Robert Jones

Listening to Sabbath (with its better helmsman, Ronnie James Dio) singing "Sign of the Southern Cross." Damn, they were great! Nobody in metal had an operatic set of pipes like Dio! He could hold a note for over a minute, it seems.

~ I am raising a Down Syndrome on the lower-end of The Bell Curve, who has Diabetes Type-2, a heart prob needing surgery when he was 2 with a prognostication of 1 more before he's 20, a neck-vertebrae prob (non-completion-closure of it's circumference) prohibiting otherwise 'necessary' physical activities which is taken for granted (obviously by too many!), thereby affecting his whole muscle-tone and inhibiting his otherwise expectable exploratory phases, keeping him even more 'retarded' in learning.

~ Can one say "Born behind the 8-ball?"

~ Spare me about a 'benevolent force' in the universe, whatever in hell you wish to label it.

~ There is definitely a better way to 'run' this cosmos-of-a-railroad, were there anyone 'running' it.!

~ Whatever 'force' there may be, I have absolutely NO 'Reverence' for it at all. Spare me this new-ageish 'religiosity.'

LLAP

J:D

John, all my sympathy for your child and you and your family. What can I say? I probably would have the same exact views as you theologically, if my own son were dealt such a bad hand. All I can say is this: You oughn't be judged harshly, or at all.

As I have never heard from God directly, I have no hard proof He exists, or if there is an afterlife. For me, Faith is more her sister, Hope. Maybe it's the Irish in me, but every time I find a penny, I make a wish on it. The older I get, the more I realise things are out of my hands, and if there isn't a God, I sure hope there is. I believe in these things because I feel incredibly blessed. Even the littlest things make me realize how fortunate I am just to be alive and (relatively) healthy. Perhaps it's because I've been knocked off my bicycle twice by SUV drivers and not only lived to tell the tale, but got up within weeks of both wrecks, and did a 1,000 mile ride.

I love Frank Sinatra's attitude on life: When an acquaintance made some offhand comment, for example, "that's a nice watch you're wearing," Sinatra would give the watch to the guy. I think he even gave a car to someone, just because they complimented him on it. Sinatra's reasoning was that God had blessed him with these things temporarily, that all Earthly things were just "on loan" from God, so he didn't feel tied to them. Now that's a great capitalistic attitude, rather than the stereotypical miserly "Scrooge" characterisation traditionally associated with the rich. Not so much that Sinatra was being generous, or even altruistic, but that he got an especial pleasure from spreading good cheer.

A side issue: I am not a new ager; I chose my particular faith because it was one of the more traditional ones out there.

However you slice it, and while I totally sympathise with you on this one, know that to your child there IS a benevolent force in the universe, and that that force is you. Remember that always.

Robert,

Along the lines of what you were discussing in a previous post, I find religious people to often be potential allies of Objectivists not just in the political sphere but in the educational. In my teaching career, the people who have been most sympathetic to classic, self-disciplined, back to basics education tend to be religious people. And your point about secular Europe not being a very good ally is well-taken as well.

The way I'd put the point is that if someone is against values as such against solid, unchanging knowledge and principles as such . . . in other words, if they are thorough relativists or subjectivists, there is no chance of working with them if one is an advocate of reason and freedom or other 'absolutes'.

You can't argue for a principle with them when they don't believe in the validity or existence of principles.

Whereas if they believe in values, principles, proof, logic, then one can at least have a basis for discussion of what those principles should be. One can present evidence and have it considered--or at least there is that potential.

You are right about the educational arena: I taught U.S. History and World History A.P. at a Catholic school here in San Antonio, and I had many parents giving me kudos on an article from The Objectivist I used in my lectures, "Metaphysics in Marble," which I think was written either by Joan Mitchell Blumenthal or Mary Ann Sures. Most people are religious, I believe, based on what I call "Scarlett O'Hara Metaphysics." That is they believe in God because they believe in God and any thought beyond that point is difficult for them -- they'll think about that tomorrow. Most people in this country are more than nominally religious, but they still have that "show me" mentality grounded in good common horse sense.

Now that I've digested the entire Objectivist canon, I find myself too tired and busy to give more than a passing glance at epistemology, or metaphysics, or ethical conundrums. I get excited, however, by Robert Rodriguez's and Quentin Tarrantino's latest double bill. I think this is a healthy attitude: After all, Objectivism is supposed to be a "philosophy for living on this Earth," and if I'm pretty rusty on "The Teleological Basis for Biology," it's because I'm busy living life on this Earth.

I think that the IOS/TOC/TAS has a realistic approach to the religious among us. While I may disagree from time to time with them, and vice-versa, they are not secular bigots or militant atheists. Proof of this can be seen in two of my upcoming movie reviews for TNI. Even a recent book review on a pro-atheistic book by Richard Dawkins by Hugo Schmidt, a frequenter over at the Bidinotto Blog, makes observations similar to yours Philip about religious folks. A few years ago, both Robert Bidinotto and David Kelley -- while not espousing religion per se -- made overtures towards the religious along the lines of finding common ground amongst "Enlightenment" religionists.

