The Ark and The Dove

Damned if He Does; Damned if He Doesn't...

Drudge linked to an article on an investigation into a possible miracle at St. Mary's in Annapolis.

A woman undergoing treatment for terminal cancer became cancer free and has stayed so for several scans. She apparently had been praying to Blessed Francis X. Seelos, an apparently cheery immigrant who was ordained and died of yellow fever while administering to the sick.

The Baltimore Sun article to which Drudge linked spends quite a bit of time trying to explain the process of canonization for its general readership. It's important to keep in mind that the cure is under investigation -- it may well be determined that the treatment she was receiving was itself sufficient to explain her cure.

Then, you get to the comments section below the article. Ouch...(more below)

Seeing is NOT Believing (Again...)

Here's an optical illusion that will totally mess with your head.

Obama Demands Optimus Prime Resign Command of Autobots

When Autobot commander Optimus Prime agreed to assist the top secret U.S. military department, Sector Seven, in exchange for material resources and fuel, he might not have read the fine print.

It turns out that federal aid to the stranded Autobots included some demanding stipulations, such as the requirement that all Autobots transform into GM vehicles, and that at least 30% of Autobot car modes go hybrid by 2015. Perhaps more significant, however, were requirements to restructure the Autobot chain of command.

Because the Autobots are now considered military-operated GM products, President Obama has insisted that Optimus Prime relinquish his position as their head.

"The Autobots were inefficient and unpopular under the old guard," White House spokesperson Gibbs announced. "Optimus Prime was clearly running them into the ground, and the president found it was time for new management."

As the new commander-in-chief of the Autobot team, President Obama has promised to take a new approach to relations with Decepticon.

"Optimus Prime was, frankly, an embarassment with his cowboy, John Wayne approach to settling disagreements with robotic fists and firepower," Obama said earlier today to thundering applause. "As Obamus Prime, I promise to renew peaceful negotiations with Decepticons, so that we might reach a mutually beneficial future despite our minor differences in worldviews. I am certain that we have much more in common with the Decepticons than we have hitherto realized."

Pro-Choice = Pro-Racist

Or, at least, that's what it looks like in the recently released transcripts of Pres. Richard Nixon:

Nixon worried that greater access to abortions would foster “permissiveness,” and said that “it breaks the family.” But he also saw a need for abortion in some cases, such as interracial pregnancies.

“There are times when an abortion is necessary. I know that. When you have a black and a white,” he told an aide, before adding: “Or a rape.”

The president sets up the classic pro-choice argument: he saw abortion as a necessary evil. It was something that he saw as inherently harmful to society, but he wasn't going to get in the way of people getting out of tragic situations, like, you know, interbreeding.

It's almost as if Nixon would have thought Obama should have been aborted...

Drudge has linked to an article on the release.

The PC Guy Scores Big Points

I just watched the Youtube video of John Hodgman's address to Obama at the Radio & TV Correspondents' Dinner.

It's a pretty awesome speech, even if (like me) you are not a fan of Obama. It's also a bit uncannily prescient at moments.

America -- #@$%!?!? YEAH!

I watched Team America again last night.

It's definitely one of those movies that I don't feel comfortable recommending to people. It's crude; it's crass; and it's pretty much offensive to any sense of decency.

That being said, it is perhaps one of the greatest works of satire ever made, and I am confident it will be studied alongside Gulliver's Travels in the distant future.

It also seems uncannily relevant today. North Korea is in fact lobbing nuclear devices around like water balloons. Al Qaeda has announced it will be more than happy to take any nuclear weapons it can get its hands on.

Even more unsettling is the way in which the horribly-acronymed Film Actors Guild seems to have in fact won with the election of Obama. There was a now-chilling moment in the movie where one of the protagonistic puppets declares that you can't end terrorism by sitting down and talking with the terrorists. We've elected a president to do just that -- and it's turning out not to be working all that well.

Using Team America's allegory for personality types, it's extremely clear which of the three types of people Obama is...and the results are discouraging for me.

