Demented: "My first abortion party"

My First Abortion Party
By Byard Duncan, AlterNet
Posted on July 8, 2009, Printed on July 9, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/141140/

"Have you guys heard the news?" Maggie (name changed) unwrapped the scarf from around her neck and patted her flat belly. "Preggers." It was around 30 degrees outside, and her cheeks were splashed pink from the Indiana wind.

She had discovered earlier that week, after missing a period and taking the test. "I kind of knew already. My boobs and my lower back have been killing me for a while." She shrugged.

My girlfriend Ali and I exchanged a surprised look. Our forks, dotted with pasta sauce, dangled identically, flaccidly, in our hands. She was quicker than me to gain her composure, and turned to address her best friend.

"What are you going to do?" Unnecessary question, really -- a conversational life vest, used when you’re sputtering for something to say. We knew the answer. Maggie, a 22-year-old college senior with no intention of bringing a child into the world yet, was going to have an abortion. She told us that she had already made up her mind; she had even determined the time, date and location. A better question might have been, "How are you going to pay for it?"

She answered that one before we had a chance to ask. "We’re having a party Friday to raise money," Maggie said. "You guys are obviously invited."

An abortion party. For the price of whatever we were willing to donate, she explained, we could partake of baked goods, beer and dancing. It was going to start at 10 p.m. at Maggie’s.

The Facebook invite came a day later, and it was settled. Ali and I were going to scrape together what donation money we could and join in the festivities.

Before continuing, I should make it clear that I’m no stranger to bizarre, pregnancy-related parties. My junior year of college, I attended a "Welcoming the Baby Kegger" designed to provide love, support and slurred confessions to a friend nearing her delivery date (she drank grape juice). Though I had initially been skeptical, I left this soirée du bébé pleasantly surprised. Everyone had brought gifts, toys, wine and food, which they piled atop a table in her living room. The music was low, and the conversation was great -- an all-around classy affair. I imagined the abortion party might be similar to this: a way to help out a friend who’s made a difficult decision. I was both right and wrong.

Ali and I arrived around 11, only half aware of the irony of being "late" to an abortion party. Walking in, we were bludgeoned with a blast of hot air, followed by the tangy stink of dance floor revelry. Someone had taken a red bed sheet and hung it below a light fixture to resemble a giant womb. Every so often, a dancer’s head or arm or dreadlock would brush against one of its smooth folds, creating a rippling effect. "Let’s Go Crazy" by Prince was playing.

As Ali went off to find Maggie, I sat down and struck up a conversation with Andrew (name changed), the three-year-old son of one of the partygoers. When Andrew and I first met months before, I learned that he’s a very precocious boy when it comes to animals and plants. His father has spent a lot of time teaching him about birdcalls and edible nuts, and he’s always spouting out little nuggets of useful knowledge. Tonight, he had the remnants of some apple-flavored dessert smeared on his mouth and owl pajamas.

Even though I thought the presence of a young child at an abortion party was a little bizarre, nobody else seemed to acknowledge (or care about) this contradiction. Instead, the rest of the guests just took turns fawning over him, exchanging high fives and swooshing him through the air. He, along with everyone else, was having a blast.

"Do you feel welcome here?" I eventually asked him, fully expecting a ‘grown-up’-type answer. He glanced around, chewed on his sleeve and went to look for some babes to hang out with. "Too cool for me," I thought, shaking my head and cramming a pastry into my mouth. I was bewildered.

I continued mingling, sampling pastries and chatting with some of Ali’s friends. I didn’t really feel comfortable discussing the abortion with strangers, so I just talked bullshit: Music. School. The Future. I guess I was hesitant to confront the breadth of the party’s complexity. Maybe I had even hoped to avoid it.

I couldn’t, of course. I saw Maggie’s boyfriend, sitting near the kitchen, wearing rainbow suspenders and looking uncomfortably alone. As it turns out, he had been the object of a lot of vitriol from Maggie’s friends -- women who thought that he should not have had anything to do with the abortion. Both he and Maggie had been saddened about this reaction because they had made the decision together. When we talked, his sentences spilled out in quick little jumbles, like scattered puzzle pieces. His eyes stayed focused on a point behind me. He looked as if he’d like to be somewhere else.

Maggie, too, looked less than excited. A few days beforehand, one of her friends had asked her to have the abortion in Ohio. When Maggie insisted on bringing her boyfriend along, the friend told her not to bother coming. Maggie was being shown a great deal of respect, certainly. But she told me she couldn’t help but feel as though her pregnancy had been "hijacked" by women who felt like her inclusion of a man in the decision was weak or wrong. This was a surprise to me, but I didn’t exactly know how to weigh in.

Abortion is, after all, a very tricky topic -- a minefield of opinions where the slightest misstep can elicit unexpected reactions from friends, family, co-workers and strangers. Though I would classify myself an ardent pro-choicer, I also recognize that I am a man, and therefore somewhat of a problematic player in the debate. It’s never been made clear to me what sort of involvement I’m entitled to on the issue, and I don’t feel particularly confident making judgment calls about women -- whatever their political leanings.

I did, however, think the extent to which Maggie’s friends were eager to vilify her partner was peculiar. These were liberal people, after all -- people whose views on sex were worlds away from anything someone might consider "modest." I couldn’t help but notice how aggressive and, for lack of a better term, ‘male’ their attitudes became when confronted with the issue of a woman’s right to choose. It was almost as if, in the process of upholding an ideal of openness and acceptance, they had fallen victim to the same forces they were trying to critique.

Read the rest of this pure evil here.

Homeland Security vs. the conscience

From CNA:

Washington D.C., Apr 14, 2009 / 02:28 pm (CNA).- According to a Homeland Security Report distributed to law enforcement organizations, abortion opponents are as great a threat to national security in the immediate future as white supremacists.

The nine-page document was sent to police and sheriff's departments across the country on April 7 under the headline, "Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment." The report is unclassified, but is accompanied by a warning that says it “contains information that may be exempt from public release under the Freedom of Information Act.”

The report was prepared by the Extremism and Radicalization Branch of the Department of Homeland Security and claims it was “coordinated with the FBI.”

“Rightwing extremists,” the document says, “have capitalized on the election of the first African American president, and are focusing their efforts to recruit new members, mobilize existing supporters, and broaden their scope and appeal through propaganda, but they have not yet turned to attack planning.”

Nevertheless, according to the report, the combination of a prolonged economic downturn, the election of the first African American President and the return of many veterans with "combat skills" could create an environment similar to the early 90's, which lead to the Oklahoma City bombing.

The report describes "Rightwing extremism" broadly as “those groups, movements, and adherents that are primarily hate-oriented (based on hatred of particular religious, racial or ethnic groups), and those that are mainly antigovernment, rejecting federal authority in favor of state or local authority, or rejecting government authority entirely. It may include groups and individuals that are dedicated to a single issue, such as opposition to abortion or immigration.”

Under the title “Revisiting the 1990s,” the report claims that “paralleling the current national climate, rightwing extremists during the 1990s exploited a variety of social issues and political themes to increase group visibility and recruit new members.”

“Prominent among these themes were the militia movement’s opposition to gun control efforts, criticism of free trade agreements (particularly those with Mexico), and highlighting perceived government infringement on civil liberties as well as white supremacists’ longstanding exploitation of social issues such as abortion, inter-racial crimes, and same-sex marriage.”

The report “is provided to federal, state, local, and tribal counterterrorism and law enforcement officials so they may effectively deter, prevent, preempt, or respond to terrorist attacks against the United States.”

From InsideCatholic:

Pro-Lifers On the Post Office Wall
Posted on April 14, 2009, 5:57 PM | Deal W. Hudson

The headline on the Drudge Report really didn't do justice to the content of the Homeland Security report issued by its new director, Janet Napolitano, warning against "right wing" terrorism.

