these two points. The problem with science is that it only gives a certain type of data. Science gives us the objective facts for the material world. Science doesn't give much relevant data for questions that are the most important to my personal life. The data that I really need is the data of who I am, what I should do, my purpose, and my place in the universe. Science gives little relevant existential data. The secularist will respond that he is able to create his own data based on his own experience. The problem with this is that the data is not separate from oneself. It's like tying the kite string to the kite. There is not going to be enough tension to get the kite off the ground.

The data that is needed is Christ. Using Christ as the data does not make me less a free thinker just like the scientists conforming to scientific data doesn't make scientists less free thinkers. The reality is that the Logos, by providing the data, makes the act of free thought possible.

So how not to be a turkey? Don't fall for the idea that free thought equals a rejection of Christ and his Church.

The Christian Barbell Strategy

2009-03-31T18:07:00.000-07:00

I talked about Nassim Nicholas Taleb a couple of posts back and gave his analogy of the turkey. Another idea that I like a lot from Taleb is his barbell strategy. Here is a quote by Taleb that givs this strategy.

…the good investment strategy is to put 90% of your money in the safest possible government securities and the remaining 10% in a large number of high-risk ventures. This insulates you from bad black swans and exposes you to the possibility of good ones. Your smallest investment could go “convex” – explode – and make you rich.

This is very different from Aristotle ideal of the golden mean. The golden mean says that the best position between two extremes is the middle. The problem that I have with the golden mean is that Christ's life really doesn't fit this model. Jesus' life wasn't always moderate. Sometimes Jesus was incredibly radical. I think Taleb's barbell strategy looks more like how Christ lived his life.

In the majority (90%) of life's situations it's really a good idea to be hyper-conservative. If you live your life 100% conservatively you miss out on a lot of things that makes life worth living. Always playing it safe is just not fun. So there should be that 10% of life were you are ruthlessly risky to expose yourself to what Taleb would call the black swan and what I would call from a Christian prospective the Holy Spirit. You really don't want to go more than 10% because most attempts at innovation (mutation in evolution) fail.

If you take the golden mean when dealing with our society your are going to take on too much risk. Your going to take on too much crap and when things blow up your going to end up a turkey.

An Essentially Christian Plotline

2009-03-31T17:17:00.000-07:00

There is a young man, different from other young men. Ancient prophecies foretell his coming, and he performs miraculous feats. Eventually, confronted by his enemies, he must sacrifice his own life—an act that saves mankind from calamity—but in a mystery as great as that of his origin, he is reborn, to preside in glory over a world redeemed. Tell this story to one of the world’s 2 billion Christians, and he’ll recognize it instantly. Tell it to a science-fiction and fantasy fan, and he’ll ask why you’re making minor alterations to the plot of The Matrix or Superman Returns. For reasons that have as much to do with global politics as with our cultural moment, some of this generation’s most successful sci-fi and fantasy movie franchises follow an essentially Christian plotline. Benjamin A. Plotinsky

I would disagree in that I do not think the reason is substantially political or cultural. I believe the reason is that truth is inherently interesting even if it's only true on an allegorical level.

Proper Ends (Goals)

2009-03-30T17:17:00.000-07:00

How not to be a Turkey? (context)

Our society puts a high value on making and achieving goals. It's something that I like about American culture. The challenge of setting, striving for, and accomplishing a worthy goal is exhilarating. Lets do an experiment to see if you have the focus to accomplish the task given by this clip.

Goals have a dark side. Goals can mislead if they are not properly ordered. To speak like St. Thomas Aquinas, our ends need to be the good that we are truly seeking. The risk is overly focusing on things that will not really obtain what we are looking for. Like being too preoccupied to see the gorilla, there is a risk of striving for non-essential things that will fail to lead to where we truly want to go. Ultimately making you end up a turkey. So to end with a quote from Christ...

Be not solicitous therefore, saying, What shall we eat: or what shall we drink, or wherewith shall we be clothed? For after all these things do the heathens seek. For your Father knoweth that you have need of all these things. Seek ye therefore first the kingdom of God, and his justice, and all these things shall be added unto you. (Matthew 6:31-34)

Alfred Hitchcock

2009-03-28T14:32:00.000-07:00

Hitchcock attended a strict Jesuit school from age eleven to almost fourteen. He later recalled that the school placed particular emphasis on fear, realism, and reason as key traits of religion. Whatever Hitchcock may have said about the role of religion in his life and work, that education remained a lifelong influence. As McGilligan writes: “The fear, the realism mixed with fancy, the reasoning power and discipline of ordered thinking—these were the cornerstones of his art” (McGilligan 24). Not only that, but they helped shape his view of the world.

The mind behind Alfred Hitchcock’s body of work is preoccupied, even obsessed, with questions of goodness and evil, innocence and guilt. Screenwriter Arthur Laurents, who worked with Hitchcock on the 1948 film Rope, observed that it was “obvious to anyone worked with him that he had a strong sense of sin” (quoted by David Sterritt in the essay “The Destruction that Wasteth at Noonday: Hitchcock’s Atheology”). Rope itself is an excellent example of this, with its tale of two young men who are inspired to commit murder by their former housemaster’s Nietzschean philosophies about superior beings and their right to act as they please. Gina R. Dalfonzo

The article where I got this quote is a good read. Go check it out

Don't be the Turkey

2009-03-28T08:13:00.000-07:00

When I started this blog, I was interested in what I called indirect apologetics. I got this idea through a book named, Strategy that looked at what made successful campaigns in war. The best strategy was to be unpredictable or to attack where it was least expected. Direct attacks were very costly and didn't tend to work. I tried to apply this idea towards bringing people to Christ.

