…How would you react to the argument that Dawkins has made that any form of religion that goes beyond the scientific facts about the universe really represents a form of brainwashing …

DB: He’s probably right. Most education is a form of brainwashing – so much better in French, by the way, lavage de cerveau. Give a child to the Jesuits, they say, and ten years later the man will cringe when he spots the Cross. But look, ten years or so spent studying physics is a pretty effective form of brainwashing as well. You emerge into the daylight blinking weakly and talking about an endless number of universes stacked on top of one another like an old-fashioned Maine pancake breakfast. Or you start babbling inanely about how meaningless the universe is. But if you ask me just who is the more credulous, the more suggestible, the dopier, the more perfectly prepared to convey absurdity to an almost inconceivable pitch of personal enthusiasm – a well-trained Jesuit or a Ph.D. in quantum physics, I’ll go with the physicist every time. There is nothing these people won’t believe. No wonder used-car salesmen love them. Biologists are, of course, worse. Tell them that in the future Richard Dawkins is going to conduct a personal invasion of Hell in order to roust the creationists, and The Panda’s Thumb will at once start vibrating with ticket sales.

This whole interview is amazing.

PS. The whole interview is well worth reading, by the way, as one thinks of the pitfalls involved in doctrinal formulation and doctrinal education.

NOTE: I HAVE CHANGED MY MIND ABOUT THIS POST

Following up on this.

It finally occurred to me to stop adding shortcuts to my safari browser. Instead, I just click and drag them to a desktop folder and rename them www.something-obvious-and-memorable. Then, instead of opening safari and clicking and dragging, I simply type the command-spacebare combination, type the name of the link into Spotlight, hit the down arrow, and hit “return.” The Safari browser then opens right to the page.

What would be great is a Firefox extenstion that opened those same bookmarks. So far they seem to be unable to read the xml code. If I could correct this, then I could program some of the links (like zillow.com which doesn’t work with Safari) to be opened by Firefox.

ERRATTA: The Firefox browser can be made to work.

I’m not sure where to begin with this.

“Sadly, this figure is grossly misleading if people say they believe in justification by faith but don’t even know what imputation is!”

Is this the mindset we want to spread in the name of the Reformed Faith? Seventy-five percent of Evangelicals affirm that justification is by faith alone, and we are to discount that because they haven’t been trained to summon the mental image of the two-path flow chart whenever the trigger word is spoken to them? (Notice how a lack of familiarity as stated in the survey slides into the claim that the people interviewed are totally ignorant.)

Doctrine upholds the status of a ruling class, if only in their own minds. When outsiders agree with the doctrine, then the doctrine is in danger of failing in its function–it threatens to become a source of unity rather than a tool of exclusion. This danger can easily be remedied. There is potentially an infinite chain of doctrines implicit in any doctrine. Just regress far enough down the chain until the outsider fails to affirm the words you want him to use. As soon as that occurs, you can reinforce the barriers you need to maintain.

It is a shame that pastors aren’t more conversant in basic theological terminology. But that claim is not nearly as sexy in some circles as it is to claim that everyone but us really believe in justification by works.

Can anyone tell me that pastors are going to be more likely to listen to us in advocating greater theological knowledge when we have basically written them all off, in plain contradiction to their actual affirmations, as teachers of works righteousness?

Dog the Bounty Hunter

If you haven’t felt guilty about your work ethic recently, here’s some therapy.

Kidding aside, I think this is seriously helpful.

Earlier I requested prayer in regard to the death of someone close but kept it vague because I didn’t want to disclose private information before I had some indication that it was OK with those more closely involved.

Instead of explaining what happened myself, you can read Jay’s post with my grandfather’s comments. Thank you to all who prayed.

One way to sum up this is to ask yourself: Whose whining is more bearable? Peter Parker’s or Buffy Summers’?

I say Buffy wins easily.

Someday I will complete this review by writing about the second season. I loved it but it was quite different–much more mythic and occult rather than high-tech, with Max being a sort of Messiah. I borrowed it and didn’t get to hear the commentary explaining where the show was going. My suspicion is that the new bad guys in season two turn out to have been behind the terorist pulse attack…. But I’m going to completely miss the point of this entry if I continue. My general feel is that in a perfect world season two would have been season four allowing for some more gradual transitions.