For instance, I feel utterly confused by Obama's stance on the recent riots in Iran. Hopefully, he is only saying that we are keeping our nose out of it. I'm no political scientist, but a pro-democratic riot is exactly the kind of thing our nose should be in. Granted, we haven't always backed the right horse in these kinds of situations. Marjane Satrapi, in her graphic novel Persepolis, argues that the current Iranian regime is largely the result of Western powers backing a monarchical revolution rather than backing the more socialist freedom fighters. Of course, who is to say that Iran would really be that better off or that much more free if the socialists had prevented the current day theocracy?

It is, however, encouraging to see Iranians fighting back against their oppressive government, and I hope they know how many American people are with them in spirit even if our government will not be with them in action.

Pro-choice Laws More Superstitious than Pro-Life Laws

In mind-numbing comment boxes, one often sees abortion defenders accusing pro-lifers of being, essentially, superstitious. It doesn't take very long for those upholding a woman's right to slaughter her unborn baby to start suggesting that the pro-life movement only exists as religious mumbo-jumbo, as if the protection of human life was based solely on scripture with no reasonable secular arguments.

Yet, when one thinks about the legal structure of abortion laws, the legal defense of abortion is really far more superstitious. Let's consider those who believe late term abortions should be legalized (a process banned in many cases -- no doubt because it's legalization seemed, in the end, too superstitious and indefensibly litigious).

Essentially, the only difference between a late term abortion and infanticide is geography and a couple of inches of umbilical cord. To defend a late term abortion you have to believe that what exists inside the womb is not the same as what exists outside the womb -- even when the entire anatomical structure of the being is completely the same.

For this to be true -- for an entity's ontology to be determined by its geography -- suggests then that being is not defined by one's inherent nature, but by one's geographical context. The location, then, must have some power in itself. The abortion advocate must see the womb, or, at least, a woman's internal organs, as having some kind of mysterious power to alter reality and suspend personhood from being realized.

If a baby is in a crib -- it's a baby. If a baby in a stroller -- a baby. If the baby is in a car seat -- still a baby. If a baby is in a high chair -- yep -- babiness is maintained.

But if the same baby is in a womb -- Mother Nature's own, self-designed crib/stroller/car seat/feeding space -- it is not a baby.

To look at this another way, it seems that the pro-choice standpoint might result from an oversimplification. A pro-choice rhetorician might see a kind of either/or stance being debated: either 1) the woman's body has such inherent value that it dehumanizes the baby, or 2) the baby's existence has such inherent value that it dehumanizes the woman -- reducing her to the aforementioned flesh-based car-seat. Because we already know that the woman is a person, but the personhood of the baby seems (rather falsely) debatable, the wiser course of action would appear to uphold position number one and deny position number two.

But the pro-life movement doesn't really uphold position number two -- it doesn't believe in the dehumanization of the mother.
What it does acknowledge, however, is that the mother's body has biological realities beyond the mystification if not fetishization assigned the human body by law.

The pro-life position is actually the middleground between two extremes: one extreme upholds the woman's body as an inviolably sacred space granting its owner the right to destroy anything within its geographical confines, and the other extreme reduces a woman's body to a mere DNA replication site.

The pro-life movement says the woman's body is sacred and has value, but it also concedes that practical, biological necessity as evidenced by science (not religion) demands that limits must be placed on what a woman can do within the volume of space taken up by her body.

Goodbye TV

I read that the analog signal died today.

My television is now officially a monitor.

Church & State

My last post reminded me of something I had meant to post upon before.
It's kind of a post-post-post.

Probably the best thing that could have happened for the Church was to get smacked down after becoming too entrenched as a state authority.

Compare, for instance, the difference between the theocracies of the Middle East and the secular nations of the West.

Theocracies like Iran seem so medieval to us because they operate under some of the shadier aspects of medieval Europe. Things like the Inquisition became state methods of consolidating power through religious means. The Inquisition has allowed historians to argue for centuries that medieval Europe was Christian largely through fear of punishment than through individuals' convictions.

It's now very tempting to think the same thing of the Middle East. Looking at Iran, one might ask "Who would the fardels of Islam bear, except for the dread of torture and execution (and the offer of 72 virgins)?"

True, most Muslims are raised Muslim and therefore consider themselves willing participants as adults (and people who convert to Islam outside of Islamic nations might be a different topic).

But if Islam is about free submission, then why are there so many contemporary stories about punishments and derision for Muslims who convert to Christianity?