It is time for a change in course due to the situation that Christians find themselves.

Instead of thinking exclusively on how to bring people into the truth of Christ. I am going to now focus more on keeping fidelity to Christ. I am going to try to tinker and take risks to do this.

Secular culture has been extremely effective with using indirect tactics against Christians. So the question that I am going to keep in mind is the following; How do you protect against the constant barrage of indirect attacks by the media and secular society so that you do not end up being a turkey.

I have been influenced by the book by Nassim Nicholas Taleb entitled The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable. In Taleb's book he used an annalogy of the turkey. The turkey's every day experience confirms the belief that the owner cares for his best interest. Every day the owner feeds and gives waters to the turkey. This keeps going until the turkey reaches a maximum level of trust for his owner but then comes the chopping block.

What I want to do is to look for ways as a Christian, immersed in a powerful secular society, to not be the turkey.

New Vs. Old Humanists

2009-03-26T08:22:00.000-07:00

Here is an interesting quote,

The British Humanist Association is currently running a campaign against religious faith. It has bought advertising space on our city buses, which now patrol the streets declaring that "There probably is no God; so stop worrying and enjoy life." My parents would have been appalled at such a declaration. From a true premise, they would have said, it derives a false and pernicious conclusion. Had they wished to announce their beliefs—and it was part of their humanism to think that you don't announce your beliefs but live them—they would have expressed them thus: "There probably is no God; so start worrying, and remember that self-discipline is up to you." The British Humanist Association sees nothing wrong with the reference to enjoyment; it seems to have no consciousness of what is clearly announced between the lines of the text, namely that there are no ideals higher than pleasure. Its publications imply that there is only one thing that stands between man and his happiness, and that is the belief in God. Take that belief away, and we can run out into the garden of permissions, picking the fruit that we wrongly thought to have been forbidden. The humanists I knew as a young man would have reacted with disgust at this hedonistic message, and at a philosophy that aims to dispense with God without also aiming to replace Him. Roger Scruton

The old school humanists always had a problem. They didn't have a tangible answer to why make sacrifices when things get hard. Because of this they didn't have staying power. The old school humanists were depending on a residual Christian morality that the next generation is not going have. The humanist movement will always eventually drift to be hedonists.

Great Depression Cooking with Clara

2009-03-22T16:26:00.000-07:00

I love these videos. I think it really shows what makes a life well lived.

Homosexuality, Experience & Tradition by Eve Tushnet

2009-03-20T17:44:00.000-07:00

I found this very enlightening...

Experience & Tradition

by Eve Tushnet

One of the frightening aspects of loving somebody is the way that love can seem to offer unique access not only to pleasure but to truth. Love of another person-not only romantic love, but familial love and deep friendship as well-promises or threatens to reshape us completely. It can become the lens through which we see the world.

When I came out as a lesbian, provoked in part by a puppyish crush, I felt as though I had found the key that unlocked the secrets of the world. The only experience that has ever given me a greater rush of self-understanding was my conversion to Catholicism. The two experiences felt weirdly similar: both were frightening and illuminating, separating me to a certain extent from friends and family, yet both were prompted by love.

The rest can be found here...

The Crisis of Credit Visualized

2009-03-20T10:22:00.001-07:00

The Crisis of Credit Visualized from Jonathan Jarvis on Vimeo.

Is the Pope obviously wrong on condoms?

2009-03-19T20:39:00.000-07:00

My comments on a post.

It is hard to calculate the consequences of condoms because human behavior is complex. If you only look at the issue through an abstract level then I can see how the Pope's statements can seem like "obvious nonsense". A barrier of latex between someone and infected body fluid is going lower the risk of getting HIV. But if you look at all the complex variables, then it's not so clear if passing out thousands of condoms really lowers HIV in the long term. Condoms being readily available is going to have an element of risk compensation. People are going to act more risky because they feel more safe while using condoms. Does the protective benefit of condoms offset the risky behavior? I really don't know and there is no scientific data provided on this blog that would make this question "obvious".

The other variable that I think the Pope was trying to get at and which the author of this post was trying to separate from the popes comments is the question of whether people are actually going to consistently use condoms. This is the real issue.

The truth is that asking people to use condoms every time they have sex is like asking a fat person to have salad for every meal. It just not going to happen. Sure people will do it a couple times but in the long run using condoms get old. Using condoms is just not that fulfilling. So to sum up, condoms increase risky behavior but over the long term the average person is not going to use condoms consistently. This leads me to believe that what the Pope is saying has a lot of truth to it. And it's not because the Pope says that condoms are wrong, but because using condoms suck.

The stuff of life

2009-03-18T20:11:00.000-07:00

Quote of the day:

A man who is holding down a menial job and thereby supporting a wife and children is doing something authentically important with his life. He should take deep satisfaction from that, and be praised by his community for doing so. Think of all the phrases we used to have for it: “He is a man who pulls his own weight.” “He’s a good provider.” If that same man lives under a system that says that the children of the woman he sleeps with will be taken care of whether or not he contributes, then that status goes away. I am not describing some theoretical outcome. I am describing American neighborhoods where, once, working at a menial job to provide for his family made a man proud and gave him status in his community, and where now it doesn’t. I could give a half dozen other examples. Taking the trouble out of the stuff of life strips people—already has stripped people—of major ways in which human beings look back on their lives and say, “I made a difference.”

