Tag: cultural musings

Toxic Fiction REPRINT

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

From June 30, 2013

Ages ago, one of my wife’s co-workers bought a rental property with a paid-up tenant, a little old lady who’d been there for years. The new owner wanted someone who could pay a higher rent, so she evicted the old woman–and came to work the next day bragging about it. “Just like J.R.!” she crowed.

She was referring to “J.R. Ewing,” the antihero played by Larry Hagman in the old TV series, Dallas. She was gloriously happy that she’d done something worthy of the villain in a TV show. (If you’re too young to have any idea what I’m talking about–well, go find out what I’m talking about.)

[Just in case you think God pays no attention to these things: The J.R. wannabe spent a lot of money remodeling the property and spiffing it up, and soon got the new tenants she asked for. They never paid the rent, and inside of two months, turned the place into a slum.]

As Solon once said, some 2,500 years ago, “If you put all those lies up on your stage, someday we’ll have them in our business.”

Far be it from me, as a story-teller, to say “No more story-telling!” But fiction can exert a powerful influence on the behavior of its consumers, and it’s so constantly available in so many different forms–novels, TV, comic books, movies, cable “news” shows. To what extent is our fiction responsible for the rotting-away of our Western  culture? Is it the fault of amoral story-tellers who don’t care what they create, as long as it makes a buck? Or is it the fault of mindless consumers who will gobble up anything as long as it’s labeled “entertainment”?

Just asking…

PS–The link to “Dallas” was supposed to take you to the TV show, but the stupid computer decided you would be better served by a high-altitude aerial photo of the city of Dallas. If you want to find out about this classic TV show, the link to “J.R. Ewing” will get you there.

A Canadian Tragedy (Or Is It a Farce?) REPRINT

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From November 20, 2012

 

This was bound to happen.  In this excursion into Canadian public policy, the irresistible force has met the immoveable object.

As reported Nov. 16 in The Toronto Sun, a lesbian went to a Muslim barbershop in Toronto and demanded a “businessman’s haircut.” The Muslim barber told her to get lost. So the lesbian, of course, ran to the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal and filed a complaint against the barber.

Hmmm… By law, Canada’s Multicultural Act, the Muslim has an inalienable right to refrain from touching a woman, let alone giving her a haircut. And by law, Canada’s Human Rights Act, the lesbian has an inalienable right to force the Muslim to give her a haircut.

O frabjous day! The irresistibly ridiculous has collided with the immoveably inane!

For years both lesbians and Muslims in Canada have used the “human rights” commissions and tribunals to bully Christians. It was their happy hunting ground. The state pays every cent of the plaintiff’s legal costs, the normal rules of evidence do not apply, and we know of not one instance in which the Christian defendant was not screwed.

But now comes the power struggle which I’ve long predicted–the Gays vs. Muslims Steel Cage Match!

Let’s sit back and watch the fun.

 

More Insane Liberal Beliefs REPRINT

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

From October 7, 2014

The notions libs ‘n’ progs have rattling around in their skulls, who can explain them? It’s all I can do just to collect them. Here are a few more gems from this collection.

*The murdering savages who call themselves “The Islamic State” have nothing to do with Islam. Nope, nothing at all.

*It’s OK to import Ebola into this country because no Americans will catch it. We know this because the government tells us so.

*Pouring uncounted millions of illegal aliens into the country all at once, many of them carrying all sorts of tropical diseases, most of them unemployed and unemployable, hardly any of them able to speak English, will turn out to be a good thing for America. Honest.

*Chelsea Clinton is America’s bright hope for the future.

I’m sorry, but that last one has upset me. I just can’t face any more of these preposterous beliefs today. Besides, you can think of as many as I can. Please feel free to add to the list.

Our New Year’s Eve REPRINT

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

From January 1, 2015

Patty and I like to spend New Year’s Eve quietly, at home. So we did a jigsaw puzzle, enjoyed a nice supper, had a nap, and then watched an Inspector Morse episode. At the approach of midnight, we bundled up and went outside to watch our town’s annual New Year’s Eve fireworks display, which is a trial for our cats.

