The Daily Show is a hugely popular program on the Comedy Network. It stars Jon Stewart who is a witty, smart, cool creator/reflector of popular culture.
Morgan Freeman appeared as a guest promoting Through the Wormhole, the show he narrates on the Discovery Channel. Mr. Freeman is among almost everybody's top five actors because of roles in The Shawshank Redemption, Driving Miss Daisy, Unforgiven, Bruce Almighty and many others. He won an Oscar for Million Dollar Baby.
Part of the interview went like this:
Stewart: "They talk about how there's five times the amount of dark matter and dark energy in the universe than there is regular matter and energy, but what the hell does that mean?"
Freeman: "Exactly."
Stewart: "What do they tell you?"
Freeman: "This is where we get into the God part of it. You know, whatever scientists don't know becomes a God factor."
Stewart: "And they will even say that?"
Freeman: "Yeah, we get to the point when we say, "Well, we don't know how that happens."
Stewart: "And they say well maybe it's..."
Freeman: "...the God factor."
Stewart: "So after all these years and the incredibly sophisticated tools that we use to scour the skies, they just come back to, basically, "I think the Sun God did it?""
Freeman: "Basically."
Stewart's line got a chuckle from the audience, but Morgan wasn't laughing. He knows many scientists believe in God and "the God factor" is one of the reasons.
This condescending mockery is typical of people who dismiss faith without thinking it through. Stewart should consider the Anthropic Principle that states the universe is set up to enable us to exist and if it were set up any differently, we wouldn't be here.
For example, the timing of Earth's rotation coupled with its distance from the Sun is necessary for liquid water (instead of ice or steam) to exist. We've also learned that the intensities of gravity, electromagnetism and nuclear forces are critical; our hospitable environment would vanish if any of them were even slightly different. The list of factors is lengthy and continues to grow.
Skeptics contend our environment is a random confluence of directionless elements that happened to lead to life. But there are many thousands of these factors, from the water cycle to atomic half-lives to sound wavelengths that must be just right. Is it really believable that a universe perfectly designed for us "just happened?"
You can't even bake a cake without directing the right ingredients, mixture, heat and time in the oven. But people like Jon Stewart think it's plausible to believe our finely tuned universe assembled all by itself.
It would have been interesting if Mr. Freeman had responded, "No, Jon, the Sun God didn't create the universe. The God of the Universe did. Think about it and let me know if you come up with a more sensible answer."
The interview can be seen at www.wired.com/geekdad/2010/06/morgan-freeman-explains-wormholes-dark-matter-and-time-itself/
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Freeman:
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
Ryder Cup Religion
Samuel Ryder was an English businessman who made a fortune packaging seeds in small packets and mailing them to workingmen who could afford the penny each packet cost. Ryder was a devout Christian whose preacher suggested he play golf to get fresh air and improve his health. He took it up at age 50 and became a six handicapper.
Ryder sponsored a number of tournaments including the famous Ryder Cup. Each team - one from Europe and one from America - consists of 12 golfers who compete in 28 matches over three days. Team USA automatically includes the year's top eight players along with four more selected by the team captain.
The current team is laden with serious Christians including Captain Corey Pavin, Assistant Captain Tom Lehman, Matt Kuchar, Rickie Fowler, Bubba Watson, Zach Johnson and Stewart Cink. All regularly attend a weekly Christian devotional group which is usually held in a hotel event room and draws up to 100 participants. According to John Paul Newport writing in The Wall Street Journal and quoting Christian golfer Paul Azinger, "'It's non-denominational, very comfortable, very easy, and anyone is welcome - wives, caddies, media people, guests, anyone who wants to come.' It's more like a traveling church for tour participants who hope to be otherwise occupied on Sunday mornings, the traditional time for church, playing in the final round of that week's event."
In England the players' faith has drawn ire. For example, "After Zach Johnson won the 2007 Masters, he said 'Being Easter, my goal was to glorify God, and hopefully I dd that today.' Some European media outlets made cracks. 'Another American winner, another sermon,' said the Times of London. The Daily Telegraph wrote..."(S)tatements suggesting Jesus was there at his shoulder and therefore not "looking after" the other 60 competitors seem a bit presumptuous." The complaint is that Christians consider themselves somehow special.