Basically any interest group opposing the Obama administration is listed as potentially dangerous -- pro-lifers, anti-immigration activists, gun owners, and -- get this-- military veterans who find it hard to integrate into society upon their return from active service.

The report is being used, obviously, to set up hate crimes' legislation, supported by Obama, that would criminalize specific language used about, among other groups, homosexuals (yes, also lesbians and the transgendered).

The report describes right-wing extremism as "divided into those groups, movements, and adherents that are primarily hate-oriented (based on hatred of particular religious, racial or ethnic groups) and those that are mainly anti-government, rejecting federal authority in favor of state or local authority, or rejecting governmental authority entirely. It may include groups and individuals that are dedicated to a single issue, such as opposition to abortion or immigration."

Anti-government? Heavens, we better all get ready to bend our knee to the new administration or we will be accused of "rejecting federal authority."

(No wonder the great state of Texas passed a resolution today calling for state sovereignty!)

Single-issue? That should read a "crackdown" on Evangelicals and Catholics who care enough about the protection of human life, as quaranteed in the Declaration of Independence, to organize, educate, protest, and vote on the basis of the moral principle upon which all other moral principles are based.

Will Fr. Pavone's picture soon be hanging in the local post office? Or Fr. Euteneuer's, or Judie Brown's, or Congressman Chris Smith's.

The post office wall could become the place d'honneur during the Obama years.

Abortion & Sexism destroys a generation in China

Chinese Bias for Baby Boys Creates a Gap of 32 Million

Article Tools Sponsored By
By SHARON LaFRANIERE
Published: April 10, 2009

BEIJING — A bias in favor of male offspring has left China with 32 million more boys under the age of 20 than girls, creating “an imminent generation of excess men,” a study released Friday said.

For the next 20 years, China will have increasingly more men than women of reproductive age, according to the paper, which was published online by the British Medical Journal. “Nothing can be done now to prevent this,” the researchers said.

Chinese government planners have long known that the urge of couples to have sons was skewing the gender balance of the population. But the study, by two Chinese university professors and a London researcher, provides some of the first hard data on the extent of the disparity and the factors contributing to it.

In 2005 , they found, births of boys in China exceeded births of girls by more than 1.1 million. There were 120 boys born for every 100 girls.

This disparity seems to surpass that of any other country, they said — a finding, they wrote, that was perhaps unsurprising in light of China’s one-child policy.

They attributed the imbalance almost entirely to couples’ decisions to abort female fetuses.

The trend toward more male than female children intensified steadily after 1986, they said, as ultrasound tests and abortion became more available. “Sex-selective abortion accounts for almost all the excess males,” the paper said.

Read the rest.

Brooks on 'the end of philosophy' or 'the end of humanity'

The End of Philosophy by David Brooks (New York Times)

Socrates talked. The assumption behind his approach to philosophy, and the approaches of millions of people since, is that moral thinking is mostly a matter of reason and deliberation: Think through moral problems. Find a just principle. Apply it.

One problem with this kind of approach to morality, as Michael Gazzaniga writes in his 2008 book, “Human,” is that “it has been hard to find any correlation between moral reasoning and proactive moral behavior, such as helping other people. In fact, in most studies, none has been found.”

Today, many psychologists, cognitive scientists and even philosophers embrace a different view of morality. In this view, moral thinking is more like aesthetics. As we look around the world, we are constantly evaluating what we see. Seeing and evaluating are not two separate processes. They are linked and basically simultaneous.

As Steven Quartz of the California Institute of Technology said during a recent discussion of ethics sponsored by the John Templeton Foundation, “Our brain is computing value at every fraction of a second. Everything that we look at, we form an implicit preference. Some of those make it into our awareness; some of them remain at the level of our unconscious, but ... what our brain is for, what our brain has evolved for, is to find what is of value in our environment.”

Think of what happens when you put a new food into your mouth. You don’t have to decide if it’s disgusting. You just know. You don’t have to decide if a landscape is beautiful. You just know.

Moral judgments are like that. They are rapid intuitive decisions and involve the emotion-processing parts of the brain. Most of us make snap moral judgments about what feels fair or not, or what feels good or not. We start doing this when we are babies, before we have language. And even as adults, we often can’t explain to ourselves why something feels wrong.

In other words, reasoning comes later and is often guided by the emotions that preceded it. Or as Jonathan Haidt of the University of Virginia memorably wrote, “The emotions are, in fact, in charge of the temple of morality, and ... moral reasoning is really just a servant masquerading as a high priest.”

The question then becomes: What shapes moral emotions in the first place? The answer has long been evolution, but in recent years there’s an increasing appreciation that evolution isn’t just about competition. It’s also about cooperation within groups. Like bees, humans have long lived or died based on their ability to divide labor, help each other and stand together in the face of common threats. Many of our moral emotions and intuitions reflect that history. We don’t just care about our individual rights, or even the rights of other individuals. We also care about loyalty, respect, traditions, religions. We are all the descendents of successful cooperators.

Read the rest of this wretched but interesting piece here.

My commentary:
As science comes up with 'explanations' for why humans feel the need to be moral, the moral 'values' that we hold will become useless. This is because, as science will have proven, it's all biologically determined anyway. This sort of reasoning admits a limit on what is reason; reason is strictly limited to the verifiable or empirical. Science hasn't accounted for feelings like "patriotism", but as Brooks asserts, eventually it will. Hence the title: "The Death of Philosophy". How does this not give a person pause? Reason is limited to materialistic determinism? Say 'bye, bye' to philosophy, theology, and reason-based ethics. An "epochal" shift. I think the article should be titled: "The End of Humanity". Brooks doesn't seem to get where this is going.... the topic is "above his pay grade".

The scientists seek to pair human morality with the reigning dogma on evolution/chance. This, of course, is not science but ideology. How are terms of 'value' and 'morality' and 'purpose' scientific? Explain why it is valid for scientists to be theorizing about such topics. Brook's article assumes evolution of random chance is true (so much for God's creative Spirit), and is more interested in taking such a view into the realm of morality with metaphysical underpinnings. The article posits, at least the scientists (it seems to me that Brooks doesn't get it), that reason is the slave of emotions because that's the only account empiricism can make for any 'moral' judgments. It very much appears that the 'science' going on here in Brooks' piece is just what you rail against in the quote above. This is especially seen when Dr. Quartz moves from 'the brain processing info at a vast rate' to 'this is what the brain is for' (assigning purpose... but I thought we were just moving particles at random?) to assigning 'value' to 'this is how we make moral judgments'. Where did the science end and the philosophy begin? I don't know about you, but I find it absurd when humans are compared to bees, moral decisions to tasting food, and that adults are no more qualified to make moral judgments than babies (yes, the article asserts all of those things). Hence, Brooks notes in the conclusion that the proposition of the 'moral scientists' is "an epochal" change; aka kiss religion, reason based morality, and what Lewis calls "the Tao" goodbye. Forget "The End of Philosophy" and enter "The End of Humanity". Which reminds me, you need to read The Abolition of Man if you haven't already; it's a great account of reason based morality that gives a role to emotion that I think you will find interesting.

At this point, the more important discussion is about the Brooks piece, and it gets back to The Metaphysical Club as well as Neuhaus' brilliant summation of Rorty and liberal irony.
One must choose:
a) To be with the materialists asserting that man's reason is slave to the emotions, and morality is simply as pragmatism describes (ready, fire, aim); truth is also always evolving and in-flux and determined by the utility in any given time by 'majority' consensus. Reality is really just what man percieves in his own mind; it does not apply to others. Such claims foundationally are anti-institution, anti-tradition, and anti-religious; usually if not always they favor a radical and unbridled positivism in the academy/polis.
-or-
b) To be with the realists who believe that man ought to and can order his emotions by using right reason and conquer his appetites, striving for the good, true, and beautiful which exist 'out there' and is accessible by our (God-given) reason, and embodied in the eternal Logos (in this account one can still recognize that we often act on emotions without thinking.) Such claims are friendly to religions, traditions, and hierarchical institutions (they are also not 'western' arguments exclusively); positivism has its place, but it is ordered to right reason.

