Archive | April 2008

Pompeii and the Eruption of Mt. Vesuvius

Apr21

In 79 AD, on August 24, the volcano Vesuvius, erupted on the unsuspecting Roman town of Pompeii. It came as such a great shock to the people who lived there because the volcano had been silent for centuries up until that fateful day.
The residents of Pompeii attempted to get out of the town and away from the violently erupting volcano. They grabbed their most treasured possessions, most of which were precious pieces of jewelry. Some doctors saved their medical tools. All of them fled, but not many got far. Many of these artefacts were not found until around 1748, when the city Pompeii was rediscovered.
Some of the remains of people who died in the eruption have been preserved and put in museums. I went to an exhibit today called Pompeii: Tales from an Eruption. I thought it was tragic and awful that all those people died, but I also thought it was interesting.

Fiction about Pompeii:

Meme: Five Twentieth Century Works of Transcendent Beauty

Apr21

Mark Olson at PsuedoPolymath, in his 3000th post, has challenged bloggers to name five works of transcendent beauty produced during the last century. Since beauty does exist alongside horror, Mr. Olson suggests that we name and remember the beauties of our century, lest we forget. Here are mine, off the top of my head:

1. The works of J.R.R. Tolkien

2. Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, and other works.

3. These windows by Marc Chagall.

4. “I Have a Dream,” a speech by Martin Luther King Jr.

5. The Green Revolution.

There are probably dance, architecture, design, science, technology and sports works and moments that could be added to this list, but I’m not so familiar with those areas of human endeavor.

The 20th century gave us much that was not beautiful such as the Killing Fields, Auschwitz, Holodomor, Stalingrad, and that list continues much too far. However, every age has beauty to claim as its own. Doestoevsky claimed that ‘beauty would save the world.’ In this vein it seems imperative that we remark and remember beauty that is in our midst.”

Thanks, Mark, good idea.

Vanity, Vanity, All Is Vanity

Apr21

Christianity for Modern Pagans, ch. 5: Vanity.

Pascal: “Anyone who wants to know the full extent of man’s vanity has only to consider the causes and effects of love. The cause is a je ne sais quoi. And it’s effects are terrifying. This indefinable something, so trifling that we cannot recognize it, upsets the whole earth, princes, armies, the entire world. Cleopatra’s nose: if it had been shorter the whole face of the earth would have been different.”

Kreeft: “No psychologist, to this day, has ever explained why Romeo falls in love with Juliet. Yet this is literally a matter of life or death. Let us pray that no one ever will explain it.”

There were other girls in the ballroom when Romeo first saw Juliet. Why her? Why are you married to your husband or wife instead of some other woman or man? Chance? Pheromones? Predestination? Does that online dating service whose name I can’t remember really have x number of “compatibility factors” infallibly figured and matched to find you the perfect mate? I doubt it.

First, there’s an attraction, physical and spiritual/mental. Ideas mesh; bodies feel. Then there must be a commitment, an act of the will. A woman says, “I love this man and forsaking all others, I will cling only to him.” Love is somethng you feel, but to become lasting, it becomes something you do, acting in love whether you feel it or not.

However, Pascal is right. None of the preceding paragraph explains completely why I chose Engineer Husband. Perhaps I chose him because he was attracted to me, but that answer begs the question: why was he attracted to me? And what if he had not been?

For want of a nail, the shoe was lost,
For want of the shoe, the horse was lost,
For want of the horse, the rider was lost,
For want of the rider, the battle was lost,
For want of the battle, the kingdom was lost,
And all for the want of a nail!

Read more about the source of this nursery rhyme on vanity and chance (or lack of foresight according to Ben Franklin) here.

Pascal’s point is that mighty events turn on small and seemingly inconsequential choices. Kreeft concludes, “If there is no God, we easily become determinists.” Or anarchic nihilists.

LOST Returns: Next Thursday

Apr16

While I was watching the first half of season four of LOST I was taking a blog break for Lent, so there were no weekly LOST posts here at Semicolon. Now, in honor of the return of LOST in just one week, I thought I’d share some of my thoughts on the first eight episodes of the season.

