Month: March 2006

This story reports that a study sponsored by the Templeton Foundation indicated that heart surgery patients who were being prayed for didn’t show a higher rate of recovery than those who weren’t being prayed for and, in fact, had slightly more complications.

I’m always baffled that people take studies like this at all seriously. They seem to be premised on an idea of God that I would characterize as “magical.” By that I mean that they seem to imagine that the deity has to behave according to certain rules, and all humans have to do in order to get what they want is repeat the proper incantations. This “god” is more like a genie of some kind.

It’s been argued that magic and science are alike in that they share the desire for prediction and control. They both seek the right “levers” to move the universe in service to human needs and wants, and each sees the universe in terms of a causal nexus where if you do x, then y will happen as a necessary result. The difference, of course, is that science is based in reality and magic isn’t.

But, whether we’re talking about magic or science, God, at least as monotheists of the Jewish, Christian, or Islamic variety conceive of God, transcends any possible causal nexus and consequently can’t be manipulated according to any formula. God is radically free with respect to creation and is never an object that can be bent to our will. God doesn’t act according to fixed laws such that the proper input will always get you a certain output. Thus, the idea that prayer is a “power” that could have a predictable and controllable effect is foreign to the biblical idea of God.

Kim at Crossroads on the question “What is poverty?”

A discussion of universalism at Flos Carmeli.

Camassia‘s series of “Questions of a Catechumen” (here, here, and here with more to come(?)).

Immigration has been a hot topic what with the various bills being debated in the House and Senate. “Gaius” of the Conservative Green has been all over this. See also this post from Chris at Even the Devils Believe and this one from Hugo Schwyzer. I don’t have firm or informed views on this topic, but their stuff comes from various points of view. P.S. See also the discussion over at Positive Liberty (here, here, and here).

Millinerd has an intriguing post on “Hegel vs. Postmodernism.”

There’s an interesting post on “eisegesis” at Pontifications; the idea being that there is a legitimate place in the church for reading things into the scriptural texts (eisegesis=the opposite of exegesis).

A post responding to one common argument against pacifism at Mode for Caleb.

One is naturally cynical about record companies cashing in (no pun intended) on a recently deceased star by releasing all kinds of third-rate “previously unreleased” material. But this advanced review of the Johnny Cash Personal File – unreleased acoustic recordings Cash recorded himself mostly in the 70s – makes it sound really good. Ironically, the spare, acoustic style of the tracks – the same as that which heralded Cash’s comeback in the 90s – made them virtually unmarketable at the time.

(Link via Thunderstruck)

Charles Taylor had disappeared before his planned extradition to stand trial for war crimes, but has now been caught (couldn’t have happened to a more deserving fellow).

Incidentally, I notice that Taylor has been demoted in several official news stories from “former president” or even “dictator” to the much scarier-sounding “warlord.” What exactly do you have to do to earn the title of warlord?

It seems that those liquor and energy drink mixes like Red Bull and vodka can give you a false feeling of sobriety.

Of course, if you’re over the age of, say, 20 and you’re actually drinking these kinds of unholy concoctions, you’ve got other problems.

(Link by way of Andrew Sullivan)

I’m sure I’ve linked to this before, but here’s an article by Stanley Hauerwas and John Berkman, “The Chief End of All Flesh,” which attempts to think theologically about our relationship to animals.

In Hauerwas and Berkman’s view, to say that humans have “dominion” over creation (and, thus, animals) means that “God has chosen humanity to be an image of God’s own rule in the world.” But to understand the nature of this rule requires that we reflect on how God rules over us. To be created in the image of God just is “to act as an image of God’s rule in the world”:

In Genesis 1, the image of God is part of the vision of a peaceable creation, both between human and animal and between animal and animal, a peace where it is not necessary to sacrifice one for the other. Similarly, for Christians to live as the image of Christ means to live according to the call of the kingdom of God. In Gethsemene – in taking up the way of the Cross-Christ shows us clearly that the way of the kingdom of God is not the way of violence. In reaching the ultimate end of all our strivings, in the peaceable kingdom of God, we shall finally live in true shalom with all creatures of God.

This eschatological orientation – that “nature” doesn’t exist in and of itself, but is directed to a purpose, namely, the consummation of God’s kingdom – gives shape to the distinctive Christian attitude toward non-human creation, say Hauerwas and Berkman:

Thus, we believe the church is faithful when it lives out the fact that nature has a sacred element, not because Christians wish to uphold or preserve nature for its own sake, but because nature is creation in travail, and, as such, has its own end to glorify God, rather than to serve humans. Thus, Christians must strive to live the relationship between human and animal life in terms of the common end being life in the peaceable kingdom, the kingdom of God.

This isn’t romanticism about “pristine,” “unspoiled” nature, an attitutde that at least some animal rights proponents seem to fall into. Nature is indeed “red in tooth and claw,” but it’s telos is to be redeemed as something different – a new heaven and a new earth. And so it’s not so much that animals have a kind of intrinsic value, much less rights, as that animals exist for God’s sake, not humanity’s sake. That animals have their own purpose in God’s ordering of the world implies that there are limits to the way we can permissibly treat them.