There is no half-way house between the two. It's option 'a' or 'b'. This is the crux of our entire discussion! Again, even Brooks sees it as "an epochal" change - hence the problems of modern education as Deneen, Fish, and many others argue. Neither choice gives any road to a 'third' option; they are diametrically opposed. I'm interested to see what your choice is, and why.

Vatican responds to Belgium's facism...

From CNA:

Vatican City, Apr 3, 2009 / 01:42 pm (CNA).- In response to Belgium’s diplomatic protest against Pope Benedict’s comments that condoms could potentially "increase the problem" of AIDS being spread in Africa, Father Federico Lombardi, director of the Holy See newsroom questioned whether the lawmakers had considered the Popes words and scientific research, or whether they received their information "through the non-objective, imbalanced filter of the echoes in the western media."

According to Reuters, the Belgium House of Deputies called the Pope’s comments "unacceptable" and instructed their government to "react strongly against any state or organization that in the future brings into doubt the benefit of using condoms to prevent transmission of the AIDS virus." [Satan, is that you?]

The measure approved with a strong majority, 95-18, and asks the government to "condemn the Pope’s unacceptable position statement and to lodge a formal protest at the Holy See." Premier Herman Van Rompuy said he will support the motion saying, "it is not the Pope’s job to shed doubts on public health policies which are unanimously supported and save lives ever day."

Father Lombardi, expressed "amazement" at the resolution, reported the Italian news service, SIR.

He questioned how a democratic country could limit the "freedom of the Holy Father and the Catholic Church to express their own positions" which are "clearly relevant to the view of the human person."

As Belgium reacted to the Pope’s comments, Lombardi pointed to "the great tradition" of the Catholic Church in "education and health-care, especially in the poorer countries" that needs no "evidence or comments."

Lombardi also questioned whether Belgium lawmakers had considered the "Pope’s arguments" and scientific research, or whether they received their information "through the non-objective, imbalanced filter of the echoes in the western media."

Atheists seek 'de-baptism'

More than 100,000 Britons have recently downloaded "certificates of de-baptism" from the Internet to renounce their Christian faith.

The initiative launched by a group called the National Secular Society (NSS) follows atheist campaigns here and elsewhere, including a London bus poster which triggered protests by proclaiming "There's probably no God."

"We now produce a certificate on parchment and we have sold 1,500 units at three pounds (4.35 dollars, 3.20 euros) a pop," said NSS president Terry Sanderson, 58.

... De-baptism organisers say the initiative is a response to what they see as increasing stridency from churches -- the latest last week when Pope Benedict XVI stirred global controversy on a trip to AIDS-ravaged Africa by saying condom use could further spread of the disease.

"The Catholic Church is so politically active at the moment that I think that is where the hostility is coming from," said Sanderson. "In Catholic countries there is a very strong feeling of wanting to punish the church by leaving it."

The Metaphysical Club

This book is an excellent portrait of post-protestant, progressive, positivism in the late 19th century. A fascinating study of disembodied faith falling into agnostic secularism.

Below are my thoughts about pragmatism.

Pragmatism: what is it really, and can it be appropriated by Christians?

Names: There are different ‘brands’ of pragmatism; for instance, William James called it pragmatism, John Dewey called it instrumentalism, and others called it humanism. Although each fellow had his own emphasis for the philosophy, there still remains a basic foundational claim common to each.

Foundational claim: At the most basic level, pragmatism purports that human beings 1) act, and only after acting 2) examine the action, determine meaning, and assess utility and/or success of the action. It is worth noting, as Louis Menand himself recognizes, that pragmatism has no logical account for desire or love. The following description is from the Catholic Encyclopedia [my emphasis]:

Pragmatism, as a tendency in philosophy, signifies the insistence on usefulness or practical consequences as a test of truth. In its negative phase, it opposes what it styles the formalism or rationalism of Intellectualistic philosophy. That is, it objects to the view that concepts, judgments, and reasoning processes are representative of reality and the processes of reality. It considers them to be merely symbols, hypotheses and schemata devised by man to facilitate or render possible the use, or experience, of reality. This use, or experience, is the true test of real existence. In its positive phase, therefore, Pragmatism sets up as the standard of truth some non-rational test, such as action, satisfaction of needs, realization in conduct, the possibility of being lived, and judges reality by this norm to the exclusion of all others.

Pragmatism as a ‘system’: Pragmatism may not be a complete philosophical system per se, but it is certainly a foundational account (logia – ideological psychology) of how humans operate – specifically the mind and decision making. This foundational account is hugely important to any direction the philosophy is taken under any name, coloring every aspect of human life: freedom, choice, truth, goodness, civil society, etc.

Assumptions: All forms of pragmatism embrace and assume the following: a) democracy is the best form of civil organization – anti-hierarchical; b) scientific positivism is the future by which man must evaluate himself and his environment – social engineering is assumed via methods such as the law of averages and the bell curve; c) man is always ‘progressing’ and becoming better/smarter; d) pragmatism is anti-institutional, especially old traditional institutions; e) pragmatism rejects all classical, Hellenistic, and scholastic methods of thinking (philosophy and theology) – it also implicitly rejects old creedal formulae (aka: De-Hellenization); f) every ‘problem’ that man now faces was once a ‘solution’ to a previous ‘problem’ (until it was subsequently deemed a ‘problem’). Looming large in the philosophy and the background context of pragmatism is Hegel’s process theology. Process theology asserts that as human history progresses and develops, God also progresses and develops and ‘comes into His being’; this implies that God is ‘mutable’ or changeable as well as ‘passable’ (can suffer). Such claims fly in the face of any orthodox Christian thinking: God is impassible, immutable, omnipotent, and omnipresent; these classic notions of God are garbaged without examining the implications. Although James was the most Christian of the pragmatists found in The Metaphysical Club, the other gentlemen, while denying God or claiming to be agnostic, still viewed ‘reality’ or ‘truth’ as always coming into being and progressing in time. Therefore, man today is automatically further and better developed than man 1,000 years ago.

Why created? The philosophy originated with Charles Pearce, but was taken up and somewhat reappropriated by William James. James intended pragmatism to be a philosophy that once again legitimized the position of God in a progressive, modern, scientific, and rational world; it was an account of reality and how men think which rationalized God in such ‘brave new world’. For the Christian observer, James is probably the one figure for whom to have sympathy, albeit his actions were based in a sort of nostalgia and he fatally sacrificed orthodoxy to make pragmatism ‘work’ (James was guilty of being pragmatic). Pragmatism was also created to legitimize philosophy in a positivistic/scientistic world; abstract thinking was no longer seen as useful or pragmatic as man liberated himself from old institutions and ways of thinking. Philosophy, as seen in pragmatism, came to be dominated by empirical data (law of averages etc.) and the new psychology, and was a hybrid of philosophy undergirded by ‘scientific’ data about human behavior. Pragmatism was also an account that proved to be more useful to control/clean up the messiness of man’s environment/life, and proved itself useful for the rising economic and industrial revolutions. The philosophy was also created as a reaction against the ante-bellum period status quo in America; this is laudable, but only resulted in replacing the former status quo with a new status quo, legitimizing new and destructive western behaviors (scientism, industrialism, abusive capitalism, materialism, Americanism- the manifest destiny of the nation, and social engineering). Pragmatism was also created to help bridge the alleged gap between fides et ratio (faith and reason); such a perceived gap can only come from a Christian fundamentalist backdrop. But such a gap between faith and reason can only be reconnected by the dynamic power of Greco-Roman abstract philosophy, not scientific positivism; ‘scientism’ is simply another form of fundamentalism and maintains the gap between faith and reason.