It seems that each of the Oceanic Six, except baby Aaron, has entered into his own personal nightmare. Each one has become what he least wanted to be. Jack is an alcoholic, drug-addicted, suicidal, washed-up surgeon just like his father. Hurley’s back in the mental hospital, talking to dead people, and acting paranoid. And he hasn’t lost any weight either. (Just because you’re paranoid, it doesn’t necessarily mean They aren’t out to get you.) Kate is trapped in a Monica-like life with a child for whom she’s responsible and a court settlement that restricts her movements. She can’t go anywhere, and she certainly can’t run anymore. She’s also trapped inside a lie that makes her out to be a heroine, and she can’t tell the truth or she’ll lose the baby and maybe more than that. Sun has lost her husband, the one person she’s spent the entire island-time trying to hang onto. Sayid’s become a contract assassin, working for Ben, of all people. Sayid said in the third episode of season four that the day he started believing Ben would be the day he “sold his soul.” It looks as if Jack, Hurley, Kate, Sun, and Sayid have all lost their souls, their identities, the essential character that vindicated each of them on the island.

Hurley has a sudden talent for deception. Before they went Through the Looking Glass, Hurley couldn’t keep a secret and couldn’t lie his way out of a paper bag. In episode three, Hurley manages to deceive Sayid, the Human Lie Detector and betray him to Locke. How did Hurley become a deceptive Judas in league with Locke? And Sayid, on the other hand, didn’t even know at first that his girlfriend in Berlin was a liar and an enemy. He’s lost his ability to detect lies and regained his talent for torture and murder. Jack’s no longer a leader; even Kate won’t follow him when he tells her they need to go back to the island. Since when did Kate not follow Jack into the jungle at a moment’s notice?

Have they sold their souls, their integrity, to their rescuers for a mess of pottage?

Stay tuned next week. Same LOST time; same LOST station.

Expelled Exposed or Science Restricted

Apr15

I have not seen Ben Stein’s new documentary Exposed, a purported expose of the stifling of scientific inquiry in the area of intelligent design and evolutionary theory. I do not know if the movie is skewed or deceptive or specious in its arguments. I am not a scientist. I probably would not know if the scientific material in the movie was accurate or not.

However, as far as I understand, the movie is not primarily a scientific argument; it is rather an attempt to tell the stories of certain academics who feel that they have been discriminated against, denied promotion and tenure, and yes, persecuted because of the subject matter that they have chosen to study or to write about, namely the area of research known as “intelligent design.” In this article in Scientific American Michael Schermer, author of Why Darwin Matters: The Case Against Intelligent Design, argues that Mr. Stein’s film is indeed inaccurate propaganda. Perhaps so, although I reserve judgement, knowing what I know already about academic politics and the misuse of power in academic settings.

Be that as it may, Mr. Shermer goes on to make a fallacious argument of his own that goes to the heart of the debate between proponents of intelligent design and Darwinian evolutionists:

When will people learn that Darwinian naturalism has nothing whatsoever to do with religious supernaturalism? By the very definitions of the words it is not possible for supernatural processes to be understood by a method designed strictly for analyzing natural causes. Unless God reaches into our world through natural and detectable means, he remains wholly outside the realm of science.

The last part of Mr. Schermer’s paragraph states exactly what I think the students of intelligent design are saying: that “God (or someone) reaches into our world through natural and detectable means,” that we can observe the effects of design by some intelligence in the phenomena of the universe. Schermer uses a restrictive definition of “science” to conclude that scientists who are interested in studying the possibilities of intelligent design cannot really be scientists. According to Schermer’s definition, science equals naturalism, natural causes within a closed system, and if my scientific observations point to a supernatural cause or explanation for any process or subject of study, then I am no longer doing science. Schermer spends half of his article saying that intelligent design proponents and theorists are not really discriminated against in academia, and then he ends by saying that of course, they are and should be walled outside the realm of science because what they’re studying isn’t really science.

It’s as if you said there was a poltergeist in your house, and I said that there couldn’t be a poltergeist because I don’t believe in poltergeists. (I don’t.) And then you invite me over to study for myself the effects of the presence of the supposed poltergeist, but I refuse to look because poltergeists don’t exist and if I came over to study your ghostly phenomena you would have to admit to me, in advance, that it was not a poltergeist at all or else I won’t even look. And I won’t look at any evidence that indicates that you might actually have a ghost in your house because it’s not scientific to study ghosts. And anyone else who studies your poltergeist-like incidents isn’t doing science either, no matter how much use he makes of the scientific method.

