Tag: cultural musings

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

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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

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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.

Crazy Jane, the Queen of Spain

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From September 18, 2015

It isn’t always a picnic, being a member of a royal family. Consider the case of Juana la Loca–meaning “Crazy Joanna” or “Crazy Jane”–the first rightful queen of what was to become modern Spain.  She died in 1555 after being kept under close confinement for going on 40 years ( .https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joanna_of_Castile ).

Juana was among the most cultured and well-educated women of her time, mastering philosophy, classical languages, and music. She was also beautiful, and a royal heiress–all in all, a fine catch for any ambitious prince.

So why was she diagnosed as mentally ill, given that “Crazy Jane” nickname that’s lasted some 450 years, and locked up for most of her life?

First her father put her away, so he could continue to rule as a king in Aragon. That didn’t work out too well. Then her husband died, and the Hapsburg dynasty had her locked up so they could keep Spain for her infant son, the future Emperor Charles V. It seems everyone who had anything to gain in `16th century European politics was out to keep poor Juana locked up in a nunnery. And in every event the explanation given was her supposed mental illness–a diagnosis which is met with strong skepticism by today’s historians.

But of course Juana’s great exhibition of craziness was her reading and studying the work of Martin Luther, her defense of him and of his doctrine, and the suspicion that she had become a secret Protestant. With that to be held against her, there was no help for her.

And so she comes down to us as Crazy Jane–just as Richard III has come down to us as a hunchbacked monster who murdered the poor little princes in the Tower, his own nephews. The case against Richard is weak, and the case against Queen Juana even weaker.

I guess you can’t believe everything you read in the history books.

BBC’s Old ‘Narnia’ Series Was Better Than the Movies

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Not for the first time, and I hope not for the last, I’ve begun to watch the old BBC-TV production of C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia.

So far I’ve seen and reviewed all the new Narnia movies–and this old production from the 1980s runs rings around them. Yes, some of the costumes and special effects are primitive, even a bit silly–no fancy computer graphics, back then. But it doesn’t matter! These old shows captured the spirit of Narnia; and the new movies, for all their expensive and up-to-date production values, do not.

There’s plenty of good acting in the movies, and wonderful camera-work; but the writing is strictly third-rate. The movie-makers made any number of ridiculous decisions. It would be hard to say which was worst. Trying to turn Prince Caspian into a smouldering hunk? Turning Susan and Lucy into warrior princesses? Presenting Reepacheep as a kind of furry Bart Simpson? Or rewriting the whole doggone story, as they did with Voyage of the Dawn Treader? I find the effect of the beautiful cinematography of these films soon wears off, but my distaste for the multitude of follies still lingers.

Watching the old BBC version of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, I was struck by how Peter (Richard Dempsey) starts out as a high-handed little prig who never loses an opportunity to lord it over his younger brother, Edmund (Jonathan Scott); and by Edmund as a nasty little piece of goods, sly and smarmy and totally self-centered. Their experiences in Narnia–most importantly, their coming to know Aslan, the Great Lion, Lewis’ fantasy avatar for Our Lord Jesus Christ–change them to the core. The real Peter emerges as a merry, brave, and great-hearted boy on his way to manhood, while the real Edmund shows sober, wise, and courageous: he, too, will grow up into a great man.

But what stirred me most, as it always does, was Aslan himself. When Peter is knighted and blessed by Aslan, I could almost imagine what bliss it would be for me, if I could kneel before Christ, and lay my eyes on Him, and receive His blessing in person. It stirs me just to write about it.

And that most of all, I think, is what C.S. Lewis had in mind.

PS–You can get these old Chronicles via amazon.com.

From April 9, 2012

The Top Real-World Wacko Fantasies of 2011

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We fantasy writers are supposed to have vivid imaginations, but ours pale beside the imaginations of our public leaders and intelligentsia. Their imaginings border on the delusional.

This was very clearly demonstrated all throughout 2011. Below are some of the most lurid examples of it.

1. The government can–and should–enforce “income equality.” Where does fantasy end, and sheer madness begin? Probably here. Furthermore, politicians who try to get ahead by inciting class warfare are playing with fire.

The aims and rhetoric of Occupy Wall Street and its sponsors among the politicos and movie stars are so insanely fantastical as to be self-evident.

2. “Gender is a spectrum.” Expect to see a lot more of this movement in the near future, especially in the public schools and colleges. It’s coming down from the top, having been enthusiastically endorsed and pushed by the likes of the European Court, the National Education Association, the Canadian government, and Satan.

To sum it up in a very few words, children are to be taught, “You can be a boy one day and a girl the next–it all depends on how you feel!”

Continue Reading “The Top Real-World Wacko Fantasies of 2011” →

Oh, Boy! ‘Post-Truth’ Politics

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[S]hall their unbelief make the faith of God without effect? God forbid: yea, let God be true, but every man a liar…   –Romans 3:3-4

The Oxford English Dictionary has selected, as its Word of the Year for 2016, the charming little term, “post-truth,” as in “post-truth politics” ( http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/news/oxford-english-dictionary-names-post-truth-word-of-the-year-w450650 ).

Somehow I missed that one. Post-truth politics is defined as repeated appeals to emotion, continuous repetition of talking points, and not bothering to answer facts offered in rebuttal. Disingenuously, this term has been applied mostly to the Brexit movement and to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign–as if it were any kind of truth at all that Britain ought to remain in the European Union no matter what, and, even more preposterous, that Hillary Clinton should have been elected president.