What are the implications of pragmatism? There are a number of serious problems with pragmatism as well as its implications for the masses. First of all, it implies that human life can be manipulated and predicted according to formulae, averages, and allegedly ‘scientific’ data; social engineering toward creating a worldly utopia is the dangerous result. According to the basic claims of pragmatism, truth is essentially developed and invented by the philosophy as a reaction to the success/failure of human action; every problem is basically the solution to problems prior to it – there is no goal that humans are attempting to reach, no truth to which we strive. Everything as a result is in-flux; there is nothing in society that man can rely upon as a constant, because reality (and/or God) is always constantly coming into being. This has obvious implications for morality: morality becomes a ‘ready, fire, aim’ process; a process that reflects upon action only after the fact. The action itself is arbitrary and subjective, and subsequently the action can be judged subjectively by terms subjectively developed by the actor - moral relativism, plain and simple. One cannot claim truth is not relative, then embrace pragmatism which essentially is creating truth on its own terms all the time; this is a contradiction. Pragmatism, as understood properly, is also deterministic and has the great potential to be oppressive and destroy human love, hope, and freedom. With human life being so predictable and determined, as well as asserting that humans act then assess action, pragmatism can be seen as anti-contemplative; the philosophy is anti-contemplative not because its founders were unintelligent or thoughtless, but because it implies that for the rest of humanity, thinking before acting is not necessary or not the case at all; in fact, it is better if man acts then determines the utility and satisfaction of action after the fact. Lastly, ideas no longer have power unless backed by empirical data; science is the new gospel of truth – yet humans clearly know that science is far from understanding everything about reality, yet it is relied upon in this philosophy to account for everything. Pragmatism is on a larger scale, what Agassiz does with God and his 'science' (it is an irrational fundamentalism): it tries to maintain the status quo of America's ‘manifest destiny’ in the post bellum period - America needs science and industry and progress - and as a result needs a 'philosophy' accounting for human thought and behavior that legitimizes such a mechanistic approach to human life: thus humans do not act before thinking (progress, industry, and the economic machine). As Agassiz is the ‘proto-intelligent design’ fundamentalist, the "Metaphysical Club" (broadly speaking) is a ‘proto-agnostic humanism’ (with some deism) based on anti-institution, democracy, anti-contemplation (as implicated for masses), and the denial human dignity (seeing men as 'averages'.).

Origins & Fruits: Looking at the origins and historical context of pragmatism (disembodied Christian world, post Christian in many ways, positivistic, industrial, progressive, and nationalistic), one can see that it originates in a troubled period. It was forged by agnostics, deists, and Hegelian disciples – this alone breaks any continuity with authentic Christian faith. Looking then at the personal lives of the founders, one can see the ‘fruits’ of such ideology. Charles Pearce is seen as the origin of pragmatism: this makes perfect sense as he was ruled by his appetites, wreaking havoc on everything he touched. James sacrificed, albeit well intentioned, orthodoxy to make pragmatism work. Dewey employed the philosophy in his educational practices: creating schools that ‘developed the child’ through social engineering; education was now about making children into ‘well adjusted’ members of society through scientific methods. Dewey called the philosophy instrumentalism, and his ‘school’ was called the laboratory. Dewey did not desire pragmatism to create individuals, but to make everyone the same – to streamline and ‘perfect’ humanity. Holmes denied human dignity, but insisted on human ‘rights’; he also replaced the language of guilt and sin with the mechanistic terms such as ‘negligence’; this fits well with pragmatism for it allows for the continued re-evaluation of what is true and good. Menand’s work portrays the majority of the ‘transcendalists’ and members of the ‘metaphysical club’ as men who lived scandalous lives, living it up in the ivory towers and high places, and using their influential positions in society to impose their ideology.

Love: Pragmatism does not account for love, and can be seen to destroy or instrumentalize it. Love is a choice; it is the proper ordering of the will (the heart, seat of emotions) by the intellect. The intellect, of course, has to assent to ideas first and be formed by ideals. Love is not based in emotions, but in the choice to give of self and choose the other despite difficulties; the pragmatist claim that man acts before thinking either does not understand this classic and true understanding of how humans operate or it flies in its face (probably the latter). To act without cognition assumes that humans are slaves of their emotions or desires; this is strange and ironic because pragmatism has no clear account of desire. One can logically ask: what then rules human action? Nothing. All is in-flux, and men and women make up truth as they see fit in the context of their existence. Dewey, as Menand asserts, was not for radical individual freedom, but sought to find harmony in the community, but this intention (albeit good) does not work in such a philosophic system. What results is simply a ‘contract society’ (John Stewart Mill – a hedonistic, materialistic society – “life is nasty, brutish, and short.”) where everyone is asserting their will, and as long as no one is bothered or offended the society ‘flourishes’. To examine this more, consider the following example: imagine an infant or toddler – this child operates off the ‘pragmatism’ method of act first, then assess the success/pleasure. The difference between and adult and such a young child is the formation of their intellect, and the process of thinking before acting. Certainly a small child can love his mommy, but if he grows up maintaining love in the same manner (a one-way street, mom does it all), he will really not be able to love another person well as an adult. Love needs to be modeled and trained to children or it will be disordered, negatively affecting the subject and the community; this seems clear ipso facto - just look at our society.

Truth & God: If truth is always in-flux, as pragmatism asserts, then can the pragmatist say that God is Logos? “I am the way, the truth, and the life,” says Christ, the Incarnate Word; “Everyone that is of the truth, heareth my voice.” Such a statement implies that truth is knowable and accessible by the human intellect. Who would deny that the Christian God is the God of Truth? Can man really not know God, nor act from any knowledge of God? What are the 10 Commandments? Is the world God created reflective of the Logos, or not? Or is the world/reality simply the manner in which man describes it, or the name subjectively given (Nominalism)? To the point, here’s what the Wiki page on pragmatism says [my emphasis]:

James and Peirce were inspired by the crucial links among belief, conduct, and disposition by saying a belief is a proposition on which a person is prepared to act. Inspiration for the pragmatists include Francis Bacon who coined the phrase "knowledge is power", David Hume for his naturalistic account of knowledge and action, Thomas Reid for his direct realism, Immanuel Kant for his idealism and from whom Peirce derives the name "pragmatism", Georg Hegel for his introduction of temporality into philosophy (Pinkard in Misak 2007), and J.S. Mill for his nominalism and empiricism.
Concept of truth

Going back to James, in pragmatism spoken truth is not ready-made, but jointly we and reality "make" truth. This idea has two senses, one which is often attributed to William James and F.C.S. Schiller, and another that is more widely accepted in pragmatism: (1) truth is mutable, and (2) truth is relative to a conceptual scheme.

(1) Mutability of truth

One major difference within pragmatism about the definition of 'truth' is the question of whether beliefs can pass from being true to being untrue and back. For James, beliefs are not true until they have been made true by verification. James believed propositions become true over the long term through proving their utility in a person's specific situation. The opposite of this process is not falsification, but rather a belief ceasing to be a "live option." F.C.S. Schiller, on the other hand, very clearly asserted that beliefs could pass into and problems. If I want to know how to return home safely, the true answer will be whatever is useful to solving that problem. Later on, when faced with a different problem, what I came to believe when faced with the earlier problem may now be false. As my problems change and as the most useful way to solve a problem shifts, so does the property of truth.

