Year: 2004

Democrats and abortion

SDG here with an interesting commentary challenging the Democrats to “do better” on abortion.

I wish they would. My blood is not Republican red. I would vote for a pro-life Democrat in a heartbeat, if for no other reason than to make the point.

Lefties often say that the pro-life movement has a stranglehold on the Republican party. The truth is closer to the other way around. Between the two major parties, the Democratic Party has allowed the Republicans to have a monopoly on pro-life candidates — and voters.

And, for reasons rather well laid out in Catholic Answers’ “Voter’s Guide for Serious Catholics, I find it necessary to give black-and-white issues like abortion, euthanasia, and same-sex marriage priority over other issues about which men of good will, including Catholics, may in good faith legitimately dispute.

But the Republicans didn’t always have a monopoly on concern over protecting the weakest of the weak. To be a pro-life Democrat wasn’t always a virtual contradiction in terms. In fact, there’s still a pro-life movement within the Democratic Party, though party bosses won’t give them a voice. According to this article, a recent gathering of Democrats for Life included:

  • Thomas Finneran, Massachusetts House Speaker
  • Bob Casey Jr., auditor general of my former state of Pennsylvania and son of Robert Casey Sr., the late pro-life former governor of Pennsylvania
  • Eunice Kennedy Shriver, sister of JFK, wife of pro-life Boston Democrat Sargent Shriver, and mother of Maria Shriver, California’s first lady
  • Ray Flynn, former mayor of Boston and ambassador to the Vatican

However, according to an article in the paper I write for, the National Catholic Register, Democrats For Life were not allowed to have a visible presence at the Democratic National Convention — no banners, no signs, etc. Planned Parenthood, OTOH, was a highly visible presence at the convention.

And while party chairman Terry McAuliffe made noises that there would be no ban on pro-life speakers at the convention, and touted the appearance of pro-life Rep. James Langevin from Rhode Island, Langevin’s topic was one on which, unlike abortion, he is not pro-life, embryonic stem cell research.

So, for all intents and purposes, the Democratic establishment brooks no dissent, at least so far. But perhaps Democrats for Life will be effective in bringing about some change in the Democratic party. Perhaps the Democrats will do better in the future, and again extend their traditional concern for the weak and powerless to the weakest of all. If they gave us a choice, I think they’d be surprised how many default Republicans there are who would vote for a pro-life Democrat.

Is it all in your head?

SDG here with an article representing a recent salvo in the debate on free will.

In this article, the issue is framed in terms of criminal and penal law, and the up-front emphasis is the claim of leading neuroscientist Wolf Singer that all criminal activity can in principle always be traced back to brain abnormality, even if no brain abnormality can be found.

However, the underlying issue is Singer’s explicit arguing point that all human actions and choices are deterministic results of electro-chemical processes in the brain, which obey deterministic laws, and that our own ideas about our motives and decision-making processes are essentially rationalizations that we create to make our lives seem rational and meaningful.

Such deterministic materialism is at least as old as Spinoza, of course, and has been advocated by a number of philosphers and schools of thought (Marxism is one example). This view is contrary to Christian anthropology, which insists on what in philosophical discourse is sometimes called libertarianism, meaning belief in a human faculty to make non-deterministic choices. On this view, presumably, non-deterministic choices have effects in the electro-chemical processes of the brain, with physical results in the brain that are different from the result that would obtain in a purely deterministic system.

The difficulty with either proving or refuting either point of view on empirical grounds, of course, is that the brain as a system is so staggeringly complex, and the difficulties in observing and measuring its processes so formidable, that the probability of meaningful analysis of the processes involved in making a choice, and of confirming a result consistent with or contrary to deterministic principles, approaches zero.

Even if a neuroscientist happened to be looking at the exact spot in the brain where cerebral bioelectric processes were being impacted by a free choice, he could never definitively say that this was not the result of deterministic processes. There are too many factors and the system is too complex to ever fully be understood. (As the saying goes, if our brains were simple enough for us to understand them, we’d be so simple that we couldn’t.)

