Philosophy, Movies and Me

As I get older I feel a shift occurring in my underlying philosophy. I used to be a hard-core, rationalistic, "Enlightenment-based" philosopher. Knowledge, logic, science... those were the keys to advancing mankind as a collective concept (though still a Christian, but salvation is noncorporate, its influence being through the conversion of individuals who, acting in concert, become "salt", but I never bought into the idea of theonomy). The last couple of years, through observation of society and intense reflection, has brought a change. I find myself moving more and more in the direction of a type of Christian existentialism (or perhaps as Marcel would day, a Christian "neo-Socratic" direction). I now think Aristotle was wrong in his Metaphysics to define man as a rational animal. I think that while we as a species have the capacity to be rational, mankind for the most part has chucked that idea right out of the ontological window. I find more and more that people actually recoil when faced with any type of logical argument, their only rejoinder coming as a variation of "How can you say that, you hurt my/his/her/their feelings!" During my lifetime this type of irrationalism began picking up steam in the 1990s and has finally swamped the boat. Now I refuse to agree with the atheistic existentialists that life is absurd, that it has no meaning, but I am ready to yield up a part of my world, the part that believes society is basically rational and will do the "right thing" when faced with a difficult choice. I now no longer believe that. I'll talk more about the philosophy involved later, but I want to briefly mention two recent movies that have touched me and hopefully demonstrate some of this shift I am facing.

The first movie is Sophie Scholl, The Final Days. If you don't know the story I strongly suggest you read some of the pages about the White Rose group. In short, in 1943 a small group of students in Munich came together and began publishing leaflets protesting the atrocities of Herr Hitler against both the German people and against mankind in general, even though if they were caught they would be tried as traitors and put to death. To borrow from the aformentioned site about the White Rose:

The members of The White Rose worked day and night, cranking a hand-operated duplicating machine thousands of times to create the leaflets which were each stuffed into envelopes, stamped and mailed from various major cities in Southern Germany. Recipients were chosen from telephone directories and were generally scholars, medics and pub-owners (which seemed to puzzle the Gestapo -- but who better to spread the word or post a leaflet!). While Hans and Alex alone drafted the first four leaflets, they counted on Christoph Probst to comment and criticize. Jürgen edited the third and fourth leaflets and traveled to Berlin with the dangerous documents. Willi contributed to the fifth leaflet and did a generous amount of leg-work, getting supplies and trying to recruit support outside of Munich. Sophie worked hard at getting stamps and paper (one couldn't buy too many stamps at one place without arousing suspicion) and also managed the group's funds. Kurt Huber contributed to the fifth leaflet and solely drafted the sixth (and final) leaflet, while Hans was apprehended with a rough-draft of a seventh leaflet written by Christoph Probst. All members traveled throughout Southern Germany (and beyond) to mail stacks of leaflets from undetectable locations. Hundreds of leaflets were also left at the University of Munich, carefully hand-delivered in the middle of the night.

They were caught and the film takes you through the trial of Sophie, Hans, and Christoph (they were arrested Feb 18, 1943, tried, and executed on Feb 22, 1943). As I sat in the theatre listening to their words I was struck with the following question: "What ideals do I have worth dying for?" Now that is extreme and thank God we don't actually face such decisions in our current society. I am free to express my beliefs and opinions without having the threat of the guillotine, but for what beliefs am I willing to face such an end? I bitch about our government but I still pay my taxes, I don't join any protest groups (I used to think the Republican party was a protest against the atrocities of big government but that is DEFINITELY no longer the case). I don't take to the streets to try to rally people to any of my so-called causes. I risk nothing for what I claim to believe. Instead I act as just another little drone in the cogs of American social machinery. Seeing that movie was like a slap in the face. Yet how quickly the sting seems to pass... Before leaving this movie I do want to comment on one Christian-related moment (Sophie was portrayed as a Christian and a right good one from what we see). Just moments before her execution she is allowed to see her parents. Her mother tells her "Sophie, remember Jesus Christ". Sophie replies something to the effect of "Mother, you remember Him too". Brilliant! It's one thing to tell a Christian facing death to remember all the promises of God, but with this instantation of life about over it's somewhat easy (that doesn't sound right but I hope you understand what I am saying... if not, write me), but for the people who have to live on after their loved one is gone, THEY are they ones who need the comfort that comes from true faith. For the Christian who passes from this existence, they are in the presense of God, no longer in need of anything. Those left here on earth are in even greater need of His grace and comfort. I thought this was a wonderful moment in the film.