Wham-boom-boom! Fifteen minutes of loud and gaudy fireworks. By “loud” I mean you could feel it in your chest. I wonder what that does if you’re wearing a pacemaker.

The show concluded, my wife went immediately to the Drudge Report and found a story, with video, of some hapless woman who suffered a little tiny cat scratch and soon discovered that some parasitic life-form was crawling around under her skin. It turned out to be a hookworm.

Next, Patty read me a story about some racist ninny complaining about Target’s ad for its new Little Orphan Annie dress. The complaint was that Target’s model was white, that is Caucasian, “and Little Orphan Annie doesn’t look like that!” Apparently Annie is now supposed to be black, after being white for more years than I’ve been alive. Racism strikes again! How dare they show an Orphan Annie who isn’t black?

“You know what?” I said. “I don’t want to hear any more of this. The year is only minutes old, and already I’ve heard about some gruesome worm eating up this woman’s flesh, and some utterly inane complaint about something a sane person wouldn’t even notice. I mean, I just can’t wait to see what I’m gonna dream about tonight!”

Well, all it proves is that our problems have all followed us into 2015.

Meanwhile, the Japanese are working their butts off to replace real people with robots–the more realistic, the better. It seems they don’t want anything much to do with real, live people anymore, and their collapsing birth rate shows it.

Proverbs 8:36, “[A]ll they that hate me love death,” sums up the current state of our culture.

Neverthless, “The LORD reigneth” (Psalm 99:1, and many places elsewhere). And, “The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to usward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance” (2 Peter:9).

It’s something to remember. All year long.

An Answer to a Bible-Basher REPRINT

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From November 21, 2013

“Would you be willing to stand in a court of law and say that, yes, Jonah did in fact spend three days in the belly of a great fish?”

Sooner or later, every high-school charlie trots out this ancient cliche. They hug themselves, grinning at the thought of how they’ve just cut the floor out from everyone who believes the Bible.

If there’s one thing worse than an idiot, it’s a boring idiot. At least give us some fresh, creative idiocy–not this old stuff that’s been going round and round since 1563.

So a “court of law” is to be the high authority? For most of American history, a witness in a court of law had to swear on the Bible, by almighty God, that his evidence is true. Would the witness ever have been asked to swear on the Bible that the Bible isn’t true? Political correctness has in recent years moved us to abandon this practice; but to this day, the President of the United States takes his oath of office with his hand on the Bible.

But if the court of law really is the high authority, does every witness tell the truth? Are we sure of hearing nothing but the truth in any court of law?

The Bible must be fiction, reasons the fool who is wise in his own eyes, because it includes accounts of miracles. A miracle is something that our experience of the world tells us cannot happen. More–it’s something the Experts tell us cannot happen. Miracles happen in the Bible, therefor the Bible can’t be true.

But the Bible attributes miracles to God, and recognizes them as rare exceptions to the laws of nature. That’s what makes them miracles. Indeed, Moses got in serious trouble for taking credit to himself for one of God’s miracles–“Hear now, ye rebels; must we fetch you water out of this rock?” (Numbers 20:10)

So let’s ask the Bible-basher a question.

Would you be willing to stand in a court of law and say, yes, life arose from non-living materials and “evolved” into dinosaurs, rosebushes, and Mozart?

Now who’s talking miracles?

Fallacies of Pop Christianity REPRINT

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

From February 16, 2013

 

With the churches in a coma when it comes to teaching the Bible, American Christians have collected some pretty funny ideas about theology. These may be described as Pop Christianity, as distinct from the real thing propounded in the Bible. Here are three of its major tenets.

1. If Jesus didn’t explicitly say it was wrong, it must be all right. This is the fallback position for liberals in the Church to excuse their espousal of sodomy: Jesus never gave a sermon against it. He didn’t explicitly condemn pedophilia, drunk driving, or voter fraud, either. But it’s a great excuse for supporting something that the Bible calls abomination.