By Charles Murray

Some thought for Christians

2009-03-16T19:50:00.000-07:00

Some thought for Christians.

If you are not able to see why homosexuality is wrong, it does not necessarily follow that, because of this, homosexuality is therefore not a sin. It reminds me of the scientists who believed that, because they could not see anything in breast milk that was essentially different from baby formula, that therefore it was equal. Mothers in third world countries were given formula and encouraged to stop breastfeeding. When the formula ran out mothers were not able to feed their babies due to their breast milk drying up. Formula fed babies were more likely to die from diarrhea because they were not protected by the antibodies that is in mother's breast milk. Some studies have even shown that babies who have been formula fed have a higher incidence of lower IQ's. All these problems and more have occurred because these scientist's were not able to see all of the unintended consequences. There has to be the realization that reality is extremely complex, and there are a lot of things that we just don't know that we don't know.

Our society is very good at science, but this strength comes with the weakness and illusion that we know more than we really do. Science does not have anything to say about morality. Science tells us about the physical world, but it has nothing to tell us about what we ought to do. Philosophy alone does not have access to the data to gain the objective perspective on who we really are and what our end is. As Christians we have been given the data that gives the answers to know who we are and what we ought to do morally. Our data is Divine Revelation. The fact that evil acts sometimes looks like good is more reason to hold firm to the faith that was given to us by Christ.

Christians who are faithful to Divine revelation are going to be marginalized by secularists and tagged as a "hate group". It's already happening. And it's not because we "hate" those with same sex attraction but because we will not agree that homosexual acts lead society to good ends. We need to trust Christ and the deposit of faith that He gave us.

Secular Songs for Lent

2009-03-15T18:38:00.000-07:00

Dave Matthews Let You Down Cover

Linkin Park - What I've Done

Persistent Vegetative State

2009-03-13T15:34:00.000-07:00

This video is about a person named Kate who was in a persistent vegetative state. Kate is now able to express some of her experiences. For me, it brings back memories of Terri Schiavo and how her parents could see in her some level of consciousness. Maybe that wasn't so outlandish after all.

Blinded By Science

2008-12-09T19:13:00.000-08:00

An interesting point of view that I came across today.

In our time, we are perhaps less inclined to recognize science as a set of ideas with aspirations to universality precisely because the scientific enterprise has been so successful. But the authority we cede to science, both as the servant of health and as the master of knowledge, weakens our allegiance to those other sources of wisdom so crucial to our self-understanding and self-government. Those other sources serve to ground our moral judgment, while science avoids or flattens moral questions, since it cannot answer them and rarely needs to ask them. . . . For all its power, science risks leaving us morally impotent. Imagining the Future

George Smoot: The design of the universe

2008-12-07T19:21:00.000-08:00

Is art evangelism?

2008-10-16T18:14:00.000-07:00

Austin,
I like you're writing and your blog, and am especially interested in what you say about art being persueasive.

Does this mean that art is evangelism?

I don't know how long ago you made this comment on my blog but I just recently saw it. If it was awhile ago, sorry for the slow response.

Art is a form of communication, although not necessarily in a conceptual way. Art can be used in evangelism but not all art is evangelism.

Art can say things that words and concept can't. Science has reduced reality to concepts of thought that fits in our heads. Anything that does not fit, does not exist. Because art points to a reality that is beyond concepts of thought, I believe that art is essential to reconnected people to Christ and his Church.

Cardinal Bellarmine and Galileo's telescope

2008-08-22T08:34:00.000-07:00

Or they suppose that science speaks with one voice, and the only dissenters must be Luddites such as the notorious Cardinal Bellarmine, who allegedly refused to look through Galileo's telescope, whereas the truth is that many of Galileo's assertions, including those about the pendulum, were contested by careful observers, including Descartes and Mersenne, probably the leading physicists of the time. And if peoples' miseducation in science has simply taught them to be dogmatists, they can hardly complain if those on the outside can see only dogmatism. But the reality is that science is a human activity, not an abstract calculus, and this properly makes its great achievements a subject of pride and awe, not suspicion and skepticism. It should also make us aware of its desperate fragility, and the hostile cultural forces that it constantly has to overcome. by Alan Sokal

Roman Catholic Political Philosophy

2008-06-18T19:21:00.000-07:00

This is a quote from a book review on James V. Schall's book Roman Catholic Political Philosophy.

The distinction between political and religious concerns, though important to recognize, is not as great as is supposed by many--especially by modern secularists, who tend to compartmentalize religion when they think of it at all. For one thing, every person, no matter how oriented toward revelation, must live in the world, and cannot wholly escape political matters or the concerns of the social sciences. Moreover, because politics does not represent humankind's ultimate end, good political philosophy must point beyond itself, and the good state must point beyond itself. A point central to Schall, and in his view a key mark of Roman Catholic political philosophy, is this recognition that "the ultimate destiny of each human being, the political animal, is not located in politics" (p. 158). Following Eric Voegelin, Schall recognizes the rise of ideology, and then the exhaustion of ideology, as symptoms of modern society's failure to recognize this basic reality. In closing itself to revelation and rejecting metaphysics, politics becomes its own monstrous metaphysics. Paralleling the phenomenon of political modernity is modern philosophy's hubristic tendency to identify the wholeness of reality with what is knowable through philosophy's methods. We neglect the vital role of revelation at our peril. (A book review by William F. Byrne)

Doctrines You Least Like

2008-06-17T20:27:00.000-07:00

A clearly maintained distinction between what the Faith actually says and what you would like it to have said or what you understand or what you personally find helpful or think probable, forces your audience to realize that you are tied to your data just as the scientist is tied by the results of the experiments; that you are not just saying what you like. This immediately helps them to realize that what is being discussed is a question about objective fact - not gas about ideals and points of view.

