Oneproblem

I'm not running for president, but you can still vote for me (please)

2008-06-06T08:20:00.000-07:00

I am not gonna hide it, this is an unashamed plea for votes.....

Last month I made a remix for an online competition. Glen Phillips, the lead singer for Toad The Wet Sprocket, released the studio tracks of a song off of his new solo album. The purpose is to get people to "remix" them in creative ways and submit them as contest entries. I have made such an entry. Except I, among a few others, have chosen to rerecord tracks completely, making a completely new arrangement. I wouldn't be asking for your vote if I didn't think that I had a legitimate chance at winning. I have been hovering in the top 10 for a while but I need you to push me over the edge.

Here is how it works. To judge entries, you have to register at OurStage.... I know, registering, yuck!!! Then you will want to go to the Music competition. From there you will need to select Kompoz/Glen Phillips. Then you will need to click "judge." You will then be presented with two songs. You will have to listen to both of them and judge. You don't have to listen the whole song, just 15 seconds of each. Here is where it gets a little annoying. My song may not cue up first. So you may have to through 10 rounds before you get to my song. So judging could take you 30 seconds or 10 minutes all depending on when my song comes up.

Helpful hints: To help my standings here are some things you can do. It will not take you long to figure out which songs are really good and others that are not. If you find one that is above average.....you will want to vote for the other one. Unless that is you really really like it and you can vote for it as better. But when you come to my song , you will want to vote "best by far." That's it. Vote as much and as often as you can from now until the end of June. Here is the song if you want a preview.

Once again you need to go to OurStage to vote. I thank you very much!!!

Calling Central Illinois Musicians

2008-01-17T19:20:00.000-08:00

I just jammed the blues in E with some dude in New Mexico. I was here in Peoria and he was in his home in New Mexico. How did we do it you ask? With eJamming software, that's how. (for some reason I can't get the link to work) It was a small step into the future of music. It was clunky and slow at times but still fun. I have read that the closer you are to one another the better it works. So that is where you come in. If you are a musician, or know of a musician, who wants to jam with people without leaving the comfort of their home, tell them about eJamming. And then tell them to drop me a line. I want to play. Who knows we may form the next Beatles....or n'Sync. Hope to hear from you soon.

Evan Knoblauch

2008-01-07T12:45:00.000-08:00

When I was in high school my speech teacher was pregnant. She had a son. Years passed and in the course of life, things like a pregnant speech teacher rarely made its' way back to the forefront of memory. But there is something about good teachers that is special. They make impressions that last. My speech teacher was a good teacher.

My wife and I were watching the news Saturday when the very first thing reported was the death of Evan Knoblauch. Immediately my wife was struck with shock and disbelief. The last year and a half, Evan had been a student in my wife’s History and Sociology classes. I knew of Evan before his death even though I had never met him. My wife rarely comments on her students but she used to tell me how sweet and nice Evan was. She said that he was always in a good mood and made a positive impact when he was in the classroom. She said that he had a rare and healthy dose of respect for his teachers. I never knew him but I think it would be safe to say that he would make any parent proud.

I know my wife was kept up that night thinking about what had happened. Since I had no real connection to Evan, I was preoccupied with what his parents were going through. I did not know who they were but I just imagined the way my mother and father were when my brother died. Then I replaced them with stranger’s faces.

My wife went to the service at the high school they had for Evan last night. When she came back we talked. She told me that it was sad but relatively short. Among the details it was discovered that Evan's mother was my high school speech teacher. I could not believe it. When you are in high school sometimes you get the impression that your teachers do not lead lives outside of school. That they arrive at school, collect your homework and then retreat to their homes where they do weird things like build Civil War Reenactment scenes in their basement. But you forget that they are people too. All I could think about was her sobbing uncontrollably.

This teacher, Mrs. Knoblauch, who was pregnant when I took her speech class in 1989 had a son. His name was Evan. For the last year and a half my wife had a fine young man in her class. His name was Evan.

During this painful time, may God's peace be of some comfort to you and your family Mrs. Knoblauch.

Thank you Chance for putting this tribute together. God bless.

I'm a Believer

2007-11-30T07:53:00.000-08:00

Today, like most days, I had a narration session. The client was a manufacturer of big yellow industrial earth moving machines. They also make some cool work boots. Anyway, the narration kept dealing with "power ratings" and "peak torque." Which got me thinking about Peter Tork. You know....the bass player for The Monkees. Growing up I could not wait for The Monkees to to come on. But I am wondering what you think. Do you think The Monkees are worthy of induction to the Rock-n-Roll Hall of Fame? If so sign the petition.

Behold, The Glory of God ....... part II

2007-11-15T17:40:00.000-08:00

Last Wednesday November 7th, 2007, our daughter Victoria (Tori) Grace Aberle was brought into this world. As of late, skeptics who are on the watch for miracles from God seem to be missing this one. Our daughter is healthy and beautiful weighing 8lbs. 2ozs. My wife, on the other hand, did not fare so well. She lost alot of blood and had to be taken into emergency surgery after the birth. She is home but is confined to limited activity for at least 4 weeks. For those of you who read this blog and pray, please keep my wife and our new daughter in yours. I am home taking care of two people. Thankfully, work has been more than understanding and is allowing me to be/work at home and there is plenty of family to help lessen the load. Blogging will really, really be slow. Here are some pics.

Luke......I am your DAD.

2007-10-09T13:15:00.000-07:00

I love misquoting famous movie lines just to see the reaction.

For work last Friday I got to go up to the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago to film footage of the opening of the Star Wars exhibit. We also "had" to record interviews with Anthony Daniels (c-3po) and George Lucas. It was great experience and I am glad that I could be part of this project.

Before I go on, this was also the same night as my wife's birthday. So the following is bittersweet.

I don't get star struck much anymore, but I think George Lucas is more than just a famous person. He is an artist, inventor and visionary. His art has shaped a segment of the culture in which I grew up. And his pursuit of advanced technology in cinematography has yielded things like THX Sound and the Avid nonlinear video editing system. For those who do not know what an Avid is, it has been the flagship video editing system for the last 15 years. It revolutionized the way content was and is created for film and TV. I believe that when history writes about George Lucas he will be lauded with the likes of Da Vinci and Michelangelo. I'm serious. Not just because of Star Wars but because of what his passion for art has done to influence art and technology. If you recall Da Vinci and Michelangelo we doing the same things just with cruder instruments. So to keep me humble, the only pics of me the whole day came out blurry and show me milking Mr. Lucas.

This is me getting "friendly" with Mr. Lucas. I believe he actually winked at me.

This is Anthony Daniels (c-3po) and me. Honestly, the company I work for takes video and pictures professionaly. Seriously, how hard is it to point and shoot a camera.......sheeesh, you're fired you imbecile. There are more pics on the imbecile's blog.

Thank You Starbucks

2007-10-08T08:15:00.000-07:00

Throughout this month Starbucks is giving out free songs from iTunes. I guess after years of charging us out the yin-yang for coffee, this is the least they could do. But I want to honestly thank them for the song I just downloaded. It is "Jokerman" from Bob Dylan's Infidel record. This song is great. In fact I will probably download the whole album. Hmmmm just from buying a cup of coffee, they have sold a record as well. Brilliant.

Little Baby

2007-10-04T14:25:00.000-07:00

I have had an overwhelming request for more footage of our baby. Moslty from family and friends. So, here you go "Snow Lips."

Behold, the glory of God!!

2007-10-01T09:54:00.000-07:00

To me, the creation of life is evidence enough of God. Even the technology behind this 3-D sonogram is an example of God's glory. Yes, man and science created it, but God has given us the capacity to do these things. Here is our daughter. She is safe in her mothers tummy now, but in a month she will be here in the real world.

How does someone like this live to be 27?

2007-09-21T08:30:00.000-07:00

Man urinates on dying woman, declaring it 'YouTube material'

From the "Annals of Modern Depravity" comes this sordid story:

Shouting, "This is YouTube material!" a 27-year-old British man urinated on a dying woman who had collapsed on the street, the BBC and local Hartepool Mail and Northern Echo tell us. He also doused her with a bucket of water and covered her with shaving cream.

The woman, 50-year-old Christine Lakinski, died at the scene of pancreatic failure.

In a sad sign of the times, it was all recorded on a mobile phone.

In court, Anthony Anderson said he had smoked a joint and been drinking with two friends when they spotted Lakinski. He faces jail after pleading guilty to "outraging public decency." Sentencing is set for Oct. 22.

"We will await the outcome and just hope he gets what he deserves," Lakinski's brother said after today's court hearing.

I have been excommunicated (digitally, that is)

2007-09-20T07:47:00.000-07:00

A little background. Every week I remix the audio for our churches television broadcast. Grace Alive on WEEK-25, Sundays at 9:00am (if you're interested). To do the mix at my home studio requires that I go to the church and pick up the hard drives after the service. No big whoop. The other day I went to pick up the drives. I had a few moments to kill at the church so I hopped on the computer. Much to my amazement, MY blog, Oneproblem, had been blocked. My own church!!! I was speechless. My heart jumped out of my chest. What did I do? Who did I offend? Will I still get my Christmas presents? The strange thing though, was that The Peoria Chronicle came up no problem but all of the other local blogs were blocked. Somethin' fishy goin' on. Anyway, I am in good company I guess, because everyone else on my blog roll was blocked too. Yes, even Eyebrows!

You want to see an atheist spin their wheels? Ask them to identify evil.

2007-09-17T15:04:00.000-07:00

From: Christopher Hitchens
To: Douglas Wilson
Part 6, conclusion

Quo warranto is a very ancient question, meaning "by what right?" You ask me for my "warrant" for a code of right conduct and persist in mistaking my answer for an evasion. I in turn ask you by what right you assume that a celestial autocracy is a guarantee of morals, let alone by what right you choose your own (Christian) version of it as the only correct one. All deities have been hailed by their subjects as the fount of good behavior, just as they have been used as the excuse for inexcusable behavior.

My answer is the same as it was all along: Our morality evolved. Just as we have. Natural selection and trial-and-error have given us the vague yet grand conception of human rights and some but not yet all of the means of making these rights coherent and consistent. There is simply no need for the introduction of the extraneous or the supernatural. LaPlace was only one of those who concluded that religion is essentially irrelevant to important questions: an option if you choose it, but only one among many. (I have to say that your account of him makes him sound dangerously like the repulsive Calvin, but even the great Isaac Newton and the even greater Alfred Russell Wallace were prey to all kinds of superstitious delusions as they made their marvelous humanistic discoveries.)

There seems to be no easy way to discuss this other than in personal or individual terms. You and I have no idea what it is like to be a sociopath—someone who does not care about other people except inasmuch as they serve his turn—or a psychopath—someone who derives actual delight from inflicting misery on others. But we know that such people exist, and that they must be guarded against. I regard their existence as part of our haphazard evolution and our kinship with a nature that often favors the predator. You do not. Indeed, you apparently adopt the immoral and suicidal doctrine that advocates forgiveness for those who would destroy us. Please take care not to forgive my enemies, or the enemies of society. If I have to call such people "evil" (and I find I have no alternative), I do not deduce peaceful coexistence from that observation and do not want you being tender to them when it is my or my family's life that is at stake.

Turning from this to the surprising amount of virtue that can be found in humans, I again choose not to confect a mystery where none exists. Leaving ordinary sins to one side—I do not steal other people's property, for example, and hope for a reciprocal restraint on their part, and do not pardon such offenses when they occur—I could mention something that is particular to our discussion. Every now and then, in argument, I find myself glib enough to make a cheap point or a point that might evoke instant applause from an audience. But I am always aware of doing so, or if you like of the temptation to do so, and I strive (not always with success) to resist the tactic, and rather dislike myself when I give in to it. Why do I do this? Socrates called this restraint the daemon: an inner voice that helps us toward self-criticism. Many later thinkers have defined it in discrepant ways, but a definition is something short of an understanding.

I am content to regard it as indefinable, which is where we part company. My own inclination is to regard it as a human faculty without which we could not have—I shan't say "evolved" yet again—made the smallest progress as homo sapiens. You believe that I owe this inner prompting to the divine, and you further assert that a heavenly intervention made in the last two thousand years of human history (a microsecond of evolutionary time) is the seal on the deal. You will have to excuse me when I say that I think such a belief is, as well as incredible, immoral. It makes right action dependent on a highly improbable wager on the supernatural. To state the case in another way, it suggests that without celestial sanction, you yourself would be unrestrained in your appetites and careless of other people. Awful though many of your opinions are to me, I decline to believe that you would, if you lost your faith, become base and self-centered. It is, rather, religion that has made many morally normal people assent to appalling cruelties, including the mutilation of children's genitalia, the institution of slavery, the revulsion from female sexuality, and many other crimes from which an average infidel would, without any heavenly prompting, turn away. Ask yourself this question. Can you name one moral action, or moral utterance, performed or spoken by a believer that could not have been performed or spoken by an atheist? My email is available to any reader who is willing to accept this challenge.

I like your joke about the reduction of mirth to a spasm (there was a solemn critic of P.G. Wodehouse who defined the smile in terms of "naso-labial" contractions), but I think you let yourself down a bit with your Hallmark conclusion. I dare say that I could add to the list of joys and even include one or two subjects which Christianity and other religions have made difficult to discuss in public. However, I shall select my own recent investigation of my DNA, which can now be sequenced and analyzed. I was perfectly happy with the "revelation" of my own kinship with other species and quite overwhelmed by the skill and precision of those who allowed me to do it. A lot of wit and beauty and intelligence had to go into the confirmation of my status as an evolved animal, just as a great deal of dullness and stupidity is required for the continuing denial of it.

I think we shall do better if we do not resist evidence that may at first sight appear unwelcome or unsettling, just as we shall do better if we refuse conclusions for which there is no evidence at all.

* * *

From: Douglas Wilson
To: Christopher Hitchens
Part 6, conclusion

Let me begin my final installment with my thanks to you for agreeing to this debate, as well as my thanks to Christianity Today for being such an amiable host.

Turning to our discussion, I would like to begin by noting several points of minor agreement. First, I do enjoy our shared appreciation of Wodehouse—although I have to say I was disappointed with your failure to pick up the Wodehousian echoes in my "Hallmark" conclusion.

Secondly, I quite agree with you that we ought not to "resist evidence that may at first sight appear unwelcome or unsettling." But this is not really a deep agreement, for we immediately go on to differ over which one of us is failing to honor this quite obvious principle. I have shown that you refuse to consider evidence for the fact that your assumption of what the universe actually is does not allow for valid descriptions of that universe to arise from within it. If one were to spill milk accidentally on the kitchen floor, and someone else came in and wanted to know what had happened, the one thing we can be sure of is that such an inquiring mind wouldn't ask the milk. The milk wouldn't know. It's the accident.

On the question of morality, you again attempt an answer: "My answer is the same as it was all along: Our morality evolved." There are two points to be made about this reply. The first concerns evolved morality and the future, and is a variation on my previous questions. If our morality evolved, then that means our morality changes. If evolution isn't done yet (and why should it be?), then that means our morality is involved in this on-going flux as well. And that means that everything we consider to be "moral" is really up for grabs. Our "vague yet grand conception of human rights" might flat disappear just like our gills did.

Our current "morals" are therefore just a way station on the road. No sense getting really attached to them, right? When I am traveling, I don't get attached to motel rooms. I don't weep when I have to part from them. So, in the future, after every ferocious moral denunciation you choose to offer your reading public, you really need to add something like, "But this is just a provisional judgment. Our perspective may evolve to an entirely different one some years hence," or "Provisional opinions only. Morality changes over time"—POOMCOT for short. It would look like this: "The Rev. Snoutworthy is an odious little toad, not to mention a waste of skin, and his proposal that we prosecute the brassiere editors of the Sears catalog on pornography and racketeering charges is an outrage against civilized humanity. But … POOMCOT."

This relates to the second point, which concerns evolved morality and the past. When dealing with people whose moral judgments have differed from yours, do you regard them as "immoral" or as "less evolved?" The rhetoric of your book, your tone in these exchanges, and your recent dancing on the grave of the late Jerry Falwell would all seem to indicate the former. In your choice of words, the people you denounce are to be blamed. The word fulminations comes to mind. You write like a witty but acerbic tenth-century archbishop with a bad case of the gout. But this is truly an odd thing to do if "morality" is a simple derivative of evolution. Are you filled with fierce indignation that the koala bear hasn't evolved ears that stick flat to the side of his head like they are supposed to? Are you wroth over the fact that clams don't have legs yet? When you notice that the bears at the zoo continue to suck on their paws, do you stop to remonstrate with them?

Your notion of morality, and the evolution it rode in on, can only concern itself with what is. But morality as Christians understand it, and the kind you surreptitiously draw upon, is concerned with ought. David Hume showed us that we cannot successfully derive ought from is. Have you discovered the error in his reasoning? It is clear from how you defend your ideas of "morality" that you have not done so. You are a gifted writer, and you have a flair for polemical voltage. But strip it all away, and what do you have underneath? You believe yourself to live in a universe where there is no such thing as any fixed ought or ought not. But God has gifted you with a remarkable ability to denounce what ought not to be. And so, because you reject him, you have great sermons but no way of ever coming up with a text. When people start to notice the absence of texts, the absence of warrant, the absence of reasons, you adjust and compensate with rhetorical embellishment and empurpled prose. You are like the minister in the story who wrote in the margin of his notes, "Argument weak. Shout here."

Your invitation to us to try to "name one moral action … that could not have been performed or spoken by an atheist" shows that you continue to miss the point. We have every reason to believe that such atheists, performing such deeds, will be as unable as you have been to give an account of why one deed should be seen as good and another as evil. You say you have no alternative but to call sociopaths and psychopaths "evil." But you surely do have an alternative. Why not just call them "different"?

A fixed standard, grounded in the character of God, allows us to define evil, but this brings with it the possibility of forgiveness. You reject forgiveness, but at the end of the day this means that you don't believe there is anything that needs forgiveness. This means you have destroyed the idea of evil, regardless of what you might "call" behaviors that happen to be inconvenient for you.

I noted from your book that you are a baptized Christian, so I want to conclude by calling and inviting you back to the terms of that baptism. Everyone who has been baptized into the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is carrying in their person the standing obligations of repentance, belief, and continued discipleship. Your Christian name Christopher means "bearer of Christ," your baptism means the same thing, and the Third Commandment requires you not to bear or carry that name in vain. Some, as you have done, revolt against the terms of this discipleship, but it does not mean that the demands of discipleship are somehow negated or revoked. I do not bring this up in order to upbraid you. I do not know if you departed from the faith because you drifted from it, bolted from it, or were chased out by hypocritical Christians. Regardless, the kindness of God is revealed to all of us in Christ, and everyone, whatever their story, has to come to terms with this kindness.

Jesus was not just one more character in history, however important—rather, he was and is the founder of a new history, a new humanity, a new way of being human. He was the last and true Adam. But before this new humanity in Christ could be established and begin its task of filling the earth, the old way of being human had to die. Before the meek could inherit the earth, the proud had to be evicted and sent away empty. That is the meaning of the Cross, the whole point of it. The Cross is God's merciful provision that executes autonomous pride and exalts humility. The first Adam received the fruit of death and disobedience from Eve in a garden of life; the true Adam bestowed the fruit of his life and resurrection on Mary Magdalene in a garden of death, a cemetery. The first Adam was put into the death of deep sleep and his wife was taken from his side; the true Adam died on the cross, a spear was thrust into his side, and his bride came forth in blood and water. The first Adam disobeyed at a tree; the true Adam obeyed on a tree. And everything is necessarily different.

Christ told His followers to tell everybody about this—about how the world is being moved from the old humanity to the new way of being human. Not only has the world been born again, so must we be born again. The Lord told us specifically to preach this Good News to every creature. He has established his great but welcoming household, and there is room enough for you. Nothing you have ever said or done will be held against you. Everything will be washed and forgiven. There is simple food—bread and wine—on the table. The door is open, and we'll leave the light on for you.

The two fundamental tenets of true atheism. One: There is no God. Two: I hate Him.

2007-09-14T08:45:00.000-07:00

From: Christopher Hitchens
To: Douglas Wilson
Part 5

If you insist, I shall concede that the significance of the Samaritan lies in his ethnicity. It's not a very impressive parable to begin with, though when I was taught it first in Sunday school, it was held up as an example of universal charity (with the added implication, not strange to us for some reason, that pious people are no more likely to behave with love and compassion than are others). Incidentally, what do we know about the ethnicity of the man who fell among thieves, or of the tribal character of those thieves if it comes to that? Surely you should be able to pronounce with authority on those details, too?

I agree that the origins of the cosmos are obscure—mysterious, if you like—to both of us. It's still you who makes the mystery, though, by insisting that very recent developments on this tiny speck of a planet on the edge of a galaxy are what impart significance to the entire "Big Bang" or divine first cause. To ask what caused either is to invite, as you are aware, an infinite regression of questions about what caused either of those causes. In my book I cite the great [Pierre-Simon, Marquis de] LaPlace, who opened the modern era by saying that accounts of the cosmos and its workings were now complete, or incomplete, on their own terms. They did not require a "god." Belief in a deity has been optional ever since. Believe it if you choose, but be aware that it raises more questions than it answers (actually it doesn't answer any important questions) and is thus highly vulnerable to Ockham's trusty edge. Deists used to agree with you about a Creator but were not religious in that the assumption of such an entity did not license the further assumption that he or she desired to intervene in human affairs, let alone the assumption that the torture and death of a single individual in a backward part of the Middle East was the solution that we had been awaiting for tens of thousands of years of brutish Homo sapiens existence.

