I just noticed this article in First Things discussing why the Schiavo case was not a case of judicial activism. It echoes some things I had posted (and here) in the heat of the Schiavo debate and is worth reading.
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Month: September 2005
There’s a debate raging in the U.S. about teaching “intelligent design” in schools. Although I find ID promising, I’m not sure ID is ready for the public schoolhouse yet, and I’m even less sure that it’s good stewardship to spend resources on litigation and lobbying to force ID into the public school curriculum. Regardless, the nastiness of the debate is startling. Take a look for example at a recent post on Evangelical Outpost and the resulting comments, in which yours truly is called an “illiterate moron,” a “pathological liar,” “deluded,” and “dopderdoink,” among other things (by one of the commenters, not by the site’s proprietor, who is sympathetic to ID). The same guy also suggested I “engage in something called self-reflection for the first time in many years,” which is particularly amusing if you know me at all (a lack of painful introspection, most definitely, is not one of my problems).
The ID debate seems to illutrate the tenacity of scientific paradigms. The tenacity of a paradigm seems for many to correlate with its inherent merit. That doesn’t square with history. Every scientific theory we now reject — from heliocentrism to Netwonian science — was held tenaciously in its day.
I’m also interested in the tenacity with which many people on the anti-ID side of the debate seem to hold a particular theory about theories — that is, the theory that Popper’s falsifiability criterion is the sine qua non of “science.” I’ve begun reading Imre Lakatos, and I think this rings true: “[i]s, then, Popper’s falsifiability criterion the solution to the problem of demarcating science from pseudoscience? No. For Popper’s criterion ignores the remarkable tenacity of scientific theories. Scientists have thick skins. They do not abandon a theory merely because the facts contradict it.” (Lakatos, “Science & Psudoscience,” in “The Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes” (Cambridge 1978, Vol. 1)), at p. 4.) In the same essay, Lakatos states that “As opposed to Popper the methodology of scientific research programmes does not offer instant rationality. One must treat budding programmes leniently: programmes may take decades before they get off the ground and become empirically progressive.” (Ibid. at p. 6.)
It’s fascinating, and frustrating, to observe the vehemence with which some oppose ID on supposedly objective grounds. As Kuhn and later Lakatos demonstrated, those grounds aren’t in any event objective, but any pretense of objectivity is abandoned by some when a new theory relating to natural history proposes some intelligent agency.
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The Blind Men and the Elephant
I heard a sermon today that featured a discussion of truth. The speaker was from a conservative evangelical tradition and was making a very basic comparison of absolute truth versus relativism. He referred to the parable of the blind men and the elephant as a standard relativist’s argument and tried to show how the parable fails as an argument for relativism. The elephant, after all, remains an elephant, regardless of the inaccurate perceptions of the blind men. This is a good critique, but in many ways I think it misses the point of the parable. In the process, some potentially helpful observations about truth and knowledge went by the boards.
With the introduction of Dreamweaver 8, Macromedia is making it easier than ever to integrate RSS feeds into your blog and webpage content. I’ll shortly be unveiling a “Technology Law and Policy” page utilizing the technology. For now, if you’re interested in some government RSS feeds, check out this really cool site.
When you have the following exhange with your 7-year-old:
Child: What are you doing, dad?
Me: Shaving.
Child: Since when do you shave during the week?
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Influence, Blogs and Podcasts
Joe Carter posted some great thoughts this week about blogging and influence. I’d apply the same principles to podcasting, and indeed to just about any leadership activity. I fall prey regularly to the “big influence” fallacy — the idea that the only kind of influence that matters is that which gets recorded in history books. Most of us, myself included, likely will never wield that kind of influence. Yet, every day, we interact with people who need a word of encouragement, a song, a poem, an admonition, a bit of perspective, a prayer, a thought from scripture. These interactions don’t usually make the history books, but they matter. They are, in fact, what life is mostly about: everyday love, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, self-control. The everyday transformation we experience through the Holy Spirit, cumulating to something marvelous, the very workmanship of God.
We recently rented the movies Sahara and The Muppets Wizard of Oz. Both of them stank like a wet dog on an August afternoon.
“Sahara” is an adaptation of a Clive Cussler novel. I’ve never read any Cussler, but my neighbor loves him. Cussler is a swashbuckling treasure hunter who writes about swashbuckling treasure hunters. This story has something to do with a lost Civil War ironclad ship that is burried in the Sahara desert, an evil African strongman, a swashbuckling treasure hunter and his goofy sidekick, a babealicious World Health Organization epidemiologist, and a multinational corporation that generates energy or something in a high-tech solar-powered desert facility and burries toxic waste in the underground river that supplies water to the noble nomadic freedom fighters and humble townsfolk that live nearby.