2. Judge not. Never, never, never! Especially do not judge prominent “progressives” and their policies, notorious perverts, morality-less celebrities, or anybody who says God’s Word is poobah. This precept is based on two words lifted from one verse (Matthew 5:25) and used to cancel out the whole rest of the Bible. But really, it’s not inexcusably self-righteous to judge Jerry Sandusky or the U. S. Senate.

3. Our beliefs must conform to Science. All the stuff in the Bible that jars with Big Science dogmas like Evolution, the Big Bang, or whatever–that Bible content must either be totally ignored, or else dismissed as “poetry” or “just a figure of speech” (making it confusing to keep track of the real poetry and real figurative language in the Bible). This is to make the pronouncements of sinful mortals in lab coats a higher standard of truth than God’s own Word.

These are the Big Three of Pop Christianity, and very much responsible for our country being the way it is. It has rushed into the vacuum created by the negligence of churches.

Go ahead: quiz your pastor, and see how much of this pop pablum has crept into his theology.

Is the Lord Trying to Tell Me Something? REPRINT

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Extinct hoofed animals looked like gorilla-horse | Earth Archives

 

From June 15, 2020

Knuckle-bear and calf, Lintum Forest

I am so not ready to go back to writing about the Chinese Communist Wuhan Death Virus, riots, soulless white liberals, and all that other schiff that everybody else is writing about. I am so not up for it, it isn’t funny.

That’s not like me. Usually on Monday I’m ready to wade back into the hurly-burly. So why am I thinking that today I’d like to work on my new book and put up a few blog posts that have nothing to do with Far Left Crazy trying to murder our country? I mean, we have to fight them, and we have to win.

But is God telling me, “I will fight them, boy. You go write your book”?

Yeahbut, yeahbut–Lord, what about my Newswithviews column?

“You don’t even know what you want to write for that. If I told you to sit down and write it today, you’d be stuck. So don’t worry about it.”

Tomorrow, then. I’ll get back into the melee tomorrow. I guess.

 

 

Yes, the Culture Really Does Matter REPRINT

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

 

From January 29, 2015

It looks like I won’t be getting the radio coverage I’d hoped for, to launch The Glass Bridge. They’ve got all this current events stuff to cover instead. Deflated footballs, for instance. The reason I get, boiled down, is, “It’s only a novel and we don’t cover novels, it’s not important enough.”

Okay–one novel, so what? Whose worldview is going to be changed by one novel? (In fact, that happened to me when I read Windswept House by Malachi Martin: changed me from somewhat pro-abortion to 100% pro-life.) My book is Young Adults fiction, which makes it even less important. Who cares what the kids are reading? And on top of that, it’s fantasy, which makes it less important still. That’s about as unimportant as it gets.

I wonder if any of our conservative, pro-family media commentators have any idea of just how much YA fantasy is out there. Boxcar-loads of it! Thousands and thousands of titles. Tons and tons of it.

And it’s only part of a larger pop culture entertainment matrix, along with movies, TV, video games, etc.

This is–and I do not exaggerate–a culture that embraces and promotes paganism, disbelief in God and His word, sexual randomness, and fosters rigid conformity (they call it “diversity”) while at the same time seducing the audience with visions of impossible personal autonomy. That’s why so many of those novels feature 11-year-old kids acquiring super powers or secret martial arts so they can beat up able-bodied adult men. That’s why The Invincible Female Warrior has become a fixture in this genre.

This is a popular culture that is shaping our world. This is the worldview being pumped into the brains of the next generation.

I don’t believe it’s possible for a child to consume thousands of hours of this stuff and still grow up to be sensible, responsible, thoughtful, and Christian.

One novel, one movie, so what–how much harm can it do?

But hundreds, or thousands, of novels, music videos, movies, TV shows, and video games–go ahead, tell me that has no effect in shaping the consumer’s mind.

I do what I can to push against the tide. What can I do? Not much. But, as Puddleglum said, that doesn’t let us off following Aslan’s signs.

The way the world is, is not decided by the stuff that’s in the headlines. It’s decided by what’s in the people’s hearts and heads.

But if you’re convinced it’s only fantasy, and really doesn’t matter… Well, please think it over. Because I’m pretty sure it does.

