I will be away from my keyboard for a week.
I am planning on traveling in astral form to a hidden city in Tibet, discovering the secret subterranean gateway to Agarththa, the buried supercivilization in Pellucidar inhabited by the Original Masters guiding human evolution.
There I intend to achieve enlightenment, overcoming all barriers and boundaries of time, space, nature, and the human condition.
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Nolan’s ODESSEY ? Not interested. Alan Moore’s WATCHMAN? No. Disney’s LAST JEDI? Pshaw.
Storytelling has three tasks: to glorify God, to recall the deeds of our ancestors, and to teach the youth to love the lovely and hate the hateful. Sublime beauty, elevated language, humor, are the means used.
Modern and Postmodern crap has tree tasks: blasphemy, defamation of our ancestors, and to teach the youth to hate the lovely and love the hateful. The means used are ugliness, vulgarity, and “cancel culture” levels of humorlessness.
It is anti-storytelling.
Even a fair-minded man does not need to drain the whole wine-bottle if the first sip, or even the perfume, betrays that it contains vinegar, not wine.
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One problem I had when I lost my atheism was deciding, now that I had seen God and believed in God, into which House of God to go on the Lord’s Day to worship and pray.
The decision was easier for me, as a complete outsider, than it would be for someone raised in the faith, pondering whether to switch one denomination for another.
How does an outsider choose?
The first thing to note is that this is not a quarrel between brothers. It is a quarrel between brothers, one of whom sides with his mother, and one of whom is against. Both spring from the same mother. One is a loyalist. The other is a reformer. In this case, the mother is the Mother Church.
This reduces the debate to a stark choice:
One either (1) joins the Church, and believes what she teaches; or (2) selects one denomination among many based on whatever teachings one prefers or invents for oneself.
Option two assumes one knows which teachings are correct before one is taught them, or has the right to challenge them afterward. The student knows more than the teacher. The baby knows more than the mother. Option two assumes one has a privileged source of information not open to the Church, with authority to overrule her.
But, of course, an outsider would have no preconceived notions nor ready answers to the question of which teachings are right, whose claim of authority is just, and what sources of information are trustworthy.
Nonetheless, a matter of logic, the privileged source of information used by the Reformer to overrule the Church cannot be the scriptures written and canonized by the Church, because the same authority that canonizes written scripture also canonized unwritten tradition. To reject one is to reject both. To accept one is to accept both.
Again, if Joseph Smith or Mohammed claim to be a prophet, and can display signs and wonders to confirm his claim, but his teaching is not in agreement with scripture and tradition, that scripture and tradition cannot affirm him to be a prophet.
If the reformer merely claims to have the authority to remove books from scripture or remove teachings from tradition, based on his own inspired insight and human reason, then he is appealing to the selfsame authority he is also at the same time rejecting.
Why listen to this reformer rather than to John the Apostle, who learned from Christ; or Polycarp, who learned from John; or Irenaeus, who learned from Polycarp?
And this reformer is not producing any signs and wonder proving that he speaks for God.
When I ceased being an atheist, and turned to find which denomination to join, what I found was a quarrel between brothers, but who would not turn to Mother Church or Father in Heaven to settle the matter.
Instead, some of the brothers took the books written by the Church, removed seven of them, and pointed to the book and said, “this is the only true Church!”
When I was asked, “Understandest thou what thou readest?” I asked in turn “How can I, except some man should guide me?” The brother Reformer answered, “Do not listen to the Irenaeus, Polycarp, or John. Do not listen to the Church that wrote these books and was given authority from Christ to interpret and teach them. I alone know the meaning of the books, and which books to remove. Do not take the WISDOM OF SOLOMON to be inerrant! That is Deuterocanonical.”
But when I ask, “On whose authority do you speak? In whose name do you reject the Wisdom of Solomon?” I am doubtfully answered.
My question is honest, but the answers are mirk. I am answered either by someone who says he does not care about the past, or by someone who says to learn Church teaching is a burden too heavy to bear.
I ask him whether he would prefer to burn in Hell rather than say Mary was born without sin. His opinion was that God would not demand the faithful to believe anything complex or confusing. Only clean and simple doctrines can be necessary for salvation. I did not ask him about the Trinity.