Apply something of the same reasoning to the origins of morality. I say that our "innate" predisposition to both good and wicked behavior is precisely what one would expect to find of a recently-evolved species that is (as we now know from the study of DNA) half a chromosome away from chimpanzees. By the way, do not take that as a denigration of humankind. Primate and elephant and even pig societies show considerable evidence of care for others, parent-child bonding, solidarity in the face of danger, and so on. As Darwin put it:

Any animal whatever, endowed with well-marked social instincts, the parental and filial affections being here included, would inevitably acquire a moral sense or conscience, as soon as its intellectual powers had become as well-developed, or nearly as well-developed, as in man.

We can now observe this to be the case. But animal and human "altruism" is contradicted by the way in which species are also designed to fight with, kill, dominate, and even consume each other. Humans are capable of even greater cruelty because only they have the imagination to inflict it. I do not think that this indicts the Creator who made them this way, because I long ago dispensed with the assumption that there is any such entity. Thus, it is you and not I who are left with the questions about God's coexistence with evil. See where your talent for needless complexity has left you.

The fluctuations between social and anti-social conduct are fairly consistent across time and space: some societies have licensed cannibalism but they tend to die out, and others have licensed human sacrifice and infanticide (usually under the influence of some priesthood). But I answer your question by making the pragmatic observation that, if we surrendered to our lower instincts all the time, there would be no language in which to write this argument between us and no society in which we could find an audience. The struggle to assert what is positive in our human capacity—I don't mind Lincoln's metaphor of our "better angels" if you promise not to take it too literally—is arduous enough. If I take myself, I find that I can derive pleasure from giving blood for free and also from contemplating the deaths of my clerical-fascist enemies in the ranks of Al Qaeda and even from the misfortunes of others who do not threaten me. I am sure you could give parallel examples of your own. But telling us that we are created sick and then ordered to be well is no help in clarifying this problem. And telling us that the solution to it only became available some two thousand years ago, according to some highly discrepant and self-contradictory accounts, cannot strike me as anything but absurd. What on earth is proven—except your own vulnerability to making tautologous statements—by the claim that "Jesus Christ is good for the world because he came as the life of the world"? You cannot possibly "know" this. Nor can you present any evidence for it. And its corollary—that without Jesus we are abandoned to wickedness in all its forms—has the horrible implication that worthy actions are pointless unless accompanied by your own rather ill-grounded faith. As I say, believe it if it helps you. But do not insult the millions of people who have done the right thing without requiring any such supernatural authority. And do not tell me that I must be in love with death if I dissent from your view. That's too much. Your Christianity, in case you have not noticed, has actually made you a less compassionate and thoughtful person than, without its exorbitant presumptions, you would otherwise be.

* * *

From: Douglas Wilson
To: Christopher Hitchens
Part 5

I am afraid your argument is tangled up with greater difficulties than the ethnicity of the Samaritan, and so that issue really need not detain us any longer. I have been asking you to provide a warrant for morality, given atheism, and you have mostly responded with assertions that atheists can make what some people call moral choices. Well, sure. But what I have been after is what rational warrant they can give for calling one choice "moral" and another choice "not moral." You finally appealed to "innate human solidarity," a phrase that prompted a series of pointed questions from me. In response, you now tell us that we have an innate predisposition to both good and wicked behavior. But we are still stuck. What I want to know (still) is what warrant you have for calling some behaviors "good" and others "wicked." If both are innate, what distinguishes them? What could be wrong with just flipping a coin? With regard to your retort that my "talent for needless complexity" has simply gotten me "God's coexistence with evil," I reply that I would rather have my God and the problem of evil than your no God and "Evil? No problem!"

After this many installments, I now feel comfortable in asserting that I have posed this question to you from every point of the compass and have not yet received anything that approaches the semblance of an answer. On this question I am tempted to quote Wyatt Earp from the film Tombstone—"You gonna do something or just stand there and bleed?"—but I think I'll pass. Earp was not very much like the Good Samaritan.

But it is interesting that the same thing happens to you when you have to give some warrant for trusting in "reason.". I noted your citation of LaPlace in your book and am glad you brought him up here. LaPlace believed he was not in need of the God hypothesis, just like you, but you should also know he held this position as a firm believer in celestial and terrestrial mechanics. He was a causal determinist, meaning that he believed that every element of the universe in the present was "the effect of its past and the cause of its future."

So if LaPlace is why you think belief in God is now "optional," this appeal of yours actually turns into quite a fun business. This doctrine means (although LaPlace admittedly got distracted before these implications caught up with him) that you, Christopher Hitchens, are not thinking your thoughts and writing them down because they are true, but rather because the position and velocity of all the atoms in the universe one hundred years ago necessitated it. And I am not sitting here thinking my Christian thoughts because they are the truth of God, but rather because that is what these assembled chemicals in my head always do in this condition and at this temperature. "LaPlace's demon" could have calculated and predicted your arguments (and word count) a century ago in just the same way that he could have calculated the water levels of the puddles in my driveway — and could have done so using the same formulae. This means that your arguments and my puddles are actually the same kind of thing. They are on the same level, so to speak.

If you were to take a bottle of Mountain Dew and another of Dr. Pepper, shake them vigorously, and put them on a table, it would not occur to anyone to ask which one is "winning the debate." They aren't debating; they are just fizzing. You refer to "language in which to write this argument," and you do so as though you believed in a universe where argument was a meaningful concept. Argument? Argument? I have no need for your "argument hypothesis." Just matter in motion, man.

You dismiss the idea that the death of Jesus—the "torture and death of a single individual in a backward part of the Middle East" — could possibly be the solution to the sorrows of our brutish existence. When I said that Jesus is good for the world because he is the life of the world, you just tossed this away. You said, "You cannot possibly 'know' this. Nor can you present any evidence for it."

Actually, I believe I can present evidence for what I know. But evidence comes to us like food, and that is why we say grace over it. And we are supposed to eat it, not push it around on the plate—and if we don't give thanks, it never tastes right. But here is some evidence for you, in no particular order. The engineering that went into ankles. The taste of beer. That Jesus rose from the dead on the third day, just like he said. A woman's neck. Bees fooling around in the flower bed. The ability of acorns to manufacture enormous oaks out of stuff they find in the air and dirt. Forgiveness of sin. Storms out of the North, the kind with lightning. Joyous laughter (diaphragm spasms to the atheistic materialist). The ocean at night with a full moon. Delta blues. The peacock that lives in my yard. Sunrise, in color. Baptizing babies. The pleasure of sneezing. Eye contact. Having your feet removed from the miry clay, and established forever on the rock. You may say none of this tastes right to you. But suppose you were to bow your head and say grace over all of it. Try it that way.

You say that you cannot believe that Christ's death on the Cross was salvation for the world because the idea is absurd. I have shown in various ways that absurdity has not been a disqualifier for any number of your current beliefs. You praise reason to the heights, yet will not give reasons for your strident and inflexible moral judgments, or why you have arbitrarily dubbed certain chemical processes "rational argument." That's absurd right now, and yet there you are, holding it. So for you to refuse to accept Christ because it is absurd is like a man at one end of the pool refusing to move to the other end because he might get wet. Given your premises, you will have to come up with a different reason for rejecting Christ as you do.

But for you to make this move would reveal the two fundamental tenets of true atheism. One: There is no God. Two: I hate Him.

The way of the world is to abide in an ongoing state of death

2007-09-13T07:14:00.000-07:00

From: Christopher Hitchens
To: Douglas Wilson
Part 4

Here is the reason why I lay so much stress in my book on the importance of William of Ockham and his justly celebrated razor. Why on earth—if you excuse the impression—do the faithful spend so much time creating a mystery where none exists? And why do they insist on inserting unwarrantable assumptions?

I take the plain meaning of the passage in Luke (in a section that is clotted with stories about the casting out of devils and other embarrassing sorceries) to be the duty to others in distress. Surely it loses much of its force if the lesson is about discrepant ethnicities of which we cannot in any case be certain? Nothing can "invert" the message to emulate the Samaritan and to go "and do thou likewise."

You dilute the purity of this—which is morally intelligible to any atheist or humanist—by saying that there is a millennium and a half delay between the "revelation" of this simple act of charity and its anecdotal fulfillment. You also appear to find no distinction between the intelligible injunction to "love thy neighbor" and the impossible order to love another "as thyself." We are not so made as to love others as ourselves: This may admittedly be a fault in our "design," but in such a case the irony would be at your expense. The Golden Rule is to be found in the Analects of Confucius and in the motto of the Babylonian Rabbi Hillel, who long predate the Christian era and who sanely state that one should not do to others anything that would be repulsive if done to oneself. (Even this strikes me as either contradictory or tautologous, since surely we agree that sociopaths and psychopaths actually deserve to be treated in ways that would be objectionable to a morally normal person.)

When you say that men have never known nor yet understood the essential principle, however, you speak absurdly. Ordinary morality is innate in my view. But if, in yours, it is still not known, then centuries of divine admonition have also gone to waste. You are trapped in a net of your own making. Take a look at the list of actual or potential crimes that you mention. Genocide is not condemned by the Old Testament and neither (as you well know and have elsewhere conceded) is slavery. Rather, these two horrors are often positively recommended by holy writ. Abortion is denounced in the Oath of Hippocrates, which long predates Christianity. As for capital punishment and unjust war, the secular and the religious are alike at odds on the very definitions that underpin any condemnation. (When you include "stem-cell research," by the way, I assume that you unintentionally omitted the word "embryonic.")

To your needlessly convoluted subsequent question: Atheists are by no means "coy" on the question of evil or on the possibility of non-supernatural derivation of ethics. We are simply reluctant to say that, if religious faith falls—as we believe it must and to some extent already has—then the undergirding of decency falls also. And we do not fail to notice that a corollary is in play: The manner in which religion makes people behave worse than they might otherwise have done. Take a look at today's paper if you do not believe me: See what the parties of God are doing in Iraq. Or notice the sordid yet pious tradesmanship of Ralph Reed, Jack Abramoff, and the late Jerry Falwell. The latter's bedside is the one at which you should be asking your question—do you dare to say that a follower of Albert Einstein or Bertrand Russell would be gloating in the same way at their last hour? In either case—an atheist boaster and braggart or a hypocritical religious one—I trust that both of us would know enough to be quite "judgmental." I would differ from you only in not requiring any supernatural sanction or in claiming to be smug enough to possess such a power.

I am sorry to see that you sarcastically refer to Thomas Jefferson as "my" beloved. Do you not respect him also? And why can you not summon enough charity to believe that a non-believer can give blood, say, for no return, out of the sheer satisfaction of doing a service that involves only a benefit and no loss? According to you, my doing this is pointless unless I accept the incredible idea that, after hundreds of thousands of years of human life and suffering, God chose a moment a few thousand years ago to finally mount an intervention. You will have to accept sooner or later that a good person can be born who cannot force his mind to believe such a fantastic thing. At that point, you will see that your strenuous conditions are surplus to requirements.

In closing, I reply to your clumsy observation about my motor vehicle by citing Heine, who said:

In dark ages people are best guided by religion, as in a pitch-black night a blind man is the best guide; he knows the roads and paths better than a man who can see. When daylight comes, however, it is foolish to use blind old men as guides.

The argument that you have been making was over long before either of us was born. There is no need for revelation to enforce morality, and the idea that good conduct needs a heavenly reward, or that bad conduct merits a hellish punishment, is a degradation of our right and duty to choose for ourselves.

* * *

From: Douglas Wilson
To: Christopher Hitchens
Part 4

You refer to the faithful "creating a mystery where none exists." May I get you to agree that the question "Why is there something here rather than nothing at all?" does not fall into that category? If you and I were standing on a little thought-experiment balcony watching either the moment when the cosmic boilers blew, giving us the Big Bang, or watching the first glorious creational response to God's fiat lux, can we agree that at that moment Ockham's razor would be of absolutely no use to either of us?

If Jesus had told a story about a black man stopping to help a beat-up white guy in Mississippi in the 1950's, and you retold the story later with the merciful one now suitably white, I think it would be appropriate for me to point out the inversion, and that the story had been significantly changed and weakened. And when I said that the Good Samaritan fulfilled an ancient law, I did not say that obedience to this law was dormant during the intervening time. Of course it was not. But neither was disobedience dormant, and Jesus was confronting a particular form of institutionalized disobedience—religious hypocrisy.

On the question of morality, you say that you are "simply reluctant" to say that if religious faith falls, then the undergirding decency must fall also. But your behavior goes far beyond a mere "reluctance to concede." Your book and your installments in this debate thus far are filled with fierce denunciations of various manifestations of immorality. You are playing Savonarola here, and I simply want to know the basis of your florid denunciations. You preach like some hot gospeler—with a floppy leather-bound book and all. I know the book is not the Bible and so all I want to know is what book it is, and why it has anything to do with me. Why should anyone listen to your jeremiads against weirdbeards in the Middle East or fundamentalist Baptists from Virginia like Falwell? On your terms, you are just a random collection of protoplasm, noisier than most, but no more authoritative than any—which is to say, not at all.

You say that I need to admit that a "good person can be born" who can't get his mind around what I am saying about Jesus. But my initial claim has been far more modest. I am simply saying that a good person needs to be able, at a minimum, to define what goodness is and tell us what the basis for it is. Your handwaving—"ordinary morality is innate"—does not even begin to meet the standard.

There are three insurmountable problems for you here. The first is that innate is not a synonym for authoritative. Why does anyone have to obey any particular prompting from within? And which internal prompting is in charge of sorting out all the other competing promptings? Why? Second, the tangled skein of innate and conflicting moralities found within the billions of humans alive today also has to be sorted out and systematized. Why do you get to do it and then come around and tell us how we must behave? Who died and left you king? And third, according to you, this innate morality of ours is found in a creature (mankind) that is a distant blood cousin of various bacteria, aquatic mammals, and colorful birds in the jungle. Your entire worldview has evolution as a key foundation stone, and evolution means nothing if not change. You believe that virtually every species has morphed out of another one. And when we change, as we must, all our innate morality changes with us, right? We have distant cousins where the mothers ate their young. Was that innate for them? Did they evolve out of it because it was evil for them to be doing that?

Now this is how all this relates to the assigned topic of our debate. We are asking if Christianity is good for the world. As a Christian discussing this with an atheist, I have sought to show in the first place that atheism has nothing whatever to say about this topic—one way or the other. If Christianity is bad for the world, atheists can't consistently point this out, having no fixed way of defining "bad." If Christianity is good for the world, atheists should not be asked about it either because they have no way of defining "good." Think of it as spiking your guns—so that I can talk about Jesus. And I want to do that because he is good for the world.

Jesus Christ is good for the world because he came as the life of the world. You point out, rightly, that loving our neighbor as we love ourselves is impossible for us, completely out of our reach. But you take this inability as a state of nature (which the commandment offends), while the Christian takes it as a state of death (which life offers to transform). Our complete inability to do what is right does not erase our obligation to do what is right. This is why the Bible describes the unbeliever as a slave to sin or one who is in a state of death. The point of each illustration is the utter and complete inability to do right. We were dead in our transgressions and sins, the apostle Paul tells us. So the death and resurrection of Christ are not presented by the gospel as medicine for everyone in the hospital, but rather as resurrection life in a cemetery.

The way of the world is to abide in an ongoing state of death—when it comes to selfishness, grasping, treachery, lust, hypocrisy, pride, and insolence, we consistently run a surplus. But in the death of Jesus that way of death was gloriously put to death. This is why Jesus said that when he was lifted up on the cross, he would draw all men to himself. In the kindness of God, the Cross is an object of inexorable fascination to us. When men and women look to him in his death, they come to life in his resurrection. And that is good for the world.

Hey! Christians! Leave them Atheists alone.

2007-09-12T08:03:00.000-07:00

From: Christopher Hitchens
To: Douglas Wilson
Part 3

Here is a minor example of how the complacency of the religious allows them to be rude (and crude) in a manner which they might not so easily permit themselves in everyday discourse. I am quite familiar with the verse from the Psalms that describes me as a fool, and corrupt and abominable as well. (In my book, God Is Not Great, I point out that the psalmist was so delighted with this conceit that he reproduced it almost word for word at the opening of Psalm 53.) No great surprise—and no real offense taken—to find myself similarly dismissed as a dumb and vain ingrate in the epistle to the Romans. It's true that I never asked to be saved and don't want anyone to be martyred for me—or to martyr themselves against me, for that matter. All I ask of the apostle Paul is that he and his followers and emulators leave me alone.

On the much more pertinent question of the origin of ethical imperatives, which I believe to be derived from innate human solidarity and not from the supernatural, let me likewise offer an instance from each Testament. Let us assume that the tales can be taken at face value. Is it to be believed that the Jews got as far as Sinai under the impression that murder, theft, and perjury were more or less all right? And, in the story of the good man from Samaria, is it claimed that the man went out of his way to help a fellow creature because of a divine instruction? He was clearly, since he preceded Jesus, not motivated by Christian teaching. And if he was a pious Jew, as seems probable, he would have had religious warrant and authority NOT to do what he did, if the poor sufferer was a non-Jew. It is belief in the supernatural that can make otherwise decent people do things that they would otherwise shrink from—such as mutilating the genitals of children, frightening infants with talk of hellfire, forbidding normal sexual practices, blaming all Jews for "deicide," applauding suicide-murderers, and treating women as Paul or Muhammad thought they should be treated.

I have nowhere claimed nor even implied that unbelief is a guarantee of good conduct or even an indicator of it. (I have sometimes thought that atheists have a slight superiority in one respect, in that we come to our conclusions without any element of self-centered wish-thinking about death.) But an atheist can as easily be a nihilist, a sadist—even a casuist.

On the matter of Stalin and the related question of secular or atheist barbarism, I shyly call your attention to chapter seventeen of my little book, which attempts an answer to this frequently asked question. Until 1917, Russia had been ruled for centuries by an absolute monarch who was also the head of a corrupt and bigoted Orthodox Church and was supposed to possess powers somewhat more than merely human. With millions of hungry and anxious people so long stultified and so credulous, Stalin the ex-seminarian would have been a fool if he did not call upon such a reservoir of ignorance and servility, and seek to emulate his predecessor. If Mr. Wilson would prefer to compare like with like and point to a society that lapsed into misery and despotism by following the precepts of Epicurus or Spinoza or Jefferson or Einstein, I will gladly meet him on that ground.

— CH

* * *

From: Douglas Wilson
To: Christopher Hitchens
Part 3

There are a few slight confusions that I would like deal with briefly within the scope of my first few paragraphs. Weather permitting, I would then like to take just a short space to address the central point which you have (again) missed. The remainder of my time will be spent on your claim concerning the origin of ethical imperatives. I would like to do all this in order to set the stage for our unfolding discussion of the central reason why Christianity is good for the world—it is good for the world because Jesus died for the life of the world.

First, the confusions. The point of citing Psalm 14:1 was not to infer that I thought you were "dumb." In the wisdom literature of the Old Testament, folly is a moral question, not a matter of intelligence. I am quite prepared to cheerfully grant (and not for the sake of the argument) that you are my intellectual superior. But our discussion is not about who has more horsepower under his intellectual hood—the point of discussion is whether your superior car is on the right road. A fast car can be a real detriment on a dark night when the bridge is out. And you insist on continuing to wear the sunglasses of atheism.

Now the second confusion concerns your citation of the parable of the Good Samaritan. The popular name for the parable should have been a giveaway—you acknowledge that the protagonist of the story was "from Samaria," but you miss that this was an ethnic and racial issue and not a question of where he happened to live. The man beat up by the side of the road was a Jew, the priest and Levite who passed by on the other side were Jews, and the man who stopped was a despised half-breed, a Samaritan. But you say that it was probable that the Samaritan was a Jew, which inverts the whole story and indicates to me that you have not really been reading the text very closely (Luke 10:27-37). But to answer your point in even bringing the story up, the Samaritan did not need the teaching of Jesus to do what God desired here. Jesus cited the story as an exposition of the second greatest commandment, which is to love your neighbor as yourself. A certain lawyer had asked Jesus to "define neighbor" in order to justify himself, and Jesus then told this story to illustrate the point of an ancient law. So the duty to love our neighbor was revealed to Old Testament writers about a millennium and a half before the Samaritan fulfilled it in his charitable act.

You say, incidentally, that this kind of law was bringing coals to Newcastle—Moses came down from the mount and told people that murder, theft, and perjury were wrong, and all the assembled rolled their collective eyes. "We already knew that!" But the problem is that ancient man didn't know that, and modern man still doesn't know it. To state some of the issues that are subsumed under just one of the three categories you mention is to point to controversies that continue down to this day. Consider some of the issues clustered under the easiest of these three to condemn—murder. We have abortion, infanticide, partial-birth abortion, euthanasia, genocide, stem-cell research, capital punishment, and unjust war. Murder is the big E on the eye chart, and we still can't see it that clearly.

