Film Tidbits

The long anticipated (ahem) first part of Joss Whedon’s new project Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog (a short film starring Neil Patrick Harris, Felicia Day and Nathan Fillion) is available for free online viewing (HT Jeffrey Overstreet). The second and final parts will be released on the 17th and 19th, but will only be free through the 20th. Unfortunately, the website got too much traffic and crashed. It should be back in a few hours, but you can also buy the episode for $1.99 on iTunes, if you can’t bear to wait. [UPDATE: The site is back up and running, though impatience got the best of me and I had already coughed up the 2 bucks; it's delightfully wacky, just as you might suspect from the trailer!] In the mean time, here’s the Teaser:




Carmen Andres has a good review of Hellboy II: The Golden Army, discussing the film's spiritual themes.

In anticipation of The Dark Knight, due out this Friday, the first six minutes of the film have been posted as a trailer. Amazing, but be warned that it is quite violent: [Apparently the trailer wasn't authorized after all (it was on the Batman Begins Blu-Ray disk), so it has been removed.]

Finally, on a lighter note, I’ve never been a fan of “reality TV” and this video perfectly illustrates why (HT Think Christian):



Who needs love and friendship if you might win a pile of money?

PZ Myers Still Plans to Desecrate the Eucharist

In case anyone isn't yet sick of this subject, PZ Myers linked an interview he did this morning with The Minnesota Independent, in which he affirms that he still plans to follow through on his threat:

MnIndy: Has the outrcry over your your post given you second thoughts about getting a host and treating "it with profound disrespect and heinous cracker abuse, all photographed and presented here on the web"?

Myers: The response has done nothing but confirm it: I have to do something. I'm not going to just let this disappear. It's just so darned weird that they're demanding that I offer this respect to a symbol that means nothing to me. Something will be done. It won't be gross. It won't be totally tasteless, but yeah, I'll do something that shows this cracker has no power. This cracker is nothing.

So much for the theory that he was just trying to provoke a response. I'll leave it to you to sort out how thoroughly the interview reveals Myers' ignorance of the full extent of the issues involved.

Violence and Disrespect

Drew Tatusko has up an interesting post asking “Should Atheists ‘Respect’ Religion?”:

One common answer to the question of respect to religious belief that I have encountered in many an argument is an unqualified No. It is a simple argument with little persuasive rhetoric. Religion should not be respected or even much tolerated due to its track record of human harm and its basis in that which has, in the common parlance of the argument, not one shred of evidence. This seems to be the foundation for the entire whirlwind of extremism regarding the theft of a consecrated Eucharist wafer and the less than hospitable reaction from one PZ Myers.

Drew helpfully discusses the tension between this and Myers’ claimed liberalism, but I’m struck by something else: I find it particularly ironic that the very atheists most eager to accuse religion of leading to violence and oppression, are often the same ones boasting of their freedom to disrespect the views of others. It seems to escape their notice that it is precisely such a disrespect which has often been the direct cause of such violence and oppression in the first place, and this has been true both in religious and atheistic (mostly communist) nations. By engaging in such disrespect, Myers and others like him implicitly undermine one of their central arguments against religion.

Do they have the legal right do disrespect religion? Of course. But many things are and should be legal that are nevertheless a terrible idea.

Islam, Christianity and the Freedom to Insult

This post is based on another from two years ago, originally posted at Signs of the Times:

Amidst the brouhaha over PZ Myers’ claimed intent to publicly desecrate the Eucharist, some have been asking how this incident relates to that surrounding those 12 caricatures of Muhammad published in a Danish newspaper in 2005. Strictly speaking, the two cases are quite different. First of all, As Mike Dunford notes (HT James McGrath), there is a clear difference between merely depicting something offensive in a cartoon, and actually stealing a sacred object in order to desecrate it. But thankfully, Myers has not (yet?) followed through on his threat, so it is possible to interpret his words as no more than an in-your-face challenge to what he perceives as false reverence.

But perhaps the more important difference lies in the respective reactions these two incidents received. While Myers and his supporters might like to treat this as proof that Catholics are just as bad as radical Islam when it comes to taking insults, the facts simply do not support this. As Mike puts it:

In the case of the cartoons, the religious group involved was demanding a great deal from those who do not share their faith. The message that they were sending was, "I believe it is a grave sin to draw or print images of the prophet. Therefore, you must never draw or print such an image." That goes farther than demanding that others respect their belief; it is a demand that everyone constrain their actions because of that belief.

