A Literary Meme

Passed along from Jim at decorabilia.

You are stuck inside Fahrenheit 451. What book would you be?

I would be Fahrenheit 451 itself, just to blow minds.

Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character?

Yes. Many times. For instance, Briony from Ian McEwan’s Atonement, Moushumi from Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake, and Kathy from Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go. Incidentally, I highly recommend all three of those books, even if you aren’t looking for a new fictional crush.

Oh, and also—how could I forget?—Hermione Granger from the Harry Potter series. (The character in the books, not the actress who plays her in the movies.)

What was the last book you bought?

The Hanging of Ephraim Wheeler by Irene Quenzler Brown and Richard D. Brown. In 1806, Ephraim Wheeler became the first man in U.S. history to be judicially executed for the rape of his own daughter. This was remarkable because in that era women, especially daughters, did not bring such charges against their fathers. However, in Wheeler’s case, his wife and daughter sided together to secure Wheeler’s conviction. But they apparently did not realize it was a capital crime; once he was sentenced to death they appealed to the court for mercy. It’s a fascinating story, and extremely well-written, especially for a history book by two academic scholars.

What are you currently reading?

The Hanging of Ephraim Wheeler described above, Doubt: A History by Jennifer Michael Hecht (who is not a fictional character, but who is certainly crush-worthy), Kiln People by David Brin, and Being and Time by Martin Heidegger.

What five books would you take to a deserted island?

The Da Vinci Code, Left Behind, The Ultimate Weight Solution by Dr. Phil, Dave Barry Turns 40, and Juiced by Jose Canseco.

Just kidding! Seriously—

As big a single-volume dictionary as I could find, a single-volume edition of Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, a single-volume edition of Shakespeare, Umberto Eco’s Foucault’s Pendulum, and Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil.

Whom are you going to pass this book meme to and why?

I have no one particular in mind. If you want to carry the torch, do so. Leave a comment with a link so the rest of us can read your responses.

Another Badly Behaved Christian

I have written plenty on what I think about “intelligent design” and one of its most vocal proponents, William Dembski, and I am pretty satisfied with what I’ve said (if you’re interested, see here, here, and here, for starters), so this will not be another long post on the subject. Rather, I just want to call attention to yet more evidence that Dembski is not what he claims to be (i.e., honest and open).

Jim at decorabilia decided to comment on Dembski’s blog, only to have his comment and his login name deleted. Fancy that. Read what Jim has to say, and read the comment on his post from Matthew Dunn, who had a similar experience. More than once. Oh, and Joshua Rosenau, too.

Does this reflect badly on “intelligent design,” or is it merely ad hominem wheel-spinning? Unfortunately, I think it must fall into the former category. If Dembski is going to complain that the only reason “intelligent design” hasn’t gotten a fair hearing is because critics of Darwinian evolution have been actively stifled, it only hurts his case when he actively stifles critics of his own theory. If “intelligent design” can’t compete in the marketplace of ideas without proponents underhandedly crippling its competitors, then one can’t help but question its adequacy.

Churchmen @ Starbucks

Last night, while enjoying a cup of coffee at Starbucks and reading about the history of doubt, two Christian couples came and occupied the corner nearest my table. One of the men seemed to be a youth pastor, and the conversation dealt almost entirely with issues pertaining to his job. That is, they spent an hour talking about apparently wayward teenagers, especially the female kind, and the problem of dealing with their parents. The men did more talking than the women, who, frankly, said almost nothing. (That in itself was not so telling, but became more interesting when one of the women suggested that the board of elders at their church needed some women on it to “shake things up,” and was promptly told by the other woman that her sentiment was, in effect, a pipe dream.)

As I said, these two middle-aged Christian men were most concerned with wayward teenaged girls last night. That is, if girls who wear two-piece swimsuits, show a little skin when they dress for the day, and “freak dance” with boys can be considered wayward. These guys sure thought so. If you ask me, there are plenty of worse things teenaged girls can do. But they were concerned, which they are free to be. Me, I get suspicious when I hear middle-aged men who are authority figures in Christian churches complain about the sexuality of teenaged girls. In my experience, both personal and observational, men who want to stifle the sexuality of teenaged girls are in it for themselves, not for the girls; that is, they’re afraid to find themselves surrounded by desirable young ladies who are nevertheless out-of-bounds and off-limits. Better to keep those pretty girls covered up than to exercise their own self-control and nobility.

