News Clips: February 2007 Archives

Here is an interesting article about Christians digging to find Sodom.* In a nutshell, a Christian college professor, Dr. Steven Collins (who has a doctorate in biblical studies), wants to find Sodom to prove the Bible is true. Also, he believes the place will one day make "a great tourist destination with a great big sign, 'Welcome to Sodom,' perhaps in pink neon." Gotcha. He charges people $5,000 to come help dig, most of whom are fellow Evangelicals also eager to prove the Bible literally true.

According to the article, "Mr. Collins is dean of the College of Archaeology and Biblical History at Trinity Southwest University, a small evangelical academy in Albuquerque." The article mentions a doctorate in biblical studies but not in archaeology, and unfortunately their website is broken so I can't check.

They are focusing on Jordan's Tall el-Hammam, at the northern end of the Dead Sea. Most of the finds so far have been from the virst millennium B.C., so they have a ways to go (to 3500 B.C.).

I have to say this reinforces a lot of notions people have about Christians and bad science. They are not doing this in a way that anyone is going to take seriously. I mean, in science you don't just set out on an expedition in order to prove a preconceived point, as admirable as it may be. I would respect him more if he simply said he was trying to find Sodom, a noble enough goal in its own right. That presupposes the truth of the bible on this point. (But I suppose he has to have line to hook people into doing this. "Oh, you'll be proving the Bible is true if you join me.") He's using non-professionals to do the work. I shudder to think that priceless antiquities are being entrusted to untrained (or barely trained) lay people who are doing this for their vacation.

It's always difficult when you have Christians working in fields that tend to be hostile to one's faith. I think it's important for us as Christians to gain legitimacy in our fields and establish our bona fides to non-Christians in the field. I.e., we can't just have this "Christian archaeology" that is isolated from mainstream archaeology. We have to have legitimacy in the eyes of the world, number one, otherwise we'll look like fools. Number two, we'll lose the knowledge gained by others, and end up with a poor quality substitute for what the mainstream field has to offer. Then we really will be fools. Of course, if the mainstream field doesn't accept our faith (i.e. it's hard for a young-earth creationist to establish bona fides in the field of paleontology) we have a problem (though not an insurmountable one, I heard about a young-earth creationist and paleontologist who was well respected in his field).

Well, I hope he finds it, without doing too much damage.

*Will expire around 3/5.

Here is a good article about how the debate over homosexuality is dividing churches just like slavery did. Mostly it discusses the Episcopal church.

Here is an interesting idea: run ads for the sacrament of confession. The article explores why confessions have fallen off over the years.

Some in the Christian right can't figure out who to support in 2008. This should come as no surprise to anyone who has looked at the expected candidates.

There is a store in Seattle that caters to pampered dogs, particularly of the female variety. You can guess what term they used to grace their sign. Lots of people are upset about it (even self-avowed liberal ones), and it's causing quite a stir. The owners are unabashed, arguing that they are reclaiming the term for its technical sense, though to be sure, they aren't really using it in its full technical sense of a female dog in heat. While I support using words like this when technically appropriate — after all, "hell" appears in the Apostle's Creed — I'd argue they are mostly be provocative which isn't legitimate in my mind.

Somehow I don't think they are going to get it. Basically they are seeking an endorsement, as no approval, of course, is required.

Hate to tell them, the market has dried up considerably.

Ash Wednesday Mass was disrupted by three CD players that played pornographic messages and foul language. The bomb squad blew up two of them but they saved the third for evidence. I dunno; shouldn't you either blow up all of them or none of them? If one could be a bomb, any of them could be a bomb, hence it makes no sense to blow up one or two but not all.

Anyway, this has got to take the cake for desecration, if I can call it that. Harassment against believers. I hope they catch the guys.

I don't really want to take delight in this but it is good to see, after how many years?, SNAP recognizing that, hey, guess, what, sexual abuse is not confined to Catholic priests, which is pretty much what you'd think if you watched all the media coverage. Let's just say it's nice to see justice done.

It should be interesting to see SNAP and the Baptists come to an agreement when the Baptist structure makes enforcement all but impossible.

Interestingly, Cardinal Pell of Australia as weighed in, rather skeptically, on global warming, making some interesting claims.