In the case of the Eucharist, the demand is much more modest. All that you need to do to refrain from desecrating the Eucharist is to stay away from Catholic churches. Period. That's it. You could argue, I suppose, that this demand also constrains your actions, but that's a bit of a stretch. After all, "don't go places where you haven't been invited" is (in most circumstances) nothing more or less than basic politeness.

And while a very small handful of angry Catholics have sent hate mail and death threats as a result of the present affair, those cartoons sparked real violence. Riots and attacks, even actual murders, spread across much of the Muslim world, all because someone had the audacity not to share their qualms about depicting Muhammad. However Myers may splutter, nothing even close to that has happened in this case. And no, Bill Donohue’s press releases (over-the-top though they may be) can in no way be compared to the fatwas that were issued for the Danish cartoonists.

All of which has reminded me of one of the more absurd responses to those comics. During the very week before Easter of the year they came out, South Park aired its own reaction to the retreat from free speech which had resulted. In the episode Cartoon Wars Part II, they mock the prohibition of any depiction of Muhammad, by claiming to be about to show the Prophet doing something totally innocuous (handing a “salmon football helmet” to another character), though actually showing a black screen with the words “Comedy Central has refused to broadcast an image of Mohammed on their network.” The show then depicted an immediate reprisal by al Qaeda: A video of George Bush and Jesus (among others) defecating on each other and the American flag. Take that free speech!

It was incredibly crude and sophomoric, so it’s little surprise that it drew the ire of some Christian groups, but once again the difference in reactions was telling. Muhammad was shown in a series of otherwise mild comics, published in an obscure newspaper, and sparked rage across half the Muslim world. Jesus was broadcast on national TV, during Holy Week, in the crudest possible way, and this was met with, what? A couple negative editorials and some hand-wringing?

The difference, no doubt, was largely a result of the fact that contemporary Westerners in general are less apt to rage over religious matters than those in some other parts of the world, but I also think it points to something deeper than the current political realities of blasphemy and free speech. It illuminates the nature of two very different worldviews. Islam teaches that Muhammad was a mere man who was so honored by God as to warrant treatment almost as if he were God. In sharp contrast, Christianity teaches that God himself became man, and willingly embraced treatment as a man.

Therefore, to depict Muhammad doing anything at all is to commit blasphemy, and can lead to violent consequences. Yet Jesus can be shown defecating, and the reaction is and should be quite different. That is because the central claim of Christianity—that God came in the flesh—is already a far greater insult than anything South Park could possibly portray.

As Joshua Anderson once argued in reference to Andres Serrano’s Piss Christ, much of the insult Christians do sense in such “art” actually reflects an overly spiritualized view of Jesus. To drop a crucifix into a jar of blood and urine, to show Jesus “crapping” all over the place, even to threaten to desecrate the Eucharist, these are certainly offensive, but can they really compare to the offense of the crucifixion? In that moment, Christians believe, God himself was executed as a rebel.

The day of the crucifixion is known as Good Friday in the Christian Church, but that should not mask the true insult it's meant to recall: God on a cross. The outrageous claim of Christianity is that in Jesus, God himself took on human flesh—blood, urine, feces and all—and faced our jeering insults with grace. Thus, in shying away from showing Muhammad, while openly mocking Jesus' humanity, South Park expressed something deep and important in the difference between Muslim and Christian worldviews, even if only inadvertently.

Free speech—even PZ Myers'—must include the freedom to insult, for the world is full of evil, and sometimes the only proper response will be offensive. Yet freedom also requires a worldview that is comfortable enough with its own humanity to be mocked. On Good Friday, we are told of a God who affirmed that freedom to his very death; on Easter, we are told of a God who laughed even from the grave.

Quote - Chesterton on the Christian Critics

G.K. Chesterton, in The Everlasting Man:

Now the best relation to our spiritual home is to be near enough to love it. But the next best is to be far enough away not to hate it.... The worst judge of all is the man now most ready with his judgments; the ill-educated Christian turning gradually into the ill-tempered agnostic, entangled in the end of a feud of which he never understood the beginning, blighted with a sort of hereditary boredom with he knows not what, and already weary of hearing what he has never heard. (pg. 11)

UPDATED: Reactions to PZ Myers and the Catholic League

UPDATED July 24: Myers did indeed carry out his threat to desecrate the Eucharist.