And, although I haven't noticed religious people flocking over to TAS in huge numbers, it is through no fault of TAS -- they've put out the welcome mat to an astonishing degree.

The fact that I find myself more comfortable among you guys and the people at TAS (in particular Robert and Ed as well as Iraida Botshteyn and her husband Igor) than I am at Mass in my own parish speaks volumes in that David Kelley put his money where his mouth is on the issue of toleration.

Robert; Thank you the name of The Razor's Edge. If I have not said it I like your reviews in The New Individualist. I may have already seen The Secret Agent but I will keep my eyes open for it.

Thanks Chris! I appreciate that. Somerset Maugham is no Graham Greene, but quite enjoyable nonetheless.

Now, now, can't upset "our friends" the Saudis!

This sort of thing often happens to me: I quote a guy in a blog, for the first time in years, and he up and dies the next day. I made mention of "The Church of God the Utterly Indifferent" in movies on the 10th (that phrase was from "The Sirens of Titan" I think, and on the 11th he's kaput. Same thing happened when I quoted Hunter S. Thompson. This is too weird.

Anyways, I loved "Harrison Bergeron," but one of my favorites from Vonnegut is this observation of his from "Cat's Cradle":

(These passages are subsequent to an ecological disaster caused by Ice-Nine, a substance which has turned all the world's bodies of water permanently into a frozen state):

"He was up to nothing new. He was watching an ant farm he had constructed. He had dug up a few surviving ants in the three-dimensional world of the ruins of Bolivar, and he had reduced the dimensions to two by making a dirt and ant sandwich between two sheets of glass. The ants could do nothing without Frank's catching them at it and commenting upon it.

"The experiment had solved in short order the mystery of how ants could survive in a waterless world. As far as I know, they were the only insects that did survive, and they did it by forming with their bodies tight balls around grains of ice-nine. They would generate enough heat at the center to kill half their number and produce one bead of dew. The dew was drinkable. The corpses were edible.

" 'Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die,' I said to Frank and his tiny cannibals.

"His response was always the same. It was a peevish lecture on all the things people could learn from ants.

"My responses were ritualized, too. 'Nature's a wonderful thing, Frank. Nature's a wonderful thing.'

"'You know why ants are so successful?' he asked me for the thousandth time. 'They co-op-er-ate.'"

Robert,

I hope that did not come across as too aggressive. I was playfully poking you in the ribs (as you are a person who believes in God). Not mockery. Just horsing around. Kinds like a multicultural joke that didn't quite come off.

Michael

Oh, I get you now. I wasn't trying to be abrasive either, I just didn't know where you were coming from is all. Here's the thing: I agree with Objectivism about 90% and with my own faith about 50%, yet, because our society places an inordinate emphasis on one's religious beliefs as predetermining the rest of one's cerebral content, when it gets down to brass tacks, I'm a Christian, not an Objectivist.

It's sort of like what Groucho Marx once said, though: "I would never belong to any club that would have me as a member." That is, I'm an individual first and an individualist second. One cannot be an individualist if he isn't true to the individual who is himself. Hence, my heterodoxical worldview.

Or, as the old Jewish lament goes:

"I can't talk to the people I pray with, and I can't pray with the people I talk to."

National Enquirer, Us Magazine, Oprah, The Little Green Men Whose Broadcasts My Tinfoil Hat is Inadequate to Jam Transmission of, My Dog (who told me to kill a bunch of blonde chicks), People en Espanol, usw ;)

Robert,

Here are a few more to chew on:

Jihad Watch

Communism Watch

Jew Watch

Halliburton Watch

Food and Water Watch

Eco Watch

Quack Watch

Just for Peikoff, there is:

Ari Watch

And for the rest in the Objectivist subculture, there is:

RandZapper

There.

Now you don't have to feel so singled out.

Michael

Singled out?

I don't know where else to put this, so I am putting it here for now.

Peikoff's main thesis is that the right-wing theocracy is America's gravest current threat. I just found an interesting site where some of the evidence can be examined:

Theocracy Watch

There is way too much to read there, but it does look like it would repay an afternoon skimming it over.

Michael

You've got to admit one thing about Lenny Peikoff: He KNOWS a theocracy when he sees one! I think we should pay his words some more heed. Perhaps he noticed the "ominous parallels" between certain Republican evangelicals and his own reign as Pope Leonard I of the Objectivist Church. Maybe Peikoff envisions the GOP conducting sham show trials, character assassinations, excommunications and issuing inscrutable encyclicals.