I'm not sure what to think of global warming myself. In my Evangelical days, I would have considered it just another liberal conspiracy. I see less reason to dispute it today, especially given what we are told is a scientific consensus. I do believe that propaganda such as An Inconvenient Truth is overly alarmist. You can usually discount the doomsayers. Nevertheless there is solid evidence of glaciers melting.

Pell claims global temperatures have not risen between 1998 and 2005, which seems to contradict everything I've heard. I wonder where the difference comes from.

One aspect that concerns me is that Pell is not presenting a balanced view, in my judgment — he comes down global warming advocates without so much as acknowledging that concern about the environment is a worthy thing. Typically, when bishops criticize a position, they take pains to praise what is good in it. He does say "I would be surprised if industrial pollution and carbon emissions had no ill-effects at all" but that's a bit weak.

Still, his evidence is worth considering, and his warnings about extreme elements are well taken. He has some quite legitimate points about the excesses of global warming advocates (if I can refer to them as such).

This is a funny story: McDonald's Filet-O-Fish was invented to lure Catholics into McDonald's on Fridays. Too funny.

When donkeys fly

The Wall Street Journal's Houses of Worship column had a gratifying story today.* It noted, with tacit disapproval, that Christian-bashing (as exemplified by the former bloggers driven out of the Edwards campaign) has reached epidemic proportions among the secular Left, with Christians almost being considered equal to (or worse than) Al Qaida by some, or simply dangerously radical zealots by others. There is lots of hand-wringing about "theocracy". And lots of ugly language and F-words. All this while Democratic candidates hone their insincerity and start showing up looking pious at churches (even Clinton, yeesh), trying to cultivate the religious vote.

The article concludes, "Sophisticates and secularists have always titillated themselves by despising the Bible Belt. But professional Christian-bashers have never been as 'embedded' in the liberal mainstream as they are today. And therein lies a problem for Democrats. More Amanda Marcottes are not what the party needs as it scrambles to re-establish its religious bona fides with wary red-staters. No wonder so many Democratic candidates are in church. Now they really have something to pray about."

To be honest I don't know what disgusts me more: Frothing-at-the-mouth liberal secularists showing bitter and ugly contempt for religion, or (is there a stronger word than "insincere"? Deceiful?) politicians who try to make you believe they are pious around election day.

*Will only be valid until around 2/22 or so.

Free will, the idea that our actions are not predetermined but rather we are free moral agents, is being hotly debated by scientists today. Most assert it is an illusion, but not every physicist agrees.

Hooray!

The two anti-Catholic bloggers won't be fired by the Edwards campaign. Edwards averred that he was "personally offended" and laid down the law that none of that sort of thing would be tolerated in the campaign, and like scolded dogs the two put their heads down and whimpered obediently. Obviously he was offended at the language but not at the attitude. Suppose they said a lot of ugly racist things about blacks? Would Edwards profess to be "personally offended" but keep them on the team as long as they didn't say those things in the campaign? And they weren't even drunk.

News of the Weird has some especially good pieces recently. You'll have to hunt for some of them, but here is a summary:

• It took 46 minutes for the top businessmen in Canada to earn the average yearly salary. (lead story)
  
• Wall Street bonuses were so excessive there is a shortage of obscenely-priced cars and real estate in New York. (lead story)
  
• A parasite carried by cats makes women more promiscuous. (fourth story)
  
• The CEO of Craigslist has confounded Wall Street analysts by refusing of raise more money than is needed to cover his expenses. (seventh story)

An AP article dripping with self-righteousness warns in alarm that there are doctors who neither give treatment (or discuss treatment) they are morally opposed to nor refer patients for that treatment. This, according to the article, "is not the right thing to do."

Excuse me, but the right thing for doctors to do is to follow their conscience and avoid what they think is ethically problematic. This is just another case of health care workers being forced to do things they are morally opposed to. I think there is a special place in Hell for people who attempt coerce others into doing what they are morally opposed to. I am going to bet that one day it will be impossible for a truly Catholic hospital to operate. The only ones who will will be those who do violence to Catholic moral teachings.

Grrr!

You may have heard about how actors and actresses (set designers too) are experiencing a crisis with HDTV, which reveals imperfections which until now have been hidden. Well guess who has been hit hardest by this? Yep, pornographers (especially sensitive readers, and readers under 18 assuming I have any, may wish to skip this link). Trying to keep up the illusion demanded by their audience has proven difficult for them. Post-production tools help, though undoubtedly they are tedious. Will some of them realize it is just ridiculous to feed viewer's insatiable appetite for perfection?

