Against the Stream

Blasphemy!

The video clip below has gotten a bit of feedback, and at least one person has said that it may be blasphemous. I'd like to address that issue.

In the first place, I don't think that either the first part, which skewers the hypocrisy of televangelical hucksters, nor the second part, about Marshall the 13th Apostle are blasphemous. If I had thought so, I never would have put them up, but I'd like to explain why they are not in fact blasphemous.

Blasphemy, as I understand it, is mocking God. Of course, there are a lot of people who believe that any reference to or representation of God or associated people or ideas that is less than completely pious is by definition blasphemous. Under that definition, not only would the Mr. Show clip be blasphemous, but so also would many episodes of the Simpsons, Monty Python, The Canterbury Tales, The Divine Comedy, and many other cultural artifacts, both sublime and ridiculous. It would also make criticism of religion or religious figures impossible, which is to the benefit of those figures, but certainly not helpful in speaking truthfully in an imperfect world. Such a broad definition of blasphemy tends to obscure more than it reveals about true piety and pious speech about God.

More narrowly construed, i.e., having to do with "mocking God," the idea of blasphemy allows us to criticize religious hypocrisy without criticizing God per se. This was something Chaucer was a master of, and his ability to hold religious scoundrels up to scorn and ridicule produced some of the finest poetry (and comedy) ever to be produced in English.

It also comes to explain the pointlessness of things like the "blasphemy challenge," which, far from mocking God, turns out to look a lot like self-mockery, since it requires its participants to recite a particular set of magic words, presumably on the theory that by doing so they are committing an unpardonable sin against a God in which they don't believe. This is a bit like chanting "bloody Mary" in the mirror three times at midnight (an analogy also made by Slacktivist), a test of "courage" that is substantially meaningless since courage necessitates belief in a real threat, of which the blasphemy challengers have none. While there may be some god-mocking taking place in the blasphemy challenge, it's more a juvenile game than anything else. (In fact, the only thing more juvenile than the challenge itself is getting worked up over the challenge, particularly since it's not like there's anything anyone can do about it).

But the clip below, far from being blasphemous, to my mind is an antidote to the blasphemous trivialization of Christian faith, as practiced by TV preachers and self-help gurus. Is there any fundamental difference between Warren the 13th Apostle and Joel Osteen? I think not. They both preach a false gospel of self-fulfillment and self-aggrandizement at the expense of authentic faith. The fact that Jesus wants the poor to inherit the Kingdom of Heaven and Marshall wants them to inherit "a whole lot more" is evidence that Marshall like Osteen, just - doesn't - get it. The fact that Jesus wants to give away loaves and fishes while Marshall wants to sell them means that Warren sees religion as a means of personal enrichment, and not service to God. And finally, the fact that God himself tells Warren to shut his trap is further evidence that we aren't meant to see the skit as mocking God, but as mocking those who mock God themselves through false piety!

And as for the first bit, about the so-called "ex-gay" ministries, I think the point is self-evident. Indeed, I found the clip less amusing than the Marshall bit because it's point was so obvious: The "ex-gay" movement is peddling snake oil. How it would be blasphemous to point that out is beyond me.

Ex-Gay & Marshall the 13th Apostle

The always-incisive Slacktivist posts this clip from "Mr. Show." The ex-gay ministries segment is funny, but  Marshall the 13th Apostle is great!

Mac Notebooks Through the Ages

The sad truth is that it was my desire for a Macintosh Powerbook that resulted in my long odyssey away from Macintosh through the desert of  PC/Windows. My first computer was a Mac, but as I was beginning graduate work, I decided that I needed a laptop computer, and I really wanted a powerbook like this one.

Unfortunately, at that time, Powerbooks were incredibly expensive, both compared to desktop Macs and compared to PC laptops, so, against my better judgement, I bought an IBM Notebook. It took me a very long time to migrate back to Macs.

I'm reminded of this because there's a really cool article over at Apple Gazette on the evolution of Mac notebooks. Cool as I thought that first generation model was, I have to admit that they've gotten a lot cooler over the years.

Lying About Honest Abe

Via Slacktivist, we read the immortal words of Abraham Lincoln, the Great Emancipator, 16th President of the United States, who once said:

Congressmen who willfully take actions during wartime that damage morale and undermine the military are saboteurs and should be arrested, exiled or hanged.

Powerful words, except that he never said them. As Slacktivist notes, and FactCheck.org confirms, this quote has been made up completely from whole cloth by right wingers eager to spatter their opponants with the label of "traitor" as often as possible for opposing an immoral war. The fact that it found its way to press once is shocking. The fact that it made to press a second time is unforgivable. But, not to be outdone by The Washington Times, a U.S. Congressman has now decided to repeat this complete, blatent, and thoroughly discredited quote on the floor of the House of Representatives.

Click the link and feel the shame.

In Which I Am Castigated by William Dembski

It's my own fault, really. I wrote a note to a participant in an email discussion group, and failed to remember that it wasn't a closed group. Therefore, writing an off-the-cuff, informal response, I opened myself up to a Bill Dembski snark attack.

So, for the record, here is the full passage that Dembski was responding to (he only quoted part of it):

You’re probably referring to the pseudo-mathematical posturings of William Dembski. Dembski is a fraud whom nobody should take seriously. Here’s why: Dembski’s model of “specified complexity” assumes that when attempting to determine the likelihood of a given pattern coming about randomly, that you have the pattern in mind from the outset. In other words, that evolution is a teleological process. But evolution is not teleological. It is not more unlikely, from a mathematical perspective, that, say, an eye should develop from a process of natural selection than that some other arbitrary result should take place. It’s only mathematically unlikely because you are separating this singular event (i.e., the one that took place), from the billions of other equally singular events that could have taken place, but didn’t. Those events were equally unlikely. prospectively any one of them could have occurred. It’s only retrospectively that we look at the one that did and say it’s unlikely.

Any mathematician worth his salt knows this. Indeed, it’s been pointed out to Dembski. He chooses to ignore it, and that is what makes him a fraud.

Second, on the subject of “chance.” Rhetoric alone is not argument, and accusing evolutionary theories of “linguistic desperation” is not a demonstration that this is what’s going on. I can only assume you mean the arguments of people like Richard Dawkins, who argue, quite cogently, that evolution is not “random” in the same way that say, drawing letters from a bag for scrabble is random. On the contrary, there is a mechanism that governs the process of evolution, namely, adaptation to environment. Variations that contribute to survival (and reproduction) are favored and variations that don’t are disfavored. Evolution is not, therefore, random but follows a comprehensible pattern. But, and this is key, the pattern is not determined by an outside consciousness (at least, from the limited perspective of what science is competent to investigate), but it is determined by the environmental effects on species, their abilities to adapt, and their ability to pass those adaptive qualities on to successive generations.

So you’re right: “chance,” in the scrabble drawing sense, is “preposterous.” It is equally preposterous to propose that this is what evolution theorizes.

Hey, Where Did Scott Go?

Well, it's been a while since an update, hasn't it? Stay tuned, though. I'm going to try and brew something up in the next few days. It turns out I've become unexpectedly popular among a certain group of bloggers in the past few days. I'm trying to craft a response, but first I have to figure out if it's even worth it.