The Magic of Evolution (Add Bronx Cheer)

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From January 6 2013

 

Which of these two statements has a higher information content?

1. Over the course of time, some of our remote ancestors evolved legs from fins; and later they evolved more sophisticated brains.

2. Over the course of time, some of our remote ancestors abracadabra’ed legs from fins; and later they presto’ed more sophisticated brains.

If you answered “Number One,” please think again. Both statements have exactly the same information content: Zilch.

Yesterday Patty and I enjoyed watching Walking With Monsters, which forms a trilogy with Walking With Dinosaurs and Walking With Beasts. The computer-generated  creatures, which don’t look computer-generated at all, are a fantasy-writer’s dream come true. (When you read the climax of The Thunder King, you’ll see how these feats of the imagination have inspired some of my own.) Yes, they look real. They’re a treat to watch.

But the narrative text of these videos, alas, is Darwinist fairy-tales from beginning to end. We are asked to believe, for instance, that amphibians “evolved” hard-shelled eggs and scaly skins to free them from dependence on a water habitat. Who would’ve ever believed amphibians were smart enough to do that? Without even the benefit of a drawing-board! But of course the fairy-tale is that these important changes “just happened” by chance over millions of years. We can’t observe them for ourselves, we can’t in any way test the hypothesis, we can’t explain why horseshoe crabs are still horseshoe crabs after all these countless eons–but if you don’t believe the fairy-tale, somehow that makes you a narrow-minded nebbish. How dare you ask for evidence? Why, look at the fossils!

All right, I’m looking. In fact, I’ve been looking at the fossils all my life. And what they tell me is that at various times in the past, there were animals present on the earth who aren’t around today, and that some of them were mind-bogglingly different from any animals that live today.

The fossils don’t tell me that fins turned into legs. Dogmatic Darwinists tell me that. They can’t tell me why everybody’s fins didn’t “evolve” into legs, or why so many amphibians obstinately persist in laying squishy eggs without shells. But they can tell me “You’re fired!” if I’m a high school or college biology teacher who asks impertinent questions.

A “science” that disallows questions is no science at all. My fantasies are clearly labeled as such. I wish the Darwinists would do the same.

Why I Fear for Britain

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

From February 18, 2016

I try to stay abreast of world events, but I pay particular attention to Canada and Britain. Canada, of course, is right next door. But why Britain? Because, like many Americans, I feel affection and affinity for the Mother Country: we are, as Churchill once said, two countries divided by a common language. But it also seems to me that the ills which affect Britain are common to all the Western countries, including my own; and that things that happen in Britain and Canada wind up happening here, too.

I have never been to England. I watch a great deal of British TV and movies, just about every day. I read a great deal of fiction by British writers, past and present. And I happen to think you can learn a lot about a nation by becoming familiar with its popular culture.

So I fear for the state of Christianity in Britain. What else am I to think, when episode after episode, in show after show, depicts Christians as at best irrelevant, at worst backward, evil, and dangerous? When actors like Hugh Laurie (atheist) and David Suchet (Christian) both say, in interviews, that Christianity in Britain isn’t what it used to be? Why should they lie about it?

As a Christian, I cannot think any good can come to a nation that turns away from Jesus Christ–especially a nation that’s been Christian for some 1,400 years.

Do I take TV shows and crime novels as literal truth? Of course not. Do I believe every article I read in British newspapers online? No, despite what you may have heard. And I do stay in touch with email friends in Britain and Canada.

From all these different sources, I’m getting the same message: Britain is rejecting her Christian heritage, and–like our own–her culture is coarsening, largely as the result of self-destructive leadership.

Of course, if you’re a fan of “gay marriage,” growth of government, multiculturalism, political correctness, speech codes, and all the rest–well, you’re getting it. In all the Western countries you’re getting all that stuff, and then some.

And so I fear for Britain, as I fear for my own country, and for the same reasons. We as nations have sinned, and we need to repent. Instead, our leaders draft and pursue policies which seem to be based on the principle that evil is good, and good is evil; and the people seem content to have it so.

But not all of us.

No, not all of us.