The Ark and The Dove

We All Know What the Fish Stands for, Right?

A former student of mine recently sent me a link to the renowned literary theorist Stanley Fish's blog for the NYTImes. He's stirred up a pedagogical hornets nest by complaining that too many college composition courses are wasting time teaching composition through literature or civic engagement or whatever other topics courses schools offer with a writing component. Rather, Fish argues, we should be finding better ways of teaching students the art of composition...with a healthy dose of linguistics thrown in. Anyway, in the process of reading the three part epic saga of Fish vs. the American freshman writing program, I came across his blog posts from earlier in the year where he argues how the average atheist arguments don't really hold water except to the already converted (er...deconverted?), even if he doesn't necessary come out advocating any particular religion. See Part 1 and Part 2.

Who Makes More Atheists?

My mom (who still uses AOL evidently) recently forwarded me an article about Kirk Cameron's latest Bible-thumping campaign. This time, he is disseminating Creationist versions of Darwin's Origin of the Species on college campuses. According to Cameron's quotes in the article:

"Atheism has been on the rise for years now, and the Bible of the atheists is 'The Origin of Species'," Cameron says. "We have a situation in our country where young people are entering college with a belief in God and exiting with that faith being stripped and shredded. What we want to do is have student make an informed, educated decision before they chuck their faith...No wonder Atheism has doubled in the last 20 years among 19-25 year olds," he explains in the video. "An entire generation is being brainwashed by Atheistic Evolution!"

I wonder, though. Is it that college kids learn about Darwin that is the problem, or is it that fundamentalist Christians teach their children that the Bible's creation stories must be read literally as fact?

Do fundamentalists approach the Bible as an all or nothing text?

That is, could the reason why so many college kids fall to atheism be that they have been taught to unswervingly believe all of the narratives to be literally true, so much so that if even one of those narratives is proven not to be historically accurate, then the fundamentalist begins to doubt all of the narratives?

The facts of the matter support some form of evolution occuring far more than they support the narrative of Genesis 2&3. And, as I'm fond of repeating in these debates, Genesis 1 actually contradicts the narrative of Genesis 2&3.

Truth, experience, and our hearts, however, know that there is more to the story than the biological process that created our bodies. The purpose of Genesis is to explain our fallen depravity, our longing sense of separation from something greater than ourselves, what it means that we are capable of imagining a more perfect existence, and how obedience to God will lead us to a greater happiness than we can find following any of God's other creatures, be they man, beast, or angel. These things are all still true whether or not the story is historical fact.

If we taught more young Christians the purpose of the story, then perhaps fewer of them would have spiritual meltdowns when they find scientific facts that undermine its historical accuracy.

To refuse to believe in God because of you find evolution convincing would be like refusing to give people presents at Christmas because you realized Santa's handwriting looks an awful lot like your mom's. Christmas endures not because they believe in Santa Claus their whole lives, but because they understand on some level that the idea of Santa Claus points to a larger Truth. Trying to keep faith alive by upholding the literal truth of Genesis 2&3 is rather like trying to keep the spirit of Christmas alive by convincing college students that Santa Claus is real. In the face of scientific evidence, it looks kind of silly and defeats the purpose.

Keep in mind, I'm not saying that Genesis 2&3 couldn't have happened. Who knows? I'm just saying that fundamentalists trying to preserve faith by denouncing scientific evidence is just making the job of evangelization harder for us Catholics. We don't have a problem with evolution, but no one will end up hearing that because they will be too busy scorning Kirk Cameron.

Separation of Church and Entertainment

Shame on you They Might Be Giants!

Isabel forwarded me the Youtube video for "Science is Real" from their new children's CD Here Comes Science. Isabel was more than a little disappointed in one of the verses:

Science is real
From the Big Bang to DNA
Science is real
From evolution to the Milky Way
I like the stories
About angels, unicorns and elves
Now I like those stories
As much as anybody else
But when I'm seeking knowledge
Either simple or abstract
The facts are with science
The facts are with science

Did you catch that buried in there? The offensive line was "I like stories / About angels, unicorns and elves."
It reads like a none-too-veiled dismissal of faith as a form of entertainment to be juxtaposed with science as a form of acquiring knowledge. As a Christian, I find it particularly disheartening to see TMBG put angels on the same level as unicorns and elves. No one has seriously believed in unicorns in over three hundred years (at least not in the "magical" sense), and while I hear there is a thriving elf-watching industry in Iceland, I don't know many institutionalized religions that promote belief in them. Angels, however, are still very much a part of Church tradition and modern theology.

The song essentially boils religion down to a nice story that you can enjoy, but that you shouldn't look to for anything "real."

Now, perhaps I am underestimating TMBG, and they are defining the real in some kind of Heideggerian metaphysical sense. The supernatural is perhaps not so much real as the extra-real. It is not "reality" or "fact" in the sense that it does not conform to repeated empirical proof the way the subject of science does. It might not be quanitfiable, observable, empirical fact...but that doesn't mean it isn't true.