Or, maybe he thought he had a monopoly on the whole theocracy gig, and doesn't want the likes of Dobson, Robertson and Bush II muscling in on his racket.

Who knows????

I read nothing by Maughum and I don't know if I want to.

Chris, you are missing a great deal -- especially his short stories.

Barbara

I'll second that. "The Razor's Edge" is my favorite novel, and an excellent early Hitchcock flick ("Secret Agent") was based on a Maugham story. Check em out.

I am an atheist. An epistemological God is the idea of God, not the reality. To believe God is real is to put part of yourself "out there," including moral authority. This makes God a kind of disowned self.

--Brant

Do not grok. That is, I don't quite get your reasoning for espousing a theoretical, but not actual belief in God. Or the idea that belief in God is putting oneself "out there," or any of the rest. That is, I *could* infer a whole lot of things that maybe you did not intend, but I'd rather not go that route, because I don't want to put words in your mouth. Please elaborate, not because I'm debating this, but because I'm interested to see where your reasoning is going. Thanks, Rob't

If movie had been made right after the book came out:

Kim Novak

If they get a move-on, my current choice:

Julianne Moore (LOOKS like someone named "Taggart")

The reason I am not a militant atheist is because I believe in the epistemological not the metaphysical God. For me "God" is inside, not out there. A God out there is psychological and social genius. Getting Him out of politics was political, philosophical genius. Don't make the mistake of coming to my house to evangelicize me, however; I will impolitely run you off, just like the last guys who thought I might have some interest in their Jehovah Witless garbage.

--Brant

Exactly! Well said, Brant. While I believe it is proper for those who are motivated by the sacred impulse to actively engage in political *issues* (e.g., Abolition, civil rights, abortion), there is a limit to the arguments they can make with credibility. That is, how do they *know* God is for or against this or that? No one cam claim such gnostic knowledge, and thus the religiously motivated must therefore make their case using extrareligious (i.e., fact, logic, evidence, reason) arguments. Further, I am wary of anybody who enters politics (particularly political office) in order to enact the will of God.

When I was a atheist for about ten years, it bewildered me how anyone could be a *militant* atheist. After all, what was the worst that could happen to believers when they died? To go to hell? Then, as now, I gauge a man's moral worth on his *actions,* not on what's in his head. The world is too large and life is too short to get all "clubby" about these things, making a clicque out of whom we will accept and respect, based upon their philosophical beliefs. I especially have this dilemma, as (unbeknownst to him), it was the writings of atheist Nat Hentoff (a writer for the Village Voice for whom I have the greatest respect and admiration) that primarily impelled me to believe in God. I had come to the conclusion that God works in mysterious ways, and that if there is proof there is a benign force in the universe, it is men such as Nat Hentoff, who -- despite his lack of theology -- are moral exemplars because of their superior exercise of free will and intellect. Contast him with religious demagogues and charlatans such as Falwell, Robertson, Oral Roberts, etc., who could easily be used as proof that God doesn't exist, or at worst, that the Devil is in charge.

So, it's true that Nat Hentoff made a Catholic out of me (this was also the most acceptable choice for me, intellectually, as Catholicism--as opposed to such Protestant creeds as Calvinism--places great emphasis on the role of free will in human decision). I don't believe in God as some "puppet master," but subscribe to, as Kurt Vonnegut called it, the concept of "God the utterly indifferent." I don't go quite to that extreme, as I believe He cares deeply, but rather that it's up to humanity, not Him, what the course of history will be.

As for the Jehovah's Witnesses, they would accost me all the time. I lived in Red Hook Brooklyn for a long time, and their world HQ is in Brooklyn Heights, right next door. That's another benefit of being Catholic: When they'd invariably hector me for Mary statue worship, I'd say something along the lines of "shut up: we were here first." ;)

Doctor Who is definitely my all-time favourite programme.

Having grown-up watching it from behind the sofa; I was overjoyed that they brought it back in 2005. [it's pitched at family viewing.]

Why do I like Doctor Who?

A larger-than-life hero (the Doctor) who travels in time and space (back in 1963 when it first came out, time-travel was still considered possible), and saves the world using just his brains, guts, heart, relationship-skills and a sonic screwdriver.

It's a positive, optimistic programme with usually a happy-ending.

It has some memorable monsters - daleks and cybermen being the ones most people know.

The Doctor, being a Timelord and not a human, can regenerate whenever a new actor replaces the old one, which is clever way of avoiding continuity problems. Each new Doctor has a different personality.

In the new series, the Doctor's companions are transformed by their time spent travelling with him, i.e. he has an overall positive effect on them.

His 'space ship', the TARDIS (Time And Relative Dimension In Space) is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside

The cast, crew and writers for Doctor Who all love the programme and this comes across in the episodes.

It's not gratuitously violent.

I am one such fan! Without "Doctor Who" there'd be no "Quantum Leap," which was also an excellent sci-fi show with a time-travel premise.