I’m pretty sure “post-truth” ought to refer to anything said by any member of the Democrat Party, anytime, anywhere.

Let us not forget that, for the past 20 yours or so, the sages at our collidges have been teaching that there’s no such thing as truth, there’s only “your truth” and “my truth” (even though their “truth” is always insisted upon as the only permitted point of view)–and this teaching has borne fruit.

Go ahead, just try to get some true truth out of the nooze media, the government, Hollywood, or any public school or university. Let everybody know if you succeed!

But we are sure God wishes us to tell the truth, and value it, and resist the post-modern fetish for lying.

From 2016

REPRINT Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part I Jan 14, 2011

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Movie Review by Lee Duigon

It’s hard to review a piece of a movie-which, for all its nearly three-hour length, is what this is. If you haven’t seen the earlier Harry Potter movies, or read the books, watching this movie will be like entering a roomful of strangers all talking about people and incidents you have never heard of. There’s no flashing back to make things clear, no explanations provided for anything. If you’re not a Harry Potter fan, you can forget about understanding this film.

So why review it, then?

J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter novels have sold millions and millions of copies, and millions of movie tickets, too. This is the most successful series of books ever published, and it has revolutionized young readers’ fiction. It would be irresponsible to ignore it.

Because Harry Potter is such a cultural phenomenon, and this movie is a slice of it, we can look at it to see what it can tell us about our culture. What has Harry Potter taken out of our culture, and what has it put in?

Magic and Science

In the alternative universe of Harry Potter, everything important gets done by magic-or “wizarding,” as they sometimes call it. Witches, wizards, and warlocks are the elite of that world.

As a thought experiment, plug in “science” for “magic”-and you’ll see that the Harry Potter world pretty closely approximates our own. By “science” we mean what Jean-Marc Berthoud calls “the cultural domination of our whole culture by a purely mathematical model of the universe (the so-called scientific worldview, valid in fact only in its strictly limited domain, that of the measurable) as normative of every aspect of reality.”1

Materialistic “science” in our culture has excluded God. In Harry Potter-land, “magic” does the same. Given the awesome power of magic in that world, there would appear to be no place for God.

Despite various efforts to spin the Potter books as some obscure kind of Christian enterprise, we see no evidence at all in Deathly Hallows I that there is any Christianity at work in any of the characters’ lives, or any other recognizable religion, for that matter. Yes, there is one brief scene in which we see a village church with people inside it singing Christmas carols. What of it? Millions of Americans celebrate Christmas as a generic holiday and are dead to its religious significance. And every now and then, a character in the movie says, “my God.” But that doesn’t mean that they believe in God. For millions of Americans, “God” and even “Jesus” are just words to be tossed casually into a sentence, stripped of all meaning.

J. K. Rowling has been accused of promoting witchcraft. But I think it important to note that in Deathly Hallows I, there is no hint of any power higher than that of the magician. Paganism is supposed to feature pagan gods and goddesses, but we see no gods here. The world of Harry Potter much more closely resembles the fantasy world of The Humanist Manifesto II than it does anything in paganism. Take the Humanist Manifesto and substitute “magic” or “wizarding” for words like “science” and “technology,” and you will instantly find yourself in Harry Potter’s universe.2

Thus we discover that Rowling is not promoting paganism. Wittingly or not, she is promoting humanism.

Continue Reading “REPRINT Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part I Jan 14, 2011” →

Important Crapola: The Evolutionary Fallacy

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Ornithomimus dinosaur running computer artwork Ornithomimus meaning 'bird-mimic' was agile ostrich-like omnivore about 1 8-2 4 Stock Photo - Alamy

When I was growing up, dinosaurs were depicted as primitive, sluggish, brainless hulks doomed to extinction; but now we know better. They weren’t primitive at all.

We’ve outgrown our assumptions about the dinosaurs (adroitly replacing them with new assumptions!), but we haven’t outgrown our evolutionary fallacies concerning just about everything else.

“New! Improved!” What 1950s commercial failed to promise that? It captures the fallacy rather well: Whatever is new is better than whatever preceded it.

This way of thinking explains a lot of Far Left Crazy. All any idea has to be is new–and of course the more shockingly new, the better. So we went from shacking up to homosexuality to transgender and are on our way to pedophilia, and every poor doofus who hasn’t outgrown college is hopping on board the lunatic express, destination unknown.

As they see it, everything naturally evolves to perfection, everything is constantly improving. It’s better if an all-powerful government helps it along by crushing everything and everybody that’s “old.” And sometimes what you need to hustle the process along is a violent revolution followed by a reign of terror. (We are now looking at sickeningly familiar patterns of history.) Best of all, “everything” started just by means of some cosmic accident–so there’s no God, no immutable moral laws, no throne of righteousness. Just evolution. New is always better.

So, yeah, we tried that freedom stuff, it got old and doesn’t work anymore, it’s time to move on… we’ll set up a social credit system, you’ll own nothing and be happy, socialism will make the flowers grow–(please, mommy, make it stop!).

The hilarious thing about it is that nothing is older, staler, more worn-out, more old-hat, more flagrantly false than all the Far Left horse-schiff. If anything resembles the old stereotype of the dinosaur, it’s all forms of leftism. The fallacy contains a paradox.

Gee, what’ll they attach their brains to after they get bored with pedophilia?