The new truth which you do not know and which you need must, in the very nature of things, be hidden precisely in the doctrines you least like and least understand. It is just the same here as in science. The phenomenon which is troublesome, which doesn't fit in with the current scientific theories, is the phenomenon which compels reconsideration and thus leads to new knowledge. Science progresses because scientists, instead of running away from such troublesome phenomena or hushing them up, are constantly seeking them out. In the same way, there will be progress in Christian knowledge only as long as we accept the challenge of the difficult or repellent doctrines. A "liberal" Christianity which considers itself free to alter the Faith whenever the Faith looks perplexing or repellent must be completely stagnant. Progress is made only into a resisting material. (C. S. Lewis, Christian Apologetics)

Dehumanized by Technology

2008-06-16T19:12:00.000-07:00

I’m haunted by that scene in 2001. What makes it so poignant, and so weird, is the computer’s emotional response to the disassembly of its mind: its despair as one circuit after another goes dark, its childlike pleading with the astronaut—“I can feel it. I can feel it. I’m afraid”—and its final reversion to what can only be called a state of innocence. HAL’s outpouring of feeling contrasts with the emotionlessness that characterizes the human figures in the film, who go about their business with an almost robotic efficiency. Their thoughts and actions feel scripted, as if they’re following the steps of an algorithm. In the world of 2001, people have become so machinelike that the most human character turns out to be a machine. That’s the essence of Kubrick’s dark prophecy: as we come to rely on computers to mediate our understanding of the world, it is our own intelligence that flattens into artificial intelligence. (Nicholas Carr)

I see this in my own relationship with technology. When I spend too much time on the computer I become emotionally, socially, and spiritually flat.

Pwned by Stuff

2008-06-10T18:12:00.000-07:00

POSSESSED from Martin Hampton on Vimeo.

This will have you throwing stuff away after watching it. As a social worker I see a lot of homes like this. Like obesity these types of issues are hard to hide. At different levels we are all slaves to things that are below us.

In Defense of Modesty

2008-06-01T07:14:00.000-07:00

"After they touched a bra, men are more likely to be content with a smaller immediate monetary reward," writes Bram Van den Bergh, one of the study's authors. "Prior exposure to sexy stimuli may influence the choice between chocolate cake or fruit for dessert."

The authors believe the stimuli bring men's minds to the present as opposed to the future. "The study demonstrates that bikinis cause a shift in time preference: Men live in the here and now when they glance at pictures featuring women in lingerie. That is, men will choose the immediately available rewards and seek immediate gratification after sex cue exposure."

Do all straight men respond the same? Actually, no. Some men are highly responsive to rewards while others are not so sensitive, and the more reward-sensitive men are the impatient ones.

In fact, doing a task designed to inspire financial satisfaction reduced the bikini-inspired impatience, just as feeling full reduces food cravings. Men may want to be aware of bikinis' effects on their bank accounts and waistlines. (Link)

Coldplay - Viva La Vida

2008-05-30T18:34:00.000-07:00

This is a interesting song by a popular English Rock band. Here is someone singing to give you and idea of the song.

I used to rule the world
Seas would rise when I gave the word
Now in the morning I sleep alone
Sweep the streets I used to own

I used to roll the dice
Feel the fear in my enemy's eyes
Listen as the crowd would sing:
"Now the old king is dead! Long live the king!"

One minute I held the key
Next the walls were closed on me
And I discovered that my castles stand
Upon pillars of salt and pillars of sand

Chorus: I hear Jerusalem bells a ringing
Roman Cavalry choirs are singing
Be my mirror my sword and shield
My missionaries in a foreign field
For some reason I can't explain
Once you go there was never, never an honest word
That was when I ruled the world

It was the wicked and wild wind
Blew down the doors to let me in.
Shattered windows and the sound of drums
People couldn't believe what I'd become

Revolutionaries wait
For my head on a silver plate
Just a puppet on a lonely string
Oh who would ever want to be king?

Chorus: I hear Jerusalem bells a ringing
Roman Cavalry choirs are singing
Be my mirror my sword and shield
My missionaries in a foreign field
For some reason I can't explain
I know Saint Peter won't call my name
Never an honest word
But that was when I ruled the world
(Repeat

Chorus)

Hat tip American Papist. The comments on the American papist post had this interpretation of the song.

Ya, there seems to be a lot of suggestions for the songs meaning. Most people think its about the French Revolution - and some will go as far as to suggest the last week of Jesus.

While you could force the song to fit any of these themes, I believe ITS INTENT was to be written from the perspective of Tony Blaire. That would be most fitting with regards to Chris' vocal objection to Blair and the War in Iraq.

For instance:
Puppet on a string - with reference to how Blair would respond to Bush

my head on a plate, and other lines about the fall of a king - with reference to how people wanted him out of office.

lines about not telling the truth - Blaire was well known for being able to spin media

reference to Crusades - allegory to spreading freedom in the middle east

St. Peter still not calling his name - maybe something is still on his conscious even after his conversion.
Anonymous | 05.29.08 - 10:59 pm | #

Suffering

2008-05-29T18:41:00.000-07:00

We look in vain for an emotionally satisfying answer to suffering because suffering is inherently a matter of being separated from the good. Complaining that there is not a “satisfying” answer to suffering is like complaining that water is wet.