The second movie that hit me is Thank You For Smoking. Here, Aaron Eckhard plays tobacco lobbyist Nick Naylor. This movie is one of the best examples of moral relativism and semantic holism that I have seen since the British classics of Monty Python's Dead Parrot Sketch and Yes, Minister's episode "The Whisky Priest" (emphasis on the bit about Humphrey being a moral vaccum). Ah, I can hear you ask "What is semantic holism?" Simply put (and with some gloss), semantic holism is the idea from philosophical linguistics that truth value in language is only possibly within a larger context of language. Any individual phrase can have any truth value you want (or put another way, a sentence in isolation has no truth value). Nick Naylor relies on this thinking, that you can make any sentence mean what you want my sifting your context at any given time, in some remarkable ways. What surprised me is that I have heard his arguments before with respect to many different "debates". Logic and rationality are irrelevant as long as I get what I want. The more I reflected on this, the more I saw it in our society and the more depressed I became. IS there any such thing as truth anymore (now before you get too shocked, I do believe in Truth, but I am trying to speak for society)? Is winning really more important than being right? Are you better off being a "moral vacuum" than actually believing in anything? And if so, where will this take us? I am afraid that if this really is true then we as a society will suffer the same fate Jim Hacker predicts for Sir Humphrey: "If you believe that, Humphrey, then when you die, you will go to Hell."

Theological Illiteracy, More Da Vinci Code Silliness

I could spend weeks writing posts on what's wrong within Dan Brown's The Da vinci Code (TDC) but being merciful I'll finish up today with a few more big blunders made by Mr. Brown in his statement of "fact". Our last few postings addressed the Gnostics and the supposed manipulation by Constantine to exclude certain "facts" from the canon. Let's look at another commonly batted about conspiracy player, the Priory of Sion. Here are a few "facts" we are told regarding this organization by Mr. Brown:

• It is one of the oldest surviving secret societies on earth (p.113).


• The Priory learned of hidden documents that told the "true" story of Christ's bloodline (p. 158)


• The existence of the Priory was firmly established when documents were found in the National Library of France in Paris, naming the names of the "Grand Masters of the Priory" which included Botticelli, Newton, and da Vinci (pp. 206, 326).


• The Knights Templar was founded by the Priory and given the mission of finding the documents regarding Jesus and Mary Magdalene's progeny. (p. 158)


• Pope Clement V decided something had to be done to stop the Knights Templar and cospired with France's King Philip IV. Secret orders were supposed issued by Philip to all his soliders all across Europe to be opened simultaneously on October 13, 1307. The orders were to round up and kill all of the knights (p.159, 160).

Okay, that's enough. I could spend pages writing just on these points, but I'll spare you. Let's hit the highlights to see how these "facts" stack up against reality. I'll break the discussion into two broad groupings, The Priory of Sion and The Knights Templar.

The Priory of Sion

There have been at least three organizations called The Priory of Sion. The first was a catholic monastic order founded in Jerusalem in about 1100. This order ceased to exist around 1600 when it was absorbed into the Jesuit order. The other two occurrances are linked to the Frenchman Pierre Plantard who, in 1956 along with three friends formed a social club called the Priory of Sion. This club disolved within a year, only to resurrected by Plantard in the 1960s and used as a mechanism to show himself an occult master and a descendant of the holy, royal bloodline of Christ. But what about the "secret documents" that show the long history of the the Priory's existence and the listings of names of its Grand Masters? Documents planted by Plantard and his associates. For example, papers with titles such as "A Geneaology of the Merovingian Kings" and "The Secret Records of Henri Lobineau" (this one repeatedly named in TDC), were distributed around France and "discovered" to show support of Plantard's claims. Fascinating if they were real, but they have all been shown to be fakes (a pretty good summary can be found here and here. So it appears there is no actual historical evidence for a Priory of Sion as described by Mr. Brown.