Man, both ancient and modern, certainly knows the entire law of God if it is his own ox being gored, but the purpose of a law code is to have one standard in place for all parties when individuals want to set aside the standards of civilized life to suit themselves. And we need as much help with that as ancient man ever did.

Now we really need to address the point you continue to miss. I am not talking about whether atheists must do evil, or if they can do evil. I have denied the former, and you have now granted the latter. But that is not the point. We are not talking about whether your atheism compels you to run downtown this evening to shoot out the street lights. I grant that it does not. And we are not talking about whether atheists can do vile things. You grant that they can. We are talking about (or, more accurately, I am trying to talk about) whether or not atheism provides any rational basis for rational condemnation when others decide to misbehave this way. You keep saying, "I have come to my ethical position." I keep asking, "Yes, quite. But why did you do so?"

So the point is not whether we could rustle up some nice places governed by atheists or some hellholes governed by Christians. If given a choice between living in a Virginia governed by Jefferson and living in a Russia under the czars, I would opt to live under your beloved Jefferson. Fine. But this is not a concession, because it is not the point.

Take the vilest atheist you ever heard of. Imagine yourself sitting at his bedside shortly before he passes away. He says, following Sinatra, "I did it my way." And then he adds, chuckling, "Got away with it too." In our thought experiment, the one rule is that you must say something to him, and whatever you say, it must flow directly from your shared atheism—and it must challenge the morality of his choices. What can you possibly say? He did get away with it. There is a great deal of injustice behind him, which he perpetrated, and no justice in front of him. You have no basis for saying anything to him other than to point to your own set of personal prejudices and preferences. You mention this to him, and he shrugs. "Tomayto, tomahto."

I am certainly willing to take the same thought experiment. I can imagine some pretty vile Christians, and if I couldn't, I am sure you could help me. The difference between us is that I have a basis for condemning evil in its Christian guise. You have no basis for confronting evil in its atheist guise, or in its Christian guise, either. When you say that a certain practice is evil, you have to be prepared to tell us why it is evil. And this brings us to the last point—you make the first glimmer of an attempt to provide a basis for ethics.

You say in passing that ethical imperatives are "derived from innate human solidarity." A host of difficult questions immediately arise, which is perhaps why atheists are generally so coy about trying to answer this question. Derived by whom? Is this derivation authoritative? Do the rest of us ever get to vote on which derivations represent true, innate human solidarity? Do we ever get to vote on the authorized derivers? On what basis is innate human solidarity authoritative? If someone rejects innate human solidarity, are they being evil, or are they just a mutation in the inevitable changes that the evolutionary process requires? What is the precise nature of human solidarity? What is easier to read, the book of Romans or innate human solidarity? Are there different denominations that read the book of innate human solidarity differently? Which one is right? Who says?

And last, does innate human solidarity believe in God?

Atheism not only keeps the guilt, but it also keeps the confusion.

2007-09-11T13:09:00.000-07:00

From: Christopher Hitchens
To: Douglas Wilson
Re: Is Christianity Good for the World?
Part 2

This is mildly amusing casuistry which—aside from its recommendation of Wodehouse—contains nothing that distinguishes it from Islam or Hinduism or indeed humanism. Were I a Christian, I would be highly unsettled by the huge number of concessions that Wilson makes. Since I am not a Christian, I mutter a mild "thank you" for his admission that morality has nothing at all to do with the supernatural. My book argues that religious belief has now become purely optional and cannot be mandated by anything revealed or anything divine. It is one among an infinite number of private "faiths," which do not disturb me in the least as long as its adherents agree to leave me alone.

Since Wilson does not even attempt to persuade me that Christ died for my sins (and can yet vicariously forgive them) or that I am the object of a divine design or that any of the events described in the two Testaments actually occurred or that extreme penalties will attend any disagreement with his view, I am happy to leave our disagreement exactly where it is: as one of the decreasingly interesting disputes between those who cling so tentatively to man-made "Holy Writ" and those who have no need to consult such texts in pursuit of truth or beauty or an ethical life. The existence or otherwise of an indifferent cosmos (the overwhelmingly probable state of the case) would no more reduce our mutual human obligations than would the quite weird theory of a celestial dictatorship,whether Aztec or Muslim or (as you seem to insist) Christian. The sole difference is that we would be acting out of obligation toward others out of mutual interest and sympathy but without the impulse of terrifying punishment or selfish reward. Some of us can handle this thought and some, evidently, cannot. I have a slight suspicion as to which is more moral.

On a recent visit to Arkansas, I ran into a huge billboard near the Little Rock airport which simply said "JESUS." This struck me as saying too much as well as too little, and I had almost forgotten it until Wilson's evasions brought it back to mind.

— Christopher Hitchens

* * *

From: Douglas Wilson
To: Christopher Hitchens
Re: Is Christianity Good for the World?
Part 2

I am glad that you found my response mildly amusing. I am also grateful we share an appreciation for Wodehouse. And I am extremely glad that you would like me to begin talking about the death of Christ for sin—which I fully intend to do. But the pattern the New Testament gives us is to address the need for repentance first and then to talk about the need for faith in Christ as Savior. Within the boundaries of our discussion, repentance would be necessary because you have embraced the internal contradictions of atheism, all for the sake of avoiding God (Rom. 1:21; Ps. 14:1-2). So we will get to the gospel, but I am afraid I am going to have to ask you to hold your horses.

So, back to the business at hand, the business of intellectual repentance. Dismissing something as casuistry is not the same thing as a demonstration of casuistry, and refusing to answer questions because the other guy is being evasive is quite a neat trick … if you can pull it off.

I am afraid you misconstrued my acknowledgement that—with regard to public civic life—atheists can certainly behave in a moral manner. My acknowledgement was not that morality has nothing to do with the supernatural, as you represented, but rather that morality has nothing to do with the supernatural if you want to be an inconsistent atheist. Here is that point again, couched another way and tied into our topic of debate.

Among many other reasons, Christianity is good for the world because it makes hypocrisy a coherent concept. The Christian faith certainly condemns hypocrisy as such, but because there is a fixed standard, this makes it possible for sinners to fail to meet it or for flaming hypocrites to pretend that they are meeting it when they have no intention of doing so. Now my question for you is this: Is there such a thing as atheist hypocrisy? When another atheist makes different ethical choices than you do (as Stalin and Mao certainly did), is there an overarching common standard for all atheists that you are obeying and which they are not obeying? If so, what is that standard and what book did it come from? Why is it binding on them if they differ with you? And if there is not a common objective standard which binds all atheists, then would it not appear that the supernatural is necessary in order to have a standard of morality that can be reasonably articulated and defended?

So I am not saying you have to believe in the supernatural in order to live as a responsible citizen. I am saying you have to believe in the supernatural in order to be able to give a rational and coherent account of why you believe yourself obligated to live this way. In order to prove me wrong here, you must do more than employ words like "casuistry" or "evasions"—you simply need to provide that rational account. Given atheism, objective morality follows … how?

The Christian faith is good for the world because it provides the fixed standard which atheism cannot provide and because it provides forgiveness for sins, which atheism cannot provide either. We need the direction of the standard because we are confused sinners. We need the forgiveness because we are guilty sinners. Atheism not only keeps the guilt, but it also keeps the confusion.

— Douglas Wilson

Christianity and Atheism both have their share of flunkies!

2007-09-10T06:30:00.000-07:00

Doug Wilson's first response.

I want to begin by thanking you for agreeing to—as the diplomats might put it—a "frank exchange of views." And I certainly want to thank the folks at Christianity Today for hosting us.

P. G. Wodehouse once said that some minds are like soup in a poor restaurant—better left unstirred. I am afraid that I find myself sympathizing with him as I consider atheism. I had been minding my own business on this subject for a number of years when I saw Sam Harris's book on the desk of a colleague, and that led to my book in response, not to mention a review of Richard Dawkins's most recent book, and now a series of responses to your God is Not Great, all culminating in this exchange. I am afraid that my problem is this: The more I stir the bowl, the more certain fumes, mystery meats, and questions keep floating to the surface. Here are a few of them.

Your first point was that the Christian faith cannot credit itself for all that "Love your neighbor" stuff, not to mention the Golden Rule, and the reason for this is that such moral precepts have been self-evident to everybody throughout history who wanted to have a stable society. You then move on to the second point, which contains the idea that the teachings of Christianity are "incredibly immoral." In your book, you make the same point about other religions. Apparently, basic morality is not all that self-evident. So my first question is: Which way do you want to argue this? Do all human societies have a grasp of basic morality, which is the theme of your first point, or has religion poisoned everything, which is the thesis of your book?

The second thing to observe in this regard is that Christians actually do not claim that the gospel has made the world better by bringing us turbo-charged ethical information. There have been ethical advances that are due to the propagation of the faith, but that is not where the action is. Christians believe—as C. S. Lewis argued in The Abolition of Man—that nonbelievers do understand the basics of morality. Paul the apostle refers to the Gentiles, who did not have the law but who nevertheless knew by nature some of the tenets of the law (Rom. 2:14). But the world is not made better because people can understand the ways in which they are being bad. It has to be made better by Good News—we must receive the gift of forgiveness and the resultant ability to live more in conformity to a standard we already knew (but were necessarily failing to meet). So the gospel does not consist of new and improved law. The gospel makes the world better through Good News, not through guilt trips or good advice.

In your second objection, you gaily dismiss the Old Testament, "which speaks hotly in recommending genocide, slavery, genital mutilation, and other horrors." Setting aside for the moment whether your representation of the Old Testament is judicious or accurate, let me assume for the sake of discussion that you have accurately summarized the essence of Mosaic ethics here. You then go on to say that we who teach such stories to children have been "damned by history." But why should this "damnation by history" matter to any of us reading Bible stories to kids, or, for that matter, to any of the people who did any of these atrocious things, on your principles? These people are all dead now, and we who read the stories are all going to be dead. Why should any of us care about the effeminate judgments of history? Should the propagators of these "horrors" have cared? There is no God, right? Because there is no God, this means that—you know—genocides just happen, like earthquakes and eclipses. It is all matter in motion, and these things happen.

If you are on the receiving end, there is only death, and if you are an agent delivering this genocide, the long-term result is brief victory and death at the end. So who cares? Picture an Israelite during the conquest of Canaan, doing every bad thing that you say was occurring back then. During one of his outrages, sword above his head, should he have stopped for a moment to reflect on the possibility that you might be right? "You know, in about three and a half millennia, the consensus among historians will be that I am being bad right now. But if there is no God, this disapproval will certainly not disturb my oblivion. On with the rapine and slaughter!" On your principles, why should he care?

In your third objection, you say that if "Christianity is to claim credit for the work of outstanding Christians or for the labors of famous charities, then it must in all honesty accept responsibility for the opposite." In short, if we point to our saints, you are going to demand that we point also to our charlatans, persecutors, shysters, slave-traders, inquisitors, hucksters, televangelists, and so on. Now allow me the privilege of pointing out the structure of your argument here. If a professor takes credit for the student who mastered the material, aced his finals, and went on to a career that was a benefit to himself and the university he graduated from, the professor must (fairness dictates) be upbraided for the dope-smoking slacker that he kicked out of class in the second week. They were both formally enrolled, is that not correct? They were both students, were they not?

What you are doing is saying that Christianity must be judged not only on the basis of those who believe the gospel in truth and live accordingly but also on the basis of those baptized Christians who cannot listen to the Sermon on the Mount without a horse laugh and a life to match. You are saying that those who excel in the course and those who flunk out of it are all the same. This seems to me to be a curious way of proceeding.

You conclude by objecting to the sovereignty of God, saying that the idea makes the whole world into a ghastly totalitarian state, where believers say that God (and who does He think He is?) runs everything. I would urge you to set aside for a moment the theology of the thing and try to summon up some gratitude for those who built our institutions of liberty. Many of them were actually inspired by the idea that since God is exhaustively sovereign, and because man is a sinner, it follows that all earthly power must be limited and bounded. The idea of checks and balances came from a worldview that you dismiss as inherently totalitarian. Why did those societies where this kind of theology predominated produce, as a direct result, our institutions of civil liberty?

One last question: In your concluding paragraph you make a great deal out of your individualism and your right to be left alone with the "most intimate details of [your] life and mind." Given your atheism, what account are you able to give that would require us to respect the individual? How does this individualism of yours flow from the premises of atheism? Why should anyone in the outside world respect the details of your thought life any more than they respect the internal churnings of any other given chemical reaction? That's all our thoughts are, isn't that right? Or, if there is a distinction, could you show how the premises of your atheism might produce such a distinction?

Cordially,

Douglas Wilson

Is Christianity good for the World?

2007-09-07T07:35:00.000-07:00

Here is a link to a discussion between theologian Doug Wilson and atheist Christopher Hitchens. They did an exchange of letters and ideas which were released at Christianity Today over the course of a month. I will post them over the course the next few days. The first is from Hitchens. Please read and comment.

Subject: Is Christianity Good for the World?

In considering the above question (for which my thanks are due to your generosity and hospitality in inviting my response), I have complete confidence in replying in the negative. This is for the following reasons.

1) Although Christianity is often credited (or credits itself) with spreading moral precepts such as "Love thy neighbor", I know of no evidence that such precepts derive from Christianity. To take one instance from each Testament, I cannot believe that the followers of Moses had been indifferent to murder and theft and perjury until they arrived at Sinai, and I notice that the parable of the good Samaritan is told of someone who by definition cannot have been a Christian.

To these obvious points, I add that the "Golden Rule" is much older than any monotheism, and that no human society would have been possible or even thinkable without elementary solidarity (which also allows for self-interest) between its members. Though it is not strictly relevant to the ethical dimension, I would further say that neither the fable of Moses nor the wildly discrepant Gospel accounts of Jesus of Nazareth may claim the virtue of being historically true. I am aware that many Christians also doubt the literal truth of the tales but this seems to me to be a problem for them rather than a difficulty for me. Even if I accepted that Jesus—like almost every other prophet on record—was born of a virgin, I cannot think that this proves the divinity of his father or the truth of his teachings. The same would be true if I accepted that he had been resurrected. There are too many resurrections in the New Testament for me to put my trust in any one of them, let alone to employ them as a basis for something as integral to me as my morality.

2) Many of the teachings of Christianity are, as well as being incredible and mythical, immoral. I would principally wish to cite the concept of vicarious redemption, whereby one's own responsibilities can be flung onto a scapegoat and thereby taken away. In my book, I argue that I can pay your debt or even take your place in prison but I cannot absolve you of what you actually did. This exorbitant fantasy of "forgiveness" is unfortunately matched by an equally extreme admonition—which is that the refusal to accept such a sublime offer may be punishable by eternal damnation. Not even the Old Testament, which speaks hotly in recommending genocide, slavery, genital mutilation, and other horrors, stoops to mention the torture of the dead. Those who tell this evil story to small children are not damned by me, but have been damned by history and should also be condemned by those who shrink from cruelty to children (a moral essential that underlies all cultures).

The late C. S. Lewis helps make this point for me by emphasizing that the teachings of Jesus only make sense if the speaker is the herald of an imminent kingdom of heaven. Otherwise, would it not be morally unsafe to denounce thrift, family, and the "taking of thought for the morrow"? Some of your readers may believe that this teaching is either true—in the sense of an imminent redemption—or moral. I believe that they would have a difficult time believing both things at once, and I notice the futility as well as the excessive strenuousness (sometimes called "fanaticism" in tribute to the way that the two things pull in opposite directions) of their efforts. Another way of phrasing this would be to say that if Christianity was going to save us by its teachings, it would have had to perform better by now. And so to my succeeding point.

3) if Christianity is to claim credit for the work of outstanding Christians or for the labors of famous charities, then it must in all honesty accept responsibility for the opposite. I shall not condescend to your readers in specifying what these "opposites" are, but I suggest once more that you pay attention to the Golden Rule. If hymns and psalms were sung to sanctify slavery—just to take a recent example—and then sung by abolitionists, then surely the non-fanatical explanation is that morality requires no supernatural sanction? Every Christian church has had to make some apology for its role in the Crusades, slavery, anti-Semitism, and much else. I do not think that such humility discredits faith as such, because I tend to think that faith is a problem to begin with, but I do think that humility will lead to the necessary conclusion that religion is man-made.

On the other hand from humility, the fantastic idea that the cosmos was made with man in mind strikes me as the highest form of arrogant self-centeredness. And this brings me to what must be (within the limits of this short essay) my closing point. We are not without knowledge on these points, and the boundaries are being expanded at a rate which astonishes even those who do not look for a single cause of such vast and diverse phenomena. There is more awe and more reverence to be derived from a study of the heavens or of our DNA than can be found in any book written by a fearful committee in the age of myth (when Aquinas took astrology seriously and Augustine invented "limbo").

I cannot, of course, prove that there is no supervising deity who invigilates my every moment and who will pursue me even after I am dead. (I can only be happy that there is no evidence for such a ghastly idea, which would resemble a celestial North Korea in which liberty was not just impossible but inconceivable.) But nor has any theologian ever demonstrated the contrary. This would perhaps make the believer and the doubter equal—except that the believer claims to know, not just that God exists, but that his most detailed wishes are not merely knowable but actually known. Since religion drew its first breath when the species lived in utter ignorance and considerable fear, I hope I may be forgiven for declining to believe that another human being can tell me what to do, in the most intimate details of my life and mind, and to further dictate these terms as if acting as proxy for a supernatural entity. This tyrannical idea is very much older than Christianity, of course, but I do sometimes think that Christians have less excuse for believing, let alone wishing, that such a horrible thing could be true. Perhaps your response will make me reconsider?

Sincerely,

Christopher Hitchens

A little bit 'o sunshine for ya!

2007-08-29T05:28:00.000-07:00

The Reasons For My Light Posting

2007-08-20T08:22:00.000-07:00

Well first and most importantly, my wife and I are expecting our first child sometime in early November. We are excited and all of my home improvement projects now have a firm deadline.

Early this summer I finished producing, engineering, mixing and mastering a full length record for a Bloomington/Normal based band called The Dowry. Please take time to check them out and go see them live. They are a band that I feel has some real promise. Great songwriting and musicianship. What more could you ask for!!!?!?

Work has been crazy. From going to Florida to interview major league baseball players to San Fransisco to film corn....... yes corn, it has been pretty busy. But it beats the alternative.

But the biggest project this summer was our work for Tyson. We developed a viral type site for them. The idea is to give people the chance to send funny emails to friends and family. An improv-o-gram. You'll have to check it out for yourselves. This site is pushing the limits of web based video and user interactivity. It took an elborate set up, a week of shooting, and actors from Chicago. My role was the supervising sound producer. Every bit of audio that was captured, edtited, spliced and diced had to go through me. It was a long couple of weeks of 14+ hour days. Please go check it out and send Improv-o-grams to your friends and family.

Here's the link to Improv-o-gram.

Here are some pictures of the video production.

We get it....the Earth is warming. Just keep your darn clothes on.

2007-08-19T21:01:00.000-07:00

Let me reitterate my stance on Global Warming.

THE EARTH IS WARMING, BUT WE ARE NOT THE CAUSE!!!!!

Check out the waste of time here.

Nearly 600 volunteers stripped before the camera on a melting Swiss glacier high in the Alps on Saturday as part of a publicity campaign to expose the impact of climate change.
The eco-conscious volunteers turned up under blue skies near the foot of the Aletsch glacier, a protected UNESCO World Heritage site.
Environmental group Greenpeace commissioned the photo shoot from world renowned photographer Spencer Tunick.
"Their numbers are close to 600," Nicolas de Roten of Greenpeace Switzerland told AFP. "It's relatively chilly but that doesn't seem to be disturbing them."
The campaign is aimed at drawing attention to melting Alpine glaciers, one clear sign of global warming and of man-made climate change, according to the group.
Greenpeace says the human body is as fragile as glaciers like the Aletsch in southern Switzerland and the world's environment. The glacier itself is now shrinking by about 100 metres (110 yards) a year.
"I want my images to go more than skin-deep. I want the viewers to feel the vulnerability of their existence and how it relates closely to the sensitivity of the world's glaciers," Tunick said.
The group hopes its billboard and poster campaign showing people exposed to the cold will send a shiver down the spines of public opinion and politicians, and convince them to do more to tackle pollution and climate change.
"They'll be used at the right moment for our campaign, in Switzerland first and then worldwide," de Roten said from the location, about an hour's hike from the village of Bettmeralp.
Tunick split the men and women into two groups of about 300 for separate shots on or around the lower end of the spectacular 23 kilometre long (14 miles) sweeping ice floe, at an altitude of about 2,300 metres (7545 feet).
Dressed in hiking gear, they stripped for minutes at a time, watched at a distance by a clump of media photographers and journalists.
While cooler than the valley below, temperatures were well above freezing -- about 10 to 15 degrees Celsius (50 to 60 Fahrenheit).
The US-born photographer is famous for his spectacular art photos of large groups of naked people carefully positioned around landmarks.
Tunick calls them "living sculptures" or "body landscapes" and he nowadays works mainly to order for contemporary art galleries.
About 18,000 nudes posed for the US-born photographer in Mexico City's Zocalo Square in May.
Other backdrops have included the Gateshead Centre for Contemporary Art in England (2005), the Biennale in Lyon, France (2005), and Grand Central Station in New York (2003).
Volunteers for the Swiss photoshoot were asked to turn up by train and cable car, to avoid generating carbon dioxide emissions that contribute to global warming.
Bettmeralp's mayor, Heidi Kreuzer, was unimpressed by the fuss.
"There's no need to get undressed, I can show you very nice pictures of the glacier," she told the Swiss newspaper Le Matin.
Environmental issues have considerable resonance in mountainous Switzerland, which has been hit by a growing number of damaging flash floods and landslides in recent years due to stronger storms and rainfall, as well as heatwaves.
A Swiss government report this week underlined that temperatures were rising faster than the global average, and measures needed to tackle the impact of global warming would cost the country about one billion Swiss francs (833 million dollars, 617 million euros) a year.
The country's 1,800 glaciers are regarded as a visible barometer of global warming.
Their data also shows that all Switzerland's main glaciers are retreating and the melting has accelerated since the mid-1990s, according to scientists at Zurich's Federal Polytechnic (ETHZ).