Suffering is a consequence of Adam and Eve disobeying God. Adam and Eve ate of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. This knowledge is not the bookish type of knowledge. It's the experiential type of knowing. Peter Kreeft said the following in regards to the word knowing, “The same word is used in Genesis 4 for sexual intercourse: Adam "knew" Eve and the result was not a book but a baby.”

Suffering is a result of experientially knowing what evil is. It is the experiencing of what it means to be separated from the source of all good. There had to be some type of consequence that results from our free choices for there to be any meaning behind our actions. The consequence was not just an experience of suffering but also a separation from grace. Due to original sin, human nature is a little bit off and weakened.

The experience of suffering really could have be worse. God's justice demands the consequence of suffering but there is also the mercy that we are not totally deprived of God's goodness. We are still able to know goodness and we still have the ability to be reconciled to God and His grace.

Suffering does say a lot about God. The Christian God is courageous; reckless even from the human point of view. When humans create a computer simulation of the world, we make it safe. There are reset buttons and little to no consequences.

The Christian God is not playing games with the world. There are real consequences and the stakes are high. Free will gives us the ability to love but it is not without a cost. With the ability to choose to love there is also the power to reject God and his love. We are living God's story. In this story there are real dangers with real suffering. God has allowed suffering but he has conquered suffering also. Jesus took on all the sins of humanity during His passion and as a result, all the eternal debt that justice requires. He is a God that chose to test himself through taking on human weakness. He tested himself to the point that he descended into hell. He saw the world from the view of our sin and human weakness, even to the point of a despairing atheist. He was able to say on the cross, ""My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" Matt 27:46 Jesus had not given up trust or faith in himself but had taken on the weakest part of humanity. He was quoting Psalm 22 which does not end in despair, surrender, or failure. (Go Read Psalm 22 to find out the full scope of what Jesus was saying)

The Christian God is strong enough even to die and in so doing Jesus conquered suffering, sin, and death when he rose from the dead. We are part of God's story and in this story it does not always make sense to us. Being separated from God -due to original sin- we are blinded by our human weakness. We have to trust and follow Christ through His-story because, “God is his own interpreter, And he will make it plain.”

(Images from Grünewald's Isenheim Altarpiece)

Still Life with Gilt Cup by Willem Claesz

2008-05-26T12:50:00.000-07:00

The overarching message of the still life is that the physical world is seductive, yet you are not to be seduced. God’s creation teems with beauty and pleasures, yet these will pass away, and you should not be so consumed by the physical world that you starve the soul. You are called as a Christian to look beneath or beyond the surface. That is why so often the interior of still-life elements are quite literally exposed to sight: We see into the lemon, the bread, the oysters; we see through the clear glass and wine, and shining surfaces reflect an unseen world.

All this was well-understood in the 17th century. Some early still lifes were more labored in advertising their moral intentions than others; the artists added crucifixes and other religious items in the shadows around the alluring foreground objects, or painted slips of paper encumbered with phrases like " Vanitas vanitatum et omnia vanitas " or "Jesus, the most beautiful flower of all."

Later on, the genre did in fact descend from the higher principles it began with into the showy decorativeness and technical display its critics had said it had always evinced. The moral lessons were subordinated to trompe l’oeil illusions and amusing coded pictures of the five senses, the seasons, and the like.

But the still life survived into the Modern era, outliving much of the "serious" art of its day, which today can strike us as too limited in its appeal or subjects, too tied to issues long past relevance. Because their symbolic language is so flexible and derived from familiar sources, still lifes remain as captivating, beautiful, and enigmatic as they were for the 17th-century Dutch. The timelessness of the still life should remind us of the passage of time and the approach of eternity. (Michael Schrauzer, This Rock

Method of Inderect Apologetics: Art Links

2008-05-23T21:34:00.000-07:00

The best defense is a good offense. Indirect apologetics through art is one of the best ways to show a truth when someone is highly biased. The following articles have to do with art and truth. I think anyone interested in art would find these articles useful.

This blog entry talks about the “uncanny valley” and how things that are close, but not close enough, to looking human cause a repulsive reaction. It gives examples through an altered Madonna photo and the movie Polor Express. I thing this idea can be used affectively to represent evil and Satan in art.

This article asks the question, why is symmetry so satisfying in art. It touches on how modern architecture tries to buck this phonomena but without much success.

This article discusses the tension that can arise between truth and facts in art. I don't know if I agree with everything said on this one but it is interesting.

In Defense of Going to Church

2008-05-23T20:59:00.000-07:00

Mark Thoma directs us to new research showing that for some, the main reason to go to a house of worship on Sunday morning is the fact that there's nothing else to do (Church and the Bored)

As a Catholic, I go to Mass to give thanks and offer sacrifice to God, to give Him his due. These things are a part of living an authentic life. It is a natural human need much like making art. Sure you can say that people make art due to boredom but there is a deeper reason.

There is a human need for down time. There is a need to realize that life is more than the rat race of producing and consuming widgets. The oldest and most successful civilizations throughout history offer thanks and sacrifice. Jews, Christians and Muslims do this and I would guess that the other great civilizations do to.

