Back of the Envelope

Since my live blogging of Nader's speech didn't work out, I'll try it again, this time with Bush's press conference. This time I'm in my living room with my home wireless network, so there are no connectivity worries.

8:31 PM -- President starts opening statement.

8:32 PM -- Three groups: Ba'athists in Fallujah, outside terrorists, and al-Sadr. Long condemnation of Sadr. He's calling the violence a power grab by these extreme faction.

8:33 PM -- He's making the case that most Iraqis don't support the uprising. True enough, but it would be better if they weren't so dedicated to neutrality in the present situation.

8:35 PM -- Bush is praising the troops and saying we will push for success. He will send more troops and resources if needed.

8:36 PM -- He's saying we have to keep the June 30th turnover. Now he's saying that the Iraqis will have to manage their own affairs, and that that's what will happen in Fallujah. [I guess that's why we pulled back, to try to give the Iraqis the ability to do their job.] Part of the demand [to the Fallujah militants] is that they turn over those responsible for killing and mutilating the contractors.

8:39 PM -- He's saying we will use force necessary to maintain order and protect troops.

8:40 PM -- He's discussing how the transition will proceed, both for the turnover, the constitution, and the election (January). [While there's a timetable, a lot of the details are still being worked out, with help from the UN special envoy.]

8:41 PM -- He's sending Armitage to talk to Iraq's neighbors. It's stated positively, but I wonder if it's to "dialogue" or "threaten." He also accidentally called Rumsfeld Secretary of State.

8:43 PM -- He's saying that we must hold firm in Iraq, since it is a meeting place of the civilized world (us) and terrorism, and that we cannot back down.

8:45 PM -- Bush is reviewing terrorist attacks, starting from the Beirut bombing, to the World Trade Center.

8:47 PM -- Any concession will only embolden them. Now, we're fighting against them at full force. They're desperate, and the work may get harder as we go on, but to give up will make things much worse.

8:50 PM -- First question: Is Iraq vietnam? Answer: No. But this is hard work. We've been there a year, but it's a relatively short time and we've made progress.

8:51 PM -- Next question: How long will troops be there? Are we sending more? Answer: We'll send troops if Abizaid asks for them, and it looks like he wants them now. Troops will be there as long as necessary. They'll be there after turnover, and we'll need to train Iraqis better.

8:54 PM -- Next question: How'd you get so much wrong? WMDs, greeted as liberators. Answer: WMD: The calculus had changed. We're less tolerant than we were then. Liberators: Iraqis are afraid, reluctant to step up.

[If you look at the old news reports, we were greeted as liberators when we first arrived. Gratitude doesn't last very long, does it?]

8:58 PM -- Next question: Do you feel personal responsibility for 9/11? Answer: In hindsight, of course there are things I would have done different, but hindsight is 20/20. Country was not on war footing.

9:00 PM -- Next question: Why won't you ever admit a mistake? Answer: [Not on point, but he thinks he overall did the right thing.]

[The point is that what he views as mistakes is very different from what the press views as mistakes. The only way he can "admit mistakes" to their satisfaction is to say "you were right and I was wrong," and I don't think he's going to do that, because he doesn't believe that.]

9:02 PM -- Next question: PDB warned of hijackings. Answer: Warning about bin Laden--nothing new. Report on FBI conducting field investigations--looked like good news.

I think it's kind of weak response.

9:07 PM -- Next question: Was PDB valid? [Some question as to whether the information on 70 FBI investigations was accurate.] Answer: I have no more information than you do, but I intend to find out.

9:08 PM -- Question: Will you be giving an apology like Clarke's? Answer: Osama bin Laden is the one responsible. We will bring them to justice.

9:10 PM -- Question: Is the coalition real? The other countries make a much smaller contribution than we do. Answer: There are people from other countries sacrificing their lives, why should we demean our allies?

9:12 PM -- He keeps bringing it back to making the case for the importance of freedom in Iraq, and the importance to pursuing the war on terror.

9:15 PM -- Question: You are being accused of waiting too long on al Qaeda, but not long enough on Iraq. Answer: Country was not on a war footing, and moving against Afghanistan would have been difficult before 9/11. After 9/11, our threshold is much lower now. We've had some success because of this: Libya, A.Q. Khan.

9:17 PM -- Question: If you lose your job, will it be worth it? Answer: I don't think I'll lose. I think the American people understand that, and will stay with me. They may decide to vote against me, but I don't think that will happen.

9:22 PM -- The soldiers are very motivated, very high morale.

9:22 PM -- Question: What's your biggest mistake since 9/11? Answer: Still would have gone into Iraq. Don't know what my biggest mistake is, only know that in retrospect. [Personally, I think how he made the case on Iraq was the biggest mistake. It should have been stated as the completion of the 1991 Gulf War.]

9:25 PM -- Question: Do you intend to split FBI's two divisions? Answer: I'm looking for input, it hasn't been decided yet.

[Probably not, from the looks of it.]

9:30 PM -- Question: Have you failed as a communicator? Answer: That will be decided in November. I don't fine-tune [the message] according to polls.

Update: Glenn Reynolds gives a much more detailed blow-by-blow of the press conference. I'm jealous, but I guess that's why he's the Instapundit and I'm just a low-level blogger.

Update: I did some cleaning up, with substantive additions put in brackets [like this]. I think the effort of juggling Blogger's interface took a lot out of the writing. I did better pseudo-live-blogging Ralph Nader, where connection problems kept me from posting during the talk, but I could type continuously and post it afterwards.

New Post: My personal thoughts above.

I wasn't going to say anything about the Democratic advertisement that says "we" should put Rumsfeld "up against a wall and say 'This is one of our bad days' and pull the trigger." However, Best of the Web had a longer quote than I'd seen before which said the following:

We have Marines and soldiers being killed by the dozens with many more wounded. How many have to be killed before the Bush Bunch is satisfied? How many burial services of our Iraq dead has Bush attended? Any? How many military hospitals has Bush visited to talk to our wounded who have lost arms, or legs, or their eye sight, or combinations of these--how many?