The article has an interesting aside. As you may know there are two HD disc formats duking it out, and the competition is cutthroat. Sony (Blu-Ray) has made the very noble and praiseworthy decision not to cooperate with adult material publishers. The publishers, in turn, are fond of pointing out that they have a history of advancing technology. For example, they drove the VHS/VCR industry in its infancy. They were also web pioneers. Pornographers could tip the scales between Blu-Ray and HD-DVD, but Sony has opted to turn them away. Kudos to them. Let's support them and encourage them.

A scientific researcher caused an uproar by his writings on his study of homosexual rams. His goal is to understand the causes behind ovine homosexuality, with the aim of helping breeders. Much of what has been circulating about him is not true (they cite an error in a London Times article). His opponents, for example, thought he was going to move into research involving changing the orientation of humans in the womb. This was based on his unctuous comments on how his research could be applied to humans. By "unctuous" I am referring to his admission that he wrote them in such a way as to improve his odds of winning a grant; it sounded to me like the scientific equivalent of marketing, where you have to play to certain audiences and kinda sorta imply things you aren't necessarily serious about in order to get what you want. Apparently his copy didn't play well to other audiences.

But, as the article points out, this is what happens when the media get involved in a hot topic: sometimes the truth suffers. Or, as they put it, "The story of the gay sheep became a textbook example of the distortion and vituperation that can result when science meets the global news cycle."

There is a controversy surrounding some aides just hired into the John Edwards campaign. It seems they have a history of profane anti-Catholicism. Not surprisingly Bill Donohue of the Catholic League has his knickers in a knot. Maybe he's got a point this time; I just got the following from the Family Research Council:

Presidential hopeful and former senator John Edwards has given new meaning to faith outreach with his latest hires. The newest members of the Edwards team have a long--and unfortunately vulgar--anti-Catholic history. As recent as last December, Amanda Marcotte, Edwards' new Blogmaster, and Melissa McEwan, the Netroots Coordinator, posted scathing personal blogs, littered with profanity and barbs about the Pope too obscene to reprint. Here are some of the tamer examples: To social conservatives, who McEwan calls the "wingnut Christofascist base," she writes, "What don't you lousy [expletive] understand about keeping your noses out of our britches, our bed and our families?" Marcotte writes, "The Pope's gotta tell women who give birth to stillborns that their babies are cast into Satan's maw. . . . The Catholic Church is not about to let something like compassion for girls get in the way of using the state as an instrument to force women to bear more tithing Catholics." The pages and pages of filthy name-calling include comparisons to Christ that would make even the most hardened secularist blush. This should alarm a man running for President, particularly one who told NBC's Tim Russert last Sunday that he "grew up in a Southern Baptist church [and] was baptized in a Southern Baptist church," and who claims that religion is "just part of who [he is]." At least two Catholic groups, Fidelis and the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, have called on Edwards to fire the bigoted bloggers. Action by the Edwards campaign may be imminent.

A minister in Florida, Jose Luis de Jesus Miranda, is making a startling claim. He says that Jesus Christ returned and "integrated" with him, and now he has a congregation that calls him Lord. He lives a lavish lifestyle, and some say he commands a cult-like control over his followers. He's made various contradictory claims about himself over the years (including, at one point, claiming to be the anti-Christ, and tattooing 666 on his body), but people still follow him.

Very strange. It's amazing what people will do.

Here is an interesting human interest story, so to speak. There are some islands off of Africa where there is a culture where women choose the men to marry, and the men cannot refuse. In one of the last remaining matriarchical societies, marriage works like this: A woman chooses a man she likes. She cooks him a ritual dinner, perhaps an aphrodesiac. She prepares the plate, finds her beloved, and sets the plate in front of him. He eats, realizing his fate is sealed. To refuse would dishonor his family. When she builds him a house (hey at least he gets that break), the marriage is considered a done deal.

I gotta admit, it makes things easier for the men.

A new, green employee went overboard and censored every reference to God in the movie The Queen, including legitimate ones, in a version for airplane distribution.

A slightly less censored version is being distributed in its place.

The editor escaped the ax.

Thank goodness the movie wasn't "Oh, God!".