Lehman, who the British press once called "Saint Tom," responded, "I know that's the message that comes across sometimes. To be told you're somehow missing something, or inferior, or that somebody else is more favored than you, that can be really aggravating and infuriating. It's perceived as arrogance or pride. But I don't know anybody who intends to make that impression."
Mr. Newport, the WSJ writer, puts it this way: "From my experience as someone who grew up in an evangelical Christian home but has lived most of his adult life in a secular milieu, one of the most unfathomable parts of born-again Christianity for the uninitiated is often the deeply personal nature of believers' relationship with their God. God is not a vague concept but an everyday, particular presence in their lives. So when a devout Christian athlete thanks God after winning something, it's not so much of a stretch as it might appear to some."
The Christian view is summed up by Fowler's golf balls, which are marked "4:13" for a verse in Philippians: "I can do everything through him who gives me strength."
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Ryder sponsored a number of tournaments including the famous Ryder Cup. Each team - one from Europe and one from America - consists of 12 golfers who compete in 28 matches over three days. Team USA automatically includes the year's top eight players along with four more selected by the team captain.
The current team is laden with serious Christians including Captain Corey Pavin, Assistant Captain Tom Lehman, Matt Kuchar, Rickie Fowler, Bubba Watson, Zach Johnson and Stewart Cink. All regularly attend a weekly Christian devotional group which is usually held in a hotel event room and draws up to 100 participants. According to John Paul Newport writing in The Wall Street Journal and quoting Christian golfer Paul Azinger, "'It's non-denominational, very comfortable, very easy, and anyone is welcome - wives, caddies, media people, guests, anyone who wants to come.' It's more like a traveling church for tour participants who hope to be otherwise occupied on Sunday mornings, the traditional time for church, playing in the final round of that week's event."
In England the players' faith has drawn ire. For example, "After Zach Johnson won the 2007 Masters, he said 'Being Easter, my goal was to glorify God, and hopefully I dd that today.' Some European media outlets made cracks. 'Another American winner, another sermon,' said the Times of London. The Daily Telegraph wrote..."(S)tatements suggesting Jesus was there at his shoulder and therefore not "looking after" the other 60 competitors seem a bit presumptuous." The complaint is that Christians consider themselves somehow special.
Lehman, who the British press once called "Saint Tom," responded, "I know that's the message that comes across sometimes. To be told you're somehow missing something, or inferior, or that somebody else is more favored than you, that can be really aggravating and infuriating. It's perceived as arrogance or pride. But I don't know anybody who intends to make that impression."
Mr. Newport, the WSJ writer, puts it this way: "From my experience as someone who grew up in an evangelical Christian home but has lived most of his adult life in a secular milieu, one of the most unfathomable parts of born-again Christianity for the uninitiated is often the deeply personal nature of believers' relationship with their God. God is not a vague concept but an everyday, particular presence in their lives. So when a devout Christian athlete thanks God after winning something, it's not so much of a stretch as it might appear to some."
The Christian view is summed up by Fowler's golf balls, which are marked "4:13" for a verse in Philippians: "I can do everything through him who gives me strength."
To Comment
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Tuesday, September 14, 2010
Twistians
The Oxford English Dictionary has 20 volumes and over 300,000 entries. According to Max Davidson in the Canadian National Post, a committee looks at thousands of possibilities and approves new entries four times a year.
Fiona McPherson, a Senior Editor at Oxford, notes "words have to pass a few basic tests before they can be deemed to have entered the language. They have to have been around a reasonable amount of time and be in common use."
Recent rejects include:
Blogish A variety of English that uses a large number of initialisms (think texting).
Earworm A catchy tune that gets stuck in your head.
Fumb Your big toe.
Nonversation A pointless chat.