For the first, I'm not sure the president should go to the funerals. Funerals are for the grieving, not for the President to make some sort of spectacle out of. He has met regularly with the families of those who've died, and I have much more respect for that than going to soldiers' funerals--something which I don't recall any other President doing in time of war. As for visiting the wounded in hospitals--that he has done, and apparently quite frequently, according to Mickey Kaus (March 25th, 8:36 pm entry):

The soldier sitting closest to me clearly liked Bush, perhaps because he had just seen the president, in person, for the third time. Apparently, Bush pays regular visits to wounded soldiers at Walter Reed. Did you know that? I didn't. Admittedly, it's easier to visit the wounded than to go to funerals, which Bush has been accused of not doing enough of. Still ...

That's another reason I admire Bush. He doesn't call attention to his good deeds.

I've posted a lot of stuff about religion recently. How come? There are several reasons, I suppose. The first is that it was just Easter, and that meant I had the occasion to post a few things I'd been thinking about for a while. The second is I started reading Letters from Babylon, a group blog which includes a friend of mine from MIT, and their thoughts on faith and science inspired some of my posting (especially read their posts about chemistry leprechauns). Finally, I just got tired of talking about politics. I had a number of things I'd been wanting to say on the subject for a while, and I've mostly said them, and after that all the major players are just repeating themselves, and there's not much to say without repeating myself. I still do it when a particularly egregious example of stupidity rears its ugly head again, and I'm sure that sooner or later something new will come along and I'll talk about it, but for right now I'm finding other topics of conversation.

Cynthia, a good friend of mine from MIT (we co-led the Hardcore Bible Study at one point), has started a discussion with the Study on Liberal Christianity. In the process, she's e-mailed me this fisking of the 8 points of the progressive church (she didn't include the points themselves in her e-mail, but I've put them in for this post, and cleaned up things a bit without altering the content).

Last night I realized how little I really know about liberal Christianity. Who are these people, and which denominations typically identify themselves as liberal?

[A friend] showed me this website on progressive Christianity. Here are their 8 points of belief.

As a fairly conservative evangelical, let me go through each of the 8 points, starting from the last one and moving up:

8. Recognize that being followers of Jesus is costly, and entails selfless love, conscientious resistance to evil, and renunciation of privilege.

Sounds okay from a first glance. However, "evil" is probably going to be a part of our lives no matter what in this fallen world. "Evil one", as in Satan, is probably more appropriate. Also, what do they mean by "renunciation of privilege"? Aren't we privileged to be God's children?

7. Form ourselves into communities dedicated to equipping one another for the work we feel called to do: striving for peace and justice among all people, protecting and restoring the integrity of all God's creation, and bringing hope to those Jesus called the least of his sisters and brothers;

On its own, it's not so bad.

6. Find more grace in the search for understanding than we do in dogmatic certainty - more value in questioning than in absolutes;

Here we go with postmodern thought. I believe God does set absolute standards, and some parts of doctrine are firm (Jesus as the son of God,
fully human and fully divine, savior of the world, etc.) Other things (infant/adult baptism, wine/grape juice, etc.) are not as firm.

5. Know that the way we behave toward one another and toward other people is the fullest expression of what we believe;

Mmm, maybe. This is a tough one. Should we expect to act like Jesus did and just expect people to ask us questions? Or should we actively try to share our faith with nonbelievers?

4. Invite all people to participate in our community and worship life without insisting that they become like us in order to be acceptable (including but not limited to):
believers and agnostics,
conventional Christians and questioning skeptics,
women and men,
those of all sexual orientations and gender identities,
those of all races and cultures,
those of all classes and abilities,
those who hope for a better world and those who have lost hope;

Well, sure, we welcome all people to church and to worship. But clearly, in terms of who we marry or serve in ministry with, we need to find those who have made a profession of faith in Jesus Christ. At some point, even the agnostic needs to make a decision.

3. Understand the sharing of bread and wine in Jesus's name to be a representation of an ancient vision of God's feast for all peoples;

Um, all peoples, as in all believers? Why would a nonbeliever be allowed to partake in the Lord's supper? What would it mean to a nonbeliever?

2. Recognize the faithfulness of other people who have other names for the way to God's realm, and acknowledge that their ways are true for them, as our ways are true for us;

Does that mean Allah and Buddha are okay?

1. Have found an approach to God through the life and teachings of Jesus;

Sure, but Jesus is more than just a "gate". He is God too.

Am I totally off base? Please share your thoughts.

I'd also like to hear your thoughts. Before I do so, I want to point out what this organization (The Center for Progressive Christianity) says on its front page, which goes a long way towards putting their eight points in context:

Religion doesn't have to be irrelevant, ineffectual, repressive...

Do you find more grace in the search for meaning than in absolute certainty, in the questions rather than in the answers?

Do you have religious interests and longings but cannot accept the beliefs and dogmas you associate with Christianity?

Are you repelled by claims that Christianity is the "only way"?

For comparison, this is the MIT Graduate Christian Fellowship's Statement of Faith (adapted from Intervarsity's, it's also in 8 points--hmm, it seems longer than it was in my day):

We affirm the historic Christian faith as expressed in the Apostles' and Nicene Creeds, and we worship Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, one God. We also hold to the Doctrinal Basis of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship:

• The only true God, the almighty Creator of all things, existing eternally in three persons -- Father, Son, and Holy Spirit -- full of love and glory.


• The unique divine inspiration, entire trustworthiness, and authority of the Bible.


• The value and dignity of all people: created in God's image to live in love and holiness, but alienated from God and each other because of our sin and guilt, and justly subject to God's wrath.


• Jesus Christ, fully human and fully divine, who lived as a perfect example, who assumed the judgment due sinners by dying in our place, and who was bodily raised from the dead and ascended as Savior and Lord.


• Justification by God's grace to all who repent and put their faith in Jesus Christ alone for salvation.


• The indwelling presence and transforming power of the Holy Spirit, who gives to all believers a new life and a new calling to obedient service.


• The unity of all believers in Jesus Christ, manifest in worshiping and witnessing churches, making disciples throughout the world.


• The victorious reign and future personal return of Jesus Christ, who will judge all people with justice and mercy, giving over the unrepentant to eternal condemnation but receiving the redeemed into eternal life.

Update: John Zimmer at Letters from Babylon has comments.

New Post: More above.

Jonah Goldberg has a good article criticizing Ted Kennedy for calling Iraq Bush's Vietnam:

So when you declare "Iraq is George Bush's Vietnam and we need a new president," that undoubtedly strikes a chord with our enemies and those susceptible to their message. Indeed, the day after Kennedy's speech, Muqtada al-Sadr — the fascistic militia leader who's fomenting rebellion against America and calling himself an ally of various terrorist groups — declared, "Iraq will be another Vietnam for America and the occupiers."