Why not turn silence into opportunity for capitalism?

2007-07-03T07:53:00.000-07:00

I was reading a post over at the Peoria Chronicle about how the city council bought a timer that cost $2675.00. This is supposed to help more strictly enforce the five minute rule for those wishing to address the council. They also started a new practice. In order to speak at the meeting you have to arrive early and fill out a card. Now anybody with half a brain can tell that these new implementations do not encourage people to address the council but only make it that much more discouraging. But I have 2 ideas that could be tried when addressing the council next.
1) When you are done addressing the council, whip out your $14.00 Pampered Chef egg timer (already pre-set to five minutes nonetheless) and give them five minutes to respond.

Or, I like this idea better.

2) Wrangle up 5-10 homeless people and have them stand in line for you. They will get your card and fill it out for you. When you arive get their cards and give them some $$. You could have anywhere from 25-50 consecutive minutes to address the council. For the price of 5-10 value meals from McDonalds you can talk to the council. You get to voice your concerns and a few homeless souls get a free meal. But wait, once the homeless people realize that they can eliminate the middle man, they can just go on there own free will and get all of the cards. Then they can sell them for fair market value.
"You want five minutes? That'll be $15.....no checks."

or

"I don't have 2 consecutive 5 minute slots but I can give you 8:35pm and 9:15pm at a reduced price."

Don't you just love capitalism?!?!

Slow news and programming day.

2007-05-22T08:46:00.000-07:00

My wife has somehow absconded with my (our) iPod. So now my rides to and from work are filled with radio. Since I cannot tollerate most of the music that is broadcast over local airwaves I have no other choice but to subject myself to the "talk" offerings on the AM dial. I usually listen to 890 WLS but yesterday I decided to listen to good 'ol WMBD 1470. In the morning I was greeted with Greg and Dan talking about a list about 25 greatest inventions. It wasn't bad. They usually don't do lists so I cut them some slack. When I left work that day, I listened to what I believe to be the worst radio show going; The Markley & Luciano show. Now before I go any further, it must be noted that these feebly entertaining voices broadcast on the same station as Greg and Dan. I can't stand The Markley & Luciano show for the simple fact that all they do is talk about “top whatever” lists they find off of the internet. But to my amazement yesterday, they were discussing the exact same list that Greg & Dan were discussing that very morning. Is he Markley & Luciano show that void of originality and talent to not be able to come up with some original material? ...Rhetorical question... I sat in wonderment as to how long it would take someone to call in and say "Hey you two, we already know what the number one invention is!!!" Which was the cell phone….I think….who cares…. Anyway. I hope WMBD is still looking for John Malone's replacement.

A crime was still committed

2007-04-11T18:57:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since my last posting. How ya'll been? Not too bad here. There has been so much going on lately that I tell myself "ooh I'm gonna blog about that" but I never do. I think I get on "topic overload" and it is sometimes hard to focus all of my brilliant thoughts into simple sentences that mere mortals can readily understand. This is how I can empathize with Rosie O'Donnell.

Anyway, I would like to way in on the whole Duke Lacrosse rape, deal, fiasco. Today prosecutors dropped all charges against the three players. Yeah, this is good news. These 3 young men now can go on and live a normal life afforded them after graduation. But sadly this will not be the case. I think the most tragic thing about this case not being wrongly accused. It is the tarnishing of a name. There are 2 things on this Earth that give us our identity. Our face and our name. We try hard as humans to protect these. Why do criminals hide their faces? Why is there shame in seeing names in the police report? Because these things make indelible marks on how we are identified. These 3 men’s faces and names have been paraded on the media's stage for the sake of voyeurism, racism, ratings and the ego of Mike Nifong. I don't feel much consideration was given to how this would affect the alleged. I pity these 3 men because they are the real victims. But it is hard to arrest somebody for merely bringing shame to your name. The notion of "in 10 years nobody will even remember this incident" feels good to sooth our conscience but it will be carried for the rest of the lacrosse players lives. Yes, a crime has been committed. Sadly, it will probably go unpunished. Not the rape of a woman, but the desecration of a name.

An Inconvenient Truth.....for Central Illinoisans

2007-03-07T13:21:00.000-08:00

What I am about to post could be construed, by some, as blasphemy. The following words could have me banned from the Central Illinoisan blogoshpere indefinitely. What I am about to say may cause me to fall out of favor with some or most of you. So with that being said.....here I go.

Avanti's is not that great. It is only great to those who live in this area.

When I lived in Nashville I was in a band with 5 members 2 were from Bloomington/Normal. We traveled around the world and across the country playing music. We used to talk about how we couldn't wait to play a show "back home" so we could take the rest of the band and crew to this place called Avanti's. How we longed for the cheesy, goo-centered delight of peperoni pizza bread, or the delicious rapture of a Gondola. We must have talked it up quite a bit because there was an air of excitement that night when the catering revealed that dinner was from Avanti's.

The band and crew ate with delight. Upon completion of our meal the 3 Central Illinois boys were eager to get reaction from the non-natives. Much to our disappointment they were under whelmed. "It's o.k. if you like chef-boy-ardee and hoagies" were the words out of Cason's mouth. Mike could only imitate the sound of someone barfing ...(he's the drummer, he doesn't use words much) Myself and the 2 other natives were crushed. We knew that our meal was not a disappointment. Why were they not seduced by the sweet bread charm? On another trip the same scenario played out with similar results.

Why do I bring this up? Because I was reminded of this very fact a couple of weeks ago and last night. Usually, I am not one who name drops but somewhere between acquaintance and friend is Mat Kearney. Cason from the aforementioned paragraph plays bass for Mat. I have spent a few days with them over the last few weeks as they have been playing around the area. When they were in Bloomington a few weeks ago the venue suggested that they could get dinner (if they didn't want catering) from this great Italian joint.......Avanti's....they have the greatest bread ya know..... And then last night Mat played at IWU. Once again the promoter suggested Avanti's which immediately stopped Cason in mid sentence only to look at me as to signal that he remembered that place and that he didn't approve. Later on that evening right before the show Mat was asking me about some local things of interest that he could incorporate into his free form rap thing that he does. I said, "mention Avanti's and the crowd will go wild." So when it came to that point in the show Mat threw in the word "Avanti's".....the crowd applauded with glee. Cason shook his head. But I will not use Cason as a single example. There are many I know who have partaken of Avanti's only to have it not live up to the hype. They were not from here, they did not know any better.

All this to say.... I love Avanti's. I grew up here, the sauce is part of my blood. The bread is flesh of my own flesh. But to those who are not from here, Avanti's is not great Italian food.

Please do not watch if you are easily offended.

2007-02-22T14:23:00.000-08:00

U of I bars Indian mascot

2007-02-16T09:05:00.000-08:00

This really disappoints me. This era of Political Correctness has to stop...... Seriously.....yo .......seriously. The university campus (campi) is supposed to be the bastion of free progressive thought, but this is only foolishness. Who is this protecting? Who is offended by this? When asked, most native American people feel honored by Chief Illiniwek. It is part of our Illinois history. This is our history!!! I guess progressives don't want to have anything that would remind them of of how we mean pale faces drove out the natives in our blood thirsty conquest of world dominance. This is such typical liberal bull@$#%. In an effort to not offend people, who for the most part are not offended in the first place, we are doing away with a tradition in order to make the progressives feel better about themselves. Gee thanks. I can't wait to show my children the DVD of what it was like when rational people roamed the Earth. I can't wait to take my children to the Basketball game of team "x" (formerly known as The Spurrs.....ya know with all of those offended cowboys) against team "y" (formerly know as the Bulls.....I mean really...who's lookin' out for the cattle?) For a change wouldn't it be nice for a university to say that they are more committed to their traditions than the blackmail money of the NCAA?

This is a bigger problem than we think. This opens the portal for all sorts of things that people can tell us we need to be offended by. DO YOU NOT SEE THIS PEOPLE!!?!?!? This is not offensive. It takes very educated, progressive liberals to TELL us how offensive this is. What's next? Smoking!?!?! oops.... too late, the ball is already rolling on that.

Music, not politics, should be honored at Grammys

2007-02-12T06:45:00.000-08:00

It's hard to put into words my frustration over the Dixie Chicks winning album of the year last night. As someone who has actually voted for the Grammys, I know that sometimes the pickins are slim. Which may be an indication of a greater problem. That there really isn't alot of good music being promoted in the mainstream. I actually bought this record. It is one of the few that I spent my hard earned cash on when it was released. It is a good record. I like Rick Reuben as a producer. The record sounds great. But I feel as a whole it only has a couple of good songs and thats about it. It is not a collection of great songs, like Pearl Jam's 10, the Police's Synchronicity or U2's Joshua Tree. There are a few records that I think could have replaced the Dixie Chicks Taking the Long Way. Niel Diamonds record 12 Songs (also produced by Reuben), Death Cab for Cuties Plans, KT Tunstalls Eye to the Telescope were much better albums.

Last night I was starting to question my barometer for judging music. After The Dixie Chicks won the first couple of awards I started to wonder if my political views clouded my assessment of this record. I started to think "maybe I need to listen to that record again on my way into work." Maybe I need to give it a second chance. Maybe the record industry wasn't all wrong in there voting. I mean for gosh sakes I did buy the record!!!

But then one of the last things that Natalie Maines said during her acceptance speech validated all that I had been feeling previously. I don't have the exact phase but she said something to the effect of.....

"I guess with all of the stuff going on, your votes validate the mood of our country...."

Now before I get flamed with corrections, I admit that this is not the exact quote. But It is close enough to remind me how infuriated I was by her comment. So basically she was admitting that this award was not about the music. It was about being vindicated. I am all for free speech. But when the Grammys and those who vote for the Grammys choose politics over the quality of music, then my friends, it is a truly sad day for us all. I am truly disappointed with this choice by the record industry.

On a happier note. The Police freakin' ROCKED!!!

The Police to reunite for Grammy Awards

2007-01-30T13:17:00.000-08:00

Read the stroy here. Thank you!!! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Please come and rescue ROCK!!!!

Over worked politicians?

2007-01-25T08:42:00.000-08:00

I know that State of the Union addrresses can be boring and all, but is it really the best time to take a nap?

I mean seriously. Are you working that hard? Look at the number of snoozers.

Now I can understand why Teddy "bear" Kennedy might be hungov...er, I mean tired. But what about the youthful rock star Obama? Hillary looks happy.

I can understand being bored if I had to sit next to John Kerry, but what is up with the dude behind him?

Maybe all of these people were blinking at the same time.

So the next time our public servants vote to give themselves a raise. Cut them some slak...they are working tirelessly for us!!

Richard Dawkins offers his own delusion.

2007-01-08T06:11:00.000-08:00

"Saddam Should Have Been Studied, Not Executed" is the title of Richard Dawkins (author of The God Delusion) latest article in the LA Times. His article suggests that we need to take the time to study him to find out what makes him tick. This seems to me to be a contradiction to Dawkins own worldview in the sense that he wants to find out what gave him his evil "values." Why? This is coming from a man who marginalizes any notion of values and those who hold values. Especially those values derived from a delusional God. This is nothing more than Dawkin's attempt to gain some sympathy from liberal progressive anti-capital punishment crowd, while trying to gain support for his own brand of atheistic "religion." I would rather him say that he would like to study people who display altruistic behavior. I think we could learn allot more from them. But realistically how do you "study' these people either good or evil? I feel that the findings from each study would be pretty much the same. That being "not much." So give it up Mr. Dawkins. I would rather see your "Christian hating" ...oops I mean atheistic.... media tour in an effort to gain new converts to your church, than read this delusional nonsense.

The Ego has landed.

2007-01-06T15:08:00.000-08:00

Nancy Pelosi now has her first 100 hours and we will see a load of pomp and circumstance and perhaps even some substance. But first she would like to introduce herself to America. The California Congresswoman has declared herself "the most powerful woman in America," according to a report from the Washington Times. I would like to take this time to bring Madam Speaker back to Earth. Why on Earth would anyone say that out loud? Regardless of how true it might be. Please lady, show some restraint, it's only been 2 freakin' days. Ms. Pelosi needs to be reminded that she is not the most powerful woman in America. Oprah is.

This is the end as we know it.

2007-01-03T08:38:00.000-08:00

What is wrong with these people. Now it is unlawful to go sledding because of lawsuits? Does anyone else feel that we are living in a different country than when we grew up? At times I sure do. What ever happened to personal responsibility? It is dangerous to drive a car, does that mean I have a case against Jeep if I get injured in a wreck? Or how about Nike if their shoestring causes me to trip. It's interesting that our culture wants to create an environment where nothing could possibly go wrong. No thanks let me sled and I will face the consequences if I run into a tree. At least I will be having fun. We need to stop living like a lawsuit is equal to wining the lottery. How about adopting the practice that loser pays when it comes to lawsuits. I think that would stave off most of this ridiculous litigiousness.

I've Thought About It

2006-12-23T19:22:00.000-08:00

On December 16th local blogger Knight in Dragonland posted the following quote under the title "Think About It."

"Despise reason and science, humanity’s greatest strengths, indulge in illusions and magical practices that reinforce your self-deception, and you will be unconditionally lost!

Of course being a Christian I feel that this is pointed toward me and other religious people. Fine, be that as it may, I hope that those who choose to have this woven into there mind akin to me having scripture memorized see the fatal flaw. The writer assumes "reason" and "science" to be humanities greatest strengths. I think this is absurd. I would argue that love and compassion are humanities greatest strengths. More good has come from compassion. More aid to fellow humans has come from love. Science, while in itself is innocuous, has brought us the Atom Bomb, guns, hand grenades and Clay Aiken Christmas CDs.

I would caution those who hold phrases like this dear to their heart to consider it's full magnitude. One who places reason and science as paramount, has no room to accept love or compassion as valid since they are only the result of science. You are now constricted to find meaning and value solely in the physical world. By this view, when one feels they have found some meaning in this world, I guarantee that some leap of faith will still need to be made. For if not, they too will be unconditionally lost as well.

My intent is not to humiliate or insult but to foster some discussion. I love deep Theological and Philosophical discussion more than anything blog related. So, if what I have written makes sense or seems completely ridiculous, please leave a comment.

Believing in Santa does not create fools

2006-12-21T09:02:00.000-08:00

My wife and I were at another couples house the other night and we were talking about the big question that seems to be plaguing young parents today. Especially around this time of year.

What do we tell our kids about Santa?

To me it seemed almost ridiculous that the topic even needed to be discussed. Where does this come from? Who is promoting this as worthy of concern? Do you think our parents wrestled with this dilemma? It seems our progressive world wants one more thing to stress itself out. And now it is the adult affects of childhood Santa Claus belief.

Stop….just stop already. It’s ok to tell your kids there is a Santa Claus. Let them enjoy it. Let them have the anticipation and excitement of Christmas. We adults have managed to suck the life out of Christmas it seems, why not enjoy the excitement vicariously through children. Do any of you look back at your parents and think that their “lying” to you about Santa is a flaw in their character? Has the revelation of there not being a Santa caused you to disavow any belief in a higher being? Me neither. I don’t think that my being told there was a Santa had any affect on my adult life.

It blows my mind as to how unwittingly arrogant we can be sometimes. I think the majority of my generation grew up with the belief in Santa. I think it is safe to say that we consider ourselves to be “normal” functioning members of our society. But yet we somehow think that our children will not be able to deal with the revelation of the truth about Santa.

It seems that the progressive method for child rearing requires us to always be up front and truthful with our children. But I feel this is neither possible or desirable. We need to protect our children’s innocence as long as possible. And this is one small way to do it. Lets face, it if your gonna not give Santa a pass then you better be doing the same for Mickey and Mini Mouse, Donald Duck and Barney. When you take your kids to Disney (or where ever) and they run with excitement up to Goofy, your gonna have to pull them aside and explain to them that there really is just a paid actor inside that costume. I bet you will be a hero. What about when little Sally asks where her brother comes from? According to the progressive model of full disclosure, a complete and truthful explanation of sexual reproduction is required. It seems we bend truths here and there all the time for our children and we don’t even think twice about it.

So stop trying to over analyze these things and enjoy Christmas. Make it fun. Set out the milk and cookies and wait for the big guy to come down the chimney.

But I would be remiss if did not write about the true meaning of Christmas. And that is that we celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ. Whether or not you acknowledge Jesus as your savoir, this celebration was started to honor Him. And I think more importantly the spirit of goodness and generosity that believers and non-believers alike display during this time is one of the greatest testimonies as to the truths of the Bible displayed here on Earth. I think during this time of year is when we get a glimpse as to what the world could be like. God bless you all and have a very Merry Christmas.

I will bash but I will not blog

2006-12-08T06:57:00.000-08:00

Last night I went to the blogger bash with CJ Summers. Although I felt somewhat guilty doing so since I have not blogged in almost a month. But it was fun meeting some of you all. On a personal note I am fine, just extremely busy. Along with work, which is busy, I am currently producing an album for a local band ASLANas well as remixing Grace Family Christmas for the television broadcast. Sometime during all of this I have to do Christmas shopping and go to office parties. Anyway, so what has happened since my last post.....lets see..

Michael Richards flushes any chance of a career resurgance down the toilet.

Britney Spears flushes any remaining vestige of dignity down the toilet.

Millions of people have gone bonkers for the Playstation 3.

Millions more people have gone bonkers for the Nintendo Wii.

Kevin Federline sells only 6500 records the first Wii... oops, I mean week.

My personal favorite Dennis Prager has created a mini national firestorm over an article over Keith Ellison taking the oath on the Koran.

Pam Anderson and Kid Rock help contribute to making a mockery of the institution of marriage by getting a divorce. Were you as surprised and saddened as I?

I strongly considered getting a "myspace" but resisted.

Two of my good friends played (drum and bass) for Mat Kearney on Conan O'Brien.

I made my first pumpkin pie.....it was "glorpy"

The Midwest gets a butt-load of snow causing major havoc.

A tornado blows through North London...tea was still served.

That's about it.

Congratulations Democrats

2006-11-09T17:48:00.000-08:00

Well what can I say. It was a well fought battle on both sides. Each side unequalled in character bashing and dirty, misleading ads. You gotta love politics. So with that I humbly say "conratulations to the liberal democrats." And I am not being smart. I REALLY MEAN IT. I have faith in the people of America and if this is the will of the people, then so be it. Unlike when Bush won in 2004 and the term "Dumb#%^&istan" was coined, I do not believe that the voting public is dumb just because my guys lost or because the others won. I hope that some real progress can be made in our government. I hope that a solution to this Iraq mess can be found.

But I do feel that there is some truth to the notion that Conservative Repubicans are dumb. They can tend to live outside of reality at times. I can be mature enough to admit that. But I feel that Liberals, not so much Democrats, can do more harm to this country. So with the choice of being with those who are dumb or those who, with good intentions of course, do harm, I choose the dumb. That is a no brainer. But I say to you liberals as you take over; please govern well, please listen to the voters, don't be as dumb as the last bunch, and please do as little harm as possible.

This was too good to pass up.

2006-10-27T07:32:00.000-07:00

Thanks to my good friends Andrew Osenga and Billy Cerveny, this could be brought to you. I could not stop laughing.

A must see

2006-10-18T15:43:00.000-07:00

This is an amazing video somebody put together. It is made up of famous album covers. Sadly I have most of them. But that's good because it means I have a deep rock heritage. So rock on bruthas n sistas!!

I believe in miracles.

2006-10-17T06:57:00.000-07:00

Last night my wife and I turned off Monday Night Football during hafltime. We could not be witness to the downfall of a great season. The score was 20 to 0 in favor of the Cardinals. When I awoke this this morning I could not believe my eyes. The Bears came back to win 24-23. I watched the highlights this morning on ESPN and can't believe that we turned off the TV!!!! Oh well.

Why is this not a huge story?

2006-10-12T13:12:00.000-07:00

This should trouble all of us deeply. Muslims in the Twin cities are refusing to give rides to people with alcohol. The cities have capitulated and are planning on color coding the cabs. COLOR CODING THE CABS!!!! Why is nobody reorting this? Can you imagine if a Christian refused to give a ride to a homosexual or a Jew not giving a ride to somebody with a ham sandwich? This is so rediculous. Christians are asked everyday to keep their practice private. I have no problem if the liberal progressive community wishes to undermine and eliminate Jueo-Christian values from our public squares. But to allow this blatant public defiance is not acceptable. I feel that progressives dare not say anything because it may come danerously close to being patriotic. This is so turned around. Folks this is just the beginning. We need to stand up and stop this. Not for the sake of Christianity but for the sake of this country.