Here's one they didn't review:
Twistian (twis'chen) n. 1. One who manipulates Christianity to justify un-Christian personal, political or cultural biases. 2. A person or publication that reports stories about twistians (see 1.) without challenging the veracity of their claims. 3. A person or publication that selectively reports information putting Christianity in a poor light while downplaying other aspects of a story that would provide a balanced account.
Last week's aborted Quran burning is loaded with twistianity. Pastor Terry Jones is virulently anti-Islamic, which is his right. But it's not right to use his church as a platform to throw gasoline on a cultural fire. Loving your enemies and practicing the Golden Rule are elemental Christian ideals ignored by Mr. Jones. The National Baptist Convention's Julius Scruggs, the Vatican and most other Christians condemned his event, but he didn't call it off until he received world-wide coverage and got interviewed on the Today Show.
Jones could have burned the books as a private citizen, but that wouldn't have gotten as much attention. Instead, he exploited a faith of peace by inflaming passions, endangering soldiers and enabling the media to present a jaundiced view of Christians. He touched a nerve in people who've been absorbing Islamic taunts for years but failed to convey a cogent message while he and the Christian faith were pilloried.
Columnist Mona Charen observed, "(Jones) became news because he fulfilled a need for the press. They had to have another side to the ground zero mosque story. Why? Because members of the press are total suckers for "both sidesism." There is nothing they like better in a news story than to present two conflicting views and to announce that "both sides" are guilty of provocation, mistrust, violence or bad faith."
Charen notes, "A significant minority of Muslims is on a hair trigger for violence and murder. Everyone knows this." The media's effort to cast a misguided book burner as emblematic of a Christian faith that's the equally culpable "other side" of a conflict with Islam is truly twisted.
It was a perfect storm: a twistian preacher and an even more twistian media.
"Twistian" isn't in the dictionary since I just made it up. But it should be: there are plenty of twistians out there, especially professional ones in the press.
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Fiona McPherson, a Senior Editor at Oxford, notes "words have to pass a few basic tests before they can be deemed to have entered the language. They have to have been around a reasonable amount of time and be in common use."
Recent rejects include:
Blogish A variety of English that uses a large number of initialisms (think texting).
Earworm A catchy tune that gets stuck in your head.
Fumb Your big toe.
Nonversation A pointless chat.
Here's one they didn't review:
Twistian (twis'chen) n. 1. One who manipulates Christianity to justify un-Christian personal, political or cultural biases. 2. A person or publication that reports stories about twistians (see 1.) without challenging the veracity of their claims. 3. A person or publication that selectively reports information putting Christianity in a poor light while downplaying other aspects of a story that would provide a balanced account.
Last week's aborted Quran burning is loaded with twistianity. Pastor Terry Jones is virulently anti-Islamic, which is his right. But it's not right to use his church as a platform to throw gasoline on a cultural fire. Loving your enemies and practicing the Golden Rule are elemental Christian ideals ignored by Mr. Jones. The National Baptist Convention's Julius Scruggs, the Vatican and most other Christians condemned his event, but he didn't call it off until he received world-wide coverage and got interviewed on the Today Show.
Jones could have burned the books as a private citizen, but that wouldn't have gotten as much attention. Instead, he exploited a faith of peace by inflaming passions, endangering soldiers and enabling the media to present a jaundiced view of Christians. He touched a nerve in people who've been absorbing Islamic taunts for years but failed to convey a cogent message while he and the Christian faith were pilloried.
Columnist Mona Charen observed, "(Jones) became news because he fulfilled a need for the press. They had to have another side to the ground zero mosque story. Why? Because members of the press are total suckers for "both sidesism." There is nothing they like better in a news story than to present two conflicting views and to announce that "both sides" are guilty of provocation, mistrust, violence or bad faith."
Charen notes, "A significant minority of Muslims is on a hair trigger for violence and murder. Everyone knows this." The media's effort to cast a misguided book burner as emblematic of a Christian faith that's the equally culpable "other side" of a conflict with Islam is truly twisted.
It was a perfect storm: a twistian preacher and an even more twistian media.