So neither libertarianism nor determinism can ever be proved or disproved on purely empirical grounds. That doesn’t stop Wolf Singer from claiming to have done so, though. For example, consider this passage from the article:

Neurobiology tells us that there is no centre in the brain where actions are planned and decisions made. Decisions emerge from a collection of dynamic systems that run in parallel and are underpinned by nerve cells that talk to each other – the brain. If you look back in evolution to say, the sea slug Aplysia, you see that the building blocks of this brain have not changed. The amino acids, the nerve cells, the signalling pathways and largely the genes, are the same. “It’s the same material [in humans], just more complex,” says Singer. “So the same rules must govern what humans do. Unavoidable conclusion.”

Ridiculous. That’s like saying “The mineral components of the rock formations in Monument Valley are identical to those of Mount Rushmore, so therefore the configuration of both must represent the same processes.” A thing’s makeup has nothing to do with the question whether some force may be operating upon it. If free will in the fully libertarian and Christian sense exists at all, it is not a function of cerebral biochemistry, but a force acting upon it. Singer’s observation that human brains and sea slug brains are built out of the same components simply has no bearing on the question whether human brains are joined to rational souls.

The article then goes on to cite the phenomenon of hypnosis, which Singer claims to have practiced on an RAF pilot at a party at Cambridge University, as an example of the brain’s ability to respond to a complex of influences and factors with specific action in a way that has nothing to do with conscious thought or decision making. But even if one grants the phenomenon of hypnosis, which I’m not prepared to do, it only shows that it’s possible to bypass or short-circuit full human freedom, not that it doesn’t exist.

Some of the other conclusions in the article (it’s not always clear which are really Singer’s and which are merely the reporters) are equally dubious. “He does not argue that a criminal should not be held responsible for their crime,” writes the reporter. “After all, if a person is not responsible for their own brain, who is?”

Framed that way, the question is meaningless. It’s like saying “He does not argue that a tree should not be held responsible for the way it grows. After all, if a tree is not responsible for its own shape, who is?” The answer is that Singer’s worldview negates the very concept of “responsibility” in any true moral sense.

One may of course argue that it still makes sense to prosecute and punish criminals, in the same way that we discipline a puppy when he exhibits unwanted behavior, or restrain or destroy a dog given to biting. It still makes sense to want to influence human behavior in ways that make us safer and better able to get along, and to protect society from those whose nature is to resist our attempts to influence their behavior and continue to behave in antisocial ways.

Of course, as soon as we say that we want to do this in order to bring about that result, we assume that we have some actual insight into our reasons for doing things. But on Singer’s view we may not. Singer wants to show that jurisprudence and penal law still make sense within his worldview — but does the concept of “making sense” make sense? If we don’t really know why we do things, if our ideas about why we do things are merely rationalizations of brains looking to make patterns, why doesn’t that apply to our ideas about why we should make laws and punish criminals as well as to any other ideas?

Even Singer’s central thesis (if it really is his thesis, and not the reporter’s interpretation) that criminal activity must always indicate brain abnormality seems not to make sense. How does Singer know that a “normal” brain will always behave in a way consistent with whatever laws happen to hold sway in a particular time and place? Does this conclusion apply to unjust laws as well as just? Were European Gentile civilians who illegally hid Jews in their houses during WW2 suffering from brain abnormalities?

Rice . . . I Had *No* Idea!

To most folks, rice is something that you eat in Asian restaurants.

To me, rice is something that I’m not allowed to eat on my diet. But it’s also something else.

Being from Texas, Rice to me is also a university located in Houston (one of my four hometowns). I’d known about Rice for years, but what I hadn’t know was how it got started.

It’s AMAZING.

I doubt that any other university in the world has been founded in quite this way.

Read The Frightful Tale Of The Founding Of Rice University!

(They should make a movie about this or something.)

"Laughoutloud funny!"

SDG here with an ego check for critics… like me.

