public enemies: not so great a film

I watched Public Enemies last night, mostly because I wanted to see some of Chicago. The film was shot while I was still there. A co-worker of mine saw Christian Bale on the street. But you might not have known Bale was in this movie from the trailers--and I imagine that is because some of Bale's performance is atrocious. It does get better near the end but his accent is distracting. But, I get ahead of myself.

From the beginning the film makes good use of its wide screen--it's in the widest format film comes in. There's the beautiful shot in the trailer of Depp vaulting over a bank desk with a machine gun, perfectly framed by the shot. Very nice. I also think the audio in the film will get nominated for an Oscar. Most of the gunfights were nearly silent except for the gunfire which came through crystal clear. You could hear all the different types of guns distinctly and even the subtle break of plaster and wood. The last gunfight in the woods is particularly masterful.

The music, however, was just confused throughout. One of the first musical bits was a Sacred Harp hymn--loud, raw and erie. Then there was a (steel?) guitar rockabilly segment during a back robbery. I thought, ok, there are some interesting choices going on here. But then it turned into standard orchestral music and a properly period lounge tune.

Overall, I was disappointed with the film. Perhaps because I went expecting it to aim for Oscar glory and it really was a very plain film. It wasn't action-packed, it wasn't high drama, it wasn't even funny in places. The acting was under played and the scenery was fairly simple. It was so strikingly plain that I wonder if it wasn't part of the director's intention--as if to say, 'The 1930s gangster scene was pretty boring, with plain Midwestern folk, and small town life and not much going on.' I think it will be compared to The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. That movie delved deep into celebrity worship in our culture, poverty and manipulation, and it had these haunting overtones, as well as brilliant acting from Pitt and Casey Affleck. Public Enemies was perhaps more accurate to history but seemed to lack the mythos audiences will undoubtedly expect.

this is wonderfully addictive reading

catching up on 700+ blog posts: science, tech, games

+ So we've invented a robot that can live off flesh, and another that can chew, and another that can navigate like a person... Does anyone else see where this is going? Fleshing eating robots with teeth that can chase us around. What are we thinking!?! Now we just need to teach them how to swarm.

+ Pacifism in Video Games.

+ Murder in Video Games. Quote:

At the moment, we rationalize our simulated violence with statements like: "It's just a game. It's not real. The people don't suffer." All this is true (at the moment); but as the experience of virtual murder becomes ever more realistic, I believe that we as players will begin to suffer emotionally every time we cause realistic suffering to any virtual person, just as if we caused suffering to real living creatures.

+ That's telekinesis, Kyle.

+ "It is absurd to expect to get more from something than you think it is possible to get from anything. Especially if it’s instant coffee. Still, I don’t think it is absurd to want coffee that would be better than life itself could possibly be. That would be a damn fine cup of coffee." [CT]

+ Virtue in Video Games. I enjoy Emily Short's blog and share her dislike of grinding, which is probably what has turned me off of computer games. I especially enjoyed her recent post on the good/evil paths in Fable II. What they need is an ethicist on staff. I wonder what a game would be like that was based on a utilitarian ethic or games that had consequentalist vs. non-consequentialist ethical systems.

religion is not failed science

I take issue with Sean Carroll's post Science and Religion are Not Compatible.

The first move that atheists often make is to assume that religion is attempting to do what science wants to do. Even when Carroll is trying to show that they are not a priori incompatible he uses this analogy:

"An airplane is different from a car, and indeed if you want to get from Los Angeles to San Francisco you would take either an airplane or a car, not both at once."

He suggests that there could be a universe where science and religion were compatable--starting and ending in the same place. Unfortunately, Caroll says, religion doesn't end in the same place, so they aren't compatible in our universe. The assumption is that science and religion are just two routes to the same goal: reliable theories about the world, knowledge, coherent models of the natural world, explanations of strange phenomena... however you want to phrase that goal.

Carroll later writes:

"The favored method of those who would claim that science and religion are compatible — really, the only method available — is to twist the definition of either 'science' or 'religion' well out of the form in which most people would recognize it. Often both."

But then Carroll chooses to twist the definition of religion into a kind of science!:

"Scientifically speaking, the existence of God is an untenable hypothesis. It’s not well-defined, it’s completely unnecessary to fit the data, and it adds unhelpful layers of complexity without any corresponding increase in understanding."

It's very easy to make the case that religion is bad science. Just like playing tennis is a bad soccer, or that playing poker is a terrible strategy for winning at Go Fish. What is the benefit of saying that a sermon couldn't hold up for 5 minutes at a biology conference? None, unless you think that religion is an old, primitive form of science. If your religious opponent accepts that premise, then it's game over.