"Twistian" isn't in the dictionary since I just made it up. But it should be: there are plenty of twistians out there, especially professional ones in the press.
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Wednesday, September 8, 2010
High Flight
Back in ancient times television was broadcast over the airwaves and was only on until 1:00AM. At that magic hour the local station would air a signoff message before shutting the transmitter off, leaving the TV showing only the irritating static we called "snow." A favorite piece was called High Flight, which showed a silver military jet dancing across the sky as the narrator spoke these words:
Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds - and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of - wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there
I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air.
Up, up the long delirious burning blue,
I've topped the windswept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or even eagle flew -
And, while with silent lifting mind I've trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand
And touched the face of God.
Pilot Officer Gillespie Magee, Jr. RCAF
Killed December 11, 1941
Viewers watched this many times and often knew the words by heart, but it was too compelling to turn off. Closeups showed the pilot as he fought the glare of the sun and flew among the clouds. When the deep, rich voice says, "Up, up the long delirious burning blue" the sleek airplane spirits up above the clouds to the sound of moving orchestral music.
It's great imagery, especially the part about the pilot putting out his hand and touching "the face of God." These words are spoken with emphasis while the music transitions to a reverent male chorus whose singing is punctuated by bells. It was moving to see the pilot in the place mankind has imagined God to be for thousands of years. As the poem says, he's in a place of "high untrespassed sanctity" which is certainly the kind of place where we expect to see God. The signoff offered a comforting thought to take to bed: the idea that someday we will touch the face of God.
There was an implied message in the airing of this piece and the roles of science and technology in making it possible. It was this: no matter how advanced mankind becomes, God is real and He transcends everything. The man in his airplane didn't challenge God - he stood in awe of Him. It was simultaneously humbling, uplifting and comforting as it validated the faith of most Americans.
In the pre-cable days there were three major broadcast networks and High Flight could be seen on all of them. Now the networks never sleep and there's no need for signoffs anymore. But one has to wonder, with the hundreds of commercial networks today, how many would dare to air High Flight if they ever did need to sign off.
High Flight can be viewed at www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzQYd_INSOg&NR=1&feature=fvwp
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Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds - and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of - wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there
I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air.
Up, up the long delirious burning blue,
I've topped the windswept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or even eagle flew -
And, while with silent lifting mind I've trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand
And touched the face of God.
Pilot Officer Gillespie Magee, Jr. RCAF
Killed December 11, 1941
Viewers watched this many times and often knew the words by heart, but it was too compelling to turn off. Closeups showed the pilot as he fought the glare of the sun and flew among the clouds. When the deep, rich voice says, "Up, up the long delirious burning blue" the sleek airplane spirits up above the clouds to the sound of moving orchestral music.
It's great imagery, especially the part about the pilot putting out his hand and touching "the face of God." These words are spoken with emphasis while the music transitions to a reverent male chorus whose singing is punctuated by bells. It was moving to see the pilot in the place mankind has imagined God to be for thousands of years. As the poem says, he's in a place of "high untrespassed sanctity" which is certainly the kind of place where we expect to see God. The signoff offered a comforting thought to take to bed: the idea that someday we will touch the face of God.
There was an implied message in the airing of this piece and the roles of science and technology in making it possible. It was this: no matter how advanced mankind becomes, God is real and He transcends everything. The man in his airplane didn't challenge God - he stood in awe of Him. It was simultaneously humbling, uplifting and comforting as it validated the faith of most Americans.
In the pre-cable days there were three major broadcast networks and High Flight could be seen on all of them. Now the networks never sleep and there's no need for signoffs anymore. But one has to wonder, with the hundreds of commercial networks today, how many would dare to air High Flight if they ever did need to sign off.
High Flight can be viewed at www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzQYd_INSOg&NR=1&feature=fvwp
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Wednesday, September 1, 2010
DC Revival
My cousin Dave and I walked down toward the Lincoln Memorial. It was around 9:30AM, it was already getting hot and the foot traffic was becoming more dense and slow-moving. It converged on the sidewalk around the Washington Monument, which is on a hill overlooking the Reflecting Pool. At the other end of the pool Lincoln's statue gazed down on Americans assembled shoulder to shoulder with a sense of shared purpose.