Isn’t this attitude rather ostrich-like? What if the universe really is a designed universe, created by an Intelligent Designer who lives outside our closed system of natural causes? Science certainly cannot define and study such a Supernatural Designer, but scientists can and always have felt qualified and able to study the (created) universe itself to find out how things work and how they became what they are today. Perhaps Darwinian evolution and natural selection are sufficient and complete scientific explanations for the world as we observe it. Or maybe some scientists are onto something when they posit that Darwinism doesn’t explain the facts we observe in the natural world and that some events and observations require a supernatural explanation, or a natural cause that we have not yet discovered. (Super-intelligent aliens from another planet, maybe? That explanation for the appearance of design in the universe has the advantage for the atheist of not requiring him to admit to the existence of God, but then there’s the age-old question of who created the super-intelligent aliens.)

O.K., so scientists can’t explain supernatural, outside of the closed system of natural law, events, but can scientists not say that the explanations we have don’t explain things very well and that the observations that they make may indicate that a supernatural explanation is in order? If not, then the scientist risks being blind and deaf and in denial. What if the Truth really is supernatural? If it looks like a poltergeist, walks like a poltergeist, and no other natural explanation exists, then maybe, just maybe it’s a poltergeist, whether I want to believe it or not.

I’ve said nothing here that proves the arguments of intelligent design proponents, nor have I refuted the Darwinists. As I said in the beginning, I’m not scientifically qualified to do so. I’ve only said that IF the evidence indicates that a naturalistic closed system cannot contain or explain the observations that a scientist makes, perhaps he ought to maintain a healthy skepticism and admit to the possibility of the supernatural.

Hat tip to Josh Sowin at Fire and Knowledge for the link to Mr. Schermer’s article.

Twilight series by Stephanie Meyer

Apr14

Vampire Love by Libby Gruner, an essay at Literary Mama on the sources for the popularity of Stephanie Meyer’s series:

Vampire stories are, of course, perfect for teenagers. Vampires stay out all night, scare the respectable citizens, take crazy risks, and live, seemingly, forever. And they’re both sexy and dangerous. Their feasting is intimate, and it’s transformative: the first time matters. Vampire stories come and go, but they’ve been particularly popular among teenagers, it seems to me, during the age of AIDS: they titillate with their suggestion of a sweet fatality borne in the blood, but they also — in the Twilight series especially — carry a strong message of abstinence.”

I read Twilight, New Moon and Eclipse last month, one after the other, like candy, in the course of two or three days. Two of my daughters had the books, purchased with their own money, and I read them mostly to see what the fuss was about. Just like candy, I found them fairly harmless, but not terribly nutritious. Eldest Daughter read the first book in the series, Twilight, and found it to be repetitive and somewhat emotionally overwrought. I couldn’t disagree with her assessment, but it didn’t bother me as much as it did her. I just kept reading, eager to find out how Bella and her vampire boy friend would resolve their essential, life-threatening dilemma: how do you love someone who’s seriously tempted to kill you and drink your blood every time he gets close to you? Or if you’re Edward the Reformed Vampire who’s made a promise not to drink human blood, even though he needs blood to survive and craves human blood, how do you have an intimate relationship with the love of your life without killing her?

There are, of course, other difficulties and plot predicaments: bad, unreformed vampires, werewolves in the second book, Bella’s own clumsiness and stubbornness, Edward’s rectitude and his family of good, but tempted, vampires, a sort of Vampire Capital of the World where the vampires are bloodthirsty and not afraid to show it., other guys who provoke Edward’s jealousy. Still, it all comes down to: how are Edward and Bella going to get together and survive the encounter?

Recommended, cautiously, for those young ladies who realize that these books are fantasy, not reality, and that they’re essentially light reading, not models for male/female relationships.

Unwind by Neal Shusterman

Apr13

I put Unwind on my list of Dystopian Novels with Pro-Life Themes along with The Declaration by Gemma Malley and Children of Men by P.D. James. I had only read a synopsis of the novel but it sounded as if it might belong on that list.

Now I think it’s a little more, and a little less, complicated, than the title to such a list would imply. The author, Neal Shusterman, tries to straddle the line between “pro-life” and “pro-choice” arguments all the way through the novel to very end. Toward the end of the story, one of the characters preaches to an audience of Unwinds, teenagers slated for death by dismemberment for the benefit of those in need of an organ transplant:

“I don’t know what happens to our consciousness when we’re unwound. I don’t even know when that consciousness starts. But I do know this. We have a right to our lives! We have a right to choose what happens to our bodies! We deserve a world where both those things are possible—and it’s our job to help make that world.”