The Knights Templar

The Knights Templar were founded as a military religious order around 1100 by Hugh des Payens and Godfrey of Sainte-Omer, two French knights, not the Priory. The move against the Knights was initiated by King Philip IV, not Pope Clement. Philip wanted the lands and the wealth that had been accumulated by the knights and it was Philip who ordered his soldiers to take the knights into custody in a mass arrest on October 13, 1307, not the Pope as TDC states. The knights were rounded up and placed on trial by Philip. Many were found guilty of "charges" and executed, but it was not carried out ala Emperor Palpatine's "Order 66" against the Jedi! In fact, a few months before this, Philip forced about 70 knights to "confess" their sins to the Pope. Clement opened investigations against the Knights Templar but at the trials held throughout Europe the various knights were found innocent... except for those France, the seat of Philip's power, where he secured the execution of 54 knights in 1310, not 1307. In 1312 Clement decided to dissolve the Order of the Knights Templar. The knights were allowed to join other military orders or to retire. Many chose to join the Order of Hospitallers and continued to live and work within the Catholic Church.

So what can we say about TDC and Mr. Brown's "facts"? Let's ignore interpretation for now, but just on simple matters of documented historical facts (dates, places, people) many of what are stated as facts in TDC are just flat out wrong. What Brown is relying on is (1) people enjoy conspiracy theories and (2) people are ignorant of history, particularly religious history and are too lazy to check out things for themselves. And if he cannot get historically documented facts right, what does that say about his interpretation of his facts? If nothing else, it should be enough to give us pause before accepting the allegations as true.

Next up, the last I have to say in this series, the "newly discovered" Gospel of Judas.

Theological Illiteracy, Addressing The Da Vinci Code

The last post in this string was the bridge. We looked briefly at how books made it into the Christian canon (The Bible), the Gnostics, since Mr. Brown's book The Da Vinci Code (TDC) brought him up, poor ol' Constantine. Last time we addressed some of the tired old charges brought against Constantine and his supposed machinations in keeping certain things from Scripture (which were brought up yet again in TDC). We'll continue for a post or two on other alligations TDC makes and hopefully show you that what Mr. Brown calls "Facts" should be not taken just on his "authority".

In addressing the numerous errors in TDC it is difficult to being. We can talk about some his trivial errors such as stating that there are 666 panes of glass in the pyramid entrance to the Louvre (p. 21) when the actual number is 673. While it makes for a fascinating allegation (though the equating of the number of panes of glass on the Pei addition to the Bible's "Mark of the Beast" takes some real stretching), Brown is simply wrong. Surely, if anything should be a "Fact" it should be something as easily checked as this. But alas, it is not to be. But as fascinating as it is, this discrepancy between story and reality is minor and has no hard implication other than to case a rather dim conspiratorial shadow. We're interested in the serious ones such as those we discussed in relation to Constantine in the pervious post. Let's take a look at a couple more:

On p.309 of TDC Brwon writes "The Jewish Tetragrammaton YHWH - the scared name of God - in fact deried from Jehova, an androgenous physical union between the masculine Jah and the pre-Hebraic name for Eve, Havah." What is Brown up to here? Well, one of the accusations against Christianity is that we tried to do away with any connection of the feminine with the divine. Now, in this passage from his book Brown does get one thing correct, the Tetragrammaton was used in Jewish writings because they thought that base man using the name of God would profane it, so they used four Hebrew letters which we would translate Y-H-W-H. As to what they actually stood for, we do not know. What we do know is that YHWH goes back much, much farther than Jehovah, since we can trace its origin to the Middle Ages while YHWH can be found in the Dead Sea Scrolls. And just where did the word Jehova come from? It isn't from the fusion of the words Brown states, but rather from Jewish scribes called the Masoretes working in the Middle Ages, who used the vowels from the word adonai interspered amoung the "Latinized" YHWH. So what we got was something that could be pronouned in public readings, J-a-H-o-V-a-H. If you want to conjure up a plot to hide the feminine nature of the divine, you need look somewhere else.

To show Mr. Brown's linguistic ineptitude, let's look at one more passage today (and it happens to involve our old friend Constantine): "Anyone who chose the forbidden gospels over Constantine's version was deemed a heretic. The word 'heretic' derives from that moment in history. The latin word haereticus means 'choice.' Those who 'chose' the original history of Christ were the world's first heretics" (TDC p.234). Oh my. I honestly don't know where he gets this stuff. In linguistic reality, the word for "heretic" goes back farther than Constantine (early fourth century). Paul himself used the greek word hairesis and its variants in passages such as 1 Corinthians 11:19 and Titus 3:10 (both somewhere around AD 60-ish). Of course, if you only read titles, you can find it in the writings of Irenaeus (Irenaeus Against Heresies, circa AD 180) and Tertullian (Prescription Against Heretics around the late second centruy).

