This video would have had me in stitches ...: "
... were I not'already in stitches. Ha!
The 'Tale of Two Brains''— male vs. female'— arrived in my e-mail today from a priest. Be careful not to watch it while eating or drinking anything that may damage your computer screen.
"
(Via The Dawn Patrol.)
Rubbish: "
Seventy years ago, Chesterton remarked:
Since the modern world began in the sixteenth century, nobodys system of philosophy has really corresponded to everybodys sense of reality: to what, if left to themselves, common men would call common sense.
(Via New Advent World Watch.)
Picked up some kind of bug and have been feeling (in the words of my 4yo daughter Treesie) ‘Gwoss.’ Even with such minor discomfort, a Christian’s thoughts naturally turn to the cross. And it seems more and more likely that it’s always been that way. Consider the recent discoveries:
* In Syria, archeologists have found two cruciform cemeteries from the third century (here and here).
* In the Basque region, archeologists unearthed a town that had been covered by a third-century landslide; and in one home they found a crudely drawn crucifix, complete with corpus.
* Scholars have begun to reconsider the dating of some gems engraved with the crucifix, placing them, too, in the third century.
* Larry Hurtado has catalogued the occurrences of staurograms and other crypto-crosses in manuscripts as far back as the early second century. He says that the staurogram — usually an embellished rendering of the Greek letters tau or chi or the Coptic ankh — ‘obviously refers to the crucifixion/cross of Jesus, and so (along with the abundant textual evidence) reflects an importance given to Jesus’ crucifixion in Christian faith/piety, from at least as early as the late second century.’
All this, of course, runs counter to what I learned in school, and probably to what most people learn in school today. It has, for generations, been commonplace to say that there were no crosses before Constantine. The standard current textbook in Christian archeology states flatly that there was ‘no place in the third century for a crucified Christ, or a symbol of divine death.’
If cruciform figures appeared in digs, they were dismissed as random scratches, mere geometric ornamentation, or later ‘contaminations’ in early strata. The argument followed a circular logic:
1. We know there were no crosses before 300 because we’ve never found any.
2. When we seem to find crosses, we know they’re late or not really crosses, because of course there WERE no crosses before 300.
3. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Hurtado points out that preachers and letter-writers in those early years often refer to the cross of Christ. Other scholars point to this very early anti-Christian graffito, which portrays a donkey hanging on a cross. It’s unlikely that bigots would seize upon that symbol unless it had already been widely used and cherished by the Christians.
My money’s with the vanguard in this controversy. It seems that when we suffer and we survey that wondrous cross, we’re very likely doing what the earliest Christians did.
(Via New Advent World Watch.)
A Winning Argument on Cloning?: "
‘Farming cloned livestock should be banned because the animals suffer too much, EU ethics experts said last night.’
Meanwhile, in the USA, there is no restriction-at all-on human cloning, be it for so-called ‘therapeutic’ purposes (i.e. where a human being is cloned and then the clone is dismembered for parts) or for reproductive purposes (that is, in America it’s A-OK to clone-for-babies). But maybe once we see that the animals suffer too much we’ll do something about the humans-we wouldn’t want to be speciesists, after all.
"(Via First Things.)
Peter Kreeft debated abortion...: "
... at the University of Colorado with Dr. David Boonin this past Friday. Catholic News Agency reports on the well-attended event:
A Catholic-sponsored debate about the ethics of abortion packed hundreds into an auditorium on the University of Colorado campus in Boulder, CO this past Friday night. The debate featured two prominent philosophy professors—Drs. Peter Kreeft and David Boonin—who defended their views on the ethics of abortion.
Listeners filled all 288 seats of the auditorium, while others sat in the aisles.' Still more sat in the overflow seating in the basement hallway, and even crowded the stairs leading up from the basement, a total audience easily surpassing 400 in number.
The debate, sponsored by the Thomas Aquinas Institute for Catholic Thought, addressed the question 'Is abortion morally justifiable?'' Dr. Peter Kreeft, of Boston College, answered that it could never be while Dr. David Boonin of the University of Colorado argued that abortion was sometimes a moral choice.' Both professors offered many reasons and
counterarguments defending their position.
The professors are both prominent in their field and in the public eye.' Kreeft has authored more than 45 books dedicated to defending Christian beliefs and understanding suffering, morality, philosophy, life, and God.' Dr. Boonin’s 2003 book ‘A Defense of Abortion’ won an honorable mention from the American Philosophical Association.' Boonin is also the chair of the University of Colorado's philosophy department.
• Introduction to Three Approaches to Abortion | Peter Kreeft
• Ignatius Insight author page for Peter Kreeft
Neuroscientist: Most opposition to new science ideas comes from fundamentalism within science: "Well, another non-materialist neuroscientist has just been sighted.
Edward F. Kelly, lead author of Irreducible Mind, writes at the Rowman blog (sponsored by publishers Rowman and Littlefield),
The word ‘fundamentalism’ probably evokes for most of us only images of bomb-wielding Islamic terrorists and other examples of religious extremism, but fundamentalism exists within science as well. When scientific opinion hardens into dogma it becomes scientism, which is essentially a secular faith and no longer science. Galileo was persecuted by the Inquisition, but in modern times the main opposition to new scientific ideas has derived not from religious orthodoxies but from other scientists for whom contemporary opinion established the limits of the possible.