But I wanted to write a note about gender relationships in this show and others. There is a lot of male bashing in the beginning of season one, and one could easily think the show was nothing but a girls rule/boys drool t-shirt. But things get more complicated. Logan Cale (Freudian slip report: I originally typed “Riley” throughout) is a true hero (though he has massive pride issues that almost lead him to suicide). In the end, the differences between him and Max seem rather traditional. Max’s concerns are all domestic–how to make a living and keep it. Riley is all about saving the world. Max both admires this and is frustrated by it, especially when Logan impoverishes himself for the sake of revealing the truth.

I think viewers will agree that the theme, once you get beyond the gunge youth culture show case, is ultimately that “a good man is hard to find and even harder to recognize no matter how obvious.” And this brings me to my point.

Here is an analogy: I used to work for Coral Ridge Ministries and have to read the regular newsletters we received in the early nineties. Don Wildmon’s AFA Report was one of many and it constantly showed the anti-Christian stereotypes present in various movies and TV shows. Many, as I recall, were evil pastors, sociopathic and murderous clergy. Now, I agree that such an extensive negative portrayal is a bad thing in our culture but I began to question if this was really motivated to produce such a result. Mysteries and crime dramas, etc, need really repulsive villains and one builds repulsivity by presenting the audience with horrible inversions. An evil sociopath is horrible but an ordained evil sociopath is the antichrist.

That’s the analogy now for the payoff with SuperHeroines. First remember that in all “action shows” the bottom line is melodrama. Some people like their soap operas without a lot of hand-to-hand violence, but not me. But the soap opera is still the basic thing at least in a successful TV series (was the fact that Witchblade was more a pure action show part of the reason it didn’t do well?).

And this is why female supers are inherently more interesting than males. In principle, a male superhero could simply kiss his wife goodbye and hug his children before leaving for work. Despite Peter Parker’s anxiety, this could work. But a woman comes with built in melodrama. She has a whole host of gender-role issues to deal with as she makes her way in the world. This is drawn out expecially in Dark Angel where Max’s prospective male interest is paralyzed from the waist down.

Egalitarianism may be the reigning philosophy, but the bottom line is that everyone knows relationships are more complicated than that.

It is possible that a true intellectual could complain bitterly about an anti-intellectual mindset in a church culture.

It is easily just as possible that a pseudo-intellectual could issue such loud complaints.

When you meet a different group of people their difference is often marked by speech mannerisms. No one has to explain the situation to you. You pick up loud and clear the message: “You don’t belong.” Whether it is an affectionate term of endearment in reference to Christian brotherhood, a reference to how wonderful someone’s children are, or rhetoric about how no one else in the world cares about grace as much as they do, it is designed to exclude. It may hold the promise that some day you can loose your Eliza Doolittle status, but for the present it keeps you out. Later, of course, it can be the means by which you show that you do belong. There is a positive aspect to all this. Words build communities.

Rationality is supposed to be away around these sorts of linguistic strategies–to either circumvent needless barriers or justify the bond that the distinctive speech reinforces. In the West, at least, Reason (which needs capitalization in this context) is supposed to be a means of communication irrespective of group solidarities.

I actually think there is some factual basis for this idea. But what people often forget is that a speech mannerism that marks out a group solidarity (and excludes others) can easily take the form,

A. If p then q

B. p

C. Therefore, q

This is a perfectly rational structure so it has the appeal of being objective and true. Thus, using this structure is an extremely effective way to enforce a completely irrational community solidarity. Groups often do not actually use these forms as arguments, but as memorized slogans that are accepted on the basis of a desire to belong to the group or a confidence that one’s group is better than others. It is common to find the form above used as the sine qua non of group identity. It is repeated as a proof when, in reality, A is completely false (there is no relationship between p and q) and so is B (q does not obtain).

I suppose thise would all be more convincing if I included some actual examples. But all you have to do is google for Presbyterian arguments against musical instruments in worship, or for exclusive Psalmody, or that it is a sin to celebrate Christmas and or Easter, and you will see this all to easily. The permissability of icon veneration and prayers to the saints I think also demonstrate this idea.

But of course, we may have all fallen for this. The point here for the Church is that trumpeting the importance of doctrine may not be any real help in promoting a culture in which people value truth. It could easily become a culture in which people are more easily misled and rendered incapable of hearing anything outside their own tribe.