It's not hard to imagine that Sadr got this talking point after seeing a clip of Kennedy on the BBC, Al-Jazeera, or CNN.

The Arab street doesn't know that Kennedy's a partisan hatchet man. All it knows is what it is told — which in this case is that one of America's most revered senators and the brother of JFK has declared that Iraq is the equivalent of Vietnam and that the violence in Iraq means Bush should go. If that's not a signal to our enemies that America is losing its resolve and that continued violence is worthwhile, I'm not sure what is.

Iraq is not George Bush's Vietnam, and it won't be his Vietnam, but it could end up being John Kerry's Vietnam. George Bush is not going to give up, and as long as he's determined, we can win. Public opinion waxes and wanes, but it's not going to hit rock bottom any time soon, and even if it did, I think Bush would push forward as long as he was able--until Congress forced him to withdraw, and I don't see that happening. If Kerry is elected, however, there's every chance he will bolt when the going gets tough and public opinion droops, and that will make it another Vietnam, with our enemies victorious because we didn't have the will to carry through. That's why I'm determined to do what I can to make sure that Kerry doesn't get elected.

A new carnival is up at Blogs for Bush. Check it out. It references this article of mine about Kerry's Catholicism. Unfortunately, the link appears to be broken.

The short version: there's nothing to see here. Read it for yourself.

The long version: there's still nothing to see here. The media thinks they can convince people that there is, but it will take some hard spinning to do that.

The only part that even hints that something like 9/11 might be possible is the following:

We have not been able to corroborate some of the more sensational threat reporting, such as that from a [deleted text] service in 1998 saying that Bin Ladin wanted to hijack a US aircraft to gain the release of "Blind Shaykh" 'Umar' Abd aI-Rahman and other US-held extremists.

Nevertheless, FBI information since that time indicates patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York.

I suppose someone might have made a leap of logic here and connected surveillance of federal buildings with hijacking, but they would have been wrong. The WTC was not a federal building, it was not surveyed, and the surveyors turned out to be Yemeni tourists anyway. I would be interested in what "suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings" had been observed. From what Condoleeza Rice said, however, none of that "suspicious activity" aside from the "surveillance" was recent, and the memo gave the indication that the FBI had the situation well in hand in the next paragraph:

The FBI is conducting approximately 70 full field investigations throughout the US that it considers Bin Ladin-related. CIA and the FBI are investigating a call to our Embassy in the UAE in May saying that a group of Bin Ladin supporters was in the US planning attacks with explosives.

We can always speculate that if only we had pursued just the right angle, we might have stopped things. It wasn't for lack of alerts: the Bush administration gave five of them to US airlines over the summer based on non-specific threats. In the end, it is not possible to fully secure the US, and we have to take the fight to the enemy.

In case you're wondering how the writing's going, I'm 54% of the way through the first revision of my as-yet unnamed short story (actually, I do have a name for it, but I'm not sure I like it).

I've passed 3000 visitors today. Cool. It took me 996 days to do it on my pre-blog webpage. It hasn't even been 60 days yet for this blog. Thanks for coming to visit.

Old Post: This is a continuation of the discussion here.

Jeremy Pierce at Parablemania was interested in other sources concerning Galileo's relationship with the Church, preferably online sources. My source was Sampson's 6 Modern Myths, and all his references were ink-and-paper, so I had to look. I'll admit I haven't done a lot of research, but I did find a website called The Galileo Project.

It's not entirely friendly to the Church, as you can see:

Freedom of thought and written and oral expression is historically a relatively recent development. For those who were the shepherds of Christian souls and whose function it was to get those souls to heaven, the idea that anyone could think and say or write what he/she wanted was an absurdity. Moreover, it was dangerous because it might lead others into error. As early as 170 CE, the Church promulgated a list of genuine books of the New Testament and excluded others from use in religious practice.

The gall of that early church! How dare they try to make a list of which books were reliable accounts of the Christian faith!

But it does contain this useful information (from the same page):

In the cases of the Copernican System, the Church was slow to act because it did not see immediate danger to the faithful in De Revolutionibus (1543)...In 1616, after 73 years, it placed De Revolutionibus on the Index [of forbidden books] subject to revision, along with several other books that defended the Copernican System. It is interesting to note that the revisions required in Copernicus's book were, in terms of the total work, actually very minor. Copies of De Revolutionibus that were in Italy at this time show the revisions: a few deleted passages and a few changes of individual words. None of Galileo's books were placed on the Index at this time.

[Emphasis added.]

There's also this, from the same site (different page):

Maffeo Barberini [later Pope Urban VIII] was an accomplished man of letters, who published several volumes of verse. Upon Galileo' s return to Florence, in 1610, Barberini came to admire Galileo' s intelligence and sharp wit. During a court dinner, in 1611, at which Galileo defended his view on floating bodies, Barberini supported Galileo against Cardinal Gonzaga. From this point, their patron-client relationship flourished until it was undone in 1633. Upon Barberini' s ascendance of the papal throne, in 1623, Galileo came to Rome and had six interviews with the new Pope. It was at these meetings that Galileo was given permission to write about the Copernican theory, as long as he treated it as a hypothesis. After the publication of Galileo' s Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief Systems of the World, in 1632, the patronage relationship was broken. It appears that the Pope never forgave Galileo for putting the argument of God's omnipotence (the argument he himelf had put to Galileo in 1623) in the mouth of Simplicio, the staunch Aristotelian whose arguments had been systematically destroyed in the previous 400-odd pages. At any rate, the Pope resisted all efforts to have Galileo pardoned.

[Emphasis added]

So while it doesn't cover all the details (there's much more on the site, but I haven't gone through it all), it confirms many of the points that Sampson made in the passage I quoted.

Update: Slight editing for better sarcasm.

Old Post: In the post below, I quote all four gospels to recount the Resurrection story.