The PZ Myers debacle has spawned an inordinate amount of blog commentary (two weeks ago, someone claimed more than 1300 blog reactions had been posted, most defending Myers—one can only guess how high that number must now be). Here are a number of worthwhile responses that I've seen. I may add more as I find them:

Prof. Myers, Webster Cook, and the Eucharist
This is the most comprehensive analysis of the series of events that preceded Myers' actions, written from a Catholic perspective.

The Case of the Communion Cracker
This atheist doesn’t address Myers' own role in the controversy, but he does offer a clear-sighted analysis of the events that preceded it.

Is there anything to the Catholic League’s complaint against PZ Myers?
Analyzes the University of Minnesota-Morris regulation against linking offensive material from the university website. Myers is a tenured professor there, and, until it was removed under pressure from the Catholic League, his blog was linked by the website.

I should add at this point that I would consider it a tragedy if Myers lost his job for this. Don't get me wrong, what he said and did was reprehensible, and a reprimand is probably in order, but to fire him (which seems pretty unlikely, given that he is tenured) would not only be a serious blow to free speech and the tenure system, it would only confirm the hysteria of Myer's supporters, turning him from an outspoken atheist into a martyr, and doing terrible damage to Christianity's reputation.

P.Z. Myers Must Be Fired
Though I disagree, this post provides the most compelling case for Myers' firing:

He also is in violation of the University of Minnesota Code of Conduct, which holds that faculty members "must be committed to the highest ethical standards of conduct" (II:2) and that "Ethical conduct is a fundamental expectation for every community member. In practicing and modeling ethical conduct, community members are expected to: act according to the highest ethical and professional standards of conduct [and] be personally accountable for individual actions" (III:1).

It also stresses that faculty members must "Be Fair and Respectful to Others. The University is committed to tolerance, diversity, and respect for differences. When dealing with others, community members are expected to: be respectful, fair, and civil . . . avoid all forms of harassment . . . [and] threats . . . [and] promote conflict resolution."

P. Z. Myers has done none of these things. He is in fundamental breach of the University of Minnesota's Code of Conduct and must be discharged.

The Institution Of Science Is Going To Keep Losing Prestige
Links to Richard Dawkins' show of support for Myers, which proves that he is equally clueless about the Christians he criticizes:

Readers of yesterday's thread "It's a G------d Cracker" will be aware of somebody called Bill Donohue, whose grasp of reality is so poor that he can't tell the difference between a wafer and Jesus. The shrieking hysteria of Donohue and other Roman Catholics over the temporary removal of a communion wafer from a church service epitomizes all that is ridiculous in the religious mind.

On PZ, Don Imus Atheism, and "Atheistblogs.com"?

What alarms me the most about the incident, however, is the major perceptual hit that the scienceblogs.com community and brand continues to take because of PZ's antics. The Seed sponsored blog portal is supposed to be a place that attracts new audiences to science, but in fact, it has turned into the Web's leading echo chamber of anti-religious rants and sophomoric discussions of atheism, what the physicist Chad Orzel refers to as the "screechy monkey" problem.

Why the Eucharist is Not Simply a "Frackin' Cracker"
Ben Kepple offers a helpful explanation, his unfair swipe at Protestants notwithstanding (thanks Alex):

The Eucharist, as all Christians know, is the Body and Blood of Christ, stemming from the Last Supper, when Christ took bread, blessed it and told His disciples, "Take, eat; this is My body," and took a cup of wine and blessed it, telling His disciples, "Drink ye, all of it; for this is My blood of the New Testament"....

Now in the Protestant tradition, the practice of communion is a symbolic one. The congregation is, perhaps once a month, served some stale white bread and grape juice and the story of the Last Supper is recalled. Communion is given, the worshippers take it, and then leave, some annoyed at having had 15 minutes added to their Sunday worship.

But in the Catholic tradition, Holy Communion is a far more serious and central affair. The giving of Communion is the central act of the Mass. Far from being symbolic in nature, the Eucharist is transformed, through the mysterium fidei, into the Body and Blood, and through taking it one's sins are forgiven and one is reconciled with God. The Church does not pretend to understand how this works -- it is the Mystery of Faith -- but as other writers have pointed out, Catholics believe Christ harrowed Hell and in dying defeated death, rising three days later from His tomb. If Christ did that, they argue, then this is a small matter in comparison.

