Archive for October, 2006

I’m posting in advance my topic notes for The Atheist Experience today. Expect them to be a bit scattered, as I’m writing this more as speaking notes than as a carefully planned essay. Note: I am a new-ish member of Chorus Austin, which will be presenting the Bach B-Minor Mass on November 4. My intention is to play a portion of the music as the intro to the show. Follow the above link if you’re interested in tickets. Although this is an overtly religious piece, I think it’s a great piece of music. A few words about Bach Wikipedia: Johann Sebastian Bach was a member of one of the most extraordinary musical families of all time. For more than 200 years, the Bach family had produced dozens of worthy performers and composers during a period in which the church, local government and the aristocracy provided significant support for professional music making in the German-speaking world, particularly in the eastern electorates of Thuringia and Saxony. Sebastian’s father, Johann Ambrosius Bach, was a talented violinist and trumpeter in Eisenach, a town of some 6,000 residents in Thuringia. Important contributions of the church to history (direct and indirect) Cathedrals: Talking about one of my favorite novels, Pillars of the Earth. The initial main character, Tom Builder, relies on the church for his livelihood, and his lifelong dream is to build a cathedral. Wikipedia on Cathedral architecture: The church that has the function of cathedral is not of necessity a large building. It might be as small as the Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford. But frequently, the cathedral, along with some of the abbey churches, was the largest building in any region. There were a number of reasons for this: The cathedral was created to the Glory of God. It was seen as appropriate that it should be as grand and as beautiful as wealth and skill could make it. It functioned as an ecclesiastical meeting-place for many people, not...
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Just when you thought you’d seen everything: here comes the Christian Boylove Forum. Christian Boylove Forum participants believe that a distinction must be made between feelings of attraction (which are not chosen) and behavior (for which one must be held responsible). We believe that boylovers can control and channel their feelings so that their relationships with boys are beneficial and honor God. We are strictly opposed to any treatment of children which is contrary to the love that God intends us to have for them. This includes the manipulation, coercion and abuse of children. If this means they’re hoping their forum will prevent pedophiles from actually acting upon their urges, more power to them. But, you know…eew! (PS: Since they seem to be of the idea that pedophilia isn’t a choice — quite likely sadly true — I wonder if they split from mainstream Christian thought concerning whether or not adult homosexuality is a choice?)

Christian conservatives often like to complain about the sinful depradations of godless librul Hollywood, and how the entertainment industry as a whole is a repellent den of sin that is “out of touch” with the American mainstream. The wild box office success of The Passion of the Christ two years ago was trumpeted — by such mouthpieces as ersatz critic Michael Medved — as an undeniable indicator that if only the movie business made more Christian movies, the money would come pouring in like the Flood itself. But it seems as if Passion was an of-the-moment cultural snapshot, released at a time when Bush’s poll numbers were still high and middle America was flush with the notion that we were really on the side of the angels in the War on Terror, our moral high ground unassailable. This facade has long since shattered, and anyway, Passion‘s $370 million box office take was more the result of media-manufactured controversy over its content than a genuine display of a sincere cultural shift towards preferring Christian entertainment. Fox Faith (“Films You Can Believe In”) is a new theatrical distribution shingle from Rupert Murdoch, where the goal clearly is to cater to the Christian conservative base that has made his propaganda house, the Fox News Channel, the highest-rated cable news network. However, their maiden release Love’s Abiding Joy did not exactly explode out of the starting gate like a greyhound its opening weekend. (Possibly the vomitrocious romance-novel title didn’t help.) Opening on 207 screens, a respectable release for an independent film, Joy only scraped up a dismal per-screen average of $704, for a total opening weekend take of $145,895. Compare this performance to that of Shortbus, the new, unrated movie by John Cameron Mitchell (Hedwig and the Angry Inch), which includes — among other things — several scenes of unknown actors engaging in actual onscreen sex. Opening on a...
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I went on Friday with about ten fellow Atheist Community members to see Jesus Camp, but I hadn’t gotten around to posting my review until now. This has already been discussed on both The Non-Prophets and The Atheist Experience, but I’m offering up a written version for your perusal. First of all, this is not a pleasant movie in most respects. What it is boils down to watching an hour and a half of child abuse, at least from my perspective. If you experience the sort of morbid fascination that comes from watching a bleak horror movie, you may get the same sort of feeling from this movie: you’re not having fun while you watch it, but you may feel like you got something out of the experience of having watched it. In a nutshell, the philosophy behind the camps is expressed by the camp leader, Becky Fischer. I can’t quote it exactly, but she says something like: “Muslims indoctrinate their kids in madrassas all their lives, so what we need to do is do MORE indoctrination so we can BEAT them!!” The directors chose to focus much of their attention on a small handful of characters. Becky is one. There is an adorable little girl named Rachael, about nine, who is all excited over her love of the lord. And then there’s Levi, a twelve year old boy with an awful mullet, who very earnestly wants to be a preacher. When I watched the movie, it seemed to me that what these kids were desperately seeking was NOT a personal relationship with God, but adult approval. For instance, there’s a scene where Rachael is in a bowling alley with her parents, and she spies a blonde woman sitting alone. Rachael rushes up to her table, plonks herself down, and starts witnessing to her — “Have you heard about Jesus?” The woman sits there and humors the cute kid and smiles in a bemused way when she leaves. Then Rachael rushes back to her dad, saying “Daddy! The lord worked through me to witness to that woman!”...
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This is really kind of sad. 42-year-old Lori Rose Cannizzaro of East Aurora, NY, admitting to herself that “Dating wasn’t working. I wasn’t connecting. Not that I never wanted to be married or never wanted children,” has chosen to “consecrate her virginity” in a strange Catholic ceremony. People deal with loneliness in all kinds of ways, some positive, some destructive. I can see how some folks might defend Ms. Cannizzaro’s choice — and I’m all for freedom of choice — as a positive one, channeling her loneliness so that she feels a stronger connection to Jesus or God or what have you. Indeed, it’s a well-understood trait of religious belief that it provides insecure people with the sense of security (a placebo, perhaps, but it’s there) that comes from thinking you have someone watching over you and looking afer you. But I worry that there’s some potentially psychologically damaging role-playing involved in this kind of thing. The rite is available only to virgins, who agree to abstain from sex so they can dedicate their lives to Jesus Christ in what the association describes as a mystical marriage and a profound spiritual blessing. Each woman wears a band on her left ring finger as a symbol, much like a wedding band. So what we have here is a way for lonely women who can’t find a husband to play like they’re married, even down to wearing a pretend wedding ring. Yet at the same time they’re told their virginity makes them pure and sanctified, which doesn’t sound like a statement with very flattering implications for Catholic women who do marry and procreate. Or perhaps they’re “sanctified” in a different way. When I was a younger guy, I went through bouts of loneliness, as most people do. I decided the problem was that I was placing too much importance on the notion of Having a Partner as a key ingredient of Happiness. Once I realized it...
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