We couldn't get close enough to see the stage but there was a jumbotron on the other side of the trees. We went there with thousands of others from all over the country.
The "Restoring Honor" rally was conceived by Glenn Beck, the controversial radio and TV personality who talks largely about politics. But the event avoided political topics for its 3-1/2 hour duration. Military heroes were honored for their sacrifices and Americans who exemplified the touchstones of hope, faith and charity spoke.
It was August 28, 2010 - exactly 47 years after Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech on the same steps. Dr. King was warmly remembered for his dream that his four young children would "live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character." His niece, Alveda King, fondly spoke of "Uncle Martin" and attendees applauded when his name was invoked by speakers of various colors.
Christian preachers like Dr. King drove the civil rights movement, but since that time Christianity has been ridiculed, slandered and attacked. Secular Humanism, which denies God and believes man's reason is sufficient, has replaced faith as our philosophical paradigm.
Where has this gotten us? Out of wedlock births have exploded. Frivolous lawsuits have replaced reconciliation, forgiveness and fairness. The idea that sometimes things happen that aren't anyone's fault has fallen victim to the notion that there's always a victim. A crazy quilt of business, racial, sexual, union, environmental and other interest groups narrow-mindedly fights for government favor without regard for the greater good. Teachers fear lawsuits for either disciplining students or supportively touching them. Regulations have crippled the ability of businesses to compete and wrecked entire industries. Politicians spend billions on problems that can't be solved by money. And we've been splintered to the point where many people see ethnicity as more important than country or faith.
The result? First moral, and now fiscal, bankruptcy.
We went to Washington, DC to express our disagreement with the government's actions and were surprised the rally turned into a religious revival. But think about it: Beck is right. The result of man's ruling according to his own opinions without the guidance of a greater power is clear. It has failed.
At the end of the program hundreds of thousands of people sang Amazing Grace together. It was a moving moment that made you wonder what would happen if the rest of the country had the same mindset.
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We couldn't get close enough to see the stage but there was a jumbotron on the other side of the trees. We went there with thousands of others from all over the country.
The "Restoring Honor" rally was conceived by Glenn Beck, the controversial radio and TV personality who talks largely about politics. But the event avoided political topics for its 3-1/2 hour duration. Military heroes were honored for their sacrifices and Americans who exemplified the touchstones of hope, faith and charity spoke.
It was August 28, 2010 - exactly 47 years after Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech on the same steps. Dr. King was warmly remembered for his dream that his four young children would "live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character." His niece, Alveda King, fondly spoke of "Uncle Martin" and attendees applauded when his name was invoked by speakers of various colors.
Christian preachers like Dr. King drove the civil rights movement, but since that time Christianity has been ridiculed, slandered and attacked. Secular Humanism, which denies God and believes man's reason is sufficient, has replaced faith as our philosophical paradigm.
Where has this gotten us? Out of wedlock births have exploded. Frivolous lawsuits have replaced reconciliation, forgiveness and fairness. The idea that sometimes things happen that aren't anyone's fault has fallen victim to the notion that there's always a victim. A crazy quilt of business, racial, sexual, union, environmental and other interest groups narrow-mindedly fights for government favor without regard for the greater good. Teachers fear lawsuits for either disciplining students or supportively touching them. Regulations have crippled the ability of businesses to compete and wrecked entire industries. Politicians spend billions on problems that can't be solved by money. And we've been splintered to the point where many people see ethnicity as more important than country or faith.
The result? First moral, and now fiscal, bankruptcy.
We went to Washington, DC to express our disagreement with the government's actions and were surprised the rally turned into a religious revival. But think about it: Beck is right. The result of man's ruling according to his own opinions without the guidance of a greater power is clear. It has failed.
At the end of the program hundreds of thousands of people sang Amazing Grace together. It was a moving moment that made you wonder what would happen if the rest of the country had the same mindset.
To Comment
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