Welborn’s Rule #27 strikes again!

In a striking display of idiocy, once again the British press manages to sensationalize and bungle a story on the Catholic Church. Recycle or go to Hell, warns Vatican. Seriously?

Failing to recycle plastic bags could find you spending eternity in Hell, the Vatican said after drawing up a list of seven deadly sins for our times.

…

The “sins of yesteryear” – sloth, envy, gluttony, greed, lust, wrath and pride – have a “rather individualistic dimension”, he told the Osservatore Romano, the official Vatican newspaper.

The new seven deadly, or mortal, sins are designed to make worshippers realise that their vices have an effect on others as well.

“The sins of today have a social resonance as well as an individual one,” said Mgr Girotti. “In effect, it is more important than ever to pay attention to your sins.”

According to Roman Catholic doctrine, mortal sins are a “grave violation of God’s law” and bring about “eternal death” if unrepented by the act of confession.

They are far more serious than venial sins, which impede a soul’s progress in the exercise of virtue and moral good.

Mgr Girotti said genetic modification, carrying out experiments on humans, polluting the environment, causing social injustice, causing poverty, becoming obscenely wealthy and taking drugs were all mortal sins.

Unfortunately, I don’t have a translated copy of the interview with L’Osservatore Romano so I can’t say for sure that the word “mortal” was never used in regard to these sins, but the whole thing is rather preposterous, especially since it supposedly comes from an archbishop. Reuters reports on the same story, never mentioning the words “seven”, “deadly”, or “mortal”.

Either way, I think the way they’ve soundbited Archbishop Girotti’s words is pretty atrocious. It seems that his intent was to discuss sins that are present today which haven’t really been issues in the past, or have recently increased in seriousness. Leave it to the press…

…at which he was crumbly, and spooned.

While searching for a fix to a Mac problem not too long ago, I came across a blog post that had a few spam comments. But these weren’t just any spam comments; no, they were special. There were three of them, mixtures of Biblical passages with some other random literature, interspersed with links to traditional spam stuff. Check it out for yourself, it’s surprisingly funny:

“We’re only human”

Lana just ran across this video. It’s SNL’s opening skit from last Saturday’s show, focusing on the media’s love for Sen. Obama. It’s part funny and part sad; this presidential election really is just a glorified American Idol.

Right now it’s okay for everyone to worship Obama because he is the perfect target for America’s romantic notions of secular messianism (the underdog – the wonderful, unknown person who rises from obscurity to be the best we could have ever hoped for). If he had come into this race being the projected frontrunner, I don’t think he would be riding the wave of emotions that he’s benefiting from now.

In Defense of the West

People who are not fond of the direction our culture has taken are fond of pointing to the way that we’ve been destroying the earth in pursuit of more bountiful harvests. As soon as we understood the chemical foundation of fertility, we had to exploit it; in the process, we ended up trampling across things that we didn’t understand, things that shouldn’t be trampled on.

This has been the framework of Western history in the context of science over the last several decades, but it reflects a Western approach that goes back for centuries. There is a quasi-scientific approach to theology in the West. Certain ideas come up which seem to fit into the existing framework; those ideas gain popularity and are applied widely. Over time, the application of some of those ideas turn out to be healthy and beneficial, and are integrated into Tradition. Those that turn out to be destructive and unhealthy are (hopefully) rejected before too much damage is done. That’s painting with a very broad brush, but I think it’s a fair assessment.

Every generation is faced with the destructive consequences of certain ideas or a misapplication of them. In the past, people would fight Western battles on Western terms, fighting bad ideas with good ideas. There have always been those who have blamed the West for over-reaching and getting into things we shouldn’t, and decide that we’re wrong for deconstructing the world and exploiting it. Such resistance has been found within Western culture itself, but generally it was overcome in time through the beneficial applications of those ideas. If, on the other hand, the applications of the idea turned out to be oppressively bad, those bad applications tended to last if there was a broad acknowledgement that either it couldn’t be helped or it shouldn’t be helped. Things are a little different in today’s world; people are quickly made aware of the bad things in the world and are able to react in ways that they weren’t in the past. One of the newer responses that people have to the West’s overreaching is a rejection of the West wholesale, and turning to Eastern thought and religion. I think a lot of the much-touted Orthodox boomlet is a derivative of this: people see destructive outcomes in the West, and decide that we’ve gone too far, running to the East where people don’t really care for analytical science or theology, never reach into the mysteries of the universe. I was one of those people for a short time. However, as I reflected on the evils of science and theology in the West, I only found reasons not to reject the West.