However, scintillating as it may be, that subject is really neither here nor there; what really got me thinking last night was the deep concern these people had for maintaining a particular character for their congregation. These were leadership people fretting over the lack of purity and commitment from the greater group. Teenaged girls in skimpy outfits may start them up, but parents who fail to bring down the hammer of justice are what keep them going. “They think their kids are so good,” the ostensible youth pastor lamented. “But they’re not!” Well, that may be true, and it may be reasonable cause for concern when parents harbor an unreasonably high estimation of their children, but the word I heard over and over last night was “compromise.” As in, “These parents are what happens when you don’t follow the Bible and compromise with the world.” Or, to reframe the problem, secular (“worldly”) parents are permissive but good (“uncompromised”) Christian parents are not.

Oddly enough, however, during the same conversation the man I’m calling the youth pastor described an incident in which a “non-believer dad” showed up several “high leadership” church parents with his agitation and subsequent action about his daughter’s sexualized behavior while they did nothing about their own children. That kind of thing should give them pause and make them re-think their “compromise” theology, but the contradiction flew right past, unnoticed by my pious neighbors. If a Christian can watch a non-believer exercise the very parenting skill whose lack in Christians he attributes to “compromise” with the non-believing world, how can he continue in his opinion that the problem with these Christian parents is their “worldliness”?

While I sat and listened to this conversation—and lest you wonder, I had little choice, as the unfortunate geometry of the situation put me right in the middle of their interplay—it occurred to me that these people, these Christian men, were not at all concerned with why other people choose to participate in their church. Instead they were worried about their own lack of influence over how people behave after they have chosen to participate. That is, it was a classic case of Christian men on a power trip.

People don’t go to church to be told how to behave. People go to church because they want to feel like they are a part of something. Some of them want to be a part of some vast, mystical entity, but many of them—I would venture to say most of them—are satisfied with being part of a social group. Is there anything wrong with either approach? Not particularly. But those leadership males in Starbucks last night would not agree. It seems their church is about purity, and they see themselves with the responsibility to maintain that purity. So they get together in public—in the inescapable earshot of a stranger!—and complain about other people in their congregation, make derogatory remarks about their actions and motivations, belittle them, and set themselves up as righteous enforcers. Why do they go to church? While their minds and motivations are unfortunately unknowable without an interview (and even then I would probably doubt their answers), I think I could make a pretty good guess.

Template Tweaking

I made a few tweaks to my template. Let me know if you have any problems.

Stretching Authority

This started as a comment on Joe Missionary’s post “Welcome, Pope Benedict XVI,” but then it got out of hand and his comment system has limits that wouldn’t let me post the whole thing, so here it is in its entirety. Maybe someone will find it interesting.

I’m not Catholic, or even a Christian, so I don’t have much vested interest in the pope as a theological leader, but I do get annoyed when the head of my national government, which is not supposed to be religious, shows up at the pope’s funeral and orders that national flags be put at half-staff, and when other non-Catholics and non-Christians, including journalists, defer to the pope as an authority. Regardless of where he stands on “heresy,” the guy is only supposed to be an authority for Catholics.

On the other hand, few things are more annoying than when religious people (which can be people of any religion, not just Christianity) try to pass laws or block the passage of laws in big, pluralistic societies with secular governments in an attempt to make laws that apply to all of us are in accordance with religious beliefs that only apply to themselves. (E.g., Christians may not want to do any human cloning, but why should they try to get anti-cloning legislation passed on the basis of their beliefs? Perhaps there are arguments against human cloning that do not rely on appeals to Christian belief, but I have not heard them. I think we should hear them, though.) Does pushing back against theological evolution within the church have an effect on this sort of thing?