The Communion Wafer is Not Just a Cracker—But PZ Meyers Shouldn’t Lose His Job for Saying So

Meyers is, of course, wrong that the Catholic host is “just a cracker.” It is a symbol for many people’s contact with meaning and community, and to flame it in a gesture of disrespect is like going up to someone’s car and keying it because it’s “just a piece of metal.” People are likely to take it as a personal attack, and obviously people have in this case. Likewise, a flag is not just a piece of cloth, and a wedding band is not just a ring.

Indeed, several of the angry emails Myers received suggested that he perform some similar act of desecration against a Koran or Torah scroll, which is a terribly hypocritical thing to say, but it does illuminate how strongly Catholics feel about the Eucharist. To willfully (and “joyfully”) disrespect that is despicable, almost as despicable as sending death threats.

He Doesn't Speak for ME.

Although I don't have the stature of Obama, I can totally relate to his disentanglement with Rev. Wright right now. Although PZ has been a hero to me in the past year or so, I really have to point out right now that although I'm an atheist, PZ Myers doesn't speak for me. I found his comments to be not only inflammatory, but extremely disrespectful... not only of religion and the 'cracker' but of people. I also found it to be inconsistent with his promotion of rationalism. After all, what is rational about asking people to remove consecrated hosts from the churches and send them to him so he can desecrate them on video?

Religion's Everest
Finally, for the other side, fisking Donohue's claim that :

“[Myers had] better be careful what he says, because if I get any death threats, it won't be hard to connect the dots.”

Let's see ... yesterday Donohue issued his fatwah ... er ... press release and by that very afternoon PZ had received 4 death threats.

Now, Bill, go ahead and show off your dot-connecting prowess!

Thanks Richard for highlighting Insulating Religion, which helpfully analyzes Andrew Sullivan's response:

Who gets to decide what constitutes "mocking religion"? To the Muslims who objected to the Danish cartoons, they constituted an unacceptable "mocking" of their religion, just as Myers' advocacy of eucharist desecration constitutes an equivalent "mockery."...

That is to say, just as Myers has a right to be a dick, so did the newspapers. But the fact that they had those rights does not make their mockery and denigration of the sacred symbols of widely held religious faiths any less offensive or worthy of criticism.

Santi Tafarella, who also penned one of the above, adds some historical perspective:

What I think Myers is not yet acknowledging is that the destruction of cultural symbols typically forebodes the marginalizing and destruction of people, and that a civil dialogue between people is rarely possible in an atmosphere of iconoclasm.

Iconoclasm, in other words, is an ancient form of prejudicial expression that ought to draw as much horror from contemporary people as racism and sexism.

I'm not sure (truly) whether I would go quite that far, but it's got me rethinking the issue.

Also, in case there was any doubt, please recognize that those sending hate-mail and death threats make up only a tiny minority of Catholics. Francis Beckwith provides just one example of a more balanced and respectful Catholic response:

Professor Myers, Academic Freedom, and Intellectual Virtue in a Civil Society

Professor Myers should not be punished by his employer for what he said. Because he teaches at a state institution, Professor Myers has many protections at his disposal that insure and secure his academic freedom, which I wholeheartedly support. Having said that however, there is absolutely nothing wrong with those citizens who are drawing public attention to Professor Myers' imprudent and thoughtless comments. If, for example, I were to insult a colleague's mother by suggesting that he has had intimate relations with her, I should not be shocked if he were to punch me in the nose or not invite me to the faculty party he is hosting at his home.

Civil society requires that we treat others with respect, and that means that if we find their beliefs unreasonable, we should offer our arguments against those beliefs in a winsome and attractive way. When it comes to Catholic theology, we are talking about a complicated, rich, and sophisticated theological and philosophical tradition that has wrestled with a whole array of challenges, concepts and ideas during its two millenia. It stands to reason then that detractors such as Professor Myers have an obligation to study what they reject with the depth and diligence such a tradition demands of a truly curious and probing mind. "It's a Frackin' Cracker" is not the prose of an adult. It is the ramblings of what G. K. Chesterton said of the atheist, "who is often a man limited and constrained by his own logic to a very sad simplification."

John Pieret:

It's more important to find out what the Catholic authorities do once the emotions cool, rather than the words they used when emotions ran high (just as I'd be more interested in what PZ actually does if he happens to come into the possession of some consecrated hosts, rather than what he said he'd do when this story first broke).

Poking peoples' emotions with a sharp stick is likely to make 'em squeal and it's no use pretending to be surprised.