Islam can not reform but must be transformed.

2006-10-06T10:51:00.000-07:00

Here is a video that I think we all should see. Wafa Sultan on Danish television, discusses Islam and the cartoon jihad with uncommon clarity. This woman is brave, and speaks truth with boldness and passion. The walls of Islam are starting to crack and if this war in Iraq and on terroism (Islamic Fascism) are the catalyst, then they need to start shining that Nobel Prize for G.W. Bush. Wow, is getting hot in here? I think I can acually hear the steam coming out of the ears of some of our liberal blogging friends.

Tip to Little Green Footballs.

Sam Harris Speaks Truth

2006-10-03T11:27:00.000-07:00

It is so exhilarating to me when a liberal, especially an atheist, is intellectually honest. In my last post I had an excerpt of Sam Harris's book "Letter to a Christian Nation." This week Sam wrote an amazing article in the LA Times. He acknowledges that Christians are basically the only ones in this country who take the threat of Islamic Fascism seriously. What a breath of fresh air from an unlikely source. I strongly encourage all of you to read this and pass it on to your liberal friends.

One of the leading voices of atheism.

2006-09-28T09:11:00.000-07:00

I like to visit Onegoodmove to keep up with the latest Daily Show and Colbert highlights. There is also an insane amount of Bush bashing there to boot. It is also a haven for highlights occuring in the atheistic world as well. Today they have highlighted an excerpt from atheist Sam Harris's book A Letter to a Christian Nation. I posted a respone over at Onegoodmove but it is waiting moderation. But here is the passage. It blows my mind that athiests look to this as a viable reason as to there not being a God.

The Goodness of God

Somewhere in the world a man has abducted a little girl. Soon he will rape, torture, and kill her. If an atrocity of this kind is not occurring at precisely this moment, it will happen in a few hours, or days at most. Such is the confidence we can draw from the statistical laws that govern the lives of six billion human beings. The same statistics also suggest that this girl's parents believe—as you believe—that an all-powerful and all-loving God is watching over them and their family. Are they right to believe this? Is it good that they believe this?
No.

The entirety of atheism is contained in this response. Atheism is not a philosophy; it is not even a view of the world; it is simply an admission of the obvious. In fact, "atheism" is a term that should not even exist. No one ever needs to identify himself as a "non-astrologer" or a "non-alchemist." We do not have words for people who doubt that Elvis is still alive or that aliens have traversed the galaxy only to molest ranchers and their cattle. Atheism is nothing more than the noises reasonable people make in the presence of unjustified religious beliefs. An atheist is simply a person who believes that the 260 million Americans (87 percent of the population) claiming to "never doubt the existence of God" should be obliged to present evidence for his existence—and, indeed, for his benevolence, given the relentless destruction of innocent human beings we witness in the world each day. An atheist is a person who believes that the murder of a single little girl—even once in a million years— casts doubt upon the idea of a benevolent God.

It is so easy and simple minded to say that bad things happen therefore God doesn't exist. Or dare I say "evil" (though most atheists will dismiss that word from being accurate). Yes there are bad(evil) things happening to innocent people as I type, as you read. Are these not the acts of men and not God? Atheists link that to whether or not God exists? Where's the connection? How come nobody ever asks the converse? Why are we allowed to experience pleasure? And some exteme pleasure at that. Most of which doesn't cost us a dime. If we are going to equate bad with "no God." Then wouldn't it be fair to equate good with "there is a God?" For us to be able to distiguish bewteen good and bad (evil) pleasure and pain means that there is a standard by which these things can be determined. Who or from where does the standard come? I believe from God. An atheist will probably say " it comes from within ourselves." Fine, but I feel you now have a monumental struggle to find an anchor for your objective moral basis. Everything then would be anchored to some sort of construct of man. Since everything is just material then there really is no meaning. Wouldn't that lead to a moraly reletivistic world? Void of meaning or purpose. Void of any ability to clearly deliniate between right and wrong. But then maybe atheists have come to terms with the idea that this is all meaningless. If thats the case then we should at least be clear about it. I would love to hear an atheist just be truthful with themselves and say something like "after review of my life, consciousness and existence I am certain it is all meningless and I am fine with that." Fine, then stop living as if you have purpose and meaning.

In closing, I would like to put a twist on Mr. Harris's last sentence:

An atheist is a person who believes that the murder of a single little girl—even once in a million years— casts doubt upon the idea of a benevolent God.

A Christian is a person who believes that the smallest amount of joy—even once in a million years— casts hope upon the idea of a benevolent God.

What ever happened to these guys?

2006-09-26T10:34:00.000-07:00

I found this clip on the Al Gore spawned "internets." These guys can't write a song to save their lives. They can't play and the singer can't sing. I hope they have good day jobs.

NBC may not air Madonna crucifixion stunt....

2006-09-21T11:56:00.000-07:00

Here's an article about how NBC has asked to cut a crucifixion scene from Madonnas current stage act. I wonder if there is any thing in Kabbalah that she finds sacred. And would she be offended if someone did a similar thing to her religion? Who knows....who really cares. I'm glad that the folks at NBC are actually considering not airing this. But lets be real here NBC won't approve the stunt until they're absolutely sure it won't offend any Muslims.

Somebody grab me a tissue...

2006-09-13T19:50:00.000-07:00

It seems as though liberal, or progressive, radio talk network Air America is heading for bankruptcy. While I can't say that I am sad to hear this, I am disappointed. Because, now, when a liberal will argue that "you conservatives have control over the airwaves" I will have to admit that they are telling the truth. But in all honesty liberal talk will not gain mass appeal until a few things change. Less hate. More actual discussion. Even representation of both sides. Lets start with the first point.

Less hate. The majority of the content on Air America is anti-Bush. With which I don't have a problem. But it is mostly tasteless and vulgar. Once again, fine, but you start to lose your credibility when you want to make a serious point.

More actual discussion. It seems that most of the shows are nothing but long monologues with no real intellectual thought or interchange. I know that sounds harsh but if the hosts are going to claim to be "progressive" and hang out with this nations "great thinkers" I would hope that they would put a little more effort into it than re-hashing their comedy routines. Why is it that the progressives best hosts are ex-comedians? (Franken, Garofalo, Mahr) That's a completely different post. I find more thought coming from some of my wife's high school sociology students.

Even representation of both sides. It seems as though there is no real attempt by the liberals to engage conservatives. Rarely will a phone call in opposition be taken. Crass generalizations are often used when referring to "red staters" or "evangelicals." I have called and gotten past the call screener to the Randi Rhodes show four times. Four times mind you. Only once did I get a busy signal. Each time I waited, a minimum of 20 minutes, and my call was never taken. Once I waited close to 40 minutes. I bring this up to point out that , one, I could get in easily and, two, they don't want to hear from us.

I am not talking about Rush and Hannity. I can't stand them. They are kind of like Conservative version of Air America to me. But I am talking about shows like Dennis Prager, Hugh Hewwitt, Michael Medved. These guys are not afraid to hear opposition and everyday ask for the opposition to call in. They frequently point listeners to liberal publications for discussion. I can honestly say that every time (that I have heard) on Air America, when they site an article that opposes their viewpoint, it is always without fail disregarded as drivel or made fun of in some way. It is interesting to me how much time I spend listening to people with other viewpoints. I desire to stay balanced. I want to know the lefts arguments even if I don't agree. I even subscribe to an atheist podcast just to hear agruments to my beliefs. I feel that there are more conservatives out there like me than liberals who desire to be challenged. Why is that? Well I think it stems from the fact that liberal viewpoints, for the most part, are based mostly on "feelings" and not much substance. Don't get me wrong, the intentions of liberalism are great, but, I have a feeling that when really pressed on the serious issues facing us today a liberal will do one of two things. Dismiss any opposing point because it may stem from values or fail to be completely morally and intellectually honest with themselves. And not only is that sad it is ironic that they are touted as progressive.

Anyway, until progressive media figures out that it has to present both sides, it will never be a success. If these are the best hosts they can muster it is doomed. It will at best be a fringe, freak circus act taking up radio bandwidth.

Brave New 1984

2006-08-29T21:18:00.000-07:00

When I was in high school I was fascinated with futurist (don't know if that is an actual term) thinking. Books like George Orwell's 1984, and Brave New World by Aldous Huxley inspired me to think about where technology and social constructs would take us in the future. I remember borrowing heavily from both books in a high school Creative Writing class to create a similar world. Back then I was impressed by how close their visions of the world came to pass. Quite frankly, with each passing year, the similarities are frightening. My story was set in 2315, if I remember correctly, and every inch of the Earth had been developed. All except a 100 by 100 mile patch in Colorado. That's where people went when they became useless (over the age of 40). After living a life surrounded by buildings, factories and dwellings they could get a glimpse as to what nature would look like had we not developed and urbanized everything. After spending a day there, they were shot. Give me some slack here....I was in high school. But I thought for a high school student my theme was quite estute (BJ pats himself on the back). That when you live in a city or urban local, you are surrounded by man's creation. There is very little to give you pause and reflect without the praise directed back to somebody or some institution. But in the wilderness you are surrounded by God's creation. In an effort to snuff out God, the society in my story had created a world almost completely void of God's creation.

I bring this up because lately I have been listening to a podcast by Ravi Zacharius where he makes reference to both of these books. He makes a point about these books that I had not thought of. Where I had once thought that these books were quite similar, Ravi points out how completely different their overall philosophies are. Orwell was concerned about the restriction of information and freedom. Huxley was concerned about the abundance of pleasure. I think that Huxley's point rings true in the end. Or should I say "more true."

Yes I think that there is some pretty funky stuff that our government is probably hiding from us. Yes big brother is starting to pop up in more and more places. Yes our language is getting slaughtered by the new techno-culture. These things Orwell got right. But he guises it in the form of oppressive government and conspiracy. Huxley realized though that with the advent of technology came great founts of pleasure. His idea being that there would be no need for conspiracies or book burning because nobody would care enough to read them. I think that Huxley gets it right. That's where we are as a nation/society now. Consumed with pleasure, filled with diversions, caring only until the next episode of The Sopranos. This is a bad place to be friends because it is only going to get worse. Blogging is just the tip of the berg of ice. If you don't believe me then check Second Life out. I was just researching it for work today and wasted/spent 5 hours on it.

I write all this to say that we are a culture that is looking more and more for meaning. But yet the current Progressive thinkers will tell you "there is no meaning, except what you infer to be meaning." Which is why I am not at all surprised as to why people are ready to accept the pursuit of pleasure (not happiness) as meaningful. It makes us feel like there is meaning without any of the trappings of God or morality. I am not sure who said it but it goes something like this. "Meaninglessness does not come from growing weary of pain; meaninglessness comes from growing weary of pleasure."

So here I am.....

2006-08-22T18:25:00.000-07:00

sitting on my front porch bloggin'. We got a new laptop and wireless router. I am so 2004. Anyway, sorry for being quiet on the blogging front. I have been trying to figure out how I want to spend my time lately. Part of it has been focused on songwriting. I have been forever writing snippets of music that I really think are cool but have yet to string anything into a complete song. I guess maybe I am too critical of anything I record. So in an effort to get me to finish a song, one of my bass students (I give lessons), actually gave me some homework. It was quite funny and humbling at the same time. He says, "BJ, it's just a matter of priority. Make a list of what yet needs to be done on your songs (homework)and then make an effort get them checked off." It is so simple and yet so true. He wrote the list for me. I think I like to play and write for fun, but when it comes time to actually work on writing something then it becomes, well, work. But I am actually focussed on some of these ideas and hope to birth them soon. I am planning on having demos recorded by the end of the year (having a studio in my basement makes that easy). I am planning on putting them up here for your consumption. And possibly a "myspace" as well.....myspace scares me though. But I would love to get some feedback from you when the time comes. Also, does anybody know of any Peoria area "open mics?" I would like to start playing out again. Peace.

A new look for Dennis Prager

2006-08-09T09:41:00.000-07:00

For those who care Dennis Prager has changed his web location. He is now at www.pragerradio.com. You can now get podcasts of the previous days shows. Listen via streaming audio. Fill your empty liberal cup with Judeo-Christian goodness. Lately he has had some great guests. He recently had a great interview with Francis Collins which I was planning on posting it until my computer decided to quit working and needed to completely restore my OS (a Mac even....lost the file...not happy.) Anyway, Dennis has been on a roll lately with some great shows. Here is yesterdays show about Moral Absolutes. I like the fact that he discusses both views and takes on opposition to his beliefs. It's about 35 minutes but well worth a listen. I guess that this is going contrary to my last post as this will probably generate an empassioned discussion. And that's o.k. Lets get our discussion on. Next week I am going to put up his discussion as to why liberals are liberal. Should be another fun discussion. Enjoy!!

Down from the mountains.

2006-07-24T10:40:00.000-07:00

It seems that a lot of significant things have happened atop mountains or hills. The 10 Commandments, The Sermon on the Mount, the crucifixion. Last week in Colorado I feel that God really got ahold of my heart. And in not the most obvious way. I had mentioned that I was planning on reading The Closing of the American Mind by Allan Bloom. That didn't happen. Instead I ended up reading A Man without a Country by Kurt Vonnegut. It's basically Kurt's thoughts about the current political climate and our countries thirst for oil based energy. Even though he did not hide the fact that he is a Humanist, Mr. Vonnegut had some very keen perceptions that I agree with about life and God. Basically he is saying that we are wasting our time being diverted from interacting with each other. Such as T.V. video games, the internet and any sort of diversion we can think of.

To get more to the point, blogging for me is a diversion. I enjoy blogging but in the grand scheme of things it doesn't seem to make much sense. I don't think I will get to the end of my life and say "I wish I would have blogged more." Great, I can share my opinion with the world and you can respond. Does this really accomplish anything? What I think it accomplishes is the elimination of obligation for us to think and act rationally. Especially if we choose to remain anonymous. But look at how tempting that can be though. The internet allows an outlet for some of our darkest behavior. From behind my keyboard I can be the most arrogant, disrespectful, insult hurling jerk in the world with no real retribution. Not only can I disagree with you but I can call you just about every filthy thing in the book. I just feel that the internet is good for some things, rational productive discussion is not one of them. True persuasion will never occur here because it is just an infinite amount of point/counter-point. There's really no point debating anything online. We may as well stand at Joe's Crab Shack and hurl our shoes in an effort to hit the East Peoria Wal-Mart. At least that would be fun.

I think I got hooked on the thrill of debate. I would wait intently for someone to post something that I didn't agree with so I could pounce on them with a fury of spell-checked opinion. I now realize that the time I spent looking for debate was just wasted time. Time that I could be spending elsewhere with other people. Heck it would have been better if we were debating over a beer somewhere. At least then we would be engaged in developing a relationship. And I guess that's the point of all of this. We are here to be in relationships with each other. To be involved with other peoples lives. But in all reality we are just words on each others screens.

As we drove around Colorado, I found it interesting that a community such as Aspen is dealing with issues of relationship. They seem to be in a dilemma over massive land development. On the one hand they want to be a world class resort. But on the other hand those who live there do not want to loose the sense of community that they have. It's good to see that even a town like Aspen can realize community and relationships are worthy of debate.

So with that said, I don't know how much more blogging I will do. I know it will be significantly reduced. I will still probably troll around and post on your blogs. I would rather be upfront and say this than string you along for the next few weeks only to fade into your cyber memory. I have had fun discussing issues with ya'll. While trolling around I found this discussion over at Polly's which I think typifies my point. It's a great discussion to have but I don't know if this forum is the most productive use of time. God bless you all and I will talk to you sometime soon.

Rocky Mountain High.........(if ya know what I mean ;)

2006-07-13T11:00:00.000-07:00

My wonderful wife and I are leaving tonight for vacation. We will be spending a week or so in Colorado. I am really looking forward to it. We will be spending a few days with some friends and then we will be secluded in the wilderness for a few days with nothing but ourselves and some good books to keep us company.....Maybe a bear or two. I hope to delve into The Closing of the American Mind by Allan Bloom during this trip. This is one of those books that has sat on our shelves for who knows how long but yet has never been read. More importantly we are in a quandary as to how it got there in the first place. Anybody read it? Anybody ever heard of it? Anybody care? Anyway, I do not want to go leaving my devoted 6 readers, including mom, without another provocative question. I will try to poke my head in from time to time to see how you all are behaving. Be good ya'll and we'll see you soon.

Question #3:

Do you consider The United States of America to be a Christian nation or not? Please explain why or why not.

In short my answer is "yes The USA is a Christian nation." But I will expound on that later. I am open to hear your thoughts. Please forgive me if it take some time for me respond this week. Grace and peace to all my cyberbuds. Talk to you soon!!

Question #2

2006-07-06T12:52:00.000-07:00

Remember last month I said I would have a weekly question? Well, here is the long over due Question #2. I don't know about you but I had a wonderful 4th of July holiday. We had way too many people over, had way too much to eat, and had way to much fun and fellowship. It's great to celebrate our countries independence, and for some reason this year I really got choked up at the fireworks when I sat back and really contemplated how this country has weathered the last 230 years. Some people will laugh at the notion that God has particularly blessed the USA. Some would like to have us believe that our country was founded by diests and not men who believed in Jesus and the God of Abraham. But the more I read history and biographies the more I am convinced that our founding fathers were God fearing men of the Judeo-Christian persuasion. I say this to remind us that yes we gladly celebrate our "independence day" but this country has been "dependent" on God from the very start. If anything I feel our country is anxiously awaiting it's independence from "God." To which I will quote Dennis Prager.

"Many countries have recovered from economic and political catastrophes but not a one has recovered from a moral catastrophe."

This leads me to my question of the week....kinda sorta. Independence and Freedom seem to go hand in hand. I have had some "go-arounds" with a few of you about what freedom means. My question is this.

Does freedom mean that we are truly free to do whatever we want or are we obligated to conduct ourselves in certain ways to help promote freedom?

Does that make sense? If so discuss.

I don't understand.

2006-07-01T06:58:00.000-07:00

I am seeing more and more people wearing these clog things lately. Please stop. I don't understand their appeal. Even my wife, who has a great sense of style, doesn't even get this. Maybe you own a pair or are contemplating purchasing. Please don't. They are not cool. They don't look cool. They don't make you look any cooler. And for the dude in Wal-Greens yesterday....you know who you are..... they certainly did not look cool with those white socks!! I think this is a big joke that some maniacal Norwegians are playing on unsuspecting Americans.

I go a whole week without blogging and this is the only thing I can come up with?!?!? sad.

I'm Back....Let's get to it!!

2006-06-26T10:52:00.000-07:00

My wife and I were at camp last week. It was a great time getting to know more of the young people and their friends who go to our church. I was really encouraged to see the level of maturity that some of these kids have. It made me wonder what I was doing at their age. I certainly wasn't reading C.S. Lewis and desiring to talk about dispensationalism. Anyway, it reaffirmed my notion that young people regardless of religion need attention and mentors. And that a little goes a long way. So I encourage you, especially if you don't have kids of your own, to invest time with young people. It will not return void.

P.S. It's good to see BJ Stone is back.

Out for a while.

2006-06-20T14:30:00.000-07:00

My wife and I will be leaving to be church camp counselors for the next few days so blogging will be non-existent. Ya'll have a great rest of the week and we'll pick this back up on Monday.

One Step Closer to Knowing....

2006-06-19T09:06:00.000-07:00

The London Times published an interesting article about the lead researcher in the Human Genome Mapping project. In a world that is so ready to lock the debate over evolution, I find it refreshing to see such an article that is so blatantly open to the possibility of (a) God. Of course this article will not "seal the deal" for converting atheists but it is a huge statement when a scientist like Francis Collins can be swayed by honestly looking at what the research suggests.

I am no genetic engineer by any stretch of the imagination. But I do feel if I am going to claim to be a Christian, I should at least do my best to try and understand the scientific philosophical implications of what this scientist is suggesting for a couple of reasons.
1) To reaffirm my Christian worldview
and
2) To rationally explain it to those who disagree.
I have recently read 3 books concerning this.

Can a Darwinian be a Christian?
The Case for a Creator
and
Total Truth:

From my own reading, here is what I have found concerning human genetics. These are paraphrased, borrowed ideas mixed with my own interpretation. So take them for what it's worth.

Like words on a page of paper so are the words of DNA. When you look at a piece of paper that has text on it your first thought is not "how did these random 26 letters affix themselves on the page in such a way to create logical sentences?" You naturally assume that there was a writer behind it. The same would be true if a box of Alphabits cereal was spilled on the counter top. And the Alphabits cereal spelled your name, address and phone number. You would assume that somebody was behind that. Now it is possible to spill Alphabits and get words like, "to,cat,is,am etc." But you wouldn't get anything with much complexity. And on top of that to get those small words to form even a basic street name or city would be next to impossible. Just like words DNA contain information. When you start to string the words together you start to create sentences. But sentences on a page are just sentences. It's when they are read and a message is conveyed that the purpose for writing comes full circle. For our example the "message" from DNA is life. The words and message line up too clearly to be passed off as mere chance. I know that this is probably over simplistic and under scientific, but it makes sense to me. And my point with all of this is not to try to convert you to the Judeo-Christian religion, but to open you up to the possibility of God. But to tie this into Christianity.....I love how the Bible addresses this in the first chapter of John.