It took him twenty years to succeed in having the Parliament in Britain abolish slavery by vote without having to fight a Civil War to do it. William Wilberforce was a religious man but one of the more rational humane ones who was moved to devote himself to his cause throughout his career.

One can hope that those of us in the Objectivist movement are as successful in our endeavor to lay the foundation for a truly free society based on a rational view of man and Nature. I would say we have our work cut out for us but at least the antidote is known.

galt

I saw "Amazing Grace" and liked it very much. Wilberforce was a man who figured prominently in the Enlightenment and among English evangelical reformers. I would like to suggest, however, that if we want to work for the "truly free society based on a rational view of man and Nature," it would be more practical to do so by forging alliances with those who may be otherwise religious, but quite this-worldly, than waiting around for that day that will never come, when the human race is both atheistical AND rational. I just saw a news story of a recent Gallup poll, which found that 92% of Americans believe in God. Take that as you will, but I agree with Mark Steyn on two points from his book "America Alone": 1). That we cannot count on largely secular, but largely passive, Europe to grow a spine in fighting the Islamist takeover of Europe, and, 2). That you cannot fight something with nothing, that it is the religious (read: Christians, Jews, Hindus, etc.) in America who will take up the fight against the Islamist radicals who want to trash Western society.

Remember: It was CATHOLIC Crusaders who saved Western society from the clutches of Islam the last go-around, and that any dreams we may have for the society you want (which I do share) are contingent FIRST on secularists and religious people together beating back the barbarians already within our gates. Then, we can sort out the secondary issues of religion versus reason (which, I believe, is a false dichotomy).

We are coming on two movie anniversaries this month. The 25th anniversary of Porky's and the 30th anniversary of Saturday Night Fever. Saturday Night Fever is going to be on ACM next Saturday. The less said about Porky's the better but Fever has its moments. Travolta's opening walk, the music and the dancing. On Porky's there's a good article in the current EW which reminds us all how hard it was to see female breasts in the 1980ths before internet porn.

The director of Porky's was just killed in a head on collision with a wrong way drunken driver on the Pacific Pallisades Parkway in California. His son also died.

--Brant

But, that director -- Bob Clark -- will always be remembered most for his greatest flick, "A Christmas Story." "You'll shoot your eye out! You'll shoot your eye out!"

I ate a ham for Jesus and gave the bones to Mohammed! Last week, we went out with some Jewish friends and drank the Bloody Marys of a Gentile barkeeper.

Seriously, though, I love Easter. My little boy messed up our living room with his first Easter basket, the plastic "grass" is strewn all about and he has what's left of the chocolate bunny all over his hands, mouth and clothes. It's sweater weather here in San Antonio too, but seeing him having fun makes me warm and toasty all over. =)

JR:

~ Uh-h-h, hmmm...as Tommy Smothers would say: "Heh, Ke-heh, uh, humm (grin)... ya caught me there, ke-heh!" (Hey, I've been checking out 'old-TV' DVD's, ok? I'm barely almost Jack Benny's age-limit.)

~ Yes, Alan Rickman is who I meant (I don't think that 'slip' was Freudian, though.)

LLAP

J:D

Yeah, it was probably the alliterative similarity of the two names.

RJ:

~ You are B-A-A-D! That is beyond even miscegnation! It...it...it's miscili-beastial-itignation! Dante doesn't even have a 'circle' down there for this! Poor Heston; what hath PhotoShop wrought?

~ As MAUDE would have once said: "God'll get you for this!"

LLAP

J:D

John: I wish it was one of my PhotoShop creations, but alas it is not. That's real, although it's not Heston as Charlie Darwin. It's a still of him in "Planet of the Apes," kissing Kim Hunter dressed in a monkey suit.

"Stella!!!! Stella!!! Stella!!!"

I took the quiz, and I'm Gail Wynand.

Today TNI movie reviewer, tomorrow the world! Ha ha ha ha!

[...] I find it highly interesting that no-one here has asked me what my signature means.

It means "What Would Mencken Do?"

You da MAN!

It almost makes up for that picture of Churchill *sigh*

No, Steve, I'm not "Da Man." It's been ages since I've worked for the CIA, selling crack in Compton and South-Central L.A. ;)

BTW, what's the matter with Churchill? I'd read that .pdf, but it won't pop up in my Acrobat reader for some reason.

Let us take some time off from religion bashing, for on television right now is the greatest Easter/Passover classic,

Cecil B. DeMille's "The Ten Commandments":

In the interest of equal time for atheists, here's Chuck Heston again, this time starring as Charles Darwin:

Catholics: Cesar Franck, J.S. Bach, Carl Orff

Bach a Catholic???!!!!

He converted out of convenience. Regardless , I was mainly being facetious. Humor, and the like. It must be admitted, though, that Catholics in particular revere his works.