And folks, this is just the beginning...

Theological Illiteracy, Part Four

Whenever conspiracy theories about the Bible are discussed one name always seems to pop up, that of Constantine. Mr. Brown's The da Vinci Code (TDC) is no different. For example, here is a sampling of Mr. Brown has to say regarding Constantine:

(1) "The Bible, as we know it today, was collated by the pagan Roman emperor Constantine... He was a lifelong pagan who was baptized on his deathbed, too week to protest" (pp 231 - 232).

(2) Constantine "commissioned and financed a new Bible, which omitted those gospels that spoke of Christ's human traits and embellished those gospels that made Him godlike. the earlier gospels were outlawed, gathered up and burned" (p. 234).

But Mr. Brown's characters are quik to tell us all was not lost at the hands of the evil Constantine...

(3) [Some of the gospels Consantine tried to destroy] "managed to survive. The Dead Sea scrolls fond in the 1950s... and the Coptic Scrolls in 1945 at Nag Hammadi.. These are... the earliest Christian records" (pp. 234, 245).

Alas, while the conspiracy to silence the Gnostic records by Constantine are not new, it appears few people have actually looked at the true historical record. Constantine (274 - 337) was not a lifelong pagan, but converted to Christianity. Even after his conversion Constantine was a tolerant emperor, allowing people to worship as they saw fit (see his Edict of Milan). As for his being too weak to protest being baptized, there is not one shred of historical evidence to this fact. What was known was that he was baptized in 337 and until several days later he wore "the white robes of a neophyte". This postponement of baptism was because of the seriousness with which one entered into baptism. The prevailing theological concept was that of baptismal regeneration, that baptism washed away sins and that it could be applied only once. Thus the desire to put it off to a time as close to death as possible was not unheard of.

Now what about that nonsense of Constantine "collating the Bible"? For starters, the Old Testament had been compiled before the birth of Jesus. The formation of the New Testament began around the end of the first century, about 200 years before Constantine. In fact, the official list of books to make up the current 27 books in the New Testament was not confirmed until the Council of Hippo in 393, over half a century after Constantine! To complicate matters, the final confirmation for the Eastern Orthodox Church did not occur until about AD 500! Amazing, isn't it. Now, what Constantine did do is to request 50 copies of the the books listed by Eusebius in his History of the Church.

Somehow, in all of this, supporters of conspiracy theories want to say that the books comprising the Bible were somehow altered/embellished by Constantine. But there is no historical evidence showing that any of the accepted Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) were embellished by Constantine or any of the scholars under him. And how can anyone seriously say that the Gospels in the Bible were changed to hide Christ's human traits. Christians since the first centrury have believed that Christ was both 100% human and 100% divine and human traits are shows throughout the gospels (such as hunger and fatigue in Luke 4:2 and 8:23). Ah, but what about the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Nag Hammadi library, were they not even earlier gospels that were suppressed for fear of changing what people believe? Of course not. The Dead Sea Scrolls contained no gospels of any kind. The manuscripts were pre-Christian Jewish writings, containing portions of the Old Testament, some secular documents, and even some accounting records! As for the Nag Hammadi writings, they do contain gospels of Gnostic origin, but they were not records of "earliest Christian writing" but data to around AD 250 - 300. These Coptic writings were based on Greek writings that scholars date back to the mid-100s at the earliest, about 70 years after the last of the synoptic Gospels was written.

Hopefully this gives you a feel for the type of sloppy "scholarship" that will pop up over and over in TDC. It appears that, for Mr Brown, there is littler difference between "fact" and fiction.

Theological Illiteracy, Part Three

Tonight boys and girls we look at (in somewhat short form) the big topic of Gnosticism. Much of what appears in The Da Vinci Code (TDC) and comes into play in the more recent Gospel of Judas (GoJ) is related to this topic and a proper understanding is required.