In other words, I am busy wondering how enforcing the doctrinal purity of the Catholic church affects the rest of us, even though I really don’t think it should affect the rest of us. Will stamping out heresy make the church purer but smaller, and hence less politically effective? Or will it make the church seem more secure, promote growth, and make it much more powerful to wield secular politics against we outsiders?

On the other-other hand, however, I think the fact that my president showed up at John Paul II’s funeral is the result of a pope who, while being theologically conservative, behaved in what might be called “pastoral” ways that garnered universal appeal. By playing the part of a universal authority and not just a Roman Catholic one, John Paul II created a world where even non-Catholics looked up to him. He probably could have gone even further had he been more theologically liberal. That makes me nervous, too. I have no obligation to revere the pope, and neither does any other non-Catholic. But John Paul II was so popular that it has become almost impossible to vocally not revere the pope, even as a non-Catholic, without suffering popular condemnation. Why else the bizarre multicultural, interfaith outpouring at the passing of JP2, and the mythologizing and hagiography about his role in the fall of Communism? While most people were busy talking about how extraordinary it was that President Bush attended the funeral, I was busy wondering if he would have been able to get away with just tossing out a terse statement to the press and still manage to avoid criticism for not revering the pope.

When the pope stretches his authority beyond the Catholic church, whether de jure or de facto, I get edgy and defensive. He’s the leader of the Roman Catholic Church, nothing else. Fostering unity and dialogue with other religions and promoting the kind of theological evolution that Protestantism saw in the second half of the 20th century (and has subsequently rolled back in many ways) would only further cement the pope’s role as a worldwide moral authority, instead of just a Roman Catholic one, and I don’t like that idea one bit. (Hence the rather disrespectful posts on my blog during the last few days.)

An organization as big and powerful as the RCC affects all the rest of us, and while I may not care one bit about whether Catholics can find a theological validation of homosexuality or birth control or whatever, I certainly care whether they use the power of their institution, regardless of its theological content, to push the rest of us around. But if that theological content affects the power of the church, then I have to wonder, even to worry first about the purpose of that theology and, maybe more importantly, about the people who are motivated to adhere to that theology. If the pope pushes theological conservatism to see a growth in numbers, power, and influence, I have to wonder about why people are flocking to conservative Christian theology. If the pope pushes theological liberalism to see a growth in respect, influence, and consequential power, I have to wonder about the motivations of the institution that seem to care more for perpetuating their influence than about maintaining their purity of purpose.

For instance, Truth may not be determined by a majority vote, but neither is it determined by a minority authority. That lesson, I had thought, was one of the great lessons of the Western leap out of monarchism. But when guys like Steve come along and praise the religion that smacks down heresy and implies (by deprecating one option then being the other) that truth can be determined by a minority authority, I get very worried about the state of civilization.

Church in a Bottle

Rand Simberg considers modern medical science and wonders if Ratzinger’s old age will really limit the length of his papacy:

Imagine that, a decade or less from now, a breakthrough occurs that cures some underlying, wasting disease from which the new pope might suffer, such as arteriosclerosis, thus buying him an additional decade of life that he might have been denied in its absence?

Indeed. But why not go one further? Why not replace the human papacy with an A.I. “expert system“? Conservatives, who seem to think the whole point of the church is that it doesn’t or shouldn’t change, ought to love this idea. Never worry again whether the pope will be too liberal–an expert system can’t think creatively! Plug in all established theology and canon law and whatever else defines the job, and just leave it there to answer questions, solve disputes, and issue bulls and encyclicals. (Maybe it will be something like this, but less meaningful.) It’s the ultimate in timeless conservation of ancient beliefs and rituals. After all, if there really is a right answer to everything, why bother with having a fallible person trying to fill those infallible shoes? Computers would surely make better conservative theologians than humans.

Imagine–no more mistakes, no more scandals, no more bad interpretations, no more of those annoying progressives! Just pure, clean, unadulterated hammering of the Same Old Stuff.

Once the A.I. pope succeeds, then we can start replacing the cardinals with computers, and then the bishops, the priests, and, finally, the parishioners. It will be the ultimate in unchanging institutions. No doubt. No liberalism. No sin. No mistakes. No variations.