You'll note that there are differences between the gospel accounts. In my younger days, this troubled me a lot. I've had twenty years now to think on this, but while I won't claim to have fully figured it out (although I do have some thoughts I'll share in a moment), I have learned that the weight of the evidence is convincing, even if my belief in the Gospels' inerrancy remains troubled. Before I discuss some possible interpretations, it's fair to ask whether it's worth the effort. Lee Strobel in The Case for Christ rightly points out that there is enough agreement that the essential story is clear, and enough differences to indicate that the four accounts came from different sources. C.S. Lewis in Miracles (Chapter 16) points out that there's more to the Resurrection than the first morning:

When modern writers talk about the Resurrection they usually mean one particular moment--the discovery of the Empty Tomb and the appearance of Jesus a few yards away from it. The story of that moment is what Christian apologists now chiefly try to support and sceptics chiefly try to impugn. But this almost exclusive concentration on the first five minutes or so of the Resurrection would have astonished the earliest Christian teachers. In claiming to have seen the Resurrection they were not necessarily claiming to have seen that. Some of them had, some of them had not. It had no more importance than any of the other appearances of the risen Jesus--apart from the poetic and dramatic importance which the beginnings of things must always have. What they were claiming was that they had all, at one time or another, met Jesus during the six or seven weeks that had followed His death. Sometimes they seem to have been alone when they did so, but on one occasion twelve of them saw Him together [by twelve here C.S. Lewis (and Paul) means the Twelve, who in fact were only eleven by that point], and on another occasion about five hundred of them. St. Paul says that the majority of the five hundred were still alive when he wrote the First Letter to the Corinthians, i.e. about 55 A.D.

The "Resurrection" to which they bore witness was, in fact, not the action of rising from the dead but the state of being risen; a state, as they held, attested by intermittent meetings during a limited period (except for the special, and in some ways different, meeting vouchsafed to St. Paul).

The actual events of Resurrection Sunday are, for the most part, skimmed over very briefly in the first three gospels. Why? One reason is pointed out by C.S. Lewis--those events were actually a very minor part of the Resurrection story. The apostles themselves didn't see any of it, and the story told by the women didn't convince them. Women, after all, were not considered reliable witnesses in first century Judea, which may be another reason that their involvement wasn't dwelt upon. There are a few other points to keep in mind, which have more to do with the nature of ancient histories and biographies than the gospels themselves. The first is that chronology was never considered terribly important in ancient histories: the point is to tell the events, not necessarily to get them in an exact order. The second is that quotes are not full quotes. Go ahead and read the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7). I doubt it will take you more than fifteen minutes. Yet Jesus usually taught for hours on end. None of the sermons we have are full transcripts; they are all highly abridged, and that likely applies to all quotes found in ancient writings. Some commentators argue that all the quotes are paraphrased; they are at the least translations, as Greek, the language in which the gospels were written, was not the spoken language of Judea at this time. There are some scholars who believe that no quotation used by ancient writers is even meant to be exact, simply what the writers think the speaker should have said. I don't subscribe to that theory myself. The third and final point is that when listing people present, writers usually just listed the important people, leaving an assumed "and others." If you want more on the nature of ancient histories and the reliability of the gospels, I recommend F.F. Bruce's The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable?

Since John is the most clearly different, and the most detailed of the accounts, we'll start with his gospel account and build on that. Clearly, John was telling the story of Mary Magdalene, so the focus is on her, and the other women aren't even mentioned. According to Luke, there were at least five of them there: he lists three, and then says there were other women (plural). Of these, four are named in the Gospels: Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, Salome, and Joanna (I suppose it's possible that Salome and Joanna are two names for the same woman--I don't really know). The exact time is around dawn. John says that it was still dark, Mark says that it was "when the sun had risen." I'll admit that this bothered me at one point, but I don't remember why. It can be pretty dark just as the sun is rising, and I imagine the episode--travelling to the tomb, arriving, witnessing, then leaving--took long enough that it was dark when it began and light when it was over. In any case, Mary Magdalene arrives, sees the tomb is empty, then runs to get Peter and the other disciple (John, who carefully avoided naming himself throughout the gospel). There's no account of angels or Jesus yet in John. Of course, there's no mention of the other women either, and I wonder what they were doing. Did they go with Mary, or did they remain there? One possibility, which is one I've never heard mentioned in any commentary I've read, is that they split up. When they found the tomb empty, Mary went back to find Peter and John--perhaps alone, perhaps with some of the others--while the others remained there. There they saw the angels. This, then, could be the main source of the discrepancy between the gospels. If the other women remained while Mary went to get Peter, then perhaps there are two encounters with the angels, one by these women and one by Mary Magdalene, and perhaps, although I'm less certain of this, two encounters with Jesus. Jesus and the angels were, after all, in the area. Jesus would be meeting with lots of people that day, including some of his disciples on the road to Emmaus (Luke 24:12-32), and the apostles that evening (Luke 24:33-49). 1 Corinthians 15:5 tells us that he met with Peter before the apostles, although we're not told exactly when (he may have been one of the disciples on the road to Emmaus).

This resolves most of the difficulties involved, except for a couple of details. First off, how many angels were there? At least two. There could have been a whole choir involved in this event (I imagine there wasn't any lack of volunteers). All the accounts except Matthew's mention two, but Matthew's is the only one which has an angel doing more than talking to the women. After doing all the hard work of subduing the guards and moving the stone, before the women arrived it appears, this angel gets top billing in doing the actual speaking. Where were the angels? While Matthew's active angel was sitting on the stone at one point, there's no reason to assume he was still there when the women arrived. Who reported to the disciples? All of the women, apparently, but it seems that it was Mary's report, when there were still very few facts, that got Peter to go and look, as recorded in Luke and John.

This is clearly not the only possible explanation for the differences, and I make no claim that it is the correct explanation. It's simply the one that makes the most sense to me, but I've been convinced that the weight of evidence is such that the exact details are less important than I once thought.

Update: I made some grammatical and stylistic changes, nothing substantive.

From Matthew:

Now after the Sabbath, as it began to dawn toward the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary came to look at the grave. And behold, a severe earthquake had occurred, for an angel of the Lord descended from heaven and came and rolled away the stone and sat upon it. And his appearance was like lightning, and his clothing as white as snow. The guards shook for fear of him and became like dead men. The angel said to the women, "Do not be afraid; for I know that you are looking for Jesus who has been crucified. He is not here, for He has risen, just as He said. Come, see the place where He was lying. Go quickly and tell His disciples that He has risen from the dead; and behold, He is going ahead of you into Galilee, there you will see Him; behold, I have told you."

And they left the tomb quickly with fear and great joy and ran to report it to His disciples. And behold, Jesus met them and greeted them. And they came up and took hold of His feet and worshiped Him. Then Jesus said to them, "Do not be afraid; go and take word to My brethren to leave for Galilee, and there they will see Me."

