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

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

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

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

[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

Shroud of Turin

New transparent carbon dating testing should be done.

HT Mark P. Shea

Andy McKee - Into the Ocean

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

Literary Gaming

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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"

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"

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

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.