When a religion is tied to the state, then it appears that people only follow that religion because it is a political obligation. When religion is not tied to the state, then its adherents appear to follow personal beliefs.

Muslims in England must really want to be Muslims. Muslims in Iran -- maybe not so much. But to be a practicing Christian in either England or Iran really takes more chutzpah than to be a Muslim in either.

Bargain-Bin Movies

I picked up an old computer-animated film called Kaena the other day.

It appears that the film was supposed to be a French answer to the rather disappointing Final Fantasy: Spirits Within Film. Unfortunately, the copy I picked up was an English-only dub which resulted in a painful attempt to transform an abstract, nightmarish, freaky French film into a children's fairy tale. The cartoon-quality American voice actors' deliveries simply did not sync up with the grotequeness of the imagery.

Plus, several of the recurring themes in the film were not at all suitable for children. (I'm fairly certain there was a liquid-creature rape scene...but it was hard to tell with the abstract graphics.)

The weakest part of the movie for me, though, was it's take on religion and its science-fiction rewrite of the origins of humanity. The humans all live in a giant tree where they do nothing more than eat giant worm-creatures and worship sap gods. The sap gods, it turns out, are actually liquid-based indigenous peoples who have duped the humans into worshiping them. Thus, the origin of religion among the people is a misunderstanding of science and exploitation at the command of their priest who is himself trapped between being the schemes of the pseudo-gods and his own desire to save face in front of the people. It involves a lot of painful, cringe-filled moments as you watch believers accept blatantly illogical and self-debasing commands from their high priest. The believers absurdly debase themselves at the behest of the high priests foppish rationalizations.

But the filmmakers have not completely removed any sense of the supernatural from the story.

We learn that the humans are actually the product of a giant living computer that crashed deep within the tree...and one of the humans (the titular Kaena) has been predestined by the computer to liberate the humans from faith in the liquid creatures and guide them down from the tree to populate a planet quite similar to a prehistoric Earth. When an alien from the race shows up to reclaim the computer, he realizes that it has fused with the humans' habitat as well as with Kaena. In other words, the planet has a life force, and that life force expresses itself in humanity.

Organized religion is replaced with Gaia theory -- which promises humans a greater freedom, independence, and -- most importantly -- dignity than any belief in gods could produce.

Obviously, I was a bit skeptical about the film's skepticism.

I am certainly willing to concede that the film may in fact capture the main thrust of world religions -- particularly primitive paganism. There is something about Kaena that is like reading Augustine's complaints about Roman worship in the City of God without ever getting to the parts where he advances Christianity. Pagan sacrifices and forms of worship do come off as a bit suspect. Indeed, ancient Romans were often more interested in the benefits of religion than in its reality. In some cases those benefits might have been material wealth to the priests and governors, or (at their most well-intended) the benefits might simply have consisted in maintaining social order.

Christianity -- particularly modern Catholicism -- generally defies the aspects of paganism that made it suspect. It's why Paul is so adamant in reminding his listeners that he hasn't been exploiting them for goods--he's worked for his food. It's why local Catholic pastors can't pocket whatever is given in the collection basket (unlike some denominations). It's why no one is forced to make donations.

Compare the Catholic Church to, say, Scientology, which is the most suspicious and perhaps most pagan of all the modern "religions" (to use the word loosely). Scientology demands payment for services. Sure, on a local level, a parish might have fees for things like using the Church building for a wedding (and, believe me, I know all about that now), but I've never heard of anyone denied a sacrament because they couldn't ante up.

It's also a good reason for the Church to operate independently from the State -- so that it can't be reduced to a mere Ideological State Apparatus.

The Church is at its most persuasive when there are no immediate, visible benefits for its practitioners or its authorities. One might even say that the Church is perhaps even more persuasive when believers seem to be swimming through internal chaos.

When Paul asks slaves not to seek their liberty, I think it's because he wants them to provoke questions in their masters. "Why are they Christian? They don't seem to be getting anything out of it."

When we face absurdities and chaos in parish life, could this trigger a similar response? "Why would anyone bother still going to Mass with the state that parish is in? They don't seem to be getting anything out of it."

Of course, the Christian does get something out of it -- but what is gained can't be seen or measured. Sometimes it can't even be perceived by the Christian himself.