The Old Testament God of Wrath and Justice

2008-05-21T19:47:00.000-07:00

It's often said that the Old Testament, especially Genesis, teaches a God of justice, in stark contrast to Jesus, who teaches a God of forgiveness and love. It is a lie, of course. The God of the Old Testament does all that He does out of love; and the Father of Jesus needs to satisfy justice as well as love; that's why Jesus had to die. I used to think that only those who never read the Bible could fall for this fallacy. But experience has taught me otherwise. Why is it so common?

I think it comes partly from misunderstanding the literary style of Genesis. It is not meant to be psychology, either of God or humanity. The modern style of storytelling emphasizes psychological motives and scrutinizes inner consciousness. This is simply not the style of premodern writing. Augustine's Confessions is the only personal introspective autobiography in premodern literature.

Thus the “wrath of God” is not meant as a description of God's own private feelings, but of His public deeds, of how those deeds look to fallen, “wrathful” man. Psychologically, this is “projection”. When God gave Lady Julian of Norwich a “showing” of His wrath, she said, “I saw no wrath but on man's part.” (Peter Kreeft)

Progressive Frankensteins

2008-05-20T17:12:00.000-07:00

Progress is a rallying cry for a lot of people. Who can be opposed to being progressive? The problem is that no one really defines what the target of the progress is. What are we progressing towards exactly? There can be no progress without knowing this because we could be progressing away from what we really want. For instance in genetic engineering; is the goal to cure diseases or is the goal to create a new humanity, a different species. All things that have the potential for good also have the potential for evil. These thing are so closely connected that the more potential for good that something has the more potential there is for evil. Messing with human DNA can have unintended consequences that we can't even imagine. We are so tempted by the power that anyone that calls for caution is told by our modern day Frankensteins, “Shut up, where making progress!” and the world follows; ignorant of where they are headed.

Emmanuel Jal: War Child

2008-05-19T20:10:00.000-07:00

This is a very sad story that has a good ending.

My Name is Emmanuel Jal, and I was born in war torn Sudan.

I do not know when I was born, but I believe I took my first breath of oxygen sometime in the early 80s.

My country has been at war for over a decade. I am from southern Sudan where the people are tall and beautiful with smooth skin similar in colour and texture to that of roasted beans.

At the age of seven I, along with thousands of other children was taken from Sudan to Ethiopia, to learn to read and write. Ethiopia at that time was like a city run by children; there were over 30,000 of us in total. During my time there, I learned 8 languages, but as time passed we learned that we had in fact been bought there to be trained as child soldiers. I escaped from the growing army when people started to lose their vision and started fighting one another. Our common enemy being our Sudanese people from the north. Unfortunately I did not reach home because a number of serious events occurred as we embarked on the long journey home. I ended up in a town called Waat. It was here that I met aid worker Emma McCune. She rescued me, by disarming me and smuggling me into Kenya. Whilst in Kenya Emma put me into school and adopted me. Unfortunately a year after I was rescued Emma was killed in a fatal car accident. After this tragedy things became increasingly difficult for me.

I turned to music as a method of therapy and started singing in church. I discovered I had a talent for music at the age of 20.

I released a song in Kenya called "All we need" which became extremely successful. My second release "Gua" reached number one in Kenya, and bought me international acclaim, winning me an American Gospel Award. I then in 2005 released an album called "Ceasefire". This to was a successful project and enabled me to travel, performing in a variety of cities all over the USA and Europe. I also had the privilage of being asked to be the headlining act performing at the Eden project in Cornwall for Live 8 2005, and my track "BAAI" is featured on the soundtrack of "Blood Diamond."

I am currently working on my forthcoming album "War Child" due for release in 2008
(Emmanuel Jal)

Here is one of his songs that expresses his current temptations that he now faces.

If you would like to listen to an NPR interview with Emmanuel Jal you can go here.

In Defense of Dignity

2008-05-19T16:36:00.000-07:00

A central concept used by Catholics in understanding bioethics is dignity. Here is some arguments against this and a response by Fr. James Martin.

Second, dignity is fungible. The Council [The President's Council on Bioethics] and [the] Vatican treat dignity as a sacred value, never to be compromised. In fact, every one of us voluntarily and repeatedly relinquishes dignity for other goods in life. Getting out of a small car is undignified. Having sex is undignified. Doffing your belt and spread- eagling to allow a security guard to slide a wand up your crotch is undignified. Most pointedly, modern medicine is a gantlet of indignities. Most readers of this article have undergone a pelvic or rectal examination, and many have had the pleasure of a colonoscopy as well. We repeatedly vote with our feet (and other body parts) that dignity is a trivial value, well worth trading off for life, health, and safety (Steven Pinker)

But voluntary relinquishments of dignity are not the point. Involuntary ones are. The fetus does not voluntarily choose to relinquish life. The worker in the developing world is not voluntarily denied a living wage. The child living in a slum does not voluntarily choose hunger. The handicapped person does not voluntarily choose to be discriminated against. The nursing-home patient does not voluntarily choose to be treated inhumanely. The torture victim does not voluntarily choose physical agony. The victim of genocide does not voluntarily choose death.

This is quite different from getting out of a small car. In Catholic social teaching, human dignity has little to do with occasionally looking "undignified" or "silly." It is about the inviolable value and worth of every human being, who is created by God. But this foundational concept in human rights is not something that appeals simply to Catholics, or Christians, or even simply to believers. As Pope Benedict XVI said in his recent speech to the U.N. General Assembly, "Human rights are increasingly being presented as the common language and the ethical substratum of international relations. At the same time, the universality, indivisibility and interdependence of human rights all serve as guarantees safeguarding human dignity." (James Martin, SJ)

Hat tip to Didymus from the Catholic Answers Form that pointed me to the article.