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God."

Coincidence? Possibly....but at least God knew how to cover his bases.

To wrap this up I would ask this. Within the scope of our known reality what would you be willing to bet all you have on? You have a 50-50 chance here.

1) The idea that our lives and life on Earth came from chance combinations of genetic material.

or

2) The idea that behind our lives and life on Earth is some sort of higher power. For this example lets not limit it to the Christian God... could be Aristotle's idea of a Prime Mover if you'd like.

To me the latter seems to be the most realistic.

This is nothing new.

2006-06-15T11:02:00.000-07:00

Well I have realized that the best way to generate blog traffic is to post something controversial. So in my quest to debunk liberal thinking I will weigh in on this whole Ann Coulter deal. I am amazed at how much froth her statements have churned. For the longest time liberals have written her off as an obnoxious, insignificant bimbo righty. What has changed? Now she has written statements that are mean, contemptible and downright malicious. Why is this a big deal? Do you know how often we are bombarded by equal if not worse from the left? Just about daily. I will give liberals this. For the most part they are usually more creative when it comes to deriding those with whom they don't agree. But now the right has someone that rivals some of the lefts best and, now, it is somehow not o.k. Do you not see the double standard here?

Let me continue by saying that I do not condone what she has written. I do however agree with the bigger point that she is trying to make. The things that she has written makes it hard for those who oppose to see her point. I think it is safe to say that conservatives generally choose to take the moral high ground when it comes to ridiculing people and their ideas. This is what usually promotes the stereotype of conservatives being bland, boring and uncreative. And I am fine with that stereotype. I think it beats the alternative. But now we have someone on the right gaining some media traction and all of a sudden the sky is falling. ***grumble grumble** "This takes freedom of speech too far!" Why now are liberals willing to come within inches of suicide by falling on their own sword of "censorship?" Because they simple don't agree.

We have to remember that Ann Coulter is a satirist. She writes satire. I have seen worse things written from Maureen Dowd but nobody seems to cry in their lattes over her tripe. Just listen to the silliness about Christians that comes from Bill Maher's pie hole. I am mistaken? Is there some sort of secret rule that grants liberals a pass because what they do is "art" or "comedy?" When I watch Bill Maher I can't help feeling that he is wrapping a turd of hate in a sweet comedy candy shell.

So to my fellow liberals. Don't get your collective panties in a wad. The mirror has been held up and you don't like what you see. That's a natural and healthy reaction. But it is amazing how the response from the left so far has been nothing but classy. (that last statement was satirical in nature)

I do not recommend watching Henry Rollins reaction to Ann Coulter. But it is typical of how liberals will guise their hate with comedy. I am not gonna link to it but any combination of their names in a Google search will lead you to it. It is truly vile. Viewer discretion is advised.

My sketch of V O N S T E R

2006-06-14T06:04:00.000-07:00

Well, after many drafts on my sketch pad I have come up with a rendering that I think best represents the mighty VONSTER. It looks vaugely familiar. Take a look and let me know what you think.

Click here for the VONSTER!!

Um!??!?

2006-06-08T06:06:00.000-07:00

I think a little piece of me has died.

Believing in God does not make you exempt from being an idiot.!!

2006-06-06T14:55:00.000-07:00

Lioness in zoo kills man who invoked God

Who is VONSTER?

2006-06-04T18:58:00.000-07:00

O.K. so I have been blogging now for 7 months now. It was slow at first but now I think I am getting the hang of things around these parts. I feel I am slowly being welcomed into this wonderful Peoria community of bloggers. It is kind of wierd feeling a certain amount of kinship to people I only know "digitally." But I like putting my opinions out there for others to see. I also like to see what the rest of my fellow Peorians think about certain issues. With that said, in an effort to generate some more interest in Oneproblem I am going to start including simple questions that you can leave short or long responses to. I think this could be fun and generate some good discussion. So here is question # 1.

Who is Vonster?

I am not looking for a name but more of a description based on Vonster's general bloggerific personality. I'll go first.

Although it seems as if we share the same political ideology, I think it is safe to say that we are nothing alike. Part of me thinks Vonster's a CAT shop worker. But that couldn't be because Vonster seems to update Vonster's blog frequently and during the day. Something a shop worker probably couldn't do. But then Vonster makes references to "All Your Base Are Belong To Us" which makes me think Vonster is around my age or a little younger, since I got the reference. Vonster's views seem to have recovered from a collegiate liberal washing, so, a minimum of age 28 seems right. (that is if Vonster went to college) Vonster probably drives an SUV. But not a new one. Maybe an 1989 Ford Bronco II. With a gun rack. Vonster knows what Starbucks is but prefers Folgers. I'm gonna put Vonster somewhere across the river. Say.....Creve Coeur or Marquette Heights. Vonster has a mullet. But it is not long. I can't figure out what is in Vonster's CD player. It's either Tool or Bruce Hornsby.

Well, that's about all I have for now. Please feel free to add or correct. Please remember that this is meant to be fun so make your comments more creative than mean. Oh yeah.....one last thing...... Vonster is a woman......and she has a sense of humor.

I have to admit my hypocrisy.

2006-06-01T13:07:00.000-07:00

Just recently I commented on Scott O’Brien’s blog how I agreed with him that all of the technology that surrounds us only tears us apart. I have blogged in the past about how the video iPod will encourage anti-social behavior. I have seen firsthand how gameboys and the like keep nieces and nephews from interacting with the rest of the family. And I have problems with how these devices are transforming us from spiritual creatures to digital creatures. So with that being said, I have to admit that this weekend I purchased an iPod. 30G. Video…….. I actually have been wanting one all along. But $$$ ain’t growing on trees.

"What?"
"Why are you looking at me like that?"

I know what you’re thinking. “The iPod is just the gateway device. Next it will be an X-box and then a new Mac iBook!” Please rest assured that I have not gone off the deep end.

My wife and I are planning a long road trip and I thought “wouldn’t it be nice to not take a case of all the music we like?” I never thought I would actually get an iPod but once she saw the demo at American this weekend I knew our fate was sealed. Her only caveat “don’t get the black one.” You would have thought that I just won the lottery.

I will say though for connoisseurs of music it is truly a great piece of technology. I have been importing music from years gone by. I have been rediscovering albums that had slipped into obscurity solely because they did not make it into our traveling CD case. Now I have just about all of them and can recall them with a moments notice. For the 6 or 7 of you who actually read Oneproblem, I hope things aren’t awkward from now on. Can we still be friends?

BBC News confirms my opinion from last week......

2006-05-30T10:17:00.000-07:00

Apocalyptic Fear-Monger

Andrew Osenga........spreading the word

2006-05-26T07:13:00.000-07:00

Throughout our time on Earth you encounter people that forever change your life. For me, Andrew Osenga is one of those people. Not only was I able to spend a few years in a band with this gifted songwriter, I was able to see first hand how an artist wrestles with life, love, art and soul. He has a new record coming out and I am doing my small part to get the word out. Check him out and if you like, please support him by PURCHASING his record. Here is a free mp3 to whet your whistle.

I do not fear Hillary, but I am afraid of Al Gore

2006-05-25T11:27:00.000-07:00

When you tell a liberal that you don't believe that Social Security will be around in 20 years, they will tell you that you are needlessly creating panic. "There is not a real problem that needs to be dealt with anytime in the near future" they may say. You are a "fear-monger." But nothing is said when liberals go on about how global warming is going to destroy our coastline cities.

Al Gore was on the Today Show spreading nonsense about the "evidence" supporting global warming. Did anybody see him? He was ridiculous. He said that "the debate is over, the scientific community has reached an overwhelming consensus....the pseudo scientists who disagree are being paid by oil companies"

Really Al? The debate is over? Because the Professor of Climatology at MIT doesn't agree with you relegates him to being a pseudo scientist? The scary thing about Al is that he is a fanatic about global warming. He believes that the world is headed for the greatest calamity ever seen. But nobody calls him a nut-job. Where have you heard similar claims? From religious fanatics. But for some reason liberals are exempt from the label of "kooks" "whackos" "nut-jobs" etc. even when they rightly deserve. I would rather have Al Gore be a “misguided phony” than a true believing fanatic. It is so turned around.

George Washington......The First Heterosexual President

2006-05-12T13:16:00.000-07:00

If Liberals (not necessary Democrats) take over, it could (will) be the end of this nation. Well, BJ, that's a pretty bold statement....wouldn't you need some example to back up that statement? Yes and I have one. In California Democrats control both houses and have a pretty easy time at forming majorities. Let's look at just a little bit of legislation that has just passed the state senate.

Basically the bill says that textbooks must now include contributions to history that have been made by homosexuals and transgendered. So what's the big deal you may ask. I have know doubt that there are examples out there, but let me ask this question. Can you name any transgendered person that has made significant contributions to US History that would warrant inclusion in textbooks? And if so; Is this something of note and something that needs to be taught to kids? To half of this country this may be good news and something worth being taught. The thing that is baffling to me is that this is about to become law. Let me repeat... This is about to become law!! Do you see the implications? This law would enforce their inclusion even if their contributions are not as significant as the major historical figures. This begs another question. Will the textbooks need to be re-written to include the following:

George Washington, a heterosexual male, was the first president.

Benjamin Franklin, a heterosexual male, invented bifocals.

Or the very front page would contain the following:

Unless otherwise noted, any mention of a historical figure assumes that they are straight.

This is so turned around. It is so turned around that even the LA Times sees this for what it is.

"It's a twisting of what history textbooks are supposed to do: tell about the most important contributions, and misdeeds, of people in history, regardless of their beliefs and orientations."

What if the person is a particularly bad person and is gay? Will that be included? What about someone who got really drunk and on one instance they did something they came to regret later? Would that one instance qualify them for the great contributions of bisexuals? What I'm getting at is this; Liberals will go to great lengths for what are noble causes, but not really think through the consequences. They want textbooks to be therapeutic more than historical. History is not written to make me or you or certain social groups feel good. It is written to tell history. I have no problem if gays want to write a book of significant homo-sexual historical figures to bolster their self image. And the same goes for any other group in America. But lets be real folks. It is things like this that not only sanitize history but slowly over time re-write history.

United 93

2006-05-09T09:04:00.000-07:00

This will be one of the tougher entries I have attempted to write. I’ll be honest; this movie was tough for me to sit through. Not because of the violence, or language. But because I was immediately transported to me waking up in my Nashville apartment to my roommate crying “holy shit, holy shit, holy shit!!” I remember rushing downstairs to see what was wrong only to see both WTC towers on the TV ablaze like two smoldering cigarettes standing on end. After sleep disorientation had worn off, and the situation explained, I was filled with fear, anger and revenge. ”Somebody’s gonna get their ass kicked for this” was all I could say. That’s how I felt leaving the theater after seeing United 93.

I wrestled with the feeling that I could relate to these people. I sat wondering “What would I have done?” The answer is pretty scary and revealing about who we are. Watching the movie I was unnerved by the emotions I was going through. The moment the passengers revolted I found myself wanting the passengers to pummel the hijackers more and more. Standing in triumph over nothing but an indistinguishable mass of red and flesh. I felt like this would be the sweetest revenge. I know it sounds awful and unchristian but I challenge you to watch United 93 and not feel the same.

What this movie points out is that we are at war with a real enemy. And on 9/11 the enemy officially kicked things off. They do not wish to fight over there. They want to bring it here along with their conquest to take over the world. It seems as though people want to quickly forget this. Or they want to reduce it to an annoyance akin to “swatting flies.” Now there will be those who will lampoon the President for invading Iraq. And rightly so. I do not agree lockstep with everything he has done. But we need to remember that just as those passengers aboard United 93, the courage to do what is “right” must prevail over that which is “good.” I believe that our President is doing his best to do what is right. Remember, President Bush said that those countries that sponsor terrorism or give terrorists safe haven would feel the recourse of their actions at the moment of our choosing. To say that Iraq is exempt from this would be foolish and dishonest.

This is not meant to be a sounding board for Bush, but a reminder that one of the greatest tragedies we faced as a country must never be forgotten. My friend Jeremy Casella grew up near Shanksville PA. He wrote a song about the tragedy of United 93. I helped produce a record for Jeremy on which this song appears. On the one-year anniversary of 9/11 he was invited to sing it at the memorial service. I hope you listen to it and remember that these events and their implications must not be forgotten.

This should be sent to Jay Leno

2006-05-05T11:50:00.000-07:00

I was looking over the Peoria Journal Star at work today and came across this headline. It was even on the front page.

Rainfall Wipes Out Drought

What would we do with out these keen insights!!

My first album review

2006-05-04T12:57:00.000-07:00

The Fray
How To Save a Life

It has been a long time since I have felt compelled to actually go out and buy an album. Especially one that has VH1 telling me I should. My wife and I went out last weekend with the intent of each buying some new music. I bought The Fray's How to save a Life. Vickie bought....oh man, please don't make me say it...er...uh OK..here it goes Rob Thomas. She still is the coolest wife ever!!! Anyway...

How to Save a Life offers nothing new sonically that we haven't already heard from artists like Coldplay and Ben Folds. But my mantra is "it's all about the songs" which this album has. Well written melodies with thought out, but at times ambiguous, lyrics. This album teeters back and forth from pop and cool. Their current hit "Over My Head" filling up every Buffalo Wild Wings and Hollister from here to LA gives me the sense that, yes, this is pop music but it just took a turn for the better. The album as a whole has ai sweet sort of melancholy atmosphere that is appropriate for late night vibe music. Sounding somewhere between Marvin the Martian and Radiohead's Thom Yorke you find The Frays vocalist Isaac Slade. A unique voice but delivery that doesn't make you question his sincerity. This album did have some hick-ups along the way though. The song "Little House" starts out one part Bruce Hornsby and one part Vanesa Carlton and then turns in to a night with Bach (not Beck) and Queen. It's a little weird, and I am not convinced. Overall, this is a good record. It is not great but I think well worth the purchase. As an interesting side note for local Peorians, a lot of this record was recorded in Bloomington Indiana's Echo Park Studio.

3.5 of 5 Stars

Apple will not change its' Tune

2006-05-02T04:32:00.000-07:00

I love the fact that it took a computer company to single-handedly tear down and rebuild the music industry. Unfortunately The Normals became one of the many victims in the record labels lack of response to the digital revolution. The same fate is headed for the movie industry as well. I'm all for making a buck but this article shows how, for the most part, record labels have learned nothing.

"Wow, iTunes is working....lets jack up the price."

By Joshua Chaffin and Kevin Allison in New York
Updated: 12:11 a.m. ET May 2, 2006

Apple Computer on Monday revealed it had renewed contracts with the four largest record companies to sell songs through its iTunes digital store at 99 cents each. The agreements came after months of bargaining, and were a defeat for music companies that had been pushing for a variable pricing model.

The music industry's big four - Universal, Warner Music , EMI and Sony BMG – were not immediately available to comment.
Story continues below ↓ advertisement

Since iTunes' launch three years ago, Apple has charged US consumers 99 cents for each track – a uniform price that Steve Jobs, its chief executive, favours because of its simplicity for consumers.

Edgar Bronfman, Warner's chief executive, and senior executives at EMI and Sony have in recent months supported variable pricing, which would allow them to charge more for new material from top artists. Universal has taken a more modest approach, suggesting that the market should be allowed to develop further before any adjustments are made.

The issue has occasionally become acrimonious, with Mr Jobs last year publicly labelling the industry "greedy". Apple and the music companies declined to comment on the current round of negotiations. However, several music executives privately acknowledge that they have little leverage over Mr Jobs.

ITunes accounts for about 80 per cent of the US digital music market at a time when the record companies are desperate to show shareholders they are replacing declining compact disc sales with new internet revenues. "The labels need Apple too much right now," one record executive said.

Online music sales surged 194 per cent last year to 352m units, according to Nielsen Soundscan, as overall album sales fell 3.9 per cent. Digital sales now account for about 5 per cent of the music majors' revenues.

The surge underlines the competing priorities for Apple and the music industry. While the record companies are seeking new ways to generate revenues, Apple generates the bulk of its music-related revenues from sales of iPod players.

Some record executives had speculated that the big labels might sign short-term contracts with Apple and revisit the issue later. The companies were also discussing issues such as anti-piracy controls and the possibility of greater interoperability between iTunes and other download services.
Copyright The Financial Times Ltd. All rights reserved.

We reserve the right to refuse business....Unless you are gay.

2006-05-01T14:07:00.000-07:00

Here is an example of how our society is getting fractured in two. There are those who will laugh at the notion that there is persecution of Christians happening in the USA. Of course not to the extent that Christians are persecuted in say, China. Read the following article and then defend, if you dare, how this is not just absolutely ridiculous. People of faith are being asked more and more to keep their faith as a private part of there lives. There is no more room in the public sphere for values. Which is interesting because I don't see people being asked to keep their liberalism private. As I have said before we are moving towards a society where the only things that are eligible for validation or even consideration are those which exist only in the physical realm. So what if a business owner doesn't want to duplicate a lesbian activist's video. That does not constitute hate. If it bothers you then don't patronize his business. It's the same with our Governor Blogobonovich's making pharmacists stock the "morning after pill." There is an attempt to create a society void of possible uncomfortable situations arising where you may be confronted with people or ideas that are based in Christian value. Do you disagree? Please, tell me where I am wrong.

TESTING THE FAITH
Businessman ordered to duplicate lesbian's videos
Virginia Christian investigated after refusing job on biblical grounds
Posted: April 28, 2006
1:00 a.m. Eastern

ÃÂ© 2006 WorldNetDaily.com

A government commission has ordered a man who runs a video duplicator business to do a job for a lesbian activist after he initially refused because, as a Christian, he did not want to help promote homosexuality.

According to a report by Concerned Women for America, Tim Bono of Bomo Film and Video in Arlington, Va., did not want to violate his biblical values by helping promote two pro-homosexual films lesbian activist Lillian Vincenz wanted duplicated.

Bono Film & Video informs potential customers that the firm does not duplicate material that it deems obscene, could embarrass employees, hurt the company's reputation or that runs counter to the company's Christian and ethical values, Bono told the Family Policy Network, which is working to organize a lawsuit against Arlington County.

The Arlington Human Rights Commission began an investigation into Bono's refusal to do the job and held a public hearing on March 9 to discuss the alleged discrimination. The panel then issued the order for Bono to acquiesce to the lesbian activist's request.

If Bono refuses to do the job, "after a reasonable amount of time, the commission can reassemble and discuss why the remedy was not done," Raul Torres, executive director of the panel, told CWA.

One option would be for the commission to ask the Arlington County Board of Commissioners to file a discrimination complaint in Arlington Circuit Court.

The human rights panel found that Bono did not review the content of the videos, entitled "Gay and Proud" and "Second Largest Minority," and in refusing to take Vincenz's business violated the county's ban on discrimination due to sexual orientation.

Bono's case is reminiscent of that of Scott Brockie, a Canadian Christian printer who was penalized $5,000 in 2001 for refusing to print letterhead for a homosexual advocacy group.

Well, here you have it....proof that God exists.

2006-04-29T09:41:00.000-07:00

I believe that God's glory is displayed through his awesome creation. So does Kirk Cameron's guest. I wanted to share this with you because I found it equal parts funny and creepy. I hope atheists worldwide see this video and and don't have nightmares.

I have taken the video out because I could not get it to not AUTOPLAY.........very annoying.

Sorry.

Can you help me discover more music that I'll like?

2006-04-25T08:30:00.000-07:00

Why yes I can. Ok I can't but Pandora Radio can. A friend tipped me to this site. Basicly some techies and musicians with a lot of free time on their hands created a music genome.

So, for example, I like U2, but I don't always want to listen to U2. The music genome has mapped out music that has certain attributes that are common to U2's music and creates a playlist to fit. Then it plays back your "U2" genre music. If you don't like a song just skip to the next track. Here is how a letter on the pandora website reads.

The Music Genome Project

On January 6, 2000 a group of musicians and music-loving technologists came together with the idea of creating the most comprehensive analysis of music ever.

Together we set out to capture the essence of music at the most fundamental level. We ended up assembling literally hundreds of musical attributes or "genes" into a very large Music Genome. Taken together these genes capture the unique and magical musical identity of a song - everything from melody, harmony and rhythm, to instrumentation, orchestration, arrangement, lyrics, and of course the rich world of singing and vocal harmony. It's not about what a band looks like, or what genre they supposedly belong to, or about who buys their records - it's about what each individual song sounds like.

Over the past 5 years, we've carefully listened to the songs of over 10,000 different artists - ranging from popular to obscure - and analyzed the musical qualities of each song one attribute at a time. This work continues each and every day as we endeavor to include all the great new stuff coming out of studios, clubs and garages around the world.

It has been quite an adventure, you could say a little crazy - but now that we've created this extraordinary collection of music analysis, we think we can help be your guide as you explore your favorite parts of the music universe.

Check it out and discover new music!!

The Safest Show On The Air.

2006-04-20T23:36:00.000-07:00

Our fellow blogger over at Cruise Control has beaten me to the punch. It seems he shares my feelings about the Markley and Luciano Show. I have put off posting about this because I have a feeling my opinion could be construed as more mean than critical. But here it goes.