Tom Payne, a literary critic, turns in a wickedly funny… er, make that a pointedly satiric exposé on the special jargon critics use, partly as a matter of trade necessity and precision, partly by carelessness and imitation, and partly to sound as if they know what they’re talking about and better than you.

The article is about literary critics, but I must confess that as a film critic I winced more than once at a well-skewered foible found in my own reviews. Not that all the listed clichés are necessarily bad. Phrases like “darkly comic” or “emotional rollercoaster” may be clichés, but they’re also useful — we know what they mean, and what would be the point of digging through the thesaurus for some less familiar way of describing a quality we already have a good term for?

That said, I hereby vow to be very careful in the future about phrases like “vast, sprawling epic,” and never, ever again to write “But these are minor quibbles.” (Aren’t quibbles minor by definition?) And I must confess that even before discovering this article I was already uncomfortably aware of my reliance on phrases like “at its core” and “at its center” (though not combined with Payne’s phrase about “a deeply moral work”).

Take that, fellow critics!

“Laughoutloud funny!”

SDG here with an ego check for critics… like me.

Tom Payne, a literary critic, turns in a wickedly funny… er, make that a pointedly satiric exposé on the special jargon critics use, partly as a matter of trade necessity and precision, partly by carelessness and imitation, and partly to sound as if they know what they’re talking about and better than you.

The article is about literary critics, but I must confess that as a film critic I winced more than once at a well-skewered foible found in my own reviews. Not that all the listed clichés are necessarily bad. Phrases like “darkly comic” or “emotional rollercoaster” may be clichés, but they’re also useful — we know what they mean, and what would be the point of digging through the thesaurus for some less familiar way of describing a quality we already have a good term for?

That said, I hereby vow to be very careful in the future about phrases like “vast, sprawling epic,” and never, ever again to write “But these are minor quibbles.” (Aren’t quibbles minor by definition?) And I must confess that even before discovering this article I was already uncomfortably aware of my reliance on phrases like “at its core” and “at its center” (though not combined with Payne’s phrase about “a deeply moral work”).

Take that, fellow critics!

I *Really* Wish I Had Seen This

disneypcThe following exchange took place on August 5 on Fox News between host Stewart Varney and Disney president Robert Iger. The conversation concerned Disney’s new Dream Desk computer for children:

IGER: It’s easy to set up, easy to use, compact, it doesn’t take much room, and most importantly it has what’s called ContentWatch built in.

VARNEY: Well, you know, I — exactly. I mean, in June you have “Gay Days” at your theme parks. You got any ‘Gay Days’ on the Mickey computer?

IGER: Well, this has built into it all kinds of protective devices that protects the kid, or the child from internet sites that a parent wouldn’t deem appropriate. Also, the fact —

VARNEY: Well, you don’t protect the kids from “Gay Days” at the theme parks, do you? Why do you have to protect them in the computer?

Fight the Power, Stu!

The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (2005)

SDG here. Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings tour de force turned out so brilliantly that one could almost forget how different it could have been. It’s entirely possible that a significant part of the reason the films are as true to the books as they are is due to enormous fan pressure online and elsewhere. (Here’s a link to an article I wrote about the issues and controversy before the release of the first film.)

Now that Walden Media is at work on The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, Narnia fans are understandably wary. For one thing, as well-loved as these books are both inside and outside the church, they don’t have nearly the huge following of the Lord of the Rings books. For another, the Christian themes in Lewis’s books are so much more blatant than those of Tolkien’s books that the risk of Hollywood subversion and the stakes in the event of such subversion are higher.

By the way, recent news from the set of The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe includes the recent casting of the four Pevensie children. So, if I need an excuse to be musing about this subject just now, here from the set (courtesy of the New Zealand Herald) are pictures of:

Nine-year-old Georgie Henley, from Yorkshire, as Lucy:

17-year-old William Moseley, from Gloucestershire, as Peter:

15-year-old Anna Popplewell and 12-year-old Skandar Keynes, both of London, as Susan and Edmund:

The big question, of course, is: Do the people in charge of this thing have any idea what they’re doing?