If I lost you at “babealicious World Health Organization epidemiologist,” I don’t blame you. This film takes every stupid buddy and spy movie cliche, chunks them in a blender, throws in a few idotic plot twists cut between absurd exploding chase scenes, slaps on opening and closing credits, and calls it a day. I was really in the mood for a dumb-but-fun action film — some gadgets, a few explosions, the bad guy buying the farm and the good guy getting the girl — but this was just dumb.
The “Muppets Wizard of Oz,” on the other hand, takes the classic Oz story, strips it of everything fun and magical, and refilms it with Kermit and friends using production values that must have Judy Garland & co. turning over in their graves. It used to be that you could count on the Muppets for kid-friendly movies with some witty adult-friendly wisecracks. In “Oz,” the jokes are simply vulgar.
For example, Kermit the Frog, as the Scarecrow, is found by Dorothy in the corn patch attached to a wooden cross. Kermit cracks, “has anyone around here seen The Passion of the Christ?” Wonderful. Now even Kermit is an anti-Christian bigot. Later, we meet Gonzo as the tin man. Toto — inexplicably presented as a three foot tall prawn (yes, a prawn, like a shrimp) rather than a little dog — manipulates some buttons and knobs to get the tin man working. Eventually, Toto twiddles some protrusions on Gonzo’s chest. “Those,” Gonzo says, “are my nipples,” to which Toto replies “I feel so dirty!” How debased! Have we really sunk so low that we need S&M / nipple references in Muppet films? Do I really need to explain this kind of thing to my kids? I feel dirty too, Toto. We’re definitely not in Kansas anymore.
I could go on and on about the crude and idiotic stuff in “Muppets Oz,” but I’ll spare myself the unwanted Google hits and just suggest you let this one rot on the video store shelves.
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Movie Review — "Crash"
This weekend we rented the movie Crash on DVD. It’s a fascinating, but flawed, take on invidual racism in Los Angeles.
There isn’t a “story” to “Crash,” or at least not a single story. Instead, there are multiple story lines, one for each principle character: an Iranian shopkeeper, two white cops, a black TV director and his wife, a black cop and his latina partner, and a white District Attorney and his wife, and two black carjackers. Each character is both racist and the victim of racial prejudice. Their individual stories intertwine over the course of a day, and we observe how each character’s circumstances and attitudes contribute to the racism they express and experience. In this respect, “Crash” is a postmodern film, with many complex stories rather than one metanarrative, and many questions and perspectives rather than one simple resolution. And on this level, the film works splendidly.
If the refusal to establish a simple, predictable Hollywood plotline is “Crash’s” glory, it’s also where the film stalls. “Crash” offers no hope for redemption. It never hints that any of the characters can reconcile their racial and cultural differences. Instead, it gives us the Iranian shopkeeper’s eventual mystical acceptance of his fate, the black cop’s unrelieved guilt, the white cop’s unrelenting conflict over caring for his ailing father. We can escape into unreality, become cynical, or become hard; there are no other alternatives. I would love to see a film as unflinching and complex as “Crash” that nevertheless provides a glimpse of the forgiveness and reconciliation we can find, even over intractable issues of culture and race, in Christ.
If you’re interested in how a postmodern sensibility might play into a studio film, or if you’re concerned about racial reconciliation, take a look at “Crash.”
(A final word of warning — the characters in “Crash” frequently say exactly what they’re thinking; as a film that explores some dark corners of human nature, the characters are often thinking things that aren’t very nice. There are many bad words, including liberal use of the “F***” word, and one brief scene involving a sexual situation. In my view, just about all of this was appropriate to the context of the film, but at the very least, if you have kids in the house, you’ll want to watch this one after they’re asleep and keep your hands on the “volume” button.)
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World Vision and Katrina Relief
For many years, my family has sponsored a child through World Vision, a Christian relief agency. World Vision is engaged in a relief program relating to Hurricane Katrina, in which they’re partnering with local churches to provide needed supplies. I invite you to check it out.
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New Version of iTunes
A new version of iTunes is out that will synch Outlook contacts and calendar entries with the iPod. Cool! Too bad the download files seem to be corrupted. I also noticed this as part of Apple’s blurb for the software:
Smart Shuffle — Adjust random playback to hear what you want.
Well, if you adjust it to hear what you want, it isn’t random, is it?