Is PZ Myers an Atheist Supremacist?
I have to answer No, but the post is interesting:

I have in my mind the image of a small frail women I once saw in a small parish church in England. Dressed in black and wearing a communion shawl over her head, she knelt at the communion rail to receive. "Amen," she said as she struggled to her feet. You could see in her face how meaningful this was. She probably knows little about molecules and atoms and cares nothing about arguments of substance about substance. It is, for her, the body of Christ. It is the moment of receiving the elements that for her is important.

Myers thinks this is mere superstition. He is entitled to this opinion. He is entitled to his belief in scientism, for ultimately that is his philosophy. Myers, who frequently argues intellectually, scientifically and rationally well, now wants to make a point with a stunt that has none of those redeeming qualities whatsoever.

Myers wants to shake the silly woman and explain to her that her belief is "silly superstition." On his blog he repeatedly tries to do this. His attacks on creationism and Intelligent Design and the existence of God have often been formidable and well articulated. But that is not what this is about now. He seems to have lost it, emotionally and intellectually."Okay, woman," he now seems to say. "Since I can't convince you I will trample on your holy bread, on your holy moment, on your faith."

P.Z. Myers Thinks Like a Bronze-Age Pagan
Responding to Myers' claim that:

The point of desecrating the host isn’t to make people angry--it’s to demystify and desanctify nonsense. It’s how we wake people up--by showing that their beliefs are powerless.

Jeff Martin retorts:

That's quite right. In this enlightened age, we do not settle religious and philosophical questions of inestimable importance by reasoning, examining the historical evidences, or any such recondite activity, but by subjecting the participants, or symbols dear to them, to the ordeal, to the end that Fate, the womb of possibility, the numinous power of whatever, might speak and deliver its verdict... let a singular communion wafer represent the entirety of the Christian claim, and let his sacrilege represent the claims of enlightenment, and if no bolt of lightning or pillar of fire descends from the heavens to smite him, Christianity stands exploded as rank superstition.

Finally, see my own posts on the subject here, here, here, here and here.

Now contrast all of that with Myers' latest, in which he destroys a Eucharistic wafer, along with copies of the Koran and Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion, all to prove that... well, that he really doesn't believe anything is sacred.

Fundamentalists Come in All Kinds

A minor explosion occurred this week in the “culture wars,” started by a surprisingly small fuse. It seems a certain Florida college student attended Catholic Mass at a local parish and, instead of consuming the consecrated bread (which Catholics believe is literally the body of Christ), he took it home with him. When he initially refused to return the wafer, he unleashed a storm of protest that might shock anyone unfamiliar with how seriously Catholics take the Mass. Among the hysterical reactions to the incident, a spokeswoman for the parish was quoted saying “if anything were to qualify as a hate crime, to us this seems like this might be it.” Bill Donohue, President of the Catholic League, even called this an attempt to take “the Body of Christ hostage,” which was “beyond hate speech.”

In response, outspoken atheist scienceblogger PZ Myers wrote a blistering rant against “Dark Age superstition and malice,” mocking Catholics for even comparing the theft of “a cracker” with true hate crime:

Wait, what? Holding a cracker hostage is now a hate crime? The murder of Matthew Shephard was a hate crime. The murder of James Byrd Jr. was a hate crime. This is a g-------d cracker. Can you possibly diminish the abuse of real human beings any further?

Now if he had stopped there, I’d probably be agreeing with Myers, crude and disrespectful though he was. In fact, the student in question eventually returned the wafer because, he claimed, he felt his life was in danger. Ironic. Maybe it’s just me, but I tend to think death threats ought to be considered a more serious crime than disrespect of a religious ceremony. Jesus, I am sure, can handle the disrespect towards his Body shown by an ignorant college student “stealing” a consecrated wafer. But death threats against a student? How do you think Jesus views that? The Church, after all, is also believed to be Jesus’ Body, and I have a hard time accepting that a stolen piece of the consecrated bread can possibly be considered to do greater harm to that Body than the kind of vitriol some have leveled against this student.