The Markley and Luciano show is just bad. Well wait....if I had to use another adjective ....boring...maybe silly. The thing is I don't really know the point of the show. They spend countless hours wasting our time with top 10 lists that are about as interesting as the Tony awards. Seriously, is "the top 10 animal songs" supposed to really keep me over during the American Pest Control commercial?

"Gee, what's it gonna be Muskrat Love or Crocodile Rock....the suspense is killing me!!

Here's an idea. Why don't they come up with their own list. Then at least I would feel they were making consorted effort in creating an engaging show. Then maybe the audience would have a chance to have some sort of connection with the show. Then people might actually care. I get the feeling that show prep happens 10 minutes ...no 5 minutes before air and is nothing more than printing off MSN's list of the day. It gives me hope that with as little as 5 minutes a day, I too can host my very own talk show. (which I am working on btw....a podcast for recording engineers....you wouldn't like it.)

The problem for me is that the show is safe. Too safe. Neither host is really willing to have a strong opinion or take a firm position. They are like keynote speakers at an ACLU dinner; two guys trying to be funny while at the same time making sure nobody is offended. The end result is a show that is contrived and not very deep. Maybe that's the point. Just pure fluff radio. I just don't know if cutting an hour of Hannity (which I rarely listen to BTW) for these guys is in the best interest of programming. To Markley and Luciano's credit, it is awfully nice of them to give their time while WMBD looks for John Malone's replacement.

Shut up and rock.

2006-04-19T08:57:00.000-07:00

"George W. Bush's presidency appears headed for colossal historical disgrace."
So declares ROLLING STONE magazine in a planned cover story. I have not read this story, but I find it interesting that Rolling Stone is so willing to lampoon our president in this fashion. It seems as though trashing the president has become the new way for celebrities and publications to give the impression that they are cool and progressive. Which it may. But it certainly does not mean that they are educated or experts. Could this president end up a failure? It is quite possible. I hope this article points out that history will be the final judge and we may not know until 30-50 years from now. But lets also remember, if Bush's efforts to transform the middle east are successful......he will be remembered as one of the greatest Presidents we have ever had. Say that to a liberal and you will actually see part of their brain ooze out their ear. It's gross.

And I thought I had a problem worshipping U2

2006-04-17T12:15:00.000-07:00

Here's an interesting article.

It's time to talk immigration. (Es tiempo para hablar inmigración)

2006-04-11T06:48:00.000-07:00

I think we would all agree that our country (or any country for that matter) should take measures to protect the interests of "it's" people. This should be a noble cause and not a basis for racism. But with the recent protests over immigration into the United States, mostly by Hispanics, those who oppose them are now labeled racists. This is ridiculous and couldn't be further from the truth. We need to close the border and enforce legal entry into our country....period. Opponents to that idea have said that closing the border will only bring our country closer to the likes of the communist regimes we fought to eliminate. Well there is one big difference. Those walls were built to hold people in. We need to keep people from flooding in. As far as I know we are free to leave the USA at any time. I heard a gentleman who was protesting in Bloomington IL say "this is an issue for universal civil rights." What would those rights be? The right to enter a country illegally, use our resources, education and hospitals at the cost of those who bear the financial burden? The right for universal amnesty? I will say that the ability for these immigrants to organize and protest is impressive if not a little scary. Instead of protesting I think they would have a better chance if they held "Gracias Estados Unidos" rallies. How great would it be if they showed the American people that they are grateful to be here, in this great nation, and want to assimilate? Also if they have this great ability to organize, then it should be a snap for them to get all these people to fill out the appropriate paperwork to get the ball rolling on legal status......(cricket....cricket). Or how about all of these protesters get together and organize a protest down in Mexico City? Send a message to Vicente Fox where (I believe) the real problem is originating. But before I close, I would like to point out one side of the argument I have not heard yet. I keep hearing people say "these people will do the jobs that Americans won't do." That is an incredibly arrogant statement. It is this arrogance that immigrants capitalize on. Let's face it most of these people are hard working, performing what we would deem as menial jobs. But if the American people don't humble themselves and accept that these jobs are not beneath them, then we are certainly doomed. What jobs will be acceptable for Americans? We need to realize that we are not guaranteed a job just because we graduated from college, but we will need to work, regardless of what that occupation may be, to be able to afford the life we want. And as far as I can see, compared to the rest of the world, the majorty of Americans live like kings. The moat has been crossed and the castle is being stormed.

The Normals live on.......(sorta)

2006-03-27T09:20:00.000-08:00

I usually don't talk about my old band The Normals unless somebody asks. I don't want to seem like that guy hanging out in Guitar Center playing dated riffs, saying things like "yeah I was in a band, we opened up twice for Head East." But I am proud of the records we got to make and the small influence we may have had on people who bought our records or came to our shows. Two weeks ago a genlteman from The Pantagraph did an interview with three of The Normals, myself included. My micrphone must have been cut because I spoke quite a bit but yet narry a quote from my mouth did the paper make. Anyway, here is the article. And if you are interested you can purchase our music at the iTunes music store. Heres a video clip of our one hit.

V for Vomit

2006-03-20T14:26:00.000-08:00

I have not been in the most bloggin' mood lately so I will direct you to a co-workers review of V For vendetta. I have not seen the movie but I have heard others who share his sentiments. Talk at ya later.

Get ready to get Hammered.

2006-03-10T08:36:00.000-08:00

I have had the worst flu this week, which is my excuse for the lack of posting. Here is an article that I thought captures what I feel the perception Hollywood has towards the "red" states. I didn't watch the Oscars but I did hear about Paul Haggis acceptance speech for Crash. Art is no longer considered "a mirror."

If Hollywood Had a Hammer

OK....What have we learned?

2006-03-01T07:52:00.000-08:00

If you like:

Then you will LOVE:

This is "Plus One" by the way. Remember them?

Well, if you have been reading last weeks posts about "Ark" culture, this is where I would love to hear some feedback. I think it comes down to one word. Relevance: Christians, it seems, are putting a lot of effort and energy into being relevant. But when you step back and look at the gospel, it totally opposes the idea of relevance. The basic message of God’s love has never changed but yet we feel the need to dress it up in cool clothes, trendy music. And for what purpose? To make to make the message more appealing. Are you kidding me? The greatest message of our time needs to be dressed up? Made relevant? What really blows my mind is that we (Christians) are the ones who claim to know the Creator. One would then assume that our ability to create would have the upper hand. Christians “should” be the ones pioneering creativity in all aspects of culture ESPECIALLY art!! What I find in Christian art (especially music) is a sense of inhibition not found in the mainstream. No one is taking the risks that make themselves vulnerable like they do in the mainstream. Imitation is safe. In an effort to maintain a sense of cool or relevance we start to follow the trends of the day. Rock bands portraying angst when there is none. Pop acts trying to sell sex when there is none. Ultimately following the secular world’s lead with cheap knock offs. Never has the term “Holy Shit” been more appropriate. Yet, I find Southern Gospel music in all of its campy cheesiness more and more appealing. I like it because it doesn’t hide the fact that it is not cool. I mean let’s face it 90% of what is available as Christian media is shabby at best. The other 10% that is good art is not successful because, at its heart, it is real. It addresses real issues in honest language. For some reason that doesn’t fly as “marketable” in the Christian sub-culture. How messed up is that? What a conundrum Christian parents are in. We want to shelter our kids from the filth from the mainstream but yet the alternative is sanitized crap. I admit, I am jaded from my experience in the CCM world. I don’t listen to “Christian” music. When driving I don’t have the slightest inclination to turn on Christian radio. In fact I rarely listen to some of my close friends whom I consider to be in the 10%. I get more out of hymns lately. How relevant are those?

A picture from my trip.

2006-02-28T10:16:00.000-08:00

This is us in Tampa at the Yankees camp. You can see our green screen set up and we also did some shooting on the field as well.

I think my face is burned.

2006-02-26T20:40:00.000-08:00

So I've been in Florida for the past few days for work. It has been cloudy most of the time but yet my skin color is a bright pink. We did have some sun screen yet I chose not to use it. Boo hoo. We are here bouncing between spring training camps interviewing different baseball players for Rawlings (a client of ours). I got a pretty sweet gig. All I do is show up and hold the boom pole (micrphone) over their faces. You know that thing you see that looks like a dead squirrel on the end of a stick.....yeah I do that. Yesterday we did the Cardinals and Mets. Today was the Pirates, Twins, and Marlins. And tomorrow is the Yankees and Phillies. Oh yeah....I lug some gear too. But other than missing Vickie, it's been good. Anyone have any thoughts about the Walter Kirn article? I do and will jot them down maybe tomorrow or Tuesday. I just want to say "hi." Good night.

Leaving On A Jet Plane.....

2006-02-23T06:45:00.000-08:00

I am leaving for Florida :) for work :( So I will be out for a few days..... for the 2 of you who frequent Oneproblem and the rest of you..... Take care and God bless.

This is the last article in this series.....enjoy.

DAY SEVEN: SAVED
Even the mouse pad I'm using comes from the Christian store. It features a quote from Hans Christian Andersen printed on a snowy olde-time Christmas scene rendered by Thomas Kinkade, Painter of Light. You've seen his stuff: wee little button-nosed children, frisky dogs, a diffuse golden glow that drips from everything as though somebody spilled a bottle of Mrs. Butterworth's. It's not even good kitsch--it's too slick, too savvy somehow. Ark culture is mall Christianity. It's been malled. It's the upshot of some dumb decision that to compete with them–to compete with N'Sync and Friends and Stephen King and Matt and Katie and Abercrombie & Fitch and Jackie Chan and AOL and Sesame Street–the faithful should turn from their centuries-old tradition of fashioning transcendent art and literature and passionate folk forms such as gospel music and those outsider paintings in which Jesus has lime green bat wings and is hovering lovingly above the Pentagon flanked by exactly thirteen flying saucers, and instead of all that head down to Tower or Blockbuster and check out what's selling, then try to rip it off on a budget if possible and by employing artists who are either so devout or so plain desperate that they'll work for scale.
What makes the stuff so half-assed, so thin, so weak and cumulatively so demoralizing (even to me, a sympathetic journalist who'd secretly love to play the brash contrarian and rate the Left Behind books above Tom Clancy) has nothing to do with faith. The problem is lack of faith. Ark culture is a bad Xerox of the mainstream, not a truly distinctive or separate achievement. Without the courage to lead, it numbly follows, picking up the major media's scraps and gluing them back together with a cross on top. You like this magazine--you like GQ Then check out New Man, "America's #1 Christian Men's Magazine." Subscribe to Time, you say? Give World a chance. The covers are almost identical.
Bibleman, however, stands alone-a pearl in this vast pile of lukewarm mud. Maisie and I finally watched it together, father and daughter, the way it was meant to be, and damn it if Willie Aames of Eight Is Enough hasn't pulled off a wily deconstruction, as clever in its way as Rocky and Bullwuinkle, of all the clunky old superhero clichés. He's a guy in a mask who instead of socking people stands stock-still with his slushy gut sucked in, squares his not-broad shoulders, faces the evildoer and bores him into submission by quoting Isaiah. That's it. That's his superpower: the ability to compose at will tidy chapter-and-verse-packed sermonettes that send the villains into instant comas and, if you think like a college professor, subtly parody piety itself while also signaling to Willie's old mainstream costars that though he's doing Christian stuff these days, he's smarter than all of them and he'll be back. I'm serious: This Bibleman show has layers.
It's bedtime now. Tomorrow is a new day. Off the Ark and back onto the sinking ship.
But first, before I sleep, a prayer for Jewel: Do whatever it takes to get back on top, my dear, but don't go "Christian." They have their Jewel already. I forget her name, but I saw her on the CD rack, and the chick is your twin, only prettier, and a virgin.

"Change your tune about the dinosaurs, or don't blame me when you wake up in hell."

2006-02-22T06:56:00.000-08:00

DAY SIX: DECEIVED
It confused me at first, but I think I understand now why my book on praying for powerful people targets Bill Nye of Bill Nye the Science Guy. It's because he talks to children about dinosaurs.
Fundamentalist Christian children's media is preoccupied with dinosaurs. The monstrous lizards and their fossilized remains represent a big black buzzing fly in the wholesome lemonade of creationism. If you lose a bright 5-year-old on the dinosaur issue--and what bright 5-year-old isn't mad for dinosaurs?--then you may lose him on the God thing too, or at least on the Holy Bible-as-perfect-truth thing. Then again, if you win the kid over on the dino stuff--and it's best to start this effort early, before a school trip to the Smithsonian saturates the kid's spongy brain with lies--then you've opened a hole in the fortress of his intellect wide enough to drive the Rapture through, or maybe even the theory that the Beast is somehow using grocery-store bar-code scanners to brand people with magnetic 666s.
As luck would have it, I finally persuade my daughter to join me in some Christian-TV viewing just as one of the ' dinosaur shows starts. Maisie loves ancient reptiles. She sits up straight, her right hand motionless in the popcorn bowl. For a 5-year-old, she's a prodigy on this subject, able to pronounce the word Cretaceous and hip to all the latest hunches and theories about the abrupt demise of pterosaur. She favors the killer-asteroid scenario but is open to extinction by natural climate change. I've taught her well.
But incorrectly, I learn. Through a combination of patronizing slapstick and earnest pronouncements from middle-aged male authority figures, the program proceeds to reeducate my daughter on the following points: (1) Dinosaurs are just 6,000 years old, since Earth itself is just 6,000 years old and both were breathed into being at the same time. (The figure is arrived at, it's explained, by adding the ages of all Adam's descendants down to Jesus and then tacking on the next 2,000 years.) (2) Dinosaurs and people once coexisted, as evidenced by biblical references to "Behemoth" and other massive beasts. (3) There were dinosaurs on Noah's Ark but, due to space limitations, only little ones, which accounts for the survival ofthe crocodile and the fading away of diplodocus. (4) The carbon-dating process is a farce. It just is. (5) Scientists who dispute these facts are really not scientists at all, since the definition of science is truth seeking and the whole of truth is in the Bible and either most of these eggheads haven't read the Bible or they have and they've consciously rejected it. (6) Science is really a religion, taking on faith what it purports to prove, while the Christian religion is really a science, which means that when you have a question about T-Rex you should visit your pastor, not the library. (Even better, avoid the library altogether--a kid can only get into trouble there.) I steal a quick look at Maisie's wondering face. She's buying this new line, I fear, and I don't blame her--the image of dinosaurs living next to people is a natural fantasy for kids. It makes for great cartoons. It also, if you truly believe in it and you share this belief with the wrong person, can keep you from ever getting into Harvard except on some special affirmative-action program for underprivileged Caucasian hillbillies. "We're turning this off," I tell Maisie. "Can I watch Rugrats?" "Only if you forget you ever saw this. By the way, the prayer for Bill Nye is as follows: " 'My modest little goal is to change the world,' says Nye. Pray that science education will engage both the imaginations and the spirits of students." That's code for this: I'm a forgiving person, you atheist bastard, so I'm giving you one last chance. Change your tune about the dinosaurs, or don't blame me when you wake up in hell.

Such lame mimicry is the curse of most youth ministries.

2006-02-21T04:46:00.000-08:00

DAY FIVE: GOD'S COUCH POTATO

Despite my invitation to pop some popcom and curl up together on the sofa for a big Saturday night of Christian television, my wife and kids go to bed early. I'm not surprised. Courtesy of Falwell and the Bakkers, Christian TV has a lousy reputation, even, I bet, among a lot of Christians. Between the nonstop frantic appeals for funds and the apoplectic praise-athons, it throws a lot of heat for a "cool" medium. Or at least it used to. It's changing now--blending into the mainstream, as the music has. That's a shame: I miss those frenzied traditionalists. Like the old-style gospel singers, the classic televangelists were geniuses, inimitable products of a culture that stood as a rival to middlebrow mass taste and didn't try to beat it by joining it. Now, instead of soaring, perspiring rants staged amid profusions of potted lilies and amened over by bouffanted grandmas who seemed about to either cry or come, you get shows like the Sky Angel network's Ten Most Wanted a low-voltage rip-off of those MTV music video-countdown programs. The twentyish host has a fuzzy soul patch, a grungy plaid shirt and a shock of spiky hair that like most Christian versions of "downtown" style, is years out of date and ever so slightly too clean. Plus, his earrings look suspiciously like clip-ons.

Both of the videos I manage to sit through by Gibraan, a black rapper who seems to lack his race's stereotypical gift for rhythm, and by 12 Stones, a gang of mussed-up white boys whose sisters are probably standing just offstage mixing pitchers of Country Time lemonade for when the guys knock off are set in what seems like the same abandoned apartment building. Its broken windows and peeling paint presumably stand for the sinful human condition that teens today are struggling to transcend.

An ad comes on for a pro-life pregnancy hot line, and then it's back to the shaggy veejay, who drops his rebel pose, earnestly asks his young viewers to come to Christ ("call 877-949-HELP") and then slips back into jive talk for the sign-off: "Thanks for hangin' wit' me. I'll see you guys later." Such lame mimicry is the curse of most youth ministries. I start changing channels, looking for fire and brimstone healings, tongues, exorcisms, spectacle but wimpiness reigns in the Kingdom of the Lord. A lot of Ark TV, particularly on PAX, seems to consist of nothing but reruns of Murder, She Wrote and other shows aimed at the nursing-home demographic (like that one in which Dick Van Dyke plays a crime-fighting pathologist). There's nothing particularly Christian about such programs, but insofar as they feature extremely old people using their wits to bring younger folks to justice, they do radiate a diffuse conservatism. Then there are the specifically Christian shows, such as Touched by an Angel, whose soft-core, herbal-tea spirituality meld old-time religion with the New Age. I catch one on PAX--Twice in a Lifetime, starring Mariette Hartley as a grown-up '60s hippie chick who, way back when, betrayed her longhaired boyfriend in order to please her crusty Republican dad. The plots of these tearjerkers are all the same: Someone screws up very, very badly and then, with the help of a kindly intercessor from outside the space-time continuum, is granted a do-over, which the person aces. Of course, the whole agony of moral choice is that do-overs aren't possible on earth (unless you're a Hindu or a Buddhist), which makes these shows meaningless as religious instruction, if not heretical. Also, I find their stories hard to follow. There's always one being who's visible to some people but not to others (or not at the same time), and there's always some tricky problem that results from leaving the present to tinker with the past.

"What I need is a little meaningless entertainment."

2006-02-20T06:17:00.000-08:00

DAY FOUR: REVELATION

Eating as Jesus ate, I have lost one pound. I can't bring myself to pray for Jesse Helms. The ending of Desecration was a cheat. Maisie still refuses to watch Bibleman.
When I'm depressed, I drive, and I'm depressed today so I set out for Bozeman, thirty miles away, to fetch more Ark supplies. On the way, I tune in to Christian radio, and the moment I hit the right frequency, I know it. There's a curious hush in the announcers' voices, as though they're broadcasting from a library, and though the top-of-the-hour news report is heralded by a dramatic burst of music not unlike those used on secular networks, the stories that immediately follow deal with abortion and pornography instead of politicians and celebrities. There's news from Israel, reported straight, but I detect an agenda between the lines--the correspondent is hoping to remind me that suicide bombings mean the End is near and it's time to get my life in order. Fair enough, but I need no reminding. What I need is a little meaningless entertainment.
The station--one of those disembodied jobs that's beamed via satellite from a distant headquarters--serves up a relentless series of buzz-kills. A man discussing the war on terrorism, which is depressing enough, digresses into a rant about damnation and how the real terror threatening the world lurks inside the sinful human heart. A therapist specializing in relationships instructs the wives out there to bow their heads and pray for a spirit of obedience. A rambling sermon about generosity loses itself in an endless and painful anecdote about a mentally retarded busboy who toiled at a truck stop to buy medicine for his sick mom until he fell ill and was hospitalized himself.
An odd sense of dislocation comes over me. I'm floating out of my Ford and into space. Secular radio, with its sports and weather, grounds one in a specific time and place — it's rush hour, the Vikings play the Rams tonight, tomorrow it will be fair to partly cloudy —but Christian radio bypasses such trivia, conjuring up a vast eternal void in which titanic forces of good and evil struggle over man's immortal soul. Who cares if it's sunny or rainy? Details, details. Who cares about traffic conditions? The Lord is coming!
I'm amazed that regular listeners can bear such weight, yet I've spoken to some who find it soothing. They say Christian radio makes them feel cocooned, particularly when they play it in the car. It's Babylon out there, corrupt and dangerous, but they drive right on past in their little rolling tabernacles.
One must grow used to it. Maybe after a while the buzz-kill becomes the buzz.
But I need a break. I skip the Christian store and stop at a supermarket for some junk food. Standing in line with my chips, I pick up a National Enquirer without thinking and binge on forbidden Hollywood scandal. It's silly stuff but exactly what I need. And then I turn a page and understand, utterly, profoundly, and in my gut, why so many people seek refuge on the Ark despite the copycat music, crappy fiction and fifth-rate performances by third-rate actors.
Before me, so raw and obscene that they look sticky, are enlarged color photos of the Columbine crime scene taken just moments after the shooting stopped. A teenage boy's skull leaks brains onto the floor next to a blood-smeared black rifle. He has a face, but it's like a McDonald's hamburger in cross section–more ketchup and cheese and special sauce than meat. Even harder to look at is the bland school furniture. It wasn't designed to shield sophomores from shotgun blasts. I put down the tabloid. I feel infected, soiled. A week ago, I could have handled this image, but my spell on the Ark has weakened my immune system. Afterward, at the Christian store, I put on headphones and sample a track from the latest John Tesh CD. It's not any good, but considering what I've just seen, it could be worse, and right now that's good enough.