Its hard for me to imagine why anyone would have a problem with human dignity being a central concept in ethics.

Conversion of St. Paul by Francesco Mazzola

2008-05-17T20:43:00.000-07:00

The Conversion of St. Paul, possibly commissioned by a Bolognese doctor (Parmigianino had fled to Bologna to escape the sack of Rome), is a bravura work whose violently asymmetrical composition, with its unique, tilted horizon, makes visible the inner upheaval Saul must have experienced upon hearing the voice of Christ whom he had been persecuting. Parmigianino shows his world being turned upside down.

Saul, having fallen from his horse, lies sprawled on the ground, his blinded eyes dazzled by the divine light. The horse, with its disproportionally small head, rears up above him. Saul’s outstretched limbs set up powerful zig-zagging diagonals for the eye to follow onto the horse’s body. The dynamic poses of the figures are awkward and untenable: The horse must either continue to rear up even higher or quickly drop its hooves back to the ground.

But the horse only appears to be rearing up: A comparison of the angle of its body with that of the horizon reveals that the two are actually parallel, so it must be the ground that is falling away beneath the horse’s feet. A close inspection at the background reveals further spatial distortions: The landscape seems to warp and melt below the angle of the horizon, leveling itself out just to the right of Saul’s jutting knee; the small figures and animals there stand aligned with the vertical side of the painting. The clouds in the sky too are strangely horizontal from our point of view. Nothing here is as it seems.

The biblical account, of course, makes no mention of a horse; the tradition of depicting the episode as an equestrian scene dates from the 12th century. But the image of the fallen rider has important symbolic meaning. A rider on a horse represents man in control of nature, or the spiritual man in control of his own fleshly nature. Thus, a man thrown by his horse is a man no longer in control of himself. Saul is becoming Paul, the slave of Christ, and his sword, a symbol of power and one of Paul’s pictorial attributes, lies useless on the ground. (Michael Schrauzer, This Rock)

Conversion: We have to change...not the Church

2008-05-17T11:12:00.001-07:00

I really agree with what is being said at the first part of this song. We are called to be changed by Christ. I am still in the process of conversion to the Catholic Church.

Constantine and the Catholic Church

2008-05-16T19:07:00.000-07:00

As Constantine rode victorious into the city, Maxentius’s head, raised on spear point, followed him – a trophy for the conqueror, a warning to rivals, a target for the spit of the Roman mob, and something more than all this. For Constantine gave no thanks to the Roman gods. If Maxentius was their champion, here was his head.

Triumphant Constantine, Augustus Maximus of the empire, was about to inaugurate a revolution in the history of the world. Shortly after his victory, Constantine and his fellow Augustus, Licinius, met in Milan to discuss imperial problems. Constantine’s priority was a guarantee of religious freedom, which became known as the Edict of Milan. It is the first legal affirmation of religious liberty, issued more than 1,400 years before a similar idea would be promulgated in America. But what is equally interesting about the Edict of Milan is that it mentions only one specific religion – Christianity – and it is mentioned repeatedly…..

The Edict of Milan, issued by two professing pagans, was the first royal proclamation in a series that would establish Catholic Christianity as the religion of empire, an empire of which it remains the living embodiment, from a beginning that stretches before all time. (H.W. Crocker III)

St. Luke by El Greco

2008-05-15T15:08:00.000-07:00

A beautifully simple depiction of this harmonious relationship can be seen in a painting of St. Luke made by El Greco (Domenikos Theotokopolous) between 1605 and 1610. Tradition says that Luke, besides being the author of the Gospel that bears his name, was an artist. Who better to appreciate the equality of words and images? Here he holds a book in one hand, and a brush—or is it a pen?—in the other. The book is open to reveal a page of text, presumably his Gospel, which so vividly describes in words the Annunciation and Nativity of Christ; on the facing page, there is a painted representation of the Madonna and Child. "Word and image illuminate each other." Luke himself is portrayed against a dark backdrop, with slightly diverging eyes that lend him an air of reverie or abstraction; perhaps he is contemplating the word with one eye and the image with another. Overall, El Greco’s sensuous, expressive technique reminds us of the physical, sacramental quality of art(Michael Schrauzer, This Rock).

Sister Wendy on Sacred Art

2008-05-14T20:15:00.001-07:00

Sister Wendy says some insightful things in regards to sacred art.

Lame Art

2008-05-14T20:00:00.000-07:00

Jimmy Akin on his blog asks this question, "Why Is Christian Art So Lame These Days?" I'm no art expert but I gave it a shot in the comments. Here is what I said...

To quote Chesterton, anything worth doing is worth doing badly. So we should not be so hard on lame music. People are just doing the best they can with what they got. I agree in it's lameness but I would say 90% of all art is lame. The problem is that contemporary styles have the emotional range of a tea spoon. Lust, anger, and despair is about the full range but it is good in that range. But if you try to fit Christ into this limited range it is a recipe for lameness. So what are the options for Christian? You can ether create a brand new genre which is very hard to do or go back to the old stuff and sound out of date.

I think the other problem is that our taste in music has to do with our identities. With the fragmentation of Christianity into all these little churches there is not a shared Christian identity making it harder to make a workable genre.