(Matthew 28:1-10)

From Mark:

When the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome, bought spices, so that they might come and anoint Him. Very early on the first day of the week, they came to the tomb when the sun had risen. They were saying to one another, "Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance of the tomb?" Looking up, they saw that the stone had been rolled away, although it was extremely large. Entering the tomb, they saw a young man sitting at the right, wearing a white robe; and they were amazed. And he said to them, "Do not be amazed; you are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who has been crucified. He has risen; He is not here; behold, here is the place where they laid Him. But go, tell His disciples and Peter, 'He is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see Him, just as He told you.' " They went out and fled from the tomb, for trembling and astonishment had gripped them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.

(Mark 16:1-8)

From Luke:

But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they came to the tomb bringing the spices which they had prepared. And they found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they entered, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. While they were perplexed about this, behold, two men suddenly stood near them in dazzling clothing; and as the women were terrified and bowed their faces to the ground, the men said to them, "Why do you seek the living One among the dead? He is not here, but He has risen. Remember how He spoke to you while He was still in Galilee, saying that the Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, and be crucified, and the third day rise again."

And they remembered His words, and returned from the tomb and reported all these things to the eleven and to all the rest. Now they were Mary Magdalene and Joanna and Mary the mother of James; also the other women with them were telling these things to the apostles. But these words appeared to them as nonsense, and they would not believe them. But Peter got up and ran to the tomb; stooping and looking in, he saw the linen wrappings only; and he went away to his home, marveling at what had happened.

(Luke 24:1-12)

From John:

Now on the first day of the week Mary Magdalene came early to the tomb, while it was still dark, and saw the stone already taken away from the tomb. So she ran and came to Simon Peter and to the other disciple whom Jesus loved, and said to them, "They have taken away the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid Him." So Peter and the other disciple went forth, and they were going to the tomb. The two were running together; and the other disciple ran ahead faster than Peter and came to the tomb first; and stooping and looking in, he saw the linen wrappings lying there; but he did not go in. And so Simon Peter also came, following him, and entered the tomb; and he saw the linen wrappings lying there, and the face-cloth which had been on His head, not lying with the linen wrappings, but rolled up in a place by itself. So the other disciple who had first come to the tomb then also entered, and he saw and believed. For as yet they did not understand the Scripture, that He must rise again from the dead. So the disciples went away again to their own homes.

But Mary was standing outside the tomb weeping; and so, as she wept, she stooped and looked into the tomb; and she saw two angels in white sitting, one at the head and one at the feet, where the body of Jesus had been lying. And they said to her, "Woman, why are you weeping?" She said to them, "Because they have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid Him."

When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, and did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to her, "Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you seeking?" Supposing Him to be the gardener, she said to Him, "Sir, if you have carried Him away, tell me where you have laid Him, and I will take Him away." Jesus said to her, "Mary!" She turned and said to Him in Hebrew, "Rabboni!" (which means, Teacher). Jesus said to her, "Stop clinging to Me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father; but go to My brethren and say to them, 'I ascend to My Father and your Father, and My God and your God.' "

Mary Magdalene came, announcing to the disciples, "I have seen the Lord," and that He had said these things to her.

(John 20:1-18)

More later.

New Post: My thoughts on the similarities and differences between the gospels above.

Blogger hasn't been letting me publish posts all day. Finally, I can post again. It's way too late to put up much tonight, but expect the Weekly Webcomic Update and the Week in Review tomorrow. They'll be posted in their rightful places when they come, the end of last week and the beginning of this one, respectively. Don't worry, I don't usually use incorrect time stamps on my posts, only for these two, since they aren't time critical anyway. (I probably should note that in the posts themselves.) I also have some thoughts on Easter and the differences between the gospel accounts that I may post tomorrow.

He is Risen indeed!

Happy Easter. There'll be more later, I promise.

Here are the things I wrote about the past week. Although this was written on Sunday afternoon, I've set the timestamp to Sunday morning so it shows up at the very beginning of the week in the archives.

Appeasement still doesn't work -- My thoughts on why Spain's attempts to give in to the terrorists didn't stop them from trying to attack.

Republicans and Judicial Activism -- Why the Republicans, though they aren't perfect in this respect, are still the most likely to oppose judicial activism.

The Fighting in Iraq -- The flare up in Iraq is no reason to panic. It won't be easy, but I don't think it will last too long either.

Kerry's Catholicism -- Kerry's response to those who criticize him for following politics rather than his faith doesn't impress me, or too many other people, for that matter.

Creative writing and the alarmist school -- School administrators really shouldn't be surprised when students in creative writing classes write graphic and shocking short stories. It's what young writers do, after all.

Heliocentrism and the Church -- In response to John Zimmer from Letters from Babylon, I talk a bit about Galileo's treatment by the Catholic church, and how the history differs from the myth.

Good Friday -- "What's so good about Good Friday?" That was actually the title of the sermon at the Good Friday service I went to last week, but it's also the topic of my post.

It's time to take a look at what's going on with our favorite online comics. Technically, this was written Sunday afternoon, but I'm setting the timestamp on Saturday night so it shows up at the end of the week in the archives.

Sluggy Freelance -- When Robot Vacuums Attack! It's a good thing that Gwynn sees the danger, because Torg sure doesn't.

Day by Day -- The Iraqi insurgents, Markos Zuniga, Richard Clarke, Ted Kennedy, and John Kerry all find themselves mocked this week.

It's Walky! -- Walky and Joyce talk. Walky has a surprise for her.

College Roomies from Hell! -- Mike is stuck in the machinery while the Doctor tries to make a clean escape. Unfortunately for him, Dave's not as gullible as he seems--either that or he's finally getting some good luck to balance out the bad.

General Protection Fault -- Ki's plans for Nick's birthday don't work out as she had planned.

Schlock Mercenary -- En route to meet their new employer, Breya's marines get some practice with Tagon's mercenaries' non-regulation goober-guns. If you don't know what that means, you ought to find out.

The link to the article on Kerry's misinterpretation of Church and State is broken. Go here.