"On the Ark, the End of the World is never ending, because it's the only dramatic game in town."

2006-02-19T08:10:00.000-08:00

DAY THREE: APOCALYPSE KITSCH

I sit in an armchair and open Desecration (subtitled Antichrist Takes the Throne). What I don't understand about these Left Behind books is how there can be so f--ing many of them, given that their subject is Armageddon. How long can a writer drag out the Second Coming? Even a trilogy would be a stretch, but ten novels going on eleven, all huge sellers, with no final volume in sight? I smell a con.

But that's because I've failed to realize this: On the Ark, the End of the World is never ending, because it's the only dramatic game in town. Drop the curtain on the Apocalypse and there are no more stories--the party's over. Which means the art of Desecration, and of the Christian thriller in general, is the art of the stall--of giving the reader a sense of forward motion without moving things any closer to a conclusion. This task is complicated by the fact that the genre's basic principles rule out new suspense. Since the heroes are assured of going to Heaven, it doesn't really matter if they die, and since the villains are bound to bum in hell, it doesn't matter if they win. Which they won't, of course. The Bible tells us so.

So why am I still reading? It's a mystery. Desecration's dialogue is preposterous ("In all candor, Anika, our intelligence reports indicated that we might face more opposition here, in the traditional homeland of several obsolete religions"), and its situations; and episodes develop in a pell-mell, miscellaneous cascade, careening from Jerusalem holy sites, where Ultimate Evil haunts the ancient shadows, to the family rooms of average midwestern homes, where true-blue Americans with names like Ray battle the Beast using laptops and ham radios. No, it must be the freakish tone that holds me: part Marvel Comics ("Mac jumped out and realized his front tires were on the edge of the gigantic crevasse") and part Sunday sermon ("We often wonder, when the truth is now so clear, why not everyone comes to Christ"). Who'd have thought such styles could ever be united? It's the prose equivalent of a sideshow monster: a snake with fur or a dolphin-flippered lady, unbearable, repulsive, yet irresistible. I decide to make this an all Armageddon day, so I pop in a tape of Megiddo: The Omega Code 2, starring Michael York as Stone Alexander, the Antichrist, and Michael Biehn as David Alexander, the straitlaced American president who opposes him and also happens to be his brother--a touch that suggests that Doomsday by itself is not sufficient but needs a soap-opera family angle too. After a brief intro by Hal Lindsay, a leading doomsayer from the 1970s and proof that a Christian can cry wolf for decades on end and still not lose his audience, the movie deals its familiar hand of cards. As in the Left Behind books, the Antichrist is an oily Eurotrash bureaucrat whose globalist rhetoric masks his raw ambition. His cosmopolitanism marks him as the Evil One as surely as David Alexander's Yankee bluntness shows he's a born lieutenant of the Lord. Does this come from the Book of Revelation? Of course not. The folks behind Megiddo and Desecration may pose as scholars of biblical prophecy, loading their products with murky sacred symbols and fancy numerological allusions, but at heart they're cornpone vaudevillians.

As the evidence mounts that Megiddo's cosmic climax will be a dud and necessitate a sequel, I find myself pitying Michael Biehn. Biehn is your typical Christian-movie star: a semilegitimate Hollywood leading man (remember Navy SEALS?) who hasn't been seen much for the past few years and appears to have weathered some crisis or tribulation that has dimmed his good looks without completely wrecking them. Because his role in Megiddo has no substance, what comes through most clearly in his numb performance is his gratitude for finding work mixed with his self-hatred for taking the work.

Biehn has plenty of company, of course. Ark culture is all about the comeback and the redemption of the mainstream hasbeen. The music aisle of the Family Christian Store features a number of John Tesh CDs. The former cohost of Entertainment Tonight has rebranded himself as a composer of inspirational music. In his photos, he's a praying man's Michael Bolton, all stuble and jawline and longif thinningblond hair. He's just the type church ladies go nuts for: a sort of macho eunuch. Burt Reynolds comes in a Christian version now, too. In Waterrproof, a weepy melodrama about forgiveness and spiritual growth, he plays a crusty Jewish deli owner who's shot in a holdup by a troubled black kid. The air of studly mischief that made Burt famous persists, but only faintly, subliminally. Once, long ago, he sinned, but now he's harmless.

I suspect Christian movie fans love to witness such neuterings. You thought you were such hot s--t, I hear them thinking. Look at you now--you're not even allowed to cuss!

"Christian living no longer requires self-denial"

2006-02-17T06:40:00.000-08:00

Continued from Walter Kirns Sept. 2002 article in GQ Magazine

DAY TWO: ADJUSTMENT

I wake aboard the Ark.
The old Ark, the biblical Ark, constructed to save the chosen from the Great Flood, had two of every creature in existence. The new Ark, the cultural Ark, built to save the chosen from the Great Media Flood, also has two of everything I'm learning. You say you're a Pearl Jam fan? Check out Third Day. They sound just like them--same soaring guttural vocals, same driven musicianship, same crappy clothes, just a slightly different message: Repent! You say you like Grisham- and Clancy-style potboilers! Grab a copy of Ted Dekker's Heaven's Wager--same stick-figure characterizations, same preschool prose, just a slightly different moral: Repent! Your kids enjoy Batman, you say? Try Bibleman. Same mask, same cape, just a slightly different...
That's the convincing logic of the Ark: If a person is going to waste his life cranking the stereo, clicking the remote, reading paperback pulp and chasing diet fads, he may as well save his soul while he's at it. Holy living no longer requires self-denial. On the Ark, every mass diversion has been cloned, from Internet news sites to MTV to action movies, and it's possible to live inside the spirit, without unplugging oneself from modern life, twenty-four hours a day.
After a wholesome scriptural breakfast of unsweetened wholegrain cereal, I start my morning with a holy workout based on a chapter from Dr. Colbert's book, "Did Jesus Exercise?" It's a question I never would have thought to ask, but in Ark culture there's a fundamental presumption that if one squeezes the Bible hard enough it will yield practical guidance on any topic, from personal finance to toilet training. And lo, it appears that the Lord did have a fitness program: Many days he walked "between ten and twenty miles" and thus "certainly was engaged in aerobic exercise." As I walk, I listen to music over headphones, a convenience unavailable in Jesus' time. The CD is the sound track from Extreme Days, a Christian movie for hyper suburban teens that was released last fall. According to a slick promotional video hosted by a bouncy-breasted blond veejay (she's a virgin, presumably, but just barely), the story of Extreme Days involves "five friends forever changed by a journey to the threshold of life and sport.... [They'll test their will and skill with the best extreme-sports athletes in the world." Skateboarders for the Lord, in other words. The sound track includes a range of acts-Audio Adrenaline, P.O.D., PAX217--from the born-again-rock scene's "alternative" department. They're not that bad. They're not bad at all, in fact. Because their lyrics are mostly unintelligible, there's no way to know they're even Christian, really. And yet, in the same way one sensed that groups like Abba were singing in a language they didn't speak, one detects a certain falseness in these bands' sound. They're trying too hard, somehow. They have the formula but lack the flair. They're straining at carelessness, but deep in their hearts they do care, one suspects--about their fans, their message, their authenticity. Bottom line: They sound a bit like foreigners--highly talented Asian prodigies whose governments have equipped them with guitars and trained them in some elite punk-rock academy.
These new Christian bands rock like Americans play soccer: skillfully but somehow not convincingly.
Or maybe it's the power of suggestion that makes the stuff seem counterfeit to me. At the Family Christian Store in Bozeman, Montana, the multimedia spiritual emporium where I bought the CD and my other Ark supplies, a poster above the music racks matches name-brand acts from secular radio with their closest sanctified equivalents. For the atheist teen who has suddenly been converted and wants to carry into his new life as many of his old attitudes and tastes as he can safely manage, such a chart would prove helpful, I imagine, much as a cookbook of sugar-free recipes might help a chocoholic with diabetes. For me, though, the chart confirmed a preconception that Christian rock is a cultural oxymorona calculated, systematic rip-off, not a genuine surge of inspired energy.
After my walk, I turn on the computer to survey the day's news, a morning ritual. Today, though, instead of going to the Drudge Report or NYTimes.com, I call up the home page of Crosswalk.com, the all-purpose Christian Internet portal whose NASDAQ symbol is AMEN. Crosswalk.com is a Net within the Net, where vulnerable children and sensitive adults can surf without fear of predators and porn.
Before I can find the morning headlines, I'm snagged by an ad for Pura Vida Coffee, a mail-order outfit that donates its profits to Central American children's ministries. They even have their own coffee on the Ark! There's no harm in that, of course, so I order a pound and feel a virtuous shiver, a passing glow. Can buying sundries score me points with God? If so, I wish there were Christian gasoline too--Christian tube socks, Christian printer cartridges!
Here are the day's big stories according to Crosswalk.com:
CHURCH PREPARES COURT FIGHT TO SAVE LAND FROM DEVELOPERS. PASTOR FINED $1,000 FOR REBUKING LEWD WOMAN. RELIGIOUS FREEDOM IN JEOPARDY IN GEORGIAN REPUBLIC. GOD AND GUINNESS" REACHES OUT TO POST-MODERN GENERATION.
It's not exactly CNN, and I find this refreshing. I'm burned out on bad news. As a member of the post-modem generation myself, I also support people's right to shape reality in whatever way they see fit. A world in which rebuffing lewd women rates a headline-a world in which lewd women get rebuked at all, a world in which the word lewd is even used--must be a cozy, reassuring place, and it doesn't surprise me that some should choose to dwell there. I'm tempted to hop off the Ark and check the real news, but why break the spell, why shatter the small-town silence? Instead I do the paternal-Christian thing and ask my daughter, whom I've prohibited from watching secular children's TV this week, to join me for a viewing of Bibleman: Conquering the Wrath of Rage.
"Who's Bibleman?" Maisie sneers. I'm taken aback. She's only 5, and she's never sneered before.
"That video you picked out. You want to watch it? It's like that Spider-Man movie you've probably heard about." She shakes her head and toddles off to her room. Despite the videos colorful, jazzy packaging, she has sensed the whiff of uplift in its title and wants no part of it. She'll break down soon, though. A few more days without Disney or Nickelodeon and Bibleman will look pretty good to her.
A few more days without sugar, salt, major-label music or mainstream news and I bet it will look pretty tempting to me too.

7 Days with Walter Kirn

2006-02-16T12:30:00.000-08:00

In Sept. 2002 GQ magazine had an article about the Christian sub-culture that exists here in America. It was quite eye opening an honestly blunt (or bluntly honest??). The author Walter Kirn spent 7 days emersed in nothing but Christian culture. Christian news service, music, literature, Jesus diets the whole 9 yards. Most of my Nashville friends already know about and have read this article. So to My Nashvilians, the next 7 days will be devoted to this article. Feel free to tag along though!!! It is long but well worth the read. I couldn't find a link to it on GQ's website but I did find it and will dole it out in daily increments. Hopefully this will keep people interested and coming back to Oneproblem. Being a Christian and, at one point, involved in the Christian music industry, what Kirn points out is painfully true and embarrasing. So with out further blabbering here is Day 1:

WHAT WOULD JESUS DO? BUT MORE, IMPORTANT, WHAT WERE JESUS' FITNESS SECRETS? IF YOU WERE ONE OF THE GROWING MILLIONS OF AMERICANS LIVING IN THE MULTIMILLION-DOLLAR CHRISTIAN ALTERNACULTURE—IN WHICH EVERYTHING IN MAINSTREAM CULTURE GETS CLONED AND THEN BLEACHED OF "SINFUL" CONTENT—YOU'D KNOW. WALTER KIRN SPENDS SEVEN STRANGE DAYS WALKING IN THE SHOES OF THE FAITHFUL.
DAY ONE: RESOLUTlONS
Today I will pray for Jewel, the singer-songwriter, "that Jewel's artistry in music and poetry will draw her audience into an encounter with truth." Tomorrow I'11 pray for Paul Allen, the Microsoft billionaire, "that Allen and others working on the leading edge of interactive media will pursue their objectives with integrity." And later this week, in the manner and order prescribed by Praying for the Worlds 365 Most Influential People: 5 Minutes a Day to Change Your World, I will pray for Michael Crichton, the author/producer; for Jesse Helms, the North Carolina senator; and for Bill Nye, who hosts TV's Bill Nye the Science Guy.
Today I will start reading Desecration, the ninth installment of the Left Behind series, a best-selling fictional treatment of the Apocalypse that pits the heroic Rayford Steele ("original member of the Tribulation Force3 against the cloven-hoofed Nicolae Carpathia ("self-appointed Global Community potentate.) Today I will dine on foods from What Would Jesus Eat? by Don Colbert, M.D., heeding Dr. Colbert's solemn warning that "eating a diet high in salt, low in fiber, very high in fat and sugar, and virtually void of nutrients is not the way Jesus ate. Today I will ask my daughter, Maisie, 3, to pick out a video from the Bibleman series, a live-action superhero saga for kids directed by and featuring Willie Aames of Eight Is Enough and Charles in Charge fame.
Today I will plug in my TVGuardian, a handy electronic chaperone whose "patent pending, award winning technology" filters out "95% to 100% of foul language from TV shows" and replaces objectionable phrases like She's such a #%&#h! and Oh &#!t! with She's such a nag! and Oh crud!
Today I will leave behind the fallen world of secular American pop culture and enter the sell-contained parallel universe of American Christian pop culture, within which I've vowed to dwell, exclusively, for seven days and nights, watching PAX instead of NBC and letting Pat Robertson be my Tom Brokaw. But first, before I do any of these things, I will read from my new prayer book and ask God "to bless Jewel with safety, meaningful relationships" and, of course, "success."

We will continue with day 2 tomorrow.

Neil Peart beats things for a living.....that's why he's confused.

2006-02-15T09:37:00.000-08:00

When I was in high school I abandoned my U2 worship for another band. RUSH. For 6 years I would listen to nothing but RUSH. Studying every nuance of Geddy Lee's bass lines. The rhythmic complexity of Neil Peart's drumming and the lush textures of Alex Lifeson's guitar work. I honestly think I could play every bass line (or at least my interpretation) from the debut album through Roll The Bones. I was committed to the gospel of RUSH. I never really paid attention to the lyrics except for the fact that Neil Peart wrote 99% of them. At work with the advent of the iPod we can share and listen to each others music. One co-worker has the entire RUSH collection on his shared play list. So I took a walk down memory lane and filled my aural cup with RUSHy goodness. Trying in my own right to be a songwriter I was fixated now not on the music, but the lyrics. I was surprised by what I discovered. Neil Peart, although extremely well read, is quite confused. Now in his defense he has had to write lyrics for a bazzillion RUSH records. Not an easy task. And though I don't worship RUSH like I did 15 years ago, I have heard that Neil has had some pretty tough personal issues lately. I haven't listened to the last 3 records they put out. Maybe he has written more introspectively about these things lately. The biggest example I bring is this. On the 1979 RUSH release "Permant Waves" there is a song called "Natural Science" which clearly endorses a Darwinian Philosophy. 4 albums later on their 1986 release "Power Windows" there is a song called "Grand Designs." This song doesn't embrace the Creationist viewpoint, but the idea of some sort of designer. Anyway, I have returned from my trip down the RUSH memory lane. I have decided not to return again.........for a long, long time. Except maybe our brief encounters on the radio sandwiched in between The Scorpions and Boston classics. From my trip down memory lane I bring a present. Somebody had a lot of time on their hands and nothing better to do. And it had to have been a drummer.........Enough Said.

Peoria Journal Star publishes my letter!

2006-02-13T10:45:00.000-08:00

Last week I wrote a letter in response to a Muslim womans reaction to the recent cartoon controversy in Denmark. I was a little miffed that she was writing about freedom of speech and not denouncing the violence. You can read my letter here.

What more can I say?

2006-02-09T06:22:00.000-08:00

A fellow co-workers' rendition of the next generation iPod

2006-02-08T08:23:00.000-08:00

I know, I know I am cynical when it comes to the iPod. I think they are cool, but I would not spend the money on one myself. Not yet at least. My friend at work came up with what he thinks will be a future version of the iPod. And I must say, it looks pretty cool. Enjoy.

We've created it, now it will turn on us.

2006-02-07T06:20:00.000-08:00

The Merchants of Cool

My wife teaches History and Sociology to high school students. A noble ambition where reward is scant and patience is tested to it's mortal limits. The other night we were talking about her Sociology class and she pointed out something to me that I had never realized before. Our society created the "teenager." Not on purpose. Because of our emergence out of an agricultural nation to industrial and beyond, the idea of big families and familiar roles has become a thing of the past. A nation emerged that gave people who were not kids but not yet adults an incredible amount of leisure time. Idle time is the devils playground. Where am I going with this? Well, with this influx of people with nothing to do comes a barrage of companies, marketers and the like vying for real-estate in their young minds. I saw this PBS broadcast 4 or 5 years ago and was reminded of it. It made an indelible impression on me as to the extent that, not just MTV, companies will research market and exploit "cool." It is 53 minutes long but well worth the watch. Shoot.....you can download it to your iPod.

This is a must have record.

2006-02-06T10:43:00.000-08:00

If you were to say 10 years ago I would be telling my friends to listen to a Neil Diamond record I would have said your were nuts. Here we are in 2006 and I cannot stop listening to Neil Diamond's latest record 12 Songs. Produced by Rick Rubin this record has guts, tenderness, melody and heart. The songs are great. I love the idea that these songs could be done in a coffee house with a guy (or girl) and a guitar and not the bravado and orchestration that has been associated with most of Diamond's career. I am not a writer so I will not waste your time with sentences with big and fancy words. In short, I think this is one of the best records to come out in awhile. Go out and get it. Give it a listen and tell me what you think.

I'm starting to sound like my Grandfather and I couldn't feel better.

2006-02-03T07:46:00.000-08:00

What in the world is going on with our society? If you think that this is limited to just schools in New York...think again my friends. This will be a problem that we in the mid-west will have to deal with very soon. What are the teachers and hall monitors doing at this school? They have to know what's going on and they let it. I can't describe how this makes me feel, a combination of disgust and outrage. It's hard to believe that there are people who don't see this as that big of a problem. I wonder what sexual discrimination will mean to these kids when they're adults. I don't even have much to say about this article except that I want my friends. who are new parents, to be aware of this. This is the state of affairs now. Just wait 15 years!! Becoming Amish is looking more and more appealing.

You need to give this guy a try

2006-02-01T07:06:00.000-08:00

I don't know how to better describe Dennis Prager other than a man of great wisdom. I have listened to his radio show now for a little more than a year. What I like about him is the fact that he doesn't just talk about politics. He literaly talks about everything. His guests range from liberal evolutionary scientists to orthodox rabbis (is that the plural of rabbi?). I wouldn't take the time to blog about it if I didn't think that you would get something out of it. Give him a week and I bet you'll be hooked. Especially every Friday 12:00 central time he has "The Happiness Hour" which will change your life. His show is streamed every day from 11:00am-2:00 Central time. You can llisten to him here or here or here. That's all for now. Talk to you again in like 3 months.

Greater than the Beatles?

2005-12-22T06:19:00.000-08:00

I heard a recording of Bono when he was 19 say "God allowed The Beatles to get so big so that U2 could become bigger." That is quite an ambitious statement for someone representing a band who, at the time, only had released 1 album. But was Bono prophetic in his statement? I think this will be something that will be contended, with good reason, for years to come. Each side will have good arguments. The Beatles had great songs and inspired a generation of guitar players and songwriters. U2 has had longevity as a band that has yet to be rivaled. Many may say "what about The Rolling Stones?" Yes, The Rolling Stones are still around (on life support) but there have been gaps in there career when they were irrelevant or nowhere to be found. Last week I saw U2 for the 6th time. Even though our seats were crappy the show did not disappoint. From the music to the lighting to the video support, it was truly mind blowing. To me it confirmed the side of the argument I am on. U2 will be remembered as the greatest rock band ever. I would love to hear your reasons as to where I am wrong in my assessment. The era of “great bands” is over. Except for possibly Coldplay. U2 is the last band, with the exception of the Spice Girls, that you will know the names of each member. The last band to have an “icon” for a singer. The last band who will tour the United States twice in one year, play over 80 shows to 35,000+ people and sell out every show. Of course I am biased. I admit it. I love this band. I think it is ironic, and prophetic that the devil gets all (most) of the schlock but the last, and greatest is a band of Christians who, to me, get bolder about their faith with each album and each show. I know it sounds weird when I say it, but I am thankful that I could live in the same era as U2, Johnny Cash, Bob Dylan, Van Morrison. This is all great art by great artists that will be around for my grandchildren’s children. It’s good to pop my head back into the blogosphere again. Have a Merry Christmas. Talk to ya soon!!