One of the remarkable things about the West, and the thing that has set us apart from all other cultures in the world in any part of history, is the development of modern science. I think everybody would agree on that. Science, in my opinion, is nothing more than a strong discipline of a culture’s knowledge and exploration. Things that were once anecdotal, preserved in oral traditions of extant societies, are now codified, checked and double-checked, and then published for everybody. The largest driving force behind modern science has been self-interest and the felt need to exploit the discoveries that we make. The problems arise when the exploitation fails to take into account some fact that is as of yet unknown. Many people believe that the two – science and exploitation – are indivisible. Understanding only makes people want to use that understanding to their advantage, and people can’t be stopped from using it. It goes back to the Garden of Eden – understanding and knowledge were tied together inexorably with sin, or at least an occasion or tendency to sin.

What is the answer? In my opinion, the answer is not to forsake all things Western, but to learn to integrate the best of the West and the East. I think there is a lot to be said for Eastern wisdom, and goodness knows we need it now. As the West gains more tools with which to work, our capacity for good and our capacity for evil has increased exponentially. Now is the time for people to advocate that we start scaling back our mass-scale experimentation, to learn from the mistakes we’ve made and not try universal exploitation any more. It would be much safer and more productive to begin using agricultural experimentation in a certain, limited location and allow a few generations to pass before it would be brought to the wider public.

As a Westerner, I will assert that the evil is not the science, not the delving into matters unknown, but the exploitation of what we find. Thus, by encouraging science and discovery while also encouraging prudence and patience in applications, we can reap the benefits while avoiding the pitfalls. Forsaking the West will only make things worse. Take a moment to see beyond this period in history. Those who see the problems with industrial farming and talk about them are Westerners. The people who choose to buy organic foods are Westerners. The people who seek to correct the destructive ideas are Westerners, just as those who originated the destructive ideas were Western. This is the strength and resilience of the West: when we cause problems, we turn away from them, we fix them as best we can. The only reason that people are now aware of the destructive qualities of modern farming because of the fact that it was attempted. The only reason people are embracing organic foods is because people are aware of the destructive qualities of industrially produced food. However, the West’s growing interest in a more natural approach to farming is now combined with increased knowledge on what makes farming work, and what makes it healthy or unhealthy, things that were never known until now. Yes, the West has done things that harmed the earth and ourselves. But with that experience comes wisdom and the ability to turn away from the harmful habits of the past.

Will a wiser approach be adopted in the West? It’s too early to tell. Of course, in America there is a lot of resistance to the idea. We’re greedy. But there is a strong, flourishing movement which aims to restrain our exploitation of the environment; you see the efforts against global warming, against deforestation, against industrial agriculture. These movements are ten times stronger than they were even a decade ago, and I don’t think it’s impossible to hope that wisdom will win the day and the West will become a bit more mature in the way we look at each other and the world around us.

The West

Rod Dreher wrote a post this morning considering the difference between East and West, particularly in the West’s infatuation with deconstruction and manipulation, compared to the East’s respect for mysteries and hands-off approach to certain topics.

This topic is something that has been close to the forefront of my mind for the past year as I’ve been investigating Catholicism and Orthodoxy. I’d like to deal directly with the physical problems we face here in the West in context of Western theology and history, but I’m not quite sure how I’ll structure it yet.