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I guess what I’m saying is that a gangster Jesus, a pop Jesus, a thrash guitar Jesus, and a country Jesus is all going to be, at some level, inherently lame. No amount of effort or skill will change this inherent lameness. But given this, there is still some value in going there because that is where people are at.

Lameness has a lot to do with what someone can relate to and identify with. The problem is with the audience and our culture as much as the artist. It is going to require a new genre and a new culture around this genre to be able to make really great (un-lame) Christian art.

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A genre has unspoken rules that come from the world view of its culture. If you break these rules the audience will not have ears to hear and will not identify with the music and it will sound lame. All secular genres have as an unspoken rule that God is a private matter that should be compartmentalized outside the music. This rule is so consistently applied that people are conditioned to hear the music in this way, even religious people. A Christian that is going to work within secular genre is handicapped because he/she has to try to stay within the genre rules while at the same time express the truth in an indirect way that avoids breaking the rules. You have to be really good to pull this off.

The other option is to break the rules of the secular genre. To explicitly break the rules of a genre is to create a new genre and this only works within a different culture/community.

For example Phatmass does Catholic hip hop. It is explicit about Christ in its lyrics. For me it is not lame. I can identify with it and they are not trying to be something they are not. I would say, even from a small pool of artists, that it is just as good as secular hip hop. But if you play this music to the secular audience of hip hop it will sound lame and they won’t identify with it. Phatmass has its own culture and it is interesting to me that it is drifting toward a lot of classical instruments and sounds in their tracts. Give it enough time to develop within its culture; it would end up sounding little like current hip hop. There are a lot of talented people who are a part of Phatmass. They would love to be able make music full time but there is not a large enough audience to support this. Christian culture is too fragmented. Secular culture is not and this is why they are producing better art in most cases.

Rightous Anger or Insecurity

2008-05-14T06:34:00.000-07:00

Here is my comment from this statement from another blog;

Agitation and annoyance when others don’t share one’s beliefs is the surest sign, and not from above, of a hollowness to one’s convictions. (Paul from Original Faith)

I think what you are saying can be true in some situations but not all.

There can be a legitimate reason to be angry about being presented with what one sees as a lie. To honor Truth demands this at times. Take for example someone teaching creationism as science in a public school biology class. People will get made at this and rightfully so. To respect truth demands this. I try not to do comparative religion because of this. To put the deposit of faith that I received from Christ on the same level as other religions -to be compared- just makes a mockery of the faith. It's like comparing science with alchemy from my perspective. Comparative religion in a real way makes you comparatively religious no matter what revelation you hold to.

It can just get old as well. To be told every other day, “have you taken Jesus as your personal lord and savior” can be annoying. I don't blame someone who is constantly asked this in getting mad. Sometimes one just needs respite to live ones faith without always having to question ones own premises. It's like never being able to start a race because someone is always challenging that you left before the gun went off.

When I say comparative religion I mean placing two religions on the same level. Let me give an example. I own and have read some of the Koran and the Book of Mormon. But I don’t read them in the same way I read the Bible. The Bible is the sacred word of God. It is a love letter that God has given me. God speaks to me through the Bible. By contrast when I read the Koran and the Book of Mormon it is in the context of an un-sacred un-inspired human creation. To ether lower ones revelation to the context of human creation or lift these other text up as equal to ones revelation does a great injustice to Truth and ones own faith. You can’t have your cake and eat it to. Comparative religion tries to have both and in so doing fails.

I can affirm and respect the truth that is in other traditions. I respect Muslims prayer to the one true God. I respect Mormons focus on family. I am free to respect these truths because I am grounded in my own faith tradition. These truths have there source in Christ and to pay them respect is to pay Christ respect. But I think this line of reasoning goes only one direction. You have to be first be grounded. Let me give an example of how I see this. It's like learning to play classical music as a child which can prepare her to play jazz as an adult. But flipping this around doesn't really work.

The Manga Bible - Extreme

2008-05-06T19:44:00.000-07:00

From what I can see, this looks like some really cool manga style Bible art. Here is some pictures that I found on another blog.

This is David and Goliath. Goliath reminds me of Sauron in the movie Lord of the Rings.

This is the websight that I got the images

And here is the web sight that makes the Manga Bible

There is also this Catholic vocations manga

Mary's Love and Obedience

2008-05-05T21:13:00.000-07:00

This picture of Mary holding the corpse of Jesus is very moving to me. The absence of detail and the deep red that permeates the picture seems to become a part of me. As if, in closing my eyes, the picture would still be present.

The love that Mary has for Jesus comes though. It is a picture of a mother's love. Mary didn't fight God's will by demanding that Jesus turn away from what he was called to do. She did not demand that Jesus submit to her though the commandment, honor thy father and mother. Instead she was obedient to God's will so that her son could be given for all humanity.

Mary's head is in line with Jesus' head in the picture, like she is ready to follow him even in death. Mary is cradling Jesus like she must have done when she presented the infant Jesus at the Temple. The following was said to her...

And Simeon blessed them, and said to Mary his mother: Behold this child is set for the fall, and for the resurrection of many in Israel, and for a sign which shall be contradicted; And thy own soul a sword shall pierce, that, out of many hearts, thoughts may be revealed. (Luke 2:34-35)

This picture, I believe, depicts Mary's pierced soul. Through it -in my heart- thoughts are revealed. Thoughts of God's love and what has been done for me. It makes me sad in that I have fallen short and betrayed Christ. But it also gives me hope for the coming resurrection. Thanks Mary for your Son, prayers, and obedience.