C.S. Peirce thought the idea that beliefs could be true at one time but false at another (or true for one person but false for another) was one of the "seeds of death"[1] by which James allowed his pragmatism to become "infected." Peirce avoided this position because he took the pragmatic theory to imply that theoretical claims should be tied to verification practices (i.e. they should be subject to test), not that they should be tied to our specific problems or life needs. Truth is defined, for Peirce, as what would be the ultimate outcome (not any outcome in real time) of inquiry by a (usually scientific) community of investigators. John Dewey, while agreeing broadly with this definition, also characterized truthfulness as a species of the good: to state that something is true means stating that it is trustworthy or reliable and will remain so in every conceivable situation. Both Peirce and Dewey clearly connect the definitions of truth and warranted assertability. Hilary Putnam also developed his internal realism around the idea that a belief is true if it is ideally epistemologically justified.

The claims above are problematic on a number of levels for the Christian, most notably the idea that truth is always evolving and changing. The philosophy rejects the Trinity motto: verum, bonum, pulchrum, because man cannot arrive at truth (as Plato says); for the pragmatist, truth is no longer ‘what is’ – that which is absolute, eternal, infinite, good, and beautiful. Ultimately, there is not much of a relationship with God if God is continuously ‘coming into being’; how can man even know himself if God is perpetually in-flux as well? Also, how can man then account for the tragedy and evil of the gas chambers and gulag if history is all part of God’s realization of himself, all things coming into being with the Creator? (cf. Hart, David Bentlely. No Shadow of Turning: on Divine Impassiblility. Pro Ecclesia.) Pragmatism can thus only be seen as intellectual and moral relativism cleverly wrapped up into a positivistic psychology dubbed ‘philosophy’.

Ecumenism? Pragmatism, because of its violent rejection of institutions, hierarchies, traditional creeds, and Hellenistic/scholastic theology/philosophy, as well as its unquestioning embrace of democracy and the mutability of truth, cannot be seen as a groundwork of Christian ecumenism. It formally rejects Catholicism, Orthodoxy, Anglicanism (Episcopal Church), Missouri Synod Lutheranism, Coptic Christianity, et al. that hold faith in their immutable truth claims.

Objections to the above claims: Let us assume that the founders of pragmatism are 'innocent' of any damage and/or negative intentionality; the founders’ ideas still were taken to their logical conclusions by their disciples and the cultural milieu - ideas are dangerous and have consequences (pragmatism was bankrupt, as I describe, from the foundation). Let us assume next that there is something to how humans look back on actions and events and then shape and develop new ideas (as pragmatism asserts with, for instance, the lobster and steak example); this alone cannot be seen as what pragmatism is. All the assumptions (which I addressed above) have to go with the claim. The aforementioned idea can be accounted for in any philosophical system; pragmatism cannot be boiled down to the ‘steak and lobster’ example; humans can and do think before action, even if at times they do not.

Counter Example: The stem cell controversy, I think, is a helpful example. The pragmatist would say: act, act, act. Yet the action to make something practical or useful happen does not in this case. As it turns out, embryonic stem cell research is has produced no major medical breakthroughs. On the other hand, orthodox Christianity, which contemplates first principles of human dignity before acting, has been correct, supporting only the use of adult stems cells. Adult stem cells have produced much medical fruit. This example can be seen to disprove 'pragmatism' in action: morally and practically speaking, it is illogical and bullheaded - it bears the mark of progressive 'scientism' unwilling to consult abstract philosophy and theology.

Conclusion: Based on the overwhelming evidence above, pragmatism, as an account of human thought and action, cannot be appropriated by an authentic Christian orthodoxy in any way.

MSNBC poll: "In God We Trust"?

A poll on NBC's website.

Should the motto "In God We Trust" be removed from U.S. currency?

6,686,953 responses [wow...]

Yes. It's a violation of the principle of separation of church and state.
23%

No. The motto has historical and patriotic significance and does nothing to establish a state religion.
77%

I think that's a pretty big "NO".

Rod Dreher: Solzhenitsyn and Wojtyla, tragic prophets

A nice piece by Rod Dreher, the Crunchy Con, on JPII & the Russian prophet.
I think Dreher's a little too gloomy. The messages of prophets take many years to sink in, and I dare say that the people who needed to listen to the two men have: Orthodox and Catholics.

12:00 AM CDT on Sunday, August 10, 2008

Rod Dreher is a Dallas Morning News editorial columnist. His e-mail address is rdreher@dallasnews.com.

Two men stood astride the 20th century as prophets without peer: Pope John Paul II and Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Their experience and testimony contained and transcended the terrible truths of the bloodiest epoch in human history. And they died tragically – tragic, in the Greek sense: They were admired and even beloved. But largely ignored.

Totalitarianism, the new form of government made possible by the mass ideology, bureaucratic forms and advanced technology, forged the consciences of these men, Slavic Christians both. Karol Wojtyla lived under the Nazis in Poland; Alexander Solzhenitsyn fought them with the Red Army. As a priest, Mr. Wojtyla suffered under the communist puppet government the Soviets installed in Warsaw. The Soviet government sentenced Mr. Solzhenitsyn to labor camp for vaguely criticizing Stalin in a letter.

In the 1970s, both emerged as deadly threats to the Soviet empire. Moscow expelled Mr. Solzhenitsyn, a Nobel laureate who became the world's most famous dissident. In 1974, upon leaving Russia for the West, he issued an impassioned plea for his countrymen to "live not by lies!"

Individuals who choose to live in truth, no matter its cost, could bring down the rotting, stinking corpse of communism.

Four years later, providence gave the Roman Catholic Church something it had never seen, a Polish pope. The new pontiff, who took the name John Paul, returned to his homeland triumphally and became the focus of spiritual resistance to communism. How did he do it? By demolishing official lies with simple truths, spoken plainly.

A year later, Solidarity was born. Eleven years later, the Soviet empire was dead.

The heroic John Paul and Alexander Solzhenitsyn, slayers of the communist dragon – that's how we like to remember them. But neither fits into the West's triumphalist liberal democratic vision.

In fact, as much as they loathed the atheistic, materialistic barbarism of the East, both warned in uncompromising terms of the spiritual and moral decay at the heart of the liberal capitalist democracies.

In his most famous address in exile, Mr. Solzhenitsyn spoke at Harvard's 1978 graduation, delivering an apocalyptic vision of Western civilization as spiritually decrepit, given over to pleasure and material gain instead of virtue and higher values – and no model for post-communist Russia to follow.

Many liberals who had admired the dissident novelist thenceforth considered him a reactionary crank. Conservatives who championed his anti-communism struggled with the Russian Orthodox believer's harsh criticism of capitalist democracy.

It was the same with John Paul. Though far more accepting of modernity, the pontiff chastised the West not to think itself so smug in its victory over Marxism. In his 1995 encyclical The Gospel of Life, the pope condemned the West's "culture of death," in which technology, freedom and moral relativism combined to pose dire threats to human life and dignity.

Read the rest here.

1.4-kids-per-household-Germans surprised that Moslems are taking over...

The future German skyline?

First, let's check Germany's birth rates...
Population growth rate: -0.12% (2007 est.)
Birth rate: 8.3 births/1,000 population (2007 est.)

hmmm... whose fault is this?

Not in My Backyard, Say an Increasing Number of Germans

By Jochen Bölsche

The planned construction of over 180 mosques [woah, mama!] in Germany is mobilizing right-wing xenophobes but also an increasing number of leftist critics [right, label them... because Moslems will only kill right wing xenophobes...]. They fear the Muslim places of worship will facilitate the establishment of a completely parallel society.

The issue at hand wasn't the construction of a missile base or a new nuclear power plant. Yet the media reported "turmoil" and an "enraged" audience in a school auditorium in Ehrenfeld, a district of the German city of Cologne. The mood was almost comparable to that of the protest gatherings once held against nuclear missiles or reactors.

Instead the outrage was directed at a huge mosque planned for the area. Still, the words used by the project's opponents called to mind the protests of earlier times. "The minarets even look like missiles," railed one woman [interesting observation...]. A man said the mosque's dome reminded him "of a nuclear plant."