I am a scientist, not a theologian, and I can’t say that I’ve given as much thought to this topic as some have. However, I do believe what I say very strongly, and I am willing to defend it insofar as I believe it is true. I haven’t seen anybody really approach the topic in a way that I can agree with, but I find it difficult to think that I am alone on this. My intent is to “ping” the world out there more than to prove anything to anybody.

Kosovo

I would like to know more about what’s actually going on with Kosovo. As an Orthofriendly person, I am somewhat aware of the Serbian position and why the Slavic cultures of the world are sensitive about this, and I am also pretty sure that I remember that the Kosovar secessionists are largely Muslim. Of course, as always the Christian-Muslim dispute always gets played down by the media. They seem pretty upbeat about the secession: I read this article this morning and immediately noticed the tone of the article: much of it focused on the words of the new PM Hashim Thaci, followed by this little editorial gem:

Thaci pledged that the new nation would be “a democratic, multiethnic state” – an attempt to reach out to Serbs who consider Kosovo the cradle of their medieval culture and religion.

Not only is Kosovo going to be a “democratic, multiethnic state” (is Serbia not?), but Mr. Thaci is so kind as to “reach out” to Serbs who are “concerned” about the cradle of their “medieval” culture and religion. Sorry, is Serbian culture and Serbian Orthodoxy derived from or stuck in the Middle Ages? Does the term “medieval” even apply to this region? Why even use such a condescending, patronizing word?

A migrant culture that wants to wipe out someone else’s cultural heritage by force. Since when has this been tolerable? Again, maybe I’m missing something, but I wish people would take a moment to think about how we would feel and respond if this happened on our soil.

Turning away from Roe v. Wade

Abortion is murder and should be illegal, period. Hopefully pro-lifers would all agree on that. So what happens when our avenue of making it illegal disintegrates? Many people, tired of fighting the political battle, are transitioning to an effort to fight the underlying causes of abortion. A lot of the people that I’ve heard talk about this have talked about changing hearts and minds, but a disturbing few have started picking up big-government catchphrases, subsidized this and subsidized that, etc.

The problem is, the alternatives offered to us by politicians will only make matters worse. Things like subsidized contraceptives and subsidized child care may seem wise, but in the long run they only continue the great American tradition of irresponsibility. Most of those who have abortions and those who care very little for their children have one thing in common: irresponsibility. Making it easier for irresponsible people to have worthless sex, then dump their kids off at a daycare at America’s expense only creates a new generation of irresponsible people.

Although the GOP has not given us much aid in our cause to make murder illegal, the liberal alternatives only increase the underlying causes of abortion. Fight the underlying causes of abortion, yes, but fight it by changing hearts and minds, not by encouraging irresponsibility.

It makes me sad to see some pro-lifers resign themselves this way, being lured to seek alternatives to banning Roe v. Wade that are simply more governmental fixes to sin – fixes that never have helped, fixes that never will.

Today I ran across this quote in the Crunchy Con combox, from Obama in an interview in Christianity Today:

Our goal should be to make abortion less common, that we should be discouraging unwanted pregnancies, that we should encourage adoption wherever possible. There is a range of ways that we can educate our young people about the sacredness of sex and we should not be promoting the sort of casual activities that end up resulting in so many unwanted pregnancies.

I’m not going to comment on his vagueness (although I suppose I just did), but I hope for everyone’s sake that he actually means what he seems to be saying here. If there’s one thing Democrats will fight for, it’s the right to have sex wherever, with whomever, and in whatever way we like; considering that they’ve traditionally been “sexual liberation” flag-wavers, it seems strange for Obama to suggest that we seriously try to restrict our promiscuous sex. I wonder if he’d say the same thing to a magazine besides Christianity Today.

I hate politics.

Reading this post over at Retractiones got me thinking; I share his huge disenchantment with politics right now. I believe in libertarian principles and would like to have a non-ideological Man of Integrity in the White House. I was/am a Ron Paul supporter. No, he’s not president material but he’s a figurehead of the libertarian resistance, and for his ideas I support him. However, now that he apparently won’t run third party, I really don’t know if I’ll even bother voting in November.

