Alfred Hitchcock

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

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

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

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

Homosexuality, Experience & Tradition by Eve Tushnet

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

The Crisis of Credit Visualized from Jonathan Jarvis on Vimeo.

Is the Pope obviously wrong on condoms?

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

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

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

Dave Matthews Let You Down Cover



Linkin Park - What I've Done

Persistent Vegetative State

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

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

Is art evangelism?

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

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

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

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

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

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

"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)