Ill will over mosques like the one being built in Cologne is spreading rapidly throughout Germany, often to the surprise of local politicians. For a long time the establishment of Muslim prayer rooms provoked little protest, housed as they were mostly in residential buildings, shops and back courtyards. Recently, though, there has been an increasing number of acts of protest, some violent. Molotov cocktails were thrown through mosque windows in the Bavarian town of Lauingen; Christians set protest crosses inscribed with "Terra christiana est," or this is Christian land [uh, not any more, fella; you actually have to practice it...], on the grounds of a mosque in Hanover; and construction trailers went up in flames in the Berlin district of Pankow.

The anti-Islam protest movement has also begun to spill over into city politics. In Cologne, for example, the extreme right anti-mosque initiative Pro Cologne captured five local government seats in recent elections. Now the group is aspiring to enter the national scene as Pro Germany, together with other like-minded organizations, some from the far-right fringe [again...]. Their approach follows the example of populist Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn, whose anti-immigration party garnered a surprising degree of support before he was murdered in 2002.

In Germany there is also a market for these "single-issue parties," suggests trend researcher Adjiedj Bakas, who himself emigrated from Surinam to the Netherlands. In the populous Ruhr Valley region of western Germany the Voter Initiative Recklinghausen (whose acronym "WIR" is the German word for "we") has found resonance with its message. The group claims it is fighting against "creeping Islamization," and is allied in the local government with the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU), one of Germany's major political parties. WIR members say they aren't alone in their opposition to Islam and their concern "that in 20 years in Recklinghausen, as in all large German cities, the majority of the residents under the age of 40 will be Muslims." "Discomfort is already spreading in some parts of the city," says Georg Schliehe, a WIR representative on the local city council, "but policy, public authorities and scholars downplay the problem." [you gotta love how secular liberals hate Christianity so much that they will even legislate themselves into the harsh submission of Islam rather than give up their 'freedoms' from conservative morals... ironically, Islam is more oppressive. Strange.]

Read the whole thing here.

Parish fashion: "the original human nature was not like the present..."

This redefines the meaning of the term "girlie-men". It's amazing what people will say when they believe any and every thing they think.

My emphasis and [my comments].

The notion of wardrobe androgyny was the fitting theme of Yves Saint-Laurent's men's collection, the house that kicked off the just-ended Paris men's shows where men's fashion won a feminine touch.

At YSL, designer Stefano Pilati used quotations from Plato to explain why he combined female detailing with a masculine silhouette.

"The original human nature was not like the present ... the sexes were not two as they are now." [What does that mean? Is he really serious? If he is, I hope he doesn't really think that, but rather he has lied to himself so much that he believes everything he thinks.]

Pilati underscored the union of genders with a line for men made in fabrics normally worn by women -- crepe de chine, organza, shantung and silk voile, all fabrics which float rather than fall.

In an era obsessed with global warming and sustainable development, the 44 spring/summer 2009 collections displayed at the four-day men's fashion shows ending Sunday featured light airy see-through linens, silks and soft feathery cottons. [Will somebody explain the connection between global warming fanaticism and gay fanaticism???? Or is it just fanaticism that's in common here?]

Bright colours, more often the domain of women's wear, also figured strong.

As Gay Pride marches took place across Europe, pink was popular in Paris.

Louis Vuitton, a house with a predominantly masculine view of the world, chose pink for shorts, pants and waistcoat, and even shoes.

A huge pink sail served as the backdrop for an otherwise frankly male take on fashion from Emmanuel Ungaro designer Franck Boclet, who said fuschia was simply one of the house's signature colours.

"I wanted a gay fresh style," Boclet said of what he told AFP was "a Paris 60s look" [yes, nothing fresher than re-hashing the 60's style...] of hip-hugging tight-thighed pants, chequered suits, and the odd item in day-glo orange, bright blue or purple.

Read the rest of this crap here.

Spanish parliment - defending the 'rights' of apes...

Yes, yes, yes... of course. My favorite line, from the liberal-material fascists interviewed was: "This is a historic day in the struggle for animal rights and in defense of our evolutionary comrades, which will doubtless go down in the history of humanity." Indeed, it will go down in history...
It certainly made it on this blog half-way around the world already, but probably not for the reasons Pedro Pozas was intending! Dumba$$.

Spanish parliament to extend rights to apes
By Martin Roberts

MADRID (Reuters) - Spain's parliament voiced its support on Wednesday for the rights of great apes to life and freedom in what will apparently be the first time any national legislature has called for such rights for non-humans.

Parliament's environmental committee approved resolutions urging Spain to comply with the Great Apes Project, devised by scientists and philosophers who say our closest genetic relatives deserve rights hitherto limited to humans.

"This is a historic day in the struggle for animal rights and in defense of our evolutionary comrades, which will doubtless go down in the history of humanity," said Pedro Pozas, Spanish director of the Great Apes Project.

Spain may be better known abroad for bull-fighting than animal rights but the new measures are the latest move turning once-conservative Spain into a liberal trailblazer.

The rest.

Demented: more robot 'partners' in Japan

From Reuters...

TOKYO - She is big-busted, petite, very friendly, and she runs on batteries.

A Japanese firm has produced a 38 cm (15 inch) tall robotic girlfriend that kisses on command, to go on sale in September for around US$175, with a target market of lonely adult men.

Using her infrared sensors and battery power, the diminutive damsel named "EMA" puckers up for nearby human heads, entering what designers call its "love mode".

"Strong, tough and battle-ready are some of the words often associated with robots, but we wanted to break that stereotype and provide a robot that's sweet and interactive," said Minako Sakanoue, a spokeswoman for the maker, Sega Toys.

"She's very lovable and though she's not a human, she can act like a real girlfriend."

EMA, which stands for Eternal Maiden Actualisation, can also hand out business cards, sing and dance, with Sega hoping to sell 10,000 in the first year.

Japan, home to almost half the world's 800,000 industrial robots, envisions a $10-billion market for artificial intelligence in a decade.

Watch the video of "Japan's sexy robot..." if you dare.

The Pathetic State of Christianity in England...

This is truly a depressing story.

Churchgoing on its knees as Christianity falls out of favour
Ruth Gledhill, Religion Correspondent TIMESONLINE UK
Church attendance in Britain is declining so fast that the number of regular churchgoers will be fewer than those attending mosques within a generation, research published today suggests.

The fall - from the four million people who attend church at least once a month today - means that the Church of England, Catholicism and other denominations will become financially unviable. A lack of funds from the collection plate to support the Christian infrastructure, including church upkeep and ministers’ pay and pensions, will force church closures as ageing congregations die.

In contrast, the number of actively religious Muslims will have increased from about one million today to 1.96 million in 2035.

According to Religious Trends, a comprehensive statistical analysis of religious practice in Britain, published by Christian Research, even Hindus will come close to outnumbering churchgoers within a generation. The forecast to 2050 shows churchgoing in Britain declining to 899,000 while the active Hindu population, now at nearly 400,000, will have more than doubled to 855,000. By 2050 there will be 2,660,000 active Muslims in Britain - nearly three times the number of Sunday churchgoers.

St. Thomas More prophesied this in his Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation.
Also, check out Aidan Nichols' The Realm, on converting England back to Catholicism, which by the way won't take much effort anymore. The majority of Christians are already Catholic on the island.

Newsweek: schizophrenic portrayal of the pope

Here's a quick preview at what caught my eye-
I was checking my email on MSN.com, and I saw a little link with a picture of Benedict. Above him read "Benedict XVI, Superstar?"; to his left reads "Hardly. US Catholics need him, but he just doesn't connect"; to his right read: "Wait a minute: This is a historic, exciting papacy".

The two articles reflect how the media dubs Benedict: unpredictable and a paradox.
They simply do not get him.