Of course, there are lots of examples of religion being a primitive form of science, the kinds of superstition that seemed to be verified by experience, say, a dancing ritual to change the weather--and the failure of crops being due to impiety toward the gods, etc..

It is worth noting however that many of these ideas aren't stupid. Some have suggested that elaborate rituals before a hunt would have helped focus the mind on success and increased the teamwork skills of the tribe. In short, it did what it was intended to do. If we look at Rene Girard's scapegoat theory, we may see that sacrifice rituals gave off psychological benefits--eliminating community aggression--in a way that was very powerful. When sacrifices occurred they had actual, felt psychological pay off in a community.

This form of religion is obviously a lot like science. Observe the world, look for patterns, see what works, try to 'divine' answers to mysteries, pass on the superstitions about what concoction is best for a snake bite, what pattern of actions leads to the highest birthrate. Naturally, modern science developed out of these kinds of habits: astrology became astronomy, alchemy became chemistry, numerology became mathematics, various theories about spirits/souls/humours became modern physics, biology. So it goes without saying, the witch doctor ought to become the medical doctor because he is really within the same trajectory--identify the problems/mysteries, experiment, go with the most effective results.

Some of the major modern religions however--Judaism, Christianity, Islam--aren't this kind of religion. Early Christians were considered atheists because they didn't do the whole observe/experiment/repeat process. These religions did not develop out of a need for better crop production. They are based on recieved revelatory experience.

Now, there remains a lot of the aforementioned superstition in all religious traditions. I visited Turkey once and depending on the region the Muslims had various folk spirituality and occult practices tied up in their Islam. (I think the same is true for Catholics in Mexico.) People still can get hyped up about coincidences, unexplained events, etc.. But my impression is that at core these 'revealed' religions don't require trust in those kinds of 'signs' and often have a difficult relationship with them (Jesus gets mad at people looking for signs, Jews outlaw divination but use lot casting in temple worship, etc..)

If someone recites a creed "I believe in God the Father, Creator of Heaven and Earth...I believe in Jesus Christ...I believe in the Holy Spirit..." that isn't a hypothesis, a theory. We aren't postulating--and it's dishonest to assume that it is. Why then don't we reject the Pledge of Allegiance because it lacks 'explanatory power'?

Atheists are prone to group all religions into the same 'failed God hypothesis' but I think there is a significant difference between certain religions that need the divine or spiritual for explanatory power and others that don't assume God as a way to explain things. It wasn't like someone sat down and said, "Why is the world here? Why is nature like this? Oh, maybe 'Jesus is the Messiah.'" I think Christians way too often take that bait, assuming that God was realized as a way to make sense of the world.

All that said, I think there are lots of other fruitful routes for the atheist--questions about revelation and authority, for example. But the 'failed science' argument for some religious traditions is disingenuous, confused and a rhetorical false start.

seriously, is this something that we're going to regret later on?

"fire" - lou pinella as bukowski poem

(story)

      fire
      for lou pinella


      I still have fire
      the amazing thing
      is when I was younger
      and I showed it more
      then I'd be criticized
      at times

      "this guy
      is showing too much
      fire"

      I understand this business

      I've been in it a long time

      and the bottom line is
      you have to win

      it doesn't matter if you have
      fire
      no fire
      passion
      no passion
      stupidity
      smartness

      all of these things
      don't
      even come into
      the equation

      what comes into it
      for the fans
      for the people watching
      is you either

      win
      or
      you lose

      it's a simple thing
      I'm doing the best I can
      that's all I can do

      last year
      we won 97 GAMES
      and I
      was the manager
      of the year
      in the NATIONAL LEAGUE

      and all
      of a sudden
      this year
      I don't
      have any
      FIRE?

      I don't buy that at all

postcard collage

In Fall 2007 I took an internship with a local arts magazine. There was a lot of mail and phone calls and networking to do. As a final project I used postcards to sum up my time working there. I found these scans buried in a folder on my desktop.

omaha, obama, bilbo, twits and transparency

+ Liberty University allows Democratic clubs again, and the Southern Baptist Convention is not totally against the idea of Obama. And Focus on the Family's new president praises Obama. ("What we want to see is more families like Barack Obama's.")

+ "Local residents joke about the real estate market in Omaha. 'We didn't get invited to the party,' they say, 'and we don't have a hangover.' The proof: Prices slipped less than 1% in Nebraska's biggest city last year, compared with an 18% drop for the U.S." (story)

+ I've been very curious about Obama's emphasis on government transparency, mostly because no one else was bringing it up. But this interview was very enlightening about the plan to put all public government records online. I think that getting all this government data truly available to the public is going to be one of the major legacies of this administration.