Then, once the church is perfect, we can collapse all these computers into one, giant simulator, shove it away in the corner somewhere, and be done with it. Call it . . . church in a bottle–perfect, unchanging orthodoxy, like only unfeeling computers could achieve.

Pomp and Pope, Play by Play

Thousands of people in the square, screaming and waving flags.

A bunch of guys in suits, looking like Italian Mafia, jump out the tall french doors and close the scarlet curtain. It needs to be dramatic, I guess, emerging from behind the curtain. Why not add a drumroll, too?

Here comes Cardinal Medina, like a freakin’ rock star, the people scream. Pathetic. Microphone on a stick. He makes the announcement.

It’s Joe Ratzinger.

CBS flashes a goofy headshot and stats, like it’s an NFL game. Hilarious.

Benedict XVI. But I’m calling him Joe. A guy named Joe.

Here come the Mafia-lookin’ guys again with JP2’s coat of arms. They have it sideways, “but eventually they’ll get it straight,” says the commentator. Brilliant. What a job. Pope lackey.

Now the cardinals are all amassed on the surrounding balconies, smiling, laughing, pointing, waving. (The first thought that comes to my mind is Mardi Gras–Cardinals Gone Wild!)

There’s Joe. Waving and clasping his hands. People screaming. (“Please! Tell us what to think!”)

“Dear brothers and sisters,” he says, and the crowd roars. “After the great Pope John Paul the Second, our lords the cardinals elected me, simply and humbly, to labor in the vineyard of the Lord. I am consoled by the fact that even though I have insufficient instruments to do this, my dear brother cardinals will be with me, and praying with me. In the joy of the resurrected Lord, who gives us his permanent help in moving forward, and to his most holy mother Mary, thank you.”

There you go. Pope Benedict XVI. Joe Ratzinger. The new guy in the funny clothes. It astonishes me that people still buy into this stuff. Look! That guy was elected to wear the ancient Roman-style headdress and vestments! Now he’s infallible! (This morning he wasn’t, though, oddly enough.)

Now they’re calling him “master of the theological thought police” and “heresy hunter.” Good thing I’m not Catholic. I can think and say whatever I want, and nobody, no matter what historical era his clothes are a throwback to, can make me stop.

Condescending, Too

More from mynym, who came back for only an hour today. . .

This is from his comment to “Civility Reaffirmed“:

I am glad to have activated your “I must save civilization, now!” sort of instinct.

Regular readers of my blog might have noticed that my Save Civilization “instinct” almost never goes away. (See here, here, here, and here, for just a few recent examples.) Then there’s the subtitle of the blog, with its bit about “cultural silliness,” which was my way of pointing out civilizational decline when I wrote it over a year ago. But the greatest irony here is that the post he is commenting on is basically an old post brought out of mothballs. But I guess it doesn’t matter that I was worried about civilization back in January, before I ever knew that mynym existed, because he still thinks he “activated” that “instinct.”

And this one is from his latest on “WWJD?“:

You will, inevitably, accept some belief into your thinking as long as you are a sentient being. That is the way of sentience and sentences.

Which is screaming for a little Jedi hand waving. Apparently mynym knows what is inevitable, or he is trying to play the part of a sage mentor, or something. But, as Bertrand Russell said, “The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts.”

More Texts from Antiquity

Wow. This is too, too cool.

The Joy of Doubt

From Pierre Charron’s book On Wisdom (1605), as quoted in Hecht, Doubt: A History:

[Doubt] alone can provide true repose and security of our spirits. Have all the greatest and most noble philosophers and wise men who have professed doubt been in a state of anxiety and suffering? But they say: to doubt, to consider both points of view, to put off a decision, is this not painful? I reply, it is indeed for fools, but not for wise men. It is painful for people who cannot stand freedom, for those who are presumptuous, partisan, passionate and who, obstinately attached to their opinions, arrogantly condemn all others. . . . Such people, in truth, know nothing. They do not even know what it is to know something.

Unfortunately, the only English edition of On Wisdom (that I could find) is prohibitively expensive, and there is no online version, either.

Not surprisingly, the Catholic Encyclopedia writes off Charron with three paragraphs of mild derision.