I noticed that I've been added to La Shawn Barber's blogroll. This is quite an honor as she, like myself, keeps a very short blogroll. After all, it would be an honor to be added to Glenn Reynold's blogroll, but as he has 233 blogs on his roll, it would hardly be noticed, and couldn't be considered an actual endorsement. (Although considering that his roll is listed alphabetically, I would be near the top... Glenn, if you're reading this, no offense. Really. And if you ever need professional advice on quantum computation, just let me know.) I was also added to Letters from Babylon's blogroll earlier this week, which, like La Shawn's, is short. I knew one of the bloggers there before he was blogging, however, so I'll never be quite certain whether they liked my blog or they were concerned by the blackmail potential. I've also been added to Mostly Cajun's blogroll, which is longer than the others, but not too much longer. He hails from Southwest Louisiana. I don't consider myself from Louisiana, but my family lives in Southeast Louisiana these days (map here), so it's where I visit for holidays. He writes a lot about guns, but that's hardly surprising for a Louisianan. Even my parents have gotten into guns since they moved there, and my mother had always been pro-gun control.

As you probably know, today is Good Friday. It is not a day of celebration, but of solemn remembrance of Jesus's suffering and death, so it is appropriate to ask why this day is called "Good." The first thing to remember is that Jesus's death was not an accident. He went to the cross willingly, knowing what was coming. As Jesus himself said:

"I am the good shepherd, and I know My own and My own know Me, even as the Father knows Me and I know the Father; and I lay down My life for the sheep. I have other sheep, which are not of this fold; I must bring them also, and they will hear My voice; and they will become one flock with one shepherd. For this reason the Father loves Me, because I lay down My life so that I may take it again. No one has taken it away from Me, but I lay it down on My own initiative. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again. This commandment I received from My Father."

(John 10:14-18)

Furthermore, his death has a purpose, and indeed had a purpose hundreds of years before it happened:

Who has believed our message? And to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed? For He grew up before Him like a tender shoot, And like a root out of parched ground; He has no stately form or majesty That we should look upon Him, Nor appearance that we should be attracted to Him. He was despised and forsaken of men, A man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; And like one from whom men hide their face He was despised, and we did not esteem Him. Surely our griefs He Himself bore, And our sorrows He carried; Yet we ourselves esteemed Him stricken, Smitten of God, and afflicted. But He was pierced through for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; The chastening for our well-being fell upon Him, And by His scourging we are healed. All of us like sheep have gone astray, Each of us has turned to his own way; But the LORD has caused the iniquity of us all To fall on Him. He was oppressed and He was afflicted, Yet He did not open His mouth; Like a lamb that is led to slaughter, And like a sheep that is silent before its shearers, So He did not open His mouth. By oppression and judgment He was taken away; And as for His generation, who considered That He was cut off out of the land of the living For the transgression of my people, to whom the stroke was due? His grave was assigned with wicked men, Yet He was with a rich man in His death, Because He had done no violence, Nor was there any deceit in His mouth.

(Isaiah 53:1-9)

His death was not a meaningless tragedy, but a purposeful sacrifice on our behalf. There was more to his sacrifice than the physical sacrifice, however. He suffered our punishment, not just death, but abandonment by God.

About the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, "Eli, eli, lama sabachthani?" that is, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"

(Matthew 27:46)

Christians believe that these words are not merely a cry of desperation, quoting Psalm 22:1, but that it is the literal truth that Jesus was abandoned by God, who turned his face from his own Son when he became sin for our sake. In so doing he not only made forgiveness possible, he made it possible for us to be a part of the relationship he and the Father once shared and would share again:

But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name. Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.

(John 1:12-13)

So, while this is a day to mourn what Jesus suffered, to mourn that our condition made it necessary for him to suffer in this way, Good Friday is good because the greatest good came out of Jesus's death. This is what redemption is all about, when God makes what is bad, even evil, good, by buying it back and making it his own again. I'll conclude with Matthew's account of Jesus's death, part of which I've already quoted:

Now from the sixth hour darkness fell upon all the land until the ninth hour. About the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, "Eli, eli, lama sabachthani?" that is, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" And some of those who were standing there, when they heard it, began saying, "This man is calling for Elijah." Immediately one of them ran, and taking a sponge, he filled it with sour wine and put it on a reed, and gave Him a drink. But the rest of them said, "Let us see whether Elijah will come to save Him." And Jesus cried out again with a loud voice, and yielded up His spirit. And behold, the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom; and the earth shook and the rocks were split. The tombs were opened, and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised; and coming out of the tombs after His resurrection they entered the holy city and appeared to many. Now the centurion, and those who were with him keeping guard over Jesus, when they saw the earthquake and the things that were happening, became very frightened and said, "Truly this was the Son of God!"

(Matthew 27:45-54)

It is an occasion for solemnity, but also an occasion to remember that God brings good out of evil.

Old Post: My last post on the situation in Iraq is here.

You may be wondering how things are going in Iraq. If you go by the news, this is another Tet offensive, which is good, since we won the Tet offensive. Unfortunately, the news media never figured that out, and they managed to convince the rest of the United States that we lost, which in turn led to a loss of the popular will and the eventual ignominious end to the Vietnam War. I don't think that will happen this time for two reasons. First, the news media has nowhere near the respect it had during the Vietnam war; it's been going down since the seventies. Just within the last three years, their last two quagmire predictions, Afghanistan and Iraq respectively, demonstrated that they don't have a clue what's happening in a war. Second, there's no unpopular draft to lower public support this time. In fact, re-enlistment in our all volunteer miltary is running high.

Most likely, we are winning the battles there. Captain Ed thinks the recent kidnappings are a sign of desperation. In Fallujah, the marines are giving the enemy a chance to sue for peace, but returning fire if fired upon. James Taranto points to an article that indicates that our enemies are not as brave as they think they are. Still, it's going to be bloody, although I maintain my contention that it's not going to be long. About a month at the most, I think, maybe only a week for an end to the major fighting. It's still possible that the whole situation in Iraq could devolve into chaos, but I'm betting against it.

Update: Added link on military re-enlistment.

New Post: And where are we after (nearly) a month. It's lasted longer than I thought, but it's also been less bloody than I thought. More above.

Old Post: The previous post is here.

John Zimmer has commented on my post and put up a new post on letters from babylon. He notes in an e-mail that he didn't mean to imply that avoiding offense should be our motivation for accepting new scientific theories. He's not clear on what he believes is the proper motivation, but I suspect that we both agree that we are all engaged in a search for a better understanding of the Truth, and that includes both the spiritual and the physical. Our understanding is never perfect, and it's worthwhile to improve it. Many of the great scientists viewed it as an act of worship to study the nature of the universe, believing that in so doing, they could better understand the nature of God.