Those words echo both sides of the abortion debate quite faithfully.

The world that Shusterman creates is a compelling one. To end the Heartland War between the Life Army and the Choice Brigade, the Bill of Life is conceived and signed. It says that “human life may not be touched from the moment of conception until a child reaches the age of thirteen. However, between the ages of thirteen and eighteen, a parent may choose to retroactively ‘abort’ a child . . . on the condition that the child’s life doesn’t ‘technically’ end. The process by which a child is both terminated and yet kept alive is called ‘unwinding.'” You can see the possibilities in such a set up: possibilities for exploring both pro-life and pro-choice arguments and weaknesses. And Shusterman does explore. He raises questions such as:

What happens to unwanted babies when no abortions are allowed? (I think his scenario in this case is rather weak and unlikely since the sort of thing he portrays didn’t happen much before abortion was legal in the first place.)

Is it better to die or to be “donated” in pieces to those who are in need of new body parts?

What is a soul, and when does a human become a living soul?

What happens to that soul or consciousness or life when you die?

What if you don’t die but rather your organs, even your brain, could live on in other bodies? Then, what happens to You? Are you really still alive?

Is every person truly valuable? What about fetuses? What about criminals and delinquents? Are you still valuable even if no one assigns value to you, if no one loves you?

Is suicide terrorism ever justified?

The answers to these questions in the novel are ambiguous, and the reader can read a lot of his own prejudices into the story and find support for whatever point of view he brings to the reading in the first place. Or one can take the novel’s questions as food for thought and come away with some awareness of or even appreciation for “the other side” of the abortion debate.

I came away with a renewed commitment to life and the sacredness of life at all stages from conception to death. But I did catch a glimpse of what fears the pro-choice people are harboring and of what a chasm there is between the worldview of a pro-life activist and that of an abortion defender.

And I did think Mr. Shusterman should be commended for writing a fine story.

Animal or Angel?

Apr13

Christianity for Modern Pagans, ch. 4: The Paradox of Greatness and Wretchedness.

Shakespeare: “What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals—and yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust? Man delights not me—nor woman neither, though by your smiling you seem to say so.” Hamlet, Act 2, Scene 2

Pascal: “Man is neither angel nor beast .. . Man must not be allowed to believe that he is equal either to animals or to angels, nor to be unaware of either, but he must know both.”
“This is why life is neither a tragedy nor a comedy but a tragicomedy.”

In the commentary portion, Kreeft goes on to list some of the philosophical movements, both before and since the time of Pascal, that have erred on either the side of animalism or angelism.

Animalism: Marxism, Behaviorism, Freudianism, Darwinism, and Deweyan Pragmatism. (I would add Psychology and Psychiatry in general which assume that all of our problems can be traced to physical/chemical causes.)

Angelism: Platonism, Gnosticism, Pantheism, and New Age Spiritualism.

Shakespeare, of course, genius that he was, wrote both tragedies and comedies and a few plays that are ambiguously considered to be tragicomedies. The wheat and the tares grow together in this world, and no one can separate the two until the harvest. The ending is hope or despair, heaven or hell, life everlasting or death everdying, and the ending determines the nature of the play. Even if sad, tragic, horrible things happen, if the culmination is a wedding, The Marriage Feast of the Lamb, then the play was a comedy all along. And even if we laugh and grab for the gusto, if the end is death and despair, the play is a tragedy, no matter how many grave-diggers’ jest we insert along the way.

So should a writer or a playwright show only the depths of evil and the hopelessness and sin of which man is capable and to which he is prone? Is this the work of a Christian novelist or poet, to bring the reader into the deepest darkness so that he might begin to look for a light? For some writers, the rather paradoxical illumination of human wretchedness might be the calling. Others are called to articulate and write hope in a dying world. Some, the greatest of writers and communicators, can do both.

NPM: Pantoum

Apr13

Pipsqueak at The Common Room writes about a kind of poem called a “pantoum.”

I’m not sure I really get it, but today’s assignment for National Poetry Month is to try to write a pantoum. I’ll add to this post if any of my urchins or I are at all successful in the endeavor.

Poetry activity for today: Write a pantoum.
Poet of the day: Aileen Fisher, not because she wrote pantoums, but because I have her book, Cricket in a Thicket on my shelf just waiting to be explored with the urchins.

Read about Aileen Fisher and an example of one of her poems, Open House.