Again, I read Thomas Paine. In AGE OF REASON, he gives an argument to reject the authority of the scripture which was word for word the same as the Reformers’ argument to reject the authority of the Church. Paine says the Bible should not contain any material that would shock the conscience of a child: no reports of murder, rape, incest, or wrongdoing. Paine says nature and natural reason are sufficient to deduce the existence of a divine creator, whose wisdom and benevolence are self evident.
I seem to recall Calvin likewise saying that which books belong in scripture and which do not are likewise self evident, as obvious as whether a bitten fruit is sweet or sour in the mouth.
Or, when I ask my honest question of a Reformer, I am not answered at all, and the response is merely to change the topic to speak about some other matter, such as the opinion of Jerome, or the findings of Pharisees from the Tenth Century compiling Masoretic texts (which, as best history can tell, is not the scriptures as read and quoted by the disciples of Christ).
Such is the problem, at least, from my perspective as an outsider, coming in.
I hold no enmity to any side, but it is you and your brothers who quarreled, and, even though surrounded by enemies on all sides, have not mended your quarrels. Logic forces me to take up one side, regardless of my personal preferences: Here I stand. I can do not otherwise.
Reviewing the full-length animated Disney features in order, we are nearing the end of the Disney Renaissance. This current film and the next enjoy well-earned iconic fame.
Disney often alternates releases of stories of princesses, meant to appeal to girls, with stories of heroes, meant to appeal to boys, and so has a habit of following Norse mermaid with Arabic streetrat with Powatan princess with Parisian hunchback. In this case, it is the boy’s turn, and the Hellenic hero of heroes is our star.
HERCULES (1997) tells the story of the ancient Greek demigod as a modern athletic superstar, complete with merchandize, sports shoes and energy drinks, attempting to regain his lost godhood by learning to be a true hero. Along the way he finds unexpected love, and, in truly heroic fashion, sacrifices everything he thought he desired to achieve it.
When asked the meaning of life, the modern schoolboy answers: “Life has no predefined meaning. Everyone must create his own goals.”
The schoolboy should receive a flunking grade for lack of basic reasoning skills. Nothing comes from nothing. A creature with no goals cannot create goals, because the goal of creating goals is itself a goal.
Consider:
Suppose a creature — let us call it a shmoo — appeared out of nowhere for no reason in the middle of a gray void. He has no desires, no goals, no wants, no needs. Its life is without predefined meaning.
Then a voice in the void shouts at the creature, “Create a goal!”
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“Why doesn’t the Church sell all its fine art and precious metals to feed the poor?”
When someone asks this question, writes Fr. Gabriel Mosher, “he is naturally defaulting to his personal experience of private ownership and then projecting that upon the institution of the Church and its ministers. The appropriate disposition, however, clearly perceives the distinction between the private and the common good.
“Like a museum, the Church acts as a steward of these beautiful creations for the sake of all people. Unlike in a museum, the Church sets these objects of devotion to work for the glory of God and to aid the faithful as they journey toward communion with the incarnate and triune God.
“If this art existed merely for those who could afford to commission it, then it would only unjustly impoverish the faithful.”
If Darwinism is true, the human brain is not a tool.
A tool is an objected designed for a use: hammers to hammer nails, screwdrivers to drive screws.
Now, if an intelligent being, such as an apeman, can pick up an object, such as a rock, and use it as a hammer to hammer open a clam his fingers are not strong enough to open, well, then, he is using a tool, even if he had not made a tool.
The rock is not itself designed to be a hammer, but the act when an apeman raises it overhead is designed, it is deliberate. The rock itself is useful to him only by happy accident. It was not meant by the volcano who made it into its current shape to fit the fingers of an apeman.
So we have two cases: tools deliberately designed to be tools (as a hammer) and natural objects deliberately used as if they were tools (as using a rock to hammer a clam).
Now, in the case of the human brain, if it is not a tool, not designed, it is an object like a rock: merely a thing found lying around. But if the brain is not designed, it is not a tool.