Consider in this light the question of post-mortem survival. The notion that aspects of mind and personality survive bodily death is central to the world’s great religions yet scorned as impossible by present-day establishment science. But few participants in this contentious debate have any inkling that there exists a large scientific literature collectively suggesting that at least some of us, under largely unknown conditions and for some unknown period of time, do in fact survive. The primary threat to this interpretation, ironically, has nothing to do with the quality of the evidence—problems of fraud, credulity, errors of observation or memory, and the like—but with the difficulty of excluding non-survivalist interpretations based solely upon supernormal (‘psi’-based or parapsychological) processes involving living persons. The voluminous evidence for such processes includes both spontaneous cases and experimental studies, and in my opinion has long since passed the threshold where competent persons who take the trouble to study it in depth and with an open mind will routinely conclude that these things exist as facts of nature. Indeed, future generations of historians, philosophers, and sociologists will undoubtedly make a good living trying to understand why it took so long for scientists in general to accept this conclusion.
(Via Mindful Hack.)
Roe v Wade: 35 years of legal baby killing: "
In remembrance of National Right To Life Day, celebrated every January 22nd on the annual anniversary of the Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion, Roe vs. Wade (1973), and in honor of the tens thousands of protestors who annually drive or fly to Washington, D.C., to march from the Washington Monument to the Supreme Court (sometimes in the freezing cold), lobby senators, and get themselves ignored by the media in favor of the eight or nine abortion-rights activists who manage to come out and get themselves interviewed on national television, it seemed only decent and proper to dig out my annual 'thought for the day' -- a parody of tortured pro-choice logic by Princeton professor, Robert P. George, which might be entitled:
'In short, I am moderately 'pro-choice.''
I am personally opposed to killing abortionists. However, inasmuch as my personal opposition to this practice is rooted in sectarian (Catholic) religious belief in the sanctity of human life, I am unwilling to impose it on others who may, as a matter of conscience, take a different view. Of course, I am entirely in favor of policies aimed at removing the root causes of violence against abortionists. Indeed, I would go as far as supporting mandatory one-week waiting periods, and even non-judgmental counseling, for people who are contemplating the choice of killing an abortionist. I believe in policies that reduce the urgent need some people feel to kill abortionists while, at the same time, respecting the rights of conscience of my fellow citizens who believe that the killing of abortionists is sometimes a tragic necessity--not a good, but a lesser evil. In short, I am moderately 'pro-choice.'
by Mario Beauregard, Ph.D. & Denyse O'Leary. Excellent! Hope to finish it tonight so I can get back to studying. Cimabue, Giotto and van Eyck are waiting for me.
Human Rights vs. Free Speech: "
David Warren at Real Clear Politics has a very good article on Canada’s ‘human rights commissions,’ which put people on trial for saying things that these human rights commissions dislike. That’s a bit glib, but only a bit. Ezra Levant published the Danish cartoons on the Prophet Mohammed to show his readers that all the fuss was overblown. He is now on trial before an Alberta human rights tribunal. Catholic Insight, a monthly magazine published in Toronto, is being prosecuted by a man in Edmonton for upholding the Church’s teaching on marriage and homosexual behavior. Even if he differs with the content or tone of such publications, an American can be grateful for the freedom of speech. Not so for Canadians, it would appear. Warren describes the situation as follows:
There are other meandering cases in the works, or that were in the works, often against Internet website owners or the contributors to their online forums. It is almost impossible to get clear information about these. In the notification process, the recipient of a human rights complaint need not be told who the complainant is, or what he is alleging. The recipient is just left to guess for a while, as the bureaucratic machinery of quasi-legal ‘justice’ proceeds at its glacial pace. Truth and rumours become hard to distinguish in this kafkaesque environment.
These human rights commissions are worth keeping an eye on. Though a healthy respect for the freedom of speech exists in most of America, let us hope that these ‘human rights’ commissions can be quarantined and eliminated in Canada lest they spread south.
"(Via First Things.)
that I was vaguely remembering was the tv version. P.D. James is a brilliant writer. I'm glad I read this one.
Communion and Liberation on Sapienza's Cretinous Move to Shout Down Benedict in...: "Communion and Liberation on Sapienza's Cretinous Move to Shout Down Benedict in the Name of Freedom of Thought
It's' best that the nice people at CL write these things, cuz I would just issue a press release titled 'Academic Black Shirts on the March!', call them a bunch of goose-stepping fascistic maroons, and be done with it."
(Via Catholic and Enjoying It!.)
Biggest story breaks, Media no where to be seen: "
It’s been a busy few days since my ‘human rights’ interrogation on Friday afternoon. As of yesterday, the video clips I uploaded were viewed nearly 200,000 times, making them the 5th most watched ‘channel’ on YouTube. I’d like to thank the blogosphere for covering a story that has been under-reported by the mainstream media, and I’d like to thank generous visitors for their financial support for our legal defence via PayPal. (Ezra Levant.com)
Yet another shining example of how useless and irrelevant the mainstream media is given their ‘coverage’ of it. All I have to say is thank the Lord for the internet. It’s a sobering thought to think where freedom loving people would be without it. It’s not surprising that the Commission sought to restrict Ezra’s video postings of their steroid pumped, Rodney King like ‘can’t-we-all-just-get-along’ court.
Yet another disaster and embarassment for these chumps. Why do they even bother calling themselves journalists? After a while the label gets a little tiring and hard to believe.
"(Via SoCon Or Bust.)
by Anne Perry is set in Victorian England with some characters from her other murder mysteries set in that era. The protagonist, a cantankerous Grandmama, solves the mystery and grows a not a little in doing so. by Martha Grimes also uses an established character, Richard Jury of Scotland Yard. Several murders over the snow-bound days leading to Christmas are solved by Jury and his friend Melrose Plant. by P.D. James, my favourite mystery writer. Unfortunately, I have the distinct feeling of dèjá vu reading this. Either this is the second time around or there was a tv adaptation. Never mind, I can't remember who did it or how it was solved. Old age has it's compensations...
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"Thinking with the Church begins with thinking"
Father Richard Neuhaus