Unsurprisingly for anyone familiar with Hauerwas’s other work, they connect our attitude toward animals with the question of pacifism. Living non-violently, both with other humans and animals, is a witness to God’s coming reign. “So Christian vegetarianism might be understood as a witness to the world that God’s creation is not meant to be at war with itself.”

Hauerwas and Berkman concede that many Christians will not go this far, but they say that, analogous to the proponent of the just-war tradition, any proponent of “just meat-eating” bears the burden of proof. Both presuppose that “nonviolence is the fundamental stance of Christians” even if they’re willing to entertain exceptions.

Here they go farther than I’m willing to go. I don’t think it’s meat-eating itself that is the problem so much as how we treat animals while they’re alive. If animals have a role in God’s plan that isn’t exhausted by serving human ends, then I think we have a responsibility not to treat them in ways that violate their God-bestowed integrity and dignity. In a similar way, while not convinced of the pacifist stance, I think there are limits to what can be done in the course of waging even a justified war, such as prohibitions on torture, respecting non-combatant immunity, etc. Respecting those limits can also be a sign that survival doesn’t trump all other values and that our hope is in a kingdom to come.

Since the topic came up in the comments below, here is a recent article from philosopher Peter Singer on factory farming. And here’s an interview from the same source.

For reasons that are hard to articulate I find this pretty disturbing:

If a new kind of pork makes it to the dinner table, healthy eaters worried about fat and heart disease might finally be free to, well, pig out.

Scientists using genetic engineering techniques have produced pigs rich in omega-3 fatty acids – a kind of healthy fat abundant in fish but not naturally found in meat.

The omega-3 fatty acids are believed to offer some protection against heart attacks, and federal nutrition guidelines recommend that adults include them in their daily diets.

[…]

The team of scientists from Harvard, the University of Missouri and the University of Pittsburgh used a gene from an earthworm, which naturally produces omega-3 fatty acids, to genetically modify their pigs.

The researchers began by harvesting more than 1,600 eggs from female pigs. They removed the genetic material from the eggs and replaced it with new DNA that had the earthworm gene inserted.

The manipulated embryos were then implanted into 14 surrogate mothers. A total of 10 male piglets were born.

DNA analysis of the piglets showed that six had the earthworm gene, according to the study published online yesterday in the journal Nature Biotechnology.

Kang said the cloned pigs produced one-fifth the amount of omega-3 fatty acids found in salmon, considered the best source of the healthy fat. But he said successive generations bred the old-fashioned way would likely produce higher amounts of omega-3.

I realize that there is no eternal piggy nature that can’t be modified by human intervention. After all, the domesticated pig as we know it is lagely a product of selective breeding.

Still, there’s something about genetically splicing a pig and an earthworm that gives me the heebie jeebies. Maybe it’s that it seems to be another manifestation of our completely utilitarian attitude toward animals; of not treating them as beings with their own kind of integrity, but simply as commodities that can be modified and used by us at will.

If nothing else, couldn’t the research money be better used for other purposes? Eat some fish, people!

Titian, Annunciation, 1559-62

Since I missed this yesterday, I’ll just link to Brandon’s fine post on the topic.

You have to hand it to Mel Gibson, he does his own thing. Here’s a look at his new project Apocalypto an “action epic about the ancient Maya” featuring “[h]undreds of local extras–many of whom have never seen a movie, let alone acted in one” and filmed in – yes – a language most viewers will never have even heard, much less understand.

Apocalypto, which Gibson loosely translates from the Greek as “a new beginning,” was inspired in large part by his work with the Mirador Basin Project, an effort to preserve a large swath of the Guatemalan rain forest and its Maya ruins. Gibson and his rookie cowriter on Apocalypto, Farhad Safinia, were captivated by the ancient Maya, one of the hemisphere’s first great civilizations, which reached its zenith about A.D. 600 in southern Mexico and northern Guatemala. The two began poring over Maya myths of creation and destruction, including the Popol Vuh, and research suggesting that ecological abuse and war-mongering were major contributors to the Maya’s sudden collapse, some 500 years before Europeans arrived in the Americas.

Those apocalyptic strains haunt Apocalypto, which takes place in an opulent but decaying Maya kingdom, whose leaders insist that if the gods are not appeased by more temples and human sacrifices, the crops will die. But the writers hope that the larger themes of decline will be a wake-up call. “The parallels between the environmental imbalance and corruption of values that doomed the Maya and what’s happening to our own civilization are eerie,” says Safinia. Gibson, who insists ideology matters less to him than stories of “penitential hardship” like his Oscar-winning Braveheart, puts it more bluntly: “The fearmongering we depict in this film reminds me a little of President Bush and his guys.”

Hmm – potshots at President Bush, saving the rainforest – I thought Mel was supposed to be Hollywood’s resident right-winger?

Anyway, I for one thought Gibson’s The Passion was an impressive and moving (though flawed) piece of work. I’m looking forward to this new flick.