It is not a tool used for the process of deliberation. It is not a tool at all. It is a natural object, like a rock, which someone or something apparently could use for the act of deliberation, even if that is not its designed function.
The question then remains, where does the deliberation arise, if the brain is not and cannot be a tool of deliberation? If the brain is not “for” anything, how can we, as creatures with brains, use our brains “for” the deliberate act of reasoning, unless we already have a brain that is for this?
A tool-using apeman can turn a rock into a hammer merely by picking it up and using it for this. His brain allows him to perform this deliberate act.
But a non-tool using ape cannot turn an irrational ape-brain into a rational man-brain by a deliberate act, since deliberations only arise from brains already being so used.
And if an irrational ape-brain by mischance falls into the same chemical and neural composition as a rational man-brain, this is not a purposeful act.
It would be like a dislodged rock smashing open a clam by accident. Such a rock is not a tool and is not a natural object being used as a tool.
So the human brain, if Darwin is true, is neither a tool designed to reason, nor is it a non-rational object picked and used for reasoning by happy accident.
But, if so, then no reasoning is deliberate, hence is not reasoning.
This is true about all reasoning, including whatever reasoning Darwin used to invent and defend his theory.
Myself, I have no interest in seeing the latest modern or postmodern reinterpretation of Homer’s ODYSSEY, nor of any ancient ancient classic, because the very thing that makes the ancient classic both ancient and classic is its timelessness hence its eternal relevance.
Such works always have something profound to say, regardless of year or season.
Modernized or postmodernized works are the opposite: because they are timely, they are out of date by printing time, and what they had to say is already old news. If, for example, a film maker wants to portray Odysseus as a Vietnam Vet with Post-traumatic Stress Disorder, addicted to the drugs of the lotus-eaters to drown his guilt, he harps on a theme from the generation of the moonshot.
Such works might be a perfectly well crafted, but they are a product of their time, and must be appreciated in that light.
Let me explain what provoked my observation.
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Darwin held that Man is not made in the image and likeness of God, because, in the proper sense of the term, Man is not made at all.
Man is instead a mere accident of unintentional atomic and chemical motions whereby some self-replicating molecules quite pointlessly replicated themselves.
Accumulated errors in the self-replication process led to statistical variations in resulting organisms, whose traits were better suited to some environments than others. Self-replication errors in apelike ancestors produced Man.
Hence, Man is not essentially different from any beast or plant or microbe, nor is life essentially different from any other set of inanimate molecular motions.
All is without design and without aim.
Catholic Bard was kind enough to interview me for his website. He is trying to profile Christian writers and artists in general, and Catholics in particular.
I may do a proper film review in days to come, if time permits, but for now this is merely a note to anyone who cannot remember the last time he went into a film a saw a good one:
Go see YOUNG WASHINGTON by Angels studios.
Well acted, period accurate, dramatic yet understated, and, at times, adorned with real quotes from Washington’s letters and journals. Ironically, this period accuracy will disappoint those used to Hollywood films, which are designed to be digested without chewing.
It neither makes Washington into a saint nor into a devil, but portrays him as a young man with ambition seeking to better his station in a society that does not welcome such things.
The acting was particularly well done. William Franklyn-Miller
portrays George Washington as a dignified and brave young man in whom the later general can be, perhaps, in part, adumbrated. George Washington in real life was towering tall, and the actor here fills that part well.
Mia Rogers does a stand out performance as his youthful infatuation, Sally Carry. And I particularly liked Ryan Begay as Tanacharison the Seneca war leader, called Half-King.
My limited historical knowledge detected no inaccuracies. After the film, I looked briefly online, and found no historians making any honest complaint. Dishonest complaint, yes, of course, those I found in abundance, but those were all matters of taste or emphasis, not matters of fact.
If you hear critics warning you away, be skeptical of those critics.
Allow me to propose that a scientific theory, to be scientific, must predict a result where a second result, that is also possible, does not come about.
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My TUSCANY BAY BOOK, my faithful publisher, is pleased to announce STARQUEST vol IX: SPACE PRINCESS of ARCADIA is available for preorder.
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