And the answer, so far, is: Hard to say.

On the encouraging side, the people at Walden Media are apparently Christians, and Lewis’s stepson Douglas Gresham, who is co-producing, seems committed to preserving Lewis’s vision. Plus, Walden Media produced Holes, a wonderful — and wonderfully faithful — adaptation of a delightful children’s book. (Of course they also produced the Jackie Chan parody of Around the World in 80 Days, but I choose to believe that doesn’t count as an adaptation at all.)

On the down side, director Andrew Adamson (Shrek, Shrek 2) at the very least hasn’t yet learned like Peter Jackson to talk the talk. Following massive interest by the Christian press and moviegoing public during the phenomenon of the first film, Jackson became trippingly familiar with variations on this theme:

“Of course Professor Tolkien was a very religious man, and his religious ideas did play a part in his novels, and while we have not set out to make a religious film, from the outset we were determined to honor Tolkien’s vision and not to put any of our own baggage into this film. So while we brought no religious intentions to this project, Tolkien’s beliefs did shape the story he told and some of that is evident in our films.”

This respectful and nuanced speech, which I read and heard in various versions from Jackson on a number of occasions, was reassuring to Tolkien’s Christian fans while at the same time not alarming non-Christian Tolkien lovers with worries that they were in for a ten-hour serial sermon.

When it comes to The Chronicles of Narnia, of course, Lewis’s Christian beliefs are even more emphatically important. Unfortunately, published remarks from Adamson so far don’t evince the same kind of respect for the integrity of Lewis’s vision or the same level of awareness of its religious dimension. Instead, Adamson has made such remarks as these:

“I don’t want to make the book as much as my memory of the book.”

and

“So I’ve really tried to make the story about a family which is disenfranchised and disempowered in World War II, that on entering Narnia, through their unity as a family become empowered at the end of the story. It’s really bringing the humanity of the characters into what is effectively a symbolic story.”

Other signs have also been mixed. Early reports indicated that the creature effects for Aslan, Tumnus, and others would be handled by the two companies who did the effects for The Lord of the Rings, Weta (which was responsible for most of the film effects) and RGB XYZ (which did the very best digital creature work in the final film, and was responsible for the oliphants looking so much better in The Return of the King than they did in The Two Towers).

But later reports indicated that in fact creature effects would be handled by a company called Rhythm & Hues, best known for the (hardly awe-inspiring) digital work on Daredevil, Scooby-Doo, The Cat in the Hat, and Garfield. Not encouraging.

Now, a friend of mine, who shall remain nameless but who works in the industry and is a Christian, assures me that the project is in good hands. Regarding Adamson’s off-putting comments, he cites PR concerns and the desire to avoid appearing as if they’re making a religious picture.

That’s fine, I guess. But somehow Peter Jackson managed to let religious fans know that their beloved author’s themes would be respected without coming across like Mel Gibson making The Passion of the Christ. From a PR perspective, there’s no reason why Adamson can’t learn to do the same — assuming he does know what he’s doing and does want to respect Lewis’s themes and intentions.

Walden Media, don’t let us down!

The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (2005)

SDG here. Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings tour de force turned out so brilliantly that one could almost forget how different it could have been. It’s entirely possible that a significant part of the reason the films are as true to the books as they are is due to enormous fan pressure online and elsewhere. (Here’s a link to an article I wrote about the issues and controversy before the release of the first film.)

Now that Walden Media is at work on The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, Narnia fans are understandably wary. For one thing, as well-loved as these books are both inside and outside the church, they don’t have nearly the huge following of the Lord of the Rings books. For another, the Christian themes in Lewis’s books are so much more blatant than those of Tolkien’s books that the risk of Hollywood subversion and the stakes in the event of such subversion are higher.