+ "Creator Jack Dorsey was shocked and saddened this week after learning that his social networking device, Twitter, was being used to disseminate pertinent and timely information during the recent civil unrest in Iran. 'Twitter was intended to be a way for vacant, self-absorbed egotists to share their most banal and idiotic thoughts with anyone pathetic enough to read them,' said a visibly confused Dorsey" (story)

+ Iran's state television is playing a Lord of the Rings marathon in order to keep protesters indoors. As one Slashdot user writes: "Perhaps this was not the best choice in films if you want your people not to believe that 'even the smallest person can change the course of the future.'"

job & the job search: what is a job for?

No, not that Job (Gob)...

It has been more fitting than I first realized to read the book of Job while on the job hunt. Not only have I been pretty bummed, but I've had to spend a lot of time waiting--and it does seem very uncertain what the right 'wisdom' is to follow.

The book of Job is a beautiful, beautiful work of poetry. It is a debate within a wisdom tradition but at the same time it's this immense mural of the universe--this endless landscape of oceans and mountains and stars and snow and animals and all of time.

This morning I read Chapter 29, which is an elegant description of 'the righteous man'--which includes his nobility and his charity. Job misses the sweet days when he had power, enough power to help others. Also notice all the imagery weaved in: Job is 'eyes' and 'feet,' he breaks the 'fangs' of evildoers, he lives his 'nest,' he has 'roots' like a tree, his words were like 'rain.'

The final verse of the chapter is striking because of the parallelism that is the formal system in biblical poetry. The second line echoes the first line with a twist, usually an increased focused or intensification of an image. If the first line's got a tree image, the second probably will, too. This parallel however places 'king among troops' next to 'one who comforts mourners.' What does this suggest? Surely it takes a picture of a mighty ruler surrounded by an army and turns it on its head: the army surrounding him are the poor, the foolish, those who need a smile (see the verses preceding), a good word, a blessing. What a powerful portrait of the Good Man!

Job again took up his discourse and said:

O that I were as in the months of old,
          As in the days when God watched over me;
When his lamp shone over my head,
          And by his light I walked through darkness;
When I was in my prime,
          When the friendship of God was upon my tent;
When the Almighty was still with me,
          When my children were around me;
When my steps were washed with milk,
          And the rocks poured out for me streams of oil!

When I went out to the gate of the city,
          When I took my seat in the square,
The young men saw me and withdrew,
          And the aged rose up and stood;
The nobles refrained from talking,
          And laid their hands on their mouths;
The voices of princes were hushed,
          And their tongues stuck to the roof of their mouths.

When the ear heard, it commended me,
          And when the eye saw, it approved;
Because I delivered the poor who cried,
          And the orphan who had no helper.
The blessing of the wretched came upon me,
          And I caused the widow's heart to sing for joy.
...
I was eyes to the blind,
          and feet to the lame.
I was a father to the needy,
          And I championed the cause of the stranger.
I broke the fangs of the unrighteous,
          And made them drop their prey from their teeth.

Then I thought, 'I shall die in my nest,
          And I shall multiply my days like the phoenix;
My roots spread out to the waters,
          With the dew all night on my branches;
My glory was fresh with me,
          And my bow ever new in my hand.'*

They listened to me, and waited,
          And kept silence for my counsel.
After I spoke they did not speak again,
          And my word dropped upon them like dew.
They waited for me as for the rain;
          They opened their mouths as for the spring rain.
I smiled on them when they had no confidence;
          And the light of my countenance they did not extinguish.
I chose their way, and sat as chief,
          And I lived like a king among his troops,
Like one who comforts mourners.

*The study note suggests this is a common image of virility.

must-see videos

The Omo People

The Recent LRO/LCROSS Launch

More info on the mission

"We feel lost, existentially guilty, and often fragile and powerless. A lot of guilt is not about this or that particular sin; it's really a guilt about not having lived yet. We call that essential or primal guilt. It's deeper than guilt for an offense we can name. It feels like shame, not about anything in particular, but about who we are and who we aren't. ...There's an existential terror about losing what you've never found. Something in my says, "I haven't done 'it' yet." I haven't experienced the stream of life yet. I haven't touched the real, the good, the true, and the beautiful - which is, of course, what we were created for."