Besides all that, I think the concept of “hate crimes” is seriously out of hand anyway, coming dangerously close to criminalizing thought. As I see it, if a crime is committed, the criminal should be punished for the crime itself, not for some presumed motive that the court attributes to him. Why should a crime be punished more severely just because it was motivated by hate rather than, oh I don’t know, spite, or greed, or lust, or even boredom? (For that matter, I'd think a person who can kill merely out of boredom ought to be considered a greater threat to society than one who kills out of hatred, but that's just me.) Intention should be relevant to crime, not the particular motive, or else we open the door to punishing beliefs and motives themselves, even where no actual crime is committed. In fact, that is precisely what has happened. Now that the concept of crime has been stretched in that way, simply saying certain politically incorrect things (like homosexuality is a sin) is now viewed as a “hate crime” by certain groups, which is not only absurd, but a serious threat to our freedom of speech. In short, “hate crimes” are ridiculous enough as it is, without adding disrespect for a religious ceremony to the list of illegal activities.

So like I said, if PZ Myers had stopped with defending the student and mocking Donohue’s absurd claim that the incident was “beyond hate speech,” I’d probably agree with him, though not with his abusive and vulgar tone. But Myers did not stop there. His post went on to encourage the willful desecration of the Eucharist:

Can anyone out there score me some consecrated communion wafers? There's no way I can personally get them — my local churches have stakes prepared for me, I'm sure — but if any of you would be willing to do what it takes to get me some, or even one, and mail it to me, I'll show you sacrilege, gladly, and with much fanfare. I won't be tempted to hold it hostage (no, not even if I have a choice between returning the Eucharist and watching Bill Donohue kick the pope in the balls, which would apparently be a more humane act than desecrating a g-------d cracker), but will instead treat it with profound disrespect and heinous cracker abuse, all photographed and presented here on the web. I shall do so joyfully and with laughter in my heart.

As you might expect, his horde of sycophants have added a few thousand comments offering more of the same. Apparently they are all so blinded by disbelieving indignation that Catholics would consider “a cracker” so important, that they fail to notice how Myer's own response is quite as absurd and over-the-top as Bill Donohue’s, indeed, much more so. But it seems there are Fundamentalists everywhere, and in the sequel, both Donohue and Myers have found their inboxes flooded with vile and hypocritical hate mail.

All I can say is, if hate were a legitimate crime, there seem to be a lot of people guilty of it right now.

Happiness and Parenting

My second child, a son, is due in just under three weeks, and I’m already anticipating the sleepless nights and messy diapers (so don’t be surprised if suddenly disappear for a few days). Meanwhile, my daughter is now two years old, and while she is still relatively well-behaved, she’s learned how to throw a mean tantrum on the slightest provocation. For instance, today she threw herself to the floor, rolling and screaming and pretending to cry, simply because I told her that she couldn’t take her bowl of goldfish crackers with her to the potty.

When she throws such a fit, I only have a few options: 1. Give in, buying temporary peace but teaching her that such tactics work; 2. Bribe her with some other alternative, again, teaching her that such tactics work; 3. Ignore her and hope she’ll get bored and stop whining on her own (this rarely works); or 4. Punish her in one way or another, making her even more upset in the (faint) hope that next time she might become a better and more mature person. Bad options, all three, but necessary because she doesn’t yet have an adequate understanding of what’s good for her. She doesn’t understand why she needs to eat vegetables, why she can’t watch too much TV, why daddy can’t spend all day playing with her.

To be sure, there is much more to parenting than dealing with tantrums. My daughter also provides countless moments of laughter and joy, and when she hugs me and tells me she loves me—I wouldn’t trade that for anything. But one thing she doesn’t give me is much time to pursue my own interests. Whether she’s in a good mood or a bad, she always draws a lot of attention to herself. Life is simply more chaotic, stressful and full with her around. Perhaps that’s why this story doesn’t surprise me much (HT Thinking Christian):

The most recent comprehensive study on the emotional state of those with kids shows us that the term "bundle of joy" may not be the most accurate way to describe our offspring. "Parents experience lower levels of emotional well-being, less frequent positive emotions and more frequent negative emotions than their childless peers," says Florida State University's Robin Simon, a sociology professor who's conducted several recent parenting studies, the most thorough of which came out in 2005 and looked at data gathered from 13,000 Americans by the National Survey of Families and Households. "In fact, no group of parents—married, single, step or even empty nest—reported significantly greater emotional well-being than people who never had children.

I’m not sure how they can claim to measure such a thing, but if happiness includes settled contentment, I’ve little doubt that the average parent feels less of it than they would without kids—there’s just so much more to worry about as a parent. But such happiness is not the goal of life. It is precisely the challenges, the struggles, the fact that I am forced to center my attention on someone else, that teach me what real unconditional love is. In truth, I love my daughter more deeply than I ever could have imagined, and I’ve little doubt that the same will be true of my son. But that kind of love can hardly be reduced to mere “happiness,” for it includes not only great joy, but also a fervent desire to see the best for them, even when that means making all of us temporarily unhappy.