By the way, recent news from the set of The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe includes the recent casting of the four Pevensie children. So, if I need an excuse to be musing about this subject just now, here from the set (courtesy of the New Zealand Herald) are pictures of:

Nine-year-old Georgie Henley, from Yorkshire, as Lucy:

17-year-old William Moseley, from Gloucestershire, as Peter:

15-year-old Anna Popplewell and 12-year-old Skandar Keynes, both of London, as Susan and Edmund:

The big question, of course, is: Do the people in charge of this thing have any idea what they’re doing?

And the answer, so far, is: Hard to say.

On the encouraging side, the people at Walden Media are apparently Christians, and Lewis’s stepson Douglas Gresham, who is co-producing, seems committed to preserving Lewis’s vision. Plus, Walden Media produced Holes, a wonderful — and wonderfully faithful — adaptation of a delightful children’s book. (Of course they also produced the Jackie Chan parody of Around the World in 80 Days, but I choose to believe that doesn’t count as an adaptation at all.)

On the down side, director Andrew Adamson (Shrek, Shrek 2) at the very least hasn’t yet learned like Peter Jackson to talk the talk. Following massive interest by the Christian press and moviegoing public during the phenomenon of the first film, Jackson became trippingly familiar with variations on this theme:

“Of course Professor Tolkien was a very religious man, and his religious ideas did play a part in his novels, and while we have not set out to make a religious film, from the outset we were determined to honor Tolkien’s vision and not to put any of our own baggage into this film. So while we brought no religious intentions to this project, Tolkien’s beliefs did shape the story he told and some of that is evident in our films.”

This respectful and nuanced speech, which I read and heard in various versions from Jackson on a number of occasions, was reassuring to Tolkien’s Christian fans while at the same time not alarming non-Christian Tolkien lovers with worries that they were in for a ten-hour serial sermon.

When it comes to The Chronicles of Narnia, of course, Lewis’s Christian beliefs are even more emphatically important. Unfortunately, published remarks from Adamson so far don’t evince the same kind of respect for the integrity of Lewis’s vision or the same level of awareness of its religious dimension. Instead, Adamson has made such remarks as these:

“I don’t want to make the book as much as my memory of the book.”

and

“So I’ve really tried to make the story about a family which is disenfranchised and disempowered in World War II, that on entering Narnia, through their unity as a family become empowered at the end of the story. It’s really bringing the humanity of the characters into what is effectively a symbolic story.”

Other signs have also been mixed. Early reports indicated that the creature effects for Aslan, Tumnus, and others would be handled by the two companies who did the effects for The Lord of the Rings, Weta (which was responsible for most of the film effects) and RGB XYZ (which did the very best digital creature work in the final film, and was responsible for the oliphants looking so much better in The Return of the King than they did in The Two Towers).

But later reports indicated that in fact creature effects would be handled by a company called Rhythm & Hues, best known for the (hardly awe-inspiring) digital work on Daredevil, Scooby-Doo, The Cat in the Hat, and Garfield. Not encouraging.

Now, a friend of mine, who shall remain nameless but who works in the industry and is a Christian, assures me that the project is in good hands. Regarding Adamson’s off-putting comments, he cites PR concerns and the desire to avoid appearing as if they’re making a religious picture.

That’s fine, I guess. But somehow Peter Jackson managed to let religious fans know that their beloved author’s themes would be respected without coming across like Mel Gibson making The Passion of the Christ. From a PR perspective, there’s no reason why Adamson can’t learn to do the same — assuming he does know what he’s doing and does want to respect Lewis’s themes and intentions.

Walden Media, don’t let us down!

Question: What On Earth Is THIS???

What *IS* this creature?

Answer: NOBODY knows!

Yes, another one of “Nature’s Special Creatures” has been spotted–this time on the ocean floor!

The creature on the left is approximately a foot long and was photographed at 6,500 feet . . . down that is.

It was phographed during a mission to the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, which runs between Iceland and the Azores.

Attempts to bring the creature to the surface failed, meaning that it may be years before we get to examine another of these creatures in detail.

In the mean time, cryptozoologists rejoice!

GET THE STORY