The other candidates are equally terrifying. I remember elections and election coverage all the way back to ‘92 (although that one’s a bit foggy to me, since I was only 7), but I don’t remember “the issues” mattering so little when it came to who people vote for. I have no idea what any of the candidates believe in apart from maybe one issue each.

Huckabee is Mr. Evangelical with some loony FairTax which isn’t a good idea by anyone. McCain is a maverick, I think? I’m getting confused nowadays. I keep hearing that he’s against torture, then now he votes against the waterboarding ban…huh? Of course, he’s such a warhawk I couldn’t support him ever.

Then of course, you have Obama, the blank slate that all the progressive types regard as the watershed candidacy in their new reign. Even crunchy cons seem to be swayed by him (which I suppose isn’t surprising, since they’re quasi-progressives themselves). He does seem like a nice guy, with maybe some integrity. Just forget the fact that he’s all for sticking crap into babies’ heads and killing them…sure, great guy!

I feel kinda sorry for Hillary – she’s pure evil, of course, but it must be supremely frustrating to have your candidacy, which has been enshrined for years now, suddenly be taken away by a guy who is supported without really having any message. Wait, I take that back, he does have a message. I think the Onion summed it up perfectly: “Pro-hopes, also supports dreams”. Seriously, I would be really mad if I were Hillary.

The level of stupidity in this election is shocking. As the culture wars wind down, American Idol is taking its place as the model for and driving force of presidential elections. I was listening to NPR the other day; they were interviewing a woman who said roughly this: “I really want to vote for Obama, because he has this kind of rock-star persona, and I’m really drawn to that. But ultimately, Hillary is more from my generation. She was a real trailblazer as a woman, and I’ve blazed a few trails myself as a woman, so I feel like I really ought to vote for her.”

The fact that Obama is now the frontrunner for the Democrats just highlights my ultimate point: part of the reason that the American people are so intentionally stupid when it comes to the upcoming election is that we all know, deep down inside, that there’s no difference between the candidates. The past eight years have made this supremely obvious, and that is why I am sick of politics. The Bush administration played religious conservatives big time; I was one of them. The Democrats swore in 2006 to stand up and put a stop to it; they didn’t. In fact, they’ve practically helped him out, except in those moments where it was convenient to oppose him for political reasons.

Who our next president is, Republican or Democrat, “conservative” or “liberal”, matters very little. The government will be just as bloated and corrupt as it ever has been, and legislation will be alternately oppressive and useless. The biggest issue that we face is this: whose all-encompassing media presence do you want to put up with for the next four or eight years? Whose face do you want to see on TV, whose voice do you want to hear on the radio? Who do you want to sound more shrill, Republicans or Democrats? Nothing else will change for normal people like you and me.

Oh yeah.

At Vanderbilt, we are so hardcore that when it snows we specifically ask that they not salt the walkways to our buildings. Anyone who can’t make it across a little snow isn’t worthy to be a scientist here.

The State of Things

It’s been a long time since I’ve written here last, and a lot of things have changed. I now have a daughter on the way (due in early June), I’ve learned a lot about church stuff but [unfortunately] haven’t made much progress when it comes to making a decision about where to go.I decided to take the Catholic Church seriously some time late last year, and I’ve learned a lot by doing so. I think that most people that leave Protestantism for Orthodoxy or Catholicism would like for something to be simple. However, everything that I’ve learned has pointed in the opposite direction; it’s more complex than I can ever get into. The lesson that I’ve learned, repeatedly, is that there is no easy way about it, no single, decisive issue that makes one right and one wrong.Which, of course, makes things impossible for someone in my position. It’s easier for those who are already Orthodox or Catholic, since generally it’s best for those people to remain in the communions they are in. The blogger Eirenikon has found the same thing; as an Orthodox Christian, he decided to look into Catholicism but ultimately found that there was no compelling reason for him to convert. Other people like Rod Dreher think that certain issues are important enough to give reason to convert; as I mentioned, of course I disagree. But what for us who have no home?That’s what I’m still learning about. More to come.