- Richard Rohr, Everything Belongs

blog-podge: we are a living thing surprised at once

from Jake T

+ IRAN: Recently posted by several friends on Facebook:

If anyone is on twitter, set your location to Tehran and your time zone to GMT +3.30. "Security" forces are hunting for people blogging about the current abuses of pro-democracy protesters using location/timezone searches. The more people at this location, the more of a logjam it creates for forces trying to shut Iranians' access to the internet down. Please cut & paste & pass it on

+ Art Institute Laying Off 22

+ Spaceport America, the world's first commercial spaceport, breaks ground in NM.

+ Why are scientists today so boring? & DIY garage biologists

+ President Obama can cook Pakistani cuisine and reads Urdu poetry...

+ ...and he's a total nerd, argues John Hodgman. (Very funny speech!)

+ "I found my son's foreskin at tax time."

+ Brian McLaren continues the grand tradition of dichotomous, oppositional thinking. :)

wright & pagels & what god laid on my heart

I recently finished reading N. T. Wright's The Last Word (2005), his thin monograph on Biblical authority. I'm almost finished reading Elaine Pagel's Beyond Belief (2003), her short work--a follow up to The Gnostic Gospels--in which she lays out a narrative of the development of orthodoxy against the gnostic Christians.

Wright: When you're a 1st Century Jewish Hammer, Everything is a 1st Century Jewish Nail

For Wright, every theological mistake is a historical mistake. If we get it wrong it is because we have not properly understood the original 1st Century Jewish context of Jesus. The church began to 'get it wrong' as soon as Christianity became primarily a Greek philosopher's religion. They didn't understand the original Jewish context, so they began to misread all of Scripture. This was compounded over space (to Europe) and time (into the Middle Ages) to the point that monks were making up crazy allegorical readings that, to Wright's mind, are silly. His advice: Bishops, priests and lay folk all need a good education in Biblical context.

Wright's view of the church has little place for spirituality, other than the practical application of Scripture. When he brings up the idea of the role of experience in interpretation, he dismisses it. Experience is exactly the thing we can't trust--that's why we need the authority of Scripture!

Pagels: Gno God, Gno Peace.

Pagels hangs the historical reason for this view on Irenaeus, a 2nd Century bishop, who vigorously attacked any form of Christianity that placed emphasis on having experiences, on spiritual mysticism, 'innovative' spiritual practices, etc.. For Irenaeus, according to Pagels, there was nothing else to the Christian life but believing in Jesus Christ as Lord. There is no second stage, no deeper secret meaning. The idea that one might gain any knowledge through personal spiritual experience was to Irenaeus the work of Satan.

Irenaeus ordered for all Gospels and other texts that supported this idea to be destroyed. Unfortunately, many of the churches that preached this heresy were using Paul, the Gospels, and the OT for their teaching--books that Irenaeus wanted to keep. So he had to make sure not only that Christians were reading the right books but that they were reading them rightly. What Pagels emphasizes is that Irenaeus was not a traditionalist fighting radicals but that he was trying to create a unified tradition in the first place--if you are the first traditionalist, you aren't traditional, you're just one viewpoint among others. It was Irenaeus who made the power moves, destroying the texts and interpretations of his objectors, which made his view the tradition.

Tradition & Experience: The Odd Couple

The threat of spiritual knowledge/revelation/experience has always been around in Christian tradition. Apostle Paul, who had his own mystical experiences, tried to keep some law & order in church services that could often get out of hand. Contemplative mysticism seemed to grow naturally out of monastic life but the heresy of Quietism in the 17th Century silenced that practice until Thomas Merton in the 20th Century revived it. Among Puritans antinomianism--the idea that one could get authoritative knowledge from God directly--remained a threat and continued through American history in Quakerism, great revivals, Mormonism and pentecostal-charismatic movements today.

Phyllis Tickle in her book The Great Emergence suggests that contemporary evangelicalism is a merger between Biblical authority and Charismatic spirituality, and therefore contains this same tension. I've recently been working through Henry Blackaby's Experience God--which also reiterates this evangelical position: Never trust your experience. But then a significant point of the book (obvious from the title) is that in a proper relationship with God he will tell you things about himself and about what is going to happen in the future and what he wants you to do. Your job is to follow the orders you recieve directly from God. The guidelines are that God will never tell you to do anything in contradiction to Scripture.

When I Felt The Presence of God

My church service growing up was 2 things: Praise & Worship (in which we were called to close our eyes, raise our hands, give our hearts up to God and repeat simple choruses into a trance-like state) and Biblical Preaching (in which the pastor made an impassioned appeal for us to listen to the Word of God and to Obey It in our lives).