The point Zimmer was making is that we should never assume that our understanding has no need of revision, especially our understanding of the natural world, where we must rely on observation rather than revelation. Even scientific theories which work do not necessarily explain the true nature of things. To quote John Derbyshire from The Corner (you find all sorts of interesting stuff in The Corner):

The General Theory of Relativity, on which all modern ideas about gravitation are based, has been verified to a very high degree of precision. That makes it a respectable and useful scientific theory. Think of Newton's mechanics, which was likewise verified to a very high degree of precision over 200 years. That was also a respectable and useful scientific theory. And in fact it still is, notwithstanding the fact that Einstein showed that, at an even HIGHER degree of precision, it fell apart. Over a wide range of physical applications -- oh, building a tree house, for example -- Newtonian mechanics works just fine. The last time you flew to visit your aunt in Florida, you were flying on a plane designed and operated according to Newtonian principles.

It's just that, in more esoteric applications -- designing Global Positioning Systems, for instance, Newton isn't quite good enough, and you need the extra refinement of Einstein. Now, what the Gravity B experiment will seek to discover is whether Einstein's equations continue to hold true at EVEN HIGHER degrees of precision. If they don't, I guess you could say that the experiment has "disproved" Einstein; but just as engineers are stull designing planes on Newtonian principles 90 years after Einstein "disproved" Newton, so the General Theory of Relativity will go on being a darn good theory across a wide range of physics, even if Gravity B "disproves" Einstein.

A scientific theory is "good" not by being infallibly, hermetically, eternally true. It is "good" if it explains a good range of observable phenomena, is not flatly contradicted by those phenomena it cannot explain, and is fruitful in verifiable predictions. Newtonian mechanics is a very good theory indeed, in spite of the fact that (for example) it cannot explain the precession of Mercury's orbit. I personally would vote it the best scientific theory ever, even though we know it's not true at high levels of precision.

As our understanding of the Truth, both physical and spiritual, is (hopefully) always approaching but never achieving perfection in this world, and it is always in need of examination and revision.

John Zimmer at letters from babylon has some advice for those seeking to reconcile the Bible and science:

I would suggest that we can best love God with our mind in this situation by allowing what we think we have learned from the book of nature to inform our interpretation of the book of revealed Truth in Scripture. We are modifying our interpretation of the Truth to change based on current science. But note carefully that we are not changing the Truth itself, only our interpretation of it. And we only do even that after we have found no reason from Scripture itself not to, and no reason from science itself not to.

I think this is generally sound advice, although his reason for it, "Can we bear the thought of having made it more difficult for an unbeliever to come to know the richness of God’s grace toward us by our pride and stiff-neck? The idea flushes me with shame and regret," may be a bit overstated, as I don't believe accomodating modern thinking just because others will take offense otherwise is a sound practice. I doubt any dispute over doctrine or science is more of a turn off for people than the Gospel message itself.

Zimmer uses heliocentrism as his example, perhaps because of the Church's well-known failure to deal with it properly in the early 17th century. Ironically, a closer, more historically accurate look at how the Church actually did deal with heliocentrism and Galileo shows that their approach was identical to Zimmer's. To quote Philip J. Sampson in 6 Modern Myths about Christianity & Western Civilization, pp. 36-38,

The fact is that during Galileo's lifetime there was insufficient evidence to show that the earth revolves. This is now widely accepted by scholars, some even suggesting that the then-known facts weighed heavily against Galileo.
...
Far from being constantly harried by obscurantist priests , he was feted by cardinals, received by Pope Paul V and befriended by the future Pope Urban VIII who, in 1620, wrote an ode in his honor. The historian Georgio de Santillana observed in 1958 that "it has been known for a long time that a major part of the Church intellectuals were on the side of Galileo, while the clearest opposition to him came from secular circles." Although scholars may long have known this, the orthodox story assumes the opposite. When it is said that Galileo became "too advanced for the church," the case is rather overstated.

Robert Cardinal Bellarmine was appointed [by the Church] to examine Galileo's teachings. A distinguished scholar, he was far from ill-informed and he was told that Galileo needed to produce more evidence to establish his case; this, as we have seen, was precisely what he could not do because at the time it did not exist. Galileo was not condemned, but the church did take a harder look at Copernicus's book. It was suspended for four years in 1616 "pending correction" and reissued with several changes, largely to make it clear that the heliocentric model is only a hypothesis. Galileo was not mentioned. How, then, did things go so wrong for him?

The Church's response to Galileo is often put down to "a fear of discussion and debate," but that is not so. Alternative astronomical hypotheses were freely discussed, including Copernicus's astronomy, which, as Bellarmine remarked (in a letter to Paolo Foscarini, April 12, 1615), made "excellent good sense" as a hypothesis.

Galileo was not content with this. In order to show that the earth revolves, he advanced an ingenious but erroneous theory of the tides, and in order to defend the Copernican picture of heavenly spheres, he argued that comets were a form of optical illusion. These views put Galileo out on a limb.

He went further than this, however. He sought to reinterpret certain disputed biblical passages in the light of Copernican reasoning and in contradiction of earlier authorities. This was contrary to the Council of Trent's admonition (which had been intended for the Reformers) forbidding the interpretation of Scripture against the authority of tradition. But perhaps just as significantly, Galileo alienated his friend Pope Urban VIII.

The dispute between the Church and Galileo was due to his increasingly rude denunciations of anyone who disagreed with him rather than any doctrinal dispute over his new theories. His strongest opponents were not the Church leadership, but his fellow natural philosophers, who had a low view of his theories.

In other words, despite the Church's accomodation to this new theory, in the face of ridicule from the natural philosophers, the history we now learn in school accuses the Church of foolish pride and a stiff-neck. Accomodating sciences will do little to make the Church more acceptable to those who regard the Gospel as foolishness.

Update: I fixed some transcription errors in the quote from Sampson's book, and also put in the page numbers.

New Posts: More on Faith and Science above. More on Galileo, including some quotes from another source, here.