And I wonder if the same isn’t true of God’s love for us. For I too frequently don’t know what’s best for my life. I too frequently think the world ought to revolve around my desires. I too am frequently unable to see that the things that make me unhappy can be for my own good, to teach me how to be a better, more mature person. Perhaps I needed to become a parent myself, to learn why I am still a child of God.

My Published Writing

Here is list of all of my published work (print and online), with brief descriptions:

February 2005-February 2008: I was a regular contributor to the Crux Project blogs “New Adventures in Sci-Phi,” “Situation Critical,” and “Signs of the Times” (all three now defunct), and to the second incarnation of “Signs of the Times,” which replaced them in January 2006 when Crux became Salvo. [Except for what I have reposted here and what archive.org has preserved, the original three blogs are no longer available, but the newer “Signs of the Times” is here.]

February-November 2006 and June-July 2007: “It’s Greek to Me,” a monthly column published in First Edition, the newsletter of my local church. [This was a series of Greek word studies, 300-800 words each, written for a lay audience; they are not available online.]

June 2006: “Interior Design: DNA and Its Complex Specified Information” (plus two sidebars), in Salvo 1, pgs. 76-79. [A moderate-length article written before the Dover trial, it maintains a more positive view of the Intelligent Design movement than I currently hold; it is available here.]

April 2007: A review of The First Edition of the New Testament by David Trobisch, in Canadian Evangelical Review, Spring 2007 issue, pgs. 83-86. [A critical review of Trobisch’s revisionist interpretation of the canonization of the New Testament; it is not available online.]

August 2007-Present: C. Orthodoxy.

August 2007: “My So-Called Second Life: Born Again into a Virtual Reality” (plus a sidebar review of Snow Crash, by Neal Stephenson), in Salvo 3, pgs. 38-45. [A lengthy article on the social impact of Second Life and other “Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games”; it is available here.]

August 2008: A review of the film Atonement, chosen as Runner-Up (Second Place) in the Looking Closer Review Contest. [Focusing particularly on the film's presentation of the corporate nature of evil. Click the previous link to read the review, or for an earlier version than that submitted, see here.]

September 2008: “Sex, Drugs and Reproduction: Birth Control is a Messy, Messy Business” (plus “Decoding Contraception” sidebar), in Salvo 6, pgs. 32-36. [A critical look at the moral and social impact and implications of contraception; available here. As the previous links indicate, this article was substantially revised by the editorial board to make it more one-sided than I intended, leading to my resignation from Salvo.]

I was also a Contributing Editor for Salvo from January 2007 to September 2008.

Greydanus on Hellboy, Christianity and Supernatural Fiction

Steven Greydanus has an excellent article up at Christianity Today on the way the supernatural is presented in films like Hellboy II, particularly how demons tend to get more play than angels or God, and how Christian symbols and objects (like the Cross, a Rosary, Holy Water, etc.) become weapons to defeat evil:

Why is there so much hell and so little heaven in these movies? Partly, perhaps, it's because filmmakers simply don't know what to do with God—not just theologically, but for the sheer dramatic difficulty posed by omnipotence. It's the Superman dilemma times infinity: Against that much power, how do you make the enemy a credible threat? Even Gandalf's power was ultimately too intimidating for Peter Jackson and company; once it became clear the wizard could drive off the flying Nazgul, the filmmakers feared the enemy might seem too diminished. (This was the rationale for the problematic scene in which the Witch-King shatters Gandalf's staff.)

Another reason for the neglect of heaven is simply that heaven is harder to do. C. S. Lewis noted this point in his preface to The Screwtape Letters, in which he regretted being unable to offset Screwtape's diabolical perspective with a parallel heavenly correspondence presenting "arch-angelical advice to the patient's guardian angel." While the task of twisting his mind into a hellish perspective was for Lewis oppressive but not difficult, assuming an angelic voice seemed to him all but unachievable.