P&W carried a kind of authority to it: one could 'feel the Presence of God' in the room. If you could get into it or not get into it, that was evidence of the Spirit's work in your life. I remember one of my friends talking about how when she lifted up her hands to God she could feel God pressing back. I personally had experiences in which I felt a light tingling sensation over my head and sometimes sweeping over my body, a lightness in my chest. A Catholic would perhaps call these 'consolations' -- and they were, in fact, personal evidence for me at the time that God was present, loved us, was real.

God could also 'lay things on our heart' -- which was usually needing to ask for forgiveness from someone, renouncing some kind of private sin, feeling a call to 'the ministry' or just to be more serious about our quiet time, witnessing to others, obeying our parents. All of these things lay within the boundaries of the Bible--there was nothing that we felt that couldn't be 'backed up' with Scripture.

However, there was the Pentecostal church across the street--which, in our minds, took the Praise & Worship thing too far, speaking in tongues, prophesying, healing people. You know, the stuff in the Bible. What surprised me about reading Pagels is that she describes the Gnostics as calling for a Second Baptism, which is exactly what some taught at the Pentecostal church! We believed that this made second-class Christians and therefore divided the church, exactly what Irenaeus argued! But, for the most part, we two churches were friends and the pastors of both seemed to get along with each other all right.

Conclusions, or Further Thoughts

My experience has been that both these routes of authority have been challenged by the authority of reason/science, the endless barage of cross-examination that is the modern mind.

As for being 'biblical' my religious development took a sharp turn when I began learning about the Christian Worldview, a perspective in which Christianity was lined up with all the major ideologies and compared to them as an ideology. The questions quickly became, "What is the Christian (Biblical) perspective on science, politics, culture?" While this propelled me into college (and toward a degree in Philosophy) it ultimately left me feeling hollow inside. It occurred to me that I really didn't need to even be a Christian in order to do the 'Christian thinker' thing; it was simply a matter of setting ideas together and making sure everything was coherent, concluding in tidy practical action points. Here is the actual chart I was shown (now they've added Islam which is weirdly similar to Christianity).

Experiential faith also seemed to weaken under skepticism. No, I had to conclude, Satan was not in the sound system. And, yes, those weekend retreats and summer camps had a large helping of hormones, emotional energy and caffeine that was not entirely Spirit-driven. And those who couldn't 'work up' a passion for Jesus and evangelism shouldn't have been convinced that there was something inherently wrong about their personality, disposition (like being shy or introverted).

So, still under the sway of some rationalism but needing something more heartfelt than ideological thinking, I've come to a practice like Centering Prayer. What I appreciate about CP is that even all spiritual experiences are surrendered, the Way of Unknowing. It is not very different than the attitude of Praise & Worship, an offering of one's heart to God in simplicity and love. But the practicioners of CP have no time to talk about visions or feelings or consolations. Perhaps it's from God, perhaps it's from my own psychology, who knows? But we let it go.

Eucharist and Centering Prayer have become my Things To Do When Doubting. I am often skeptical of many religious things, often I do not know what to think or believe. Sometimes I think the skeptical rationalist in my head is keeping me sane and sensible, sometimes I think it's the echoes of hell. Oh, well. It's likely never going away but I can sit here. I can take what's given to me. Wait. Wait. Keep watch. Stay alert. Always be ready for an arrival. Perhaps my faith is this: I'm not going anywhere. I'll sit and wait for God to move, a long wait in the silence. Calling out, Here am I.

Then Job answered:
Today also my complaint is bitter;
his hand is heavy despite my groaning.
Oh, that I knew where I might find him,
That I might come even to his dwelling!
...
If I go forward, he is not there;
or backward, I cannot perceive him;
on the left he hides, and I cannot behold him;
I turn to the right, but I cannot see him.
But he knows the way that I take;
when he has tested me, I shall come out like gold.
...
But he stands alone and who can dissuade him?
What he desires, that he does.
For he will complete what he appoints for me;
and many such things are in his mind.
...
If only I could vanish in darkness,
and thick darkness would cover my face!

regina spektor is jewish, likely practicing

Check out Regina Spektor's new album Far--a free listen to the entire album via NPR. (My favorite song is "Human of the Year" (around 21:25 -- definitely buying this album!))

Since her newest single is Laughing With [God] and her last one was Samson, I was curious about her religious faith. Wikianswers says she's Jewish (likely practicing).

Also, she has some of the best music videos... I'll have to find out who the people are behind them...

Laughing With

I love reading Chicagoist's weather report each day: Soulful, Charming, Saturnine, Alleged...