Those of you who have read the New Testament (NT) know that the apostle Paul met early in his career churches who were deviating from the "gospel once delivered". Nowhere more evident is this than what must have been happening at Corinth. Here, a "spiritual aristocracy" developed, those in it seemed to be inclined to pride themselves on the possession of "special knowledge" and having greater, deeper "experiences" than the more run-of-the-mill Christian. These people were often dualists, believing that the spirit is everything and the body (and anything else material) as evil. At Colossae in Asia Minor Paul met with those who were creating a new belief system resulting from a blending of Christianity, heterodox Judaism, and some of the currently existing "mystery cults". Both of these types of beliefs, that Paul felt needed correcting, belong to the more broad category of belief systems known as Gnosticism. This term, often applied to rival sects that appear to have broken away from the early church between A.D. 80 and 150, is from the Greek work for knowledge (gnosis). These sects claimed to possess a special "knowledge" which transcends the simple faith of the Church. Part of this special knowledge was the dualistic bent of spirit=good, matter=evil, extending to the belieft of not one true God, but two Gods. The first God is all spirit and it is he who created the second (evil) god responsible for creating the material world. Many Gnostics denied the divinity of Christ because for them it was impossible for the divine to exist in the material world while other believed that the material body of Christ was simply an illusion which those "in the know" could understand and move up to a higher spiritual plane. As you can see, these views fly in the face of what was being taught in the early Church and thus writing containing such teachings could be be considered part of the canon. To quote from Early Christian Writings:

There are numerous references to the Gnostics in second century proto-orthodox literature. Most of what we know about them is from the polemic thrown at them by the early Church Fathers. They are alluded to in the Bible in the pastorals (spurious Paulines of 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, and Titus), for example 1 Tm 1:4 and 1 Tm 6:20, and possibly the entirety of Jude. Ignatius of Antioch writes against them as well as Docetism, a doctrine closely related to Gnosticism that stated that Christ was pure spirit and had only a phantom body. Second Clement is a document aimed at refuting early second century Gnosticism. Marcion was the most famous of the Gnostics, and he established a "canon" of the Pauline epistles (minus the pastorals) and a "mutilated" Luke (presumably considered so because it lacked proof-texts such as Lk 22:43-44). Justin Martyr mentioned him c. 150 CE, and Irenaeus and Tertullian wrote against him extensively in the late second century (in Against Heresy and Against Marcion, respectively).

Besides Marcion, other important Gnostics were Basilides and Valentinus. Some Gnostic documents are the Gospel of Truth, the Letter to Rheginus, Treatise on the Three Natures, Apocalypse of Adam, the Gospel of Matthias, Gospel of Philip, Acts of Peter, and Acts of Thomas...

The Gnostics were prolific writers, but from the start their views were contrary to what we know about Christian doctrine in the pre-Gnostic time. Their writings are also lacked in many of the other areas used in evaluating the canon such as apostolic origin, internal claims of speaking for God, veridicality, etc and were not included in what was eventually called "The Bible"... but more on that next time.

Theological Illiteracy, Part Two

The last week has brought considerable discussion on the topic of Christian scripture. Unfortunately the vast majority of it is worthless for anyone actually trying to learn anything about the Bible. Using the twin vehicles of Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code (TDC) and the newly translated (but not lost) Gospel of Judas (GoJ), popular media has played up the questioning of the foundations of Christian belief. Unfortunately, most Christians know so little about what they claim to believe that they either look foolish when questioned or have shamefully bought into some if not all of the claims. So, in an effort to provide a little free education, let's take a look at some of the issues raised and what, according to scholars, do we know and what is speculation.

In this first posting, we'll begin with the process of canonization. Both TDC and those hyping the GoJ try to raise doubts on the message recorded in the Bible. The basic charge is that there was "secret information" deliberately kept out for (usually) political reasons. That early Christians hide this information to make their "product" the most attractive (or the only one available). But was this really the situation?

Canonization is the process by which the Bible was received in its final form. The word canon comes from the Greek kanon meaning "a rod or ruler" and literally is the measuring rod against which claims are compared. The Bible has 66 recoginzed books in the combined Old and New Testaments. The big question is "Why these 66 and why not xxx?" In determining which texts are considered part of the canon, the early Church applied five basic criteria:

• Is the book authoritative, that is, does it claim to be from God?
  
• Was it written by a prophet or a declared servant of God?
  
• Is the book factual, that is, does it relay true information?
  
• Does the book have a life-transforming impact upon the reader?
  