The first article, by Lisa Miller, is, well, stupid. Her writing is about as shallow as it gets. Her last article for Newsweek was entitled "Is Your Rabbi Hot or Not?". Uh, yeah. She's trying to lower expectations, maybe even turn people away from paying attention. This certainly will not work, because the pope's words are simply too important and interesting; it is essential to listen now as it was when he gave a lecture at his old university. If they listened hard then, they will have to listen when he's on the big stage...

The second article, on the "historic" nature of Benedict's papacy, is by none other than George Weigel. I applaud Newsweek with giving some balance to this story.

Here are a few excerpts of each article...

Why This Pope Doesn’t Connect

Benedict has done little to appeal to an American flock that is in need of a serious spiritual catharsis. [At the onset, we can see how Miller views Christianity- only relevant if it's exciting or "cathartic" in her words. She has bought into the drive-by-media mentality, where most people have the attention span of a flea. If Lisa lived in 1st c. Jerusalem, under Tiberius Augustus, I wonder if she would have thought Jesus was boring?]
by Lisa Miller

The Rev. Gerald Fogarty decided not to go to the pope's mass in Washington because he's busy teaching that day at the University of Virginia. The Rev. John Dufell considered joining him at Yankee Stadium, but he's got a couple of weddings to do, so he also passed. Paul Kane, a retired lawyer who goes to church in Georgetown, actually laughed at the idea, and Barbara Breshcia, who prays at St. Patrick's Cathedral several mornings a week, didn't even know the Holy Father was coming. Buttonholed on Fifth Avenue the week before Benedict XVI's arrival in New York, Breshcia was perplexed. "He's coming when? This week? Oh, next week. Is he coming to St. Patrick's?" Well, yes, and celebrating mass there, but never mind. [This intro is stupid. It does not say anything about the importance of the pope's visit. What if we had articles about what the common priest or laymen was doing during the investiture conflict? I suspect people in Sweden would probably not even know who the pope was. Is that breaking news? Idiot!]

The cameras will begin to roll on Tuesday, and despite what's sure to be wall-to-wall coverage of ceremonial events, punctuated by mind-numbing dissections of the pontiff's veiled pronouncements [Miller reveals what she really thinks about the pope with this smarta$$ remark], the truth is that among American Roman Catholics, excitement about this pope and his trip is remarkably low [Is that really true? Are not his books at the top of the bestsellers among Catholic authors? Yeah... so where does Miller get this "low interest" stuff? Her own mind, or the people she wants to interview.]. It's not just that Benedict pales in comparison to his predecessor John Paul II in almost every respect, including looks, vitality, charisma, showmanship, tenure and popular appeal—facts so obvious that even Benedict's defenders concede them immediately before trying to spin their man's "timid" temperament and essential "humility" as spiritual assets. It's that Benedict himself has done very little to win the hearts of his American flock at what may be the most critical moment in their history [Because being pope is all about "winning hearts"? Um no, it's all about saving souls!].

Ever since the Second Vatican Council, the gap between what the church teaches and what the American laity practices has been growing ever wider. According to a 2005 survey by Catholic University sociologist William D'Antonio and his colleagues, 58 percent of American Catholics believe you can be a "good" Catholic and disregard the church's teachings on abortion. Sixty-six percent believe you can ignore its position on divorce and remarriage. Seventy-five percent believe you can disregard the ban on birth control. Seventy-six percent think you don't have to go to church every week. [This is exactly why this papacy is exciting, important, and attractive to young people. Miller needs to do some research beyond media polls.]

Enough of this crap... same ol', same ol'. Let's move on to the Weigel article (thank God!).

How Benedict XVI Will Make History

The master teacher who follows John Paul is a moral leader who's begun an unprecedented conversation with Islam.
By George Weigel | NEWSWEEK
Apr 21, 2008 Issue

According to a title first used by Gregory the Great (590–604), the Bishop of Rome is the "Servant of the Servants of God." The Roman Catholic Church recognizes 265 of those servants as legitimate popes. Some were historical titans; others labored in obscurity. Some were saints, including more than two dozen martyrs; others were scandalous sinners. Some were reformers whose legacy in Catholic doctrine and practice is visible today; others were complicit in corruption. Some were men of genius, both intellectual and organizational; others were mediocrities. A few years back, a veteran Vatican bureaucrat remarked that "God has been very kind to us; we haven't had a wicked pope in 500 years." That wistful expression of gratitude suggests something of the papacy's staying power while hinting at its complex history.

Surprises
The influence and magnetism of the modern papacy are, in fact, surprises. When Leo XIII was elected in 1878—the first pope in 1,100 years not to control substantial territory as an internationally recognized sovereign—many thought the papacy an impotent anachronism. Leo, however, created the modern papacy as an office of moral persuasion. John Paul II, elected precisely 100 years after Leo, turned the papal bully pulpit into something to be reckoned with in the world. John Paul was one of the key figures in the collapse of European communism; he also played a significant role in democratic transitions in Latin America and East Asia, while defending the universality of human rights and challenging the intolerant secularism of European high culture.

That many Catholics feel a deep personal connection to the pope is another relatively new, and in some respects surprising, phenomenon. [Miss Miller, did you read that?]

[fast-forward...]

The different personalities of John Paul II and Benedict XVI sometimes mask their shared (and unshakable) conviction that religious and moral ideas can redirect the course of human affairs. And that, in turn, suggests the possibility that Benedict XVI may have had his own "June 1979 moment"—a moment that was missed, or misunderstood, at the time.

That moment was the most controversial episode in Benedict XVI's pontificate: his Regensburg Lecture on faith and reason, delivered at his old German university on Sept. 12, 2006. By quoting a Byzantine emperor's sharp critique of Islam, Benedict XVI drew worldwide criticism. Others, however, including significant personalities in the complex worlds of Islam, took the pope's point about the dangers of faith detached from reason quite seriously. And over the ensuing 19 months, there have been potentially historic tectonic shifts going on, both within Islam and in the world of interreligious dialogue.

Benedict has received two open letters from Muslim leaders; the October 2007 letter, "An Open Word Between Us and You," proposed a new dialogue between Islam and the Vatican. That dialogue will now be conducted through a Catholic-Muslim Forum that will meet twice yearly, in Rome and in Amman, Jordan. The forum will address two issues that Benedict XVI has insisted be the focus of conversation: religious freedom, understood as a human right that everyone can grasp by reason, and the separation of religious and political authority in the modern state.

Perhaps even more important, given his influence in Sunni Islam, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia visited Benedict XVI in November 2007. Subsequently, the king announced his own interfaith initiative, aimed at drawing representatives of the three monotheistic faiths into a new conversation, and negotiations between the Holy See and Saudi Arabia opened on building the first Catholic church in the kingdom. (A new Catholic church, also the first of its kind, recently opened in Doha, Qatar.) Abdullah's voice was noticeably absent from the chorus of critics who charged Benedict XVI with "aggression" for baptizing Magdi Allam, a prominent Italian journalist and convert from Islam, in St. Peter's Basilica on March 22. That all of this has happened after Regensburg is, at the very least, suggestive.

In addition to reshaping the dialogue between Catholicism and Islam, Benedict XVI has made significant changes in the Vatican's intellectual approach to these volatile issues. Catholic veterans of the interreligious dialogue who did not press issues like religious freedom and reciprocity between the faiths have been replaced by scholars who believe that facing the hard questions helps support those Muslim reformers who are trying to find an authentic Islamic path to civility, tolerance and pluralism. Thus Benedict XVI has quietly put his pontificate behind the forces of Islamic reform—and may have found a crucial ally with a Saudi king who is wrestling with Wahhabi extremism in his own domain.

Read the rest here. Thanks, George!

What are those no-name former SNL stars doing now?

Trashing religion... particularly Christianity.