While Lewis did later achieve some success in dramatically depicting the outskirts of heaven in The Great Divorce, the general disparity of depicting heaven and hell in art and drama has been felt by many. It's not hard to see why. Beauty is more elusive an effect than grotesquerie; misery and wretchedness are far easier to inflict, and therefore to imagine and express, than joy and beatitude are to bestow or evoke. Even biblical or cultural images of hell (unquenchable flames, demons with pitchforks) are more immediately persuasive than biblical or cultural images of heaven (thrones and crowns, halos and harps). Every sinful impulse in us is hell in miniature, while our best impulses fall infinitely short of the glory of heaven. In a word, God's absence is easier to imagine than the fullness of his presence.

Like the familiar narrative dilemma of the colorful villain who makes the hero look pale by comparison—think of Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader, Dorothy and the Wicked Witch, Clarisse Starling and Hannibal Lecter—the remoteness of heaven versus the imminence of hell seems a not unnatural creative side effect of our limited perspective as finite and fallen creatures.

The whole thing is worth a read.

Hellboy Shorts

Just for fun, here a few of the many humorous videos promoting Hellboy 2, which is due out this week (and is so far getting positive reviews). Enjoy:

Camping and Reading... Under Water

The title and pictures (below) are for Carmen’s sake. The weather report promised near perfect camping weather: 70s or 80s with just a chance of light showers. Instead, a major thunderstorm poured rain on us for most of the trip, half flooding our tent. Still, our brief camping trip was as relaxing as I could have hoped, and I enjoyed myself immensely. Apart from a few walks with my daughter (she was not at all deterred by the rain, though she did maintain a fearful curiosity of slugs), I spent most of my time reading, with the rain noisily bouncing off the tarp over our heads, and a cheerful fire to keep us warm. Thanks to the weather, the campground was surprisingly empty for the week of a major holiday, and the few times the sun did peak out the rain made the towering maples seem even greener. Most of all, however, I just enjoyed getting away from the internet and my other responsibilities for a couple of days.

As for my reading, I finished John Stott’s Why I Am a Christian and finally read C.S. Lewis’ autobiographical Surprised by Joy. Stott was somewhat of a disappointment, to be honest. I’ve heard good things about him, but this book seemed a rather flat and mundane defense of Christianity. It offered a few good quotes and one or two original argumentative turns, but nothing that really stuck with me. I had to force myself to finish its brief 133 pages. Surprised by Joy, on the other hand, caught my attention quickly and did not let it up, offering not only an informative picture of Lewis’ early life and conversion, but also a fascinating examination of the human condition. It was also fun to see Lewis interacting with G.K. Chesterton’s work (another of my favorite authors). Anyway, one of Lewis' points is that the attempt to capture or analyze experience inevitably fails, and that is certainly true of the trip. These photos do nothing to capture the full onslaught of the rain, nor the true beauty of the trees:

Camping and the Christian Carnival

This week's Christian Carnival is up at Fish and Cans (be warned, the page loads pretty slowly; I think it's got too much stuff in its sidebar), and includes my post on Inclusivism and Injustice plus a whole lot of other stuff.

I also just started reading this fascinating article at The Weekly Standard on the changes in parenting practices over the last 50 years (HT: Maverick Philosopher, who's back after taking a month off blogging). I haven't had a chance to finish the article yet, but it's worth a look.

In any case, I'm about to rush off to go camping with my family, so I won't be back til Saturday. God bless and have a great week!

Quote - Robert Southwell on Love and Life

Robert Southwell (a sixteenth-century British Catholic and martyr; quoted by John Stott, Why I Am a Christian, pg. 92):

Not where I breathe, but where I love, I live.

WWFBSTW Meme

Hurray for gaudy acronyms! WWFBSTW, according to Drew Tatusko, means “What Would Five Biblical Studies Types Write?” And he tagged me (Thanks Drew!):

This meme is very simple. You choose five Biblical studies types and invent a post that they might have written over the last couple of months. Those parodied are entitled, yea, obligated to tag five other bibliobloggers in similar fashion. Don’t forget to link to this original post.

Here goes:

James McGrath: “How Dr. Who LOST His Intelligent Design When He Tried to Learn Mandaic”
Ben Myers: “St. Paul’s Taste in Theology Does Not Include Pornographic Worship”
Scot McKnight: “According to the Gospel of Ruth, James Dobson Does Not Speak For Conservatives”
Chris Heard: “How to Maintain an Audience Without Posting Anything”
Michael Halcomb: “Why Steve Carell Should Not Produce a Comic Version of Genesis 2”

My apologies if you’ve already been tagged. Actually, you have my apologies for tagging you at all! ;)