• Did the early groups of Christians for whom the book was written
  recognize the book as the word of God?
  

Now why was there a need to create such an assembly of writing? There were at least two reasons that combined in the early years of the Church for such a process to happen:

• Political: Events such as the Dioletian persecutions around AD 302 - 305, ordering for the buring of all Christian writings prompted a need for a collection and distribution of the "true" writings.
  
• Theological: First, which writings were to be acceptable for public readings during worship? Second, as early as AD 140 different listings of canonical writings were being circulated, some by leaders of questionable theology.
  

Now initially, not all of the books of the Bible were accepted without question as belonging to the cannon. From here out we'll focus just on the New Testament since that is the focus of TDC and the GoJ. The basic groups that various writings fell into were:

• Homologoumena: The books accepted by all of the early Church Fathers.
  
• Pseudepigrapha ("false writings"): Books rejected by all of the Church Fathers.
  
• Antilegomena: Books disputed (according to Eusebius [about AD 260 - 340] there were seven: Hebrews, James, 2 Peter, 2 John, 3 John, Jude, and Revelation).
  

So, where do we focus? If we accept Eusebius the text such as the GoJ is not part of the antilegomena, and obviously did not make it into the homologoumena (else we would be reading it in our ol' KJV/ESV/NIV already), so it would seem to fall into the class of "false writings", the pseudopigrapha. This was a HUGE class including the repeated brought up Gospel of Thomas. There were several so-called gospels in this list including Gospel of the Ebionites, Gospel of Peter, Gospel of the Egyptians, and Protoevangelium of James to list just a few. Virtually no Church Father or council pronounced any of these books canonical. Not to say everything in them is false, but their interest is at best historical and not factual. What these books seemed to have in common was their contents consisted of Gnostic, Docetic, or ascetic errors of doctrine. This gets to a very important point... both TDC and GoJ rely heavily on a Gnostic "understanding" of the Bible (and that is being gracious to TDC). Briefly, the Gnostics were a sect claiming special knowledge into the divine mysteries, often denying the physical for the spiritual (and most of their writings denied the Incarnation since the "ultimate spiritual" could not be part of the physical) while the Docetists believed in the deity of Christ but denied his humanity. The ascetic Monophysites denied the dual nature of Christ and said that He was a fusion of the two into one nature. At best there books were revered by some cult, but never considered essential to the Christian faith except by those in the club who had the special "spiritual decoder ring".

Okay, now that your eyes are glazed over and I see that little bit of drool slipping out of the corner of your mouth, I'll rest for tonight. Tomorrow we will return to the canonical process, then march into the fun topics of examining TDC and GoJ directly.

Illegal Alien Day of Action

I know, this is off the stated topic for the next few days, but driving to work this morning really got me ticked off. Today is supposedly a "Day of Action" to protest the House Resolution and to make the "demands of the [illegal] immigrant known to our [sic] representatives." I added the commentary because it was difficult to dodge San Diego morning traffic and keep complete quotes in my head, so I remembered the context so you would get a flavor for what I heard. Don't these people know they won this round? Congress is in recess (where I think it should be placed permanently so the rest of us can get on with our lives) without passing ANYTHING! Nothing has changed. No one has been made a felon, no one is getting deported, no firms hiring illegal aliens are being singled out for braking the law... NOTHING IS DIFFERENT THAN IT WAS LAST WEEK, LAST MONTH, OR LAST YEAR! Don't these people know how a law is enacted in this country? Sheesh! OF course, in America we seem to no longer think, only feel, so it is more important to make your opponents feel badly about their position than it is to actually make them think about it.

I listened to the Bill Handel Show (not the most conservative of morning shows) and what I heard was disturbing. What amazed me was an article they discussed from the L. A. Times talking about the effects of the illegal alien situation upon Black America and how many within that community are losing out on entry level jobs to illegals. One person in the article said they were not hired because the hiring manager at the fast food restaurant told the person he couldn't use him if he didn't speak Spanish. I then flipped to CNN Headline news (actually KASH 1700 which does stock market and financial news in the afternoons in San Diego) only to hear the following conversation between reporters, one in studio and one at a protest:

Reporter 1 (in the studio): Has anyone there said that there was a proposal in Washington they could live with?

Peporter 2 (at the protest): No, they have said that none of the proposals are acceptable... They say that what they want are their representatives to listen to their demands. They say that they know the only avenue they have to representation is through the immigrants who are here legally...