Here's the title of Julia Sweeny's latest affort: "Letting Go of God".

If we could all be as courageous as Julia, and let go of our comfortable ideas about God. Those that come to mind, those that make life so much easier for us to bear, are things like forgiveness, reconciliation, dying to self, humility, and that other silly thing called charity. That's right, those little ideas help us to put life in a comfortable little box, and there we cannot be challenged by the greatness and 'diversity' of progressive, liberal secularism (or atheism). Oh, we Christians are so sentimental. Suffering... who needs that? Grow up, you traditionalists.

Ok, enough sarcasm.

Here's what one of her reveiwers wrote; don't tell me that ideas are harmless, even from former, washed-up, SNL stars.

***** (5 stars) EVERYONE should hear this -- at least once!

This CD has become very dear to me and some of my friends. I saw this performed live three times, and laughed all the way through and even wept a few times (and I am a grown man!). Sweeney went through the whole gamut of spirituality, (Catholicism, Buddhism, the belief that "God is love" and finally "God is Nature") before truly weighing fact from blind faith. It was not easy for her (or any of us seeking truth and perhaps even FEARING the truth) which is what this great 2 CD set covers. I know it sounds like a very broad statement, but if everyone on earth could hear this, I think we just may come to live in a more rational world (or perhaps that is just wishful thinking on my part...). I HIGHLY recommend this to anyone who is questioning the rationality of blind faith, who is suffering from a religious upbringing, or feels they are ready to live a truly authentic life. A NOTE: Sweeney has no agenda--she only tells her story and the listener can take from it what they may. I always feel very peaceful and inspired after listening to this. It comes with a book of the complete text, a track list and 2 CD's.

Customers who bought this crappy product also purchased (this is for real!)...

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4.1 out of 5 stars (17) $16.3

Satire on Richard (The God Delusion) Dawkins

This video is pretty funny. It rips on the sheer arrogance of the man behind the book, The God Delusion: Richard Dawkins. Dawkins is known for his staunch atheism and his harsh rhetoric against Christianity and any belief in something higher than his intellect.
He coined the name "the Brights" referring to himself and other 'enlightened' atheist -scientists who scoffed at religion.

Here he is avoiding an innocent question, and displaying his ever-acrimonious wit against believers...



Now for the well-deserved roast... (beware, the video has some questionable content). What's funnier, after watching a few moments of the satire, is reading Mark Shea's post on the Crisis blog.



Mark Shea writes about the Dawkins video:

As we know, Chesterton famously observed that the mark of madness is not the loss of reason, but the loss of everything except reason. Periodically, something in our culture will show me the brilliance of that insight with great force.

Chad, one of the readers over on the Vox Popoli blog summarizes Dawkins & Co.'s lightning-swift-on-the-uptake response to the satire:

1. Video posted around 11:00 PM

2. 1 hour and 44 minutes later, Dawkins implores his more intelligent readers to help inform him as to whose side the video is on (his side, or not his side). He then pokes fun at people that think things are funny that he doesn't understand just in case it turns out to be 'not on his side.' Comment #151544

3. Dawkins now presumably goes to sleep.

4. Nearly nine hours later, he wakes up and checks the post again. He sees that his fellow scientific elites like the video, but also don't understand it. Dawkins tries to get in a little dig on postmodernism, but just ends up making fun of his posters. Comment #151685

5. Nine and a half hours after posting, Dawkins wonders how his fellow comrades could laugh at something they don't understand. He then lauds The Life of Brian as the pinnacle of comedic evolution. Comment #151704

6. A couple minutes after the last post, he gets in another jab at Postmodernism. Comment #151713

7. Under chastisement for his humbuggery, Dawkins admits that Daniel Dennett popping his head up from out of nowhere is, in fact, funny. Comment #151715

8. Nearly ten hours after posting the video, someone postulates that the humor is derived from the silly dancing bodies (not the satire). Dawkins seems to accept this theory and thanks the poster for his intellect. Comment #151723

9. Sixteen hours after first watching the video, Dawkins finally realizes that it is, in fact, making fun of 'his side.' Dawkins defends himself again by saying that he didn't understand it. Comment #151849.

10. Seventeen hours after posting, Dawkins attempts to comprehend the humor by equating similar scenes of incongruousness that Monty Python has also done. Dawkins has apparently not yet pondered why, if this were the only thing funny about the video, he did not catch on before this. Dawkins chalks this up to the video not being funny, and dismisses the obvious conclusion that his head is too big to see the satire behind it. Comment #151889

11. The next day, Dawkins chimes in again to defend his Ph.D. status to a poster who dared question it. Comment #152142

12. Nearly 36 hours after posting, Dawkins discovers what a 'grill' is and waxes philosophic as to why Sam Harris would have one in the video. The conclusion he comes up with is that it adds no humor to the video and should not have been put in. Comment #152168

13. After a full three and a half days after first watching the video, Dawkins (obviously perturbed at the fact he didn't get that he was the butt of the joke, when every other non-elite who saw it could tell in an instant) attempts to equate the video with 'The worst poem ever written.' He then satisfies himself by settling on the conclusion that this is the only reason why people might like it. The final analysis is that it's not only 'not good,' and not even 'pretty bad,' but so incredibly bad, that it is in fact, good. He gets in a snobbish comment about the Bible for good measure. Comment #153061

It is hilarious to read about how divorced these people are from reality- and humanity... a bit sad too.

Let's commence the "Pray For Richard Dawkins Apostolate".

Takin' down Oprah...

Preaching the Gospel of relativism to millions each day...

This video is a little dramatic, but it's true. We allow Oprah to wash over us enough, and pretty soon we'll become the crap that she peddles.

Robots to take over Japan...

Due to devastating demographics, the Japanese are resorting to building robots to fulfill economic needs. One may find themselves asking the obvious question: why not just have some kids?

TOKYO (Reuters) - Robots could fill the jobs of 3.5 million people in graying Japan by 2025, a thinktank says, helping to avert worker shortages as the country's population shrinks.

Japan faces a 16 percent slide in the size of its workforce by 2030 while the number of elderly will mushroom, the government estimates, raising worries about who will do the work in a country unused to, and unwilling to contemplate, large-scale immigration.

The thinktank, the Machine Industry Memorial Foundation, says robots could help fill the gaps, ranging from microsized capsules that detect lesions to high-tech vacuum cleaners.

Rather than each robot replacing one person, the foundation said in a report that robots could make time for people to focus on more important things.

Japan could save 2.1 trillion yen ($21 billion) of elderly insurance payments in 2025 by using robots that monitor the health of older people, so they don't have to rely on human nursing care, the foundation said in its report.

The rest of this story here.

Culture of Death- obsessed with sex...

Here's a Culture of Death update, brought to you by CBS (See-BS is a logical name).

I noticed this at the bottom of the Pope Benedict story I posted (on the CBS website).

Check this out:

WCBSTV.com's Most Popular Pages

* World's Coolest Fighter Jets
* More Openly Gay Celebrities
* When It Was Out To Be Out
* 2007 Celebrity Deaths
* 100 Greatest Movies Of All Time
* Celebrity Sex Tapes
* Celebrity Real Names Revealed
* Britney Spears: Then & Now
* Jessica Alba: Then & Now
* Jessica Simpson: Then & Now

That's demented. Most people are visiting CBS's website to get a peek at some 'hotties' or to read about "celebrity deaths"???? I don't know what to say, but I find it strange that sex and death are on the same level.

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On a related note... from Laura Ingraham's website:

# EU SUPERSIZES SCHOOL FURNITURE:
Due to students' additional inches and pounds since the 1970's, EU school furniture standards have been revised to include larger, reinforced chair seats and backs to accommodate greater girth and height--as well as ergonomic chair design to help children with back problems due to inactive lifestyles.

College/University = becoming a stupid, lazy, fata$$?