And, indeed, this is where I, coming from the humanities, even get annoyed by the potshots taken at elves and unicorns. Even when stories aren't "real" or "fact," the best stories are more than enjoyment...they are true.

Maybe later I'll parody this song...

UPDATE: Parodied lyrics...

The Bible is true

From Hebrew to New Testament

The Bible is true

From Genesis to Apocalypse

I read science

About atoms, dinosaurs and stars

Now I read that science 

And trust in consensus, too

But when I'm seeking wisdom

Either divine or moral

The truth is the Bible

The truth is the Bible

The Bible is true

The Bible is true

The Bible is true

The Bible is true

From Torah to the Prophecies

The Bible is true

From Matthew, Mark, and Luke to John

And biblical allegory

Isn't just superstitious

It's more like analogy

Written for a historic context;

When a new reading is stated

In-line with Church tradition

The reading is true

The reading is true

The Bible is true

The Bible is true

The Bible is true

The Bible is true

Okay, now back to some Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2...Should I feel morally compromised that I chose not to fight on the side of the White House?

Why am I doing this, again?

From Charles Krauthammer:

After the Soviet collapse, Marxism is a relic, a pathetic anachronism reduced to its last redoubts: North Korea, Cuba and the English departments of the more expensive American universities.

From Mike Adams:

It’s tough to know sometimes whether we are supposed to stand and fight in a place where we are surrounded by those who seek to destroy us by destroying what we believe. Or whether we should surround ourselves with like-minded individuals who will tell us what we want to hear. But there’s no real chance of destroying what we believe.

Inciting Violence

Drudge linked to an article about a pro-life activist who was shot and killed this morning.

Apparently, the protester was wielding one of those highly graphic images in front of a high school...so you can come to your own conclusions about the mental stability of the protester.

My burning question is, however, whether or not people will start blaming this on liberal pundits who have inspired hate and fear against the pro-life movement. After all, whenever an abortionist is killed by a lunatic, the blame is foisted on pro-life pundits. If O'Reilly is at fault when an abortionist is shot, shouldn't Olberman be at fault in the death of a pro-lifer?

Unhealthy Curiosity

I don't know if it is because I was allowed to watch The Excorcist at too young of an age, or if it was because my mom loved to tell me all the weirdest stories about Saints Padre Pio and John Bosco...but I've always gotten the heebie-jeebies from stories about diabolic possessions or hauntings.

It occurred to me this weekend, though, that in this day and age such normally scary supernatural phenomena shouldn't be scary at all. If anything, it should bring the comfort of empirical proof that things exist beyond the material world.

This, obviously, is not to endorse people to get involved in superstition or to start playing ouija boards. I have no intention of inviting anything evil. (I've got enough infestations of arachnids in my house; I certainly don't need any spiritual vermin.) I'm also not so sure how effective my logic would be on the kid afraid of the monster in his closet: "Don't worry, Bobby, if there is a diabolic entity dwelling in your closet, then just think of it as verifying the existence of a higher power. Lights out!"

No One Should Die

Isabel tells me that she's seeing a lot of Facebook friends copying and pasting the following:

No one should die because they cannot afford health care, and no one should go broke because they get sick.

I think it's missing something...

No one should die because they receive substandard government-run health care, and no one should go broke because the government forces its citizens to pay for other people's sickness.

On further reflection: has anyone ever actually died because they couldn't afford health care?
I've never heard of a lack of affluence as being listed as an actual cause of death.
It makes me quite nervous, actually, that I might suddenly keel over dead simply because my liquid assets dip below a particular level.

The last time I checked, people die from either violence or disease -- not from financial insecurity.

Medical care might prevent disease from killing a person, but it does not logically follow that the lack of medical care therefore causes the person's death.

Likewise, I've never heard of a sickness that directly causes a person to go broke. Is there some new strain of H1N1 that disintegrates money? People go broke because they purchase treatments that they cannot afford.

It seems to me that the best solution here is to find more effective, more affordable treatments for disease. The best way to do that is to encourage researchers to compete for the discovery of those cures. The best way to encourage efficient competition is to bait them with free-market enterprise rewards.

The government should not be in the business of trying to prevent people from dying natural deaths. That is an absurdly impossible task. The government's job is also not to prevent people from going broke. The government's job is to protect our property and our rights from foreign invaders and domestic criminals.

I agree that a lack of financial success greatly cripples one's ability to compete for medical resources, and that is a source of sadness. But we can find ways to improve people's finances and reduce the cost of healthcare without giving the government more power. We can benefit from health care reforms, but the particular reforms being sold to us right now seem to come with greater hidden costs than promised benefits.

I'm Just Your Big Brother

As I read about Obama's televised broadcast for schoolchildren, I can only think of one thing:



Of course, in some ways, the people in Orwell's 1984 are even more free than we are today...at least they were allowed to smoke! For all of his seeming prescience about the future, he didn't seem to have that one pegged.