Excuse me... those that are here legally, that are CITIZENS, have representatives. What right do they think they have to representation?

Just one more thing of note... this weekend I actually heard a speak at a protest say "You [sic] know who was the first illegal immigrants to the United States? The pilgrims, that's who." The crowd cheered, either not realizing the stupidity of that remark... or they didn't care because it made them feel good. And in case you don't know what's wrong with that statement, stop and think... first, you can't be illegal without there being a law to break and second, which came first, the pilgrims or the United States.

God help us all.

Theological Illiteracy, Part One

First it was renewed interest in The Da Vinci Code because of a court case and the upcoming release of the movie, and now the bluster and confusion generated by the mainstream media over The Gospel of Judas have combined to leave me in a bit of a funk. All of this happening during the time we celebrate Easter detracts from the message we are to take from the events that happened about 2000 years ago. Add to this my shock that a country which wants to think of itself as sophisticated and literate has been taken in by a mediocre book and an ancient Gnostic document. The knowledge of history and religious thought (though apparently not religious experience) has reached such a low level that anything the media discusses really frightens me. I hope that the next few postings will in some small way provide a source for correction in how people think about these things as well as relay my own view of Easter and its significance.

The fun starts tomorrow.

Come Back Tomorrow...

I'm watching "The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe"... you should too.

No Place Is Safe In NPR Land

I generally do not listen to what passes for news on National Public Radio. My moments of listening on FM 89.5 are often resticted to Car Talk, A Way with Words, and sometimes A Prarie Home Companion (yeah, I know Garrison Kiellor is more than just a bit liberal politically but he still produces a fine show). But the so-called news on NPR I tend to avoid. That's why this morning I thought listening to Only a Game would be safe (I mean, what does NPR actually know about sports? Not much if you have listened to the show). At first I thought I was in for a fun time when they went to an interview with Thomas Hackett, author of "Slaphappy: Pride, Prejudice, and Professional Wrestling". Now for those of you who didn't know it, I used to be a big fan of professional wresting (or as my friend Gregg taught me to say, professional "wrasslin'" to distinguish it from Greco-Roman wresting... we even attempted a game based on the WWF which we called "Wrasslin'"). Boy, was I in for a shock. Now I know that they were going to bash the "red state" people who watch it, I'm used to that, but the way they went about trying to display their supposed superior intellect was appalling! The interviewer asked Mr. Hackett the following: "In a world where investment professionals don't bother to investigate Enron's fantastic claims and where a former body builder gets elected governor of California essentially on the strength of the celebrity he gained by taking steriods, it really isn't fair to characterize pro-wresting as phoney. Have I got that argument right?" Now had someone said something like that to me I would have done a pile-driver on them right then and there with their face winding up smashed into a copy of Aristotle. But Mr. Hackett, being an author who is invited to speak on an NPR show, said "Well, I mean, it's phoney in the way pretty much everything else is phoney." Huh? First off, what kind of argument is that presented by the interviewer? It certainly doesn't fit with any known valid structure. In fact, his premises are not only false (investment professionals DID investigate the claims of Enron, some saying it was all a house of cards, and while some were just greedy, some were out-and-out stupid and didn't understand what was going on), they make no sense (what the heck is he saying about Arnold, whose celebrity didn't come from taking steroids, and how does it tie into Enron). And just how do his two statements tie into whether or not professional "wrasslin'" is "real" or "phoney"? And what does Mr. Hackett mean saying everything is phoney? Is he advocating some type of solipsism? *sigh* The entire interview is like that. At one point the language they use about "The Rock" indicated they do not consider him a "real celebrity", and at another place in the show that people who believe professional wrestling is "real" are just like those who believe in religion, unwilling to give up cherished beliefs in the face of "solid facts" (it's amazing how NPR shows go out of their way to try to show those of us who have genuine beliefs in God, the Bible, and a life after death as wacky non-intellectual boobs). Now if they had wanted to indicate they don't think he is a "real athlete", they might be able to come up with an arugment based on how they define their words, but who could say with a straight face that "The Rock" isn't a celebrity?! Can't they even do a simple, straightforward interview without getting sidetracked into lefty land? I guess I have to be even MORE vigilant... and Mr. Rock, you ARE a celebrity.