I haven't watched the testimony itself, but I will be reading the transcript when I get a chance. Powerline has live-blogged it for anyone interested in the instant replay. His general feeling is she did okay, but not great. The one thing I've noticed is that the Bush administration has avoided laying the blame for 9/11 at Clinton's feet. This would be very easy to do, and sometimes I wish they just would do it, since Clinton's people don't seem to be returning the favor. At other times, I admire them for doing that, trying to avoid the obvious partisan advantage and instead looking to unite the American people. Even in the direct aftermath of 9/11, when firing a dozen or so Clinton appointees would have been strongly approved, and would have discredited them enough that they couldn't have taken the role they're in now, Bush decided to keep them, hoping that in the emergency situation they could put aside partisan differences. Perhaps it was a mistake, but I still have to admire him for it.

A post from The Volokh Conspiracy discusses an article about a college student who was sent home (it’s not clear whether he was suspended or expelled) for writing a short story from the first-person perspective of a serial killer. When his parents complained, the teacher was fired for assigning a disturbing, unapproved story in class, specifically "Girl with Curious Hair," by David Foster Wallace, the author of the critically acclaimed Infinite Jest.

I've read Infinite Jest. Although it’s hard to get into, it is worth reading, with an interesting philosophical basis and a subtle humor which I didn’t always get. It was also very disturbing. Disturbing is not the same as graphic, or shockinig, although this book was occasionally those things as well. Disturbing is when a book makes you nervous, less certain that the world is as you thought it was. Good writers can write disturbing stories, while amateurs have to settle for shocking.

Most student writers are amateurs. I’ve taken a creative writing class in college--as a Grad student, I was nearly a decade older than some of the students--and I read the works of my fellow classmates. Some of them were very good. A lot of their works tended towards fantasy and magic realism, but as an avid reader, and sometimes writer, of fantasy, I’m not one to complain. But when they tried for horrific or disturbing stories, sometimes it amounted to piling on the graphic and shocking in the hopes that something disturbing resulted. One story was focused on sadomasochism, and I found it mildly disgusting rather than disturbing. The point is that student writers don’t usually have much appreciation of the limits of graphic and shocking writing, neither the limits of what it can accomplish nor the limits of what other people can tolerate.

Lest I sound too patronizing here, I’ll note that while I often try for disturbing with my stories, I’m not at all sure that I succeed. When I do succeed, I think it’s where I’m less graphic, leaving things out and letting the readers fill in the blank spaces. On the other hand, maybe I’m just not very good at the graphic stuff.

Anyway, it doesn’t surprise me to read that a student would write a graphic story from a serial killer’s point of view. It must have been seriously graphic, and perhaps even truly disturbing, for an experienced creative writing teacher to feel nervous about it. Thus I can understand the motivations of both the student and the teacher. As for the administration, that’s another matter. The fact that they called the police homicide division because a student wrote a disturbing short story in a creative writing class, now that’s disturbing. And while it’s certainly in the college’s authority to supervise what its instructors teach, firing a teacher for assigning outside reading material in a creative writing class is a little bit overboard. I think the best avenue for the teacher would have been a one-on-one with the student, with another person there if she were really nervous about this. The fact that her attempt to get advice about the situation turned into this mess will only make the situation worse for more teachers.

Update: Fixed the link to the Volokh Conspiracy, and added one to my writings.

Kerry has a tendency to bristle whenever his patriotism is questioned, or his voting record, or ... Okay, Kerry bristles whenever someone asks him a question. As in this article where he responds to questions about his Catholicism:

Mr. Kerry became combative when told that some conservatives were criticizing him for being a Roman Catholic who supported policies, like abortion rights and same-sex unions, that are at odds with Catholic teaching.

"Who are they?" he demanded of his questioner. "Name them. Are they the same legislators who vote for the death penalty, which is in contravention of Catholic teaching?"

He added: "I'm not a church spokesman. I'm a legislator running for president. My oath is to uphold the Constitution of the United States in my public life. My oath privately between me and God was defined in the Catholic church by Pius XXIII and Pope Paul VI in the Vatican II, which allows for freedom of conscience for Catholics with respect to these choices, and that is exactly where I am. And it is separate. Our constitution separates church and state, and they should be reminded of that."

Scott Belliveau has a thorough fisking of this in National Review. Hugh Hewitt, meanwhile, argues that the Catholic doctrine on the death penalty and abortion are very different, and Kerry is merely showing off his lack of knowledge of and reflection on his own faith.

To this, I have one thing to add. Even if Kerry were accurately pointing out the hypocrisy of others, how does this in any way absolve hypocrisy on his own part? His answer started with an ad hominem attack and devolved into a murky explanation of separation of church and state. If Kerry does not understand that separation of church and state does not prevent people's faith from influencing their public decisions, then he is the opposite of a defender of the freedom of religion. The Senate Democrats have been treating religious belief as a disqualifier for public office, attacking President Bush's nominees for holding strong beliefs which might somehow influence them, despite ample evidence that at no time did this religious belief prevent them from acting within the confines of the law. In other words, even if they follow the law and do their duty, the fact that their religious belief may influence how they fulfill their duties within the discretion afforded to them by the office is reason enough to disqualify them for that office. (In the meantime, there's no word of complaint on those judges and executive officers who break the law in accordance with the religion of secular humanism.) If this is not an attack on religious freedom, I don't know what is.

Update: Added a link to Byron York's article to point out what the Democratic anti-religious tactics have been.

I really meant to be revising a short story of mine right now, but instead I'm being distracted by "Whose Line is it Anyway?" If you're not familiar with this show, it's an improv comedy show on ABC. It's also on Monday-Thursday on ABC Family at 10 pm. It's very funny, but the comedy isn't exactly family friendly.

Update: I managed to turn off the television and do some work. After about an hour I got through 10% of the first revision. Depending on how you count it, there will be two or three more revisions before it's done.

Old Post: My previous post on this topic is here.

Kevin at The Smallest Minority is hosting a discussion of judicial tyranny, going so far as to keep the post at the top of his blog in order to make sure the discussion continues. He kindly points to my post on the subject (link in Old Post section).

It's an interesting topic, and I've said plenty about it before, so I won't go into it again. Instead, try here and here.

Steven den Beste at USS Clueless thinks it's not entirely a bad thing:

It's been said that it is impolite to correct an enemy when he is making a tremendous mistake.
...
Our primary goal in Iraq is to establish a multi-ethnic tolerant liberal democracy, one which supports free expression. This is quite radical; there's never been anything like that before in an Arabic-speaking nation. And there's a natural tendency for those living in Iraq to wonder whether we're serious or hypocritical. After all, everyone believes in free speech when that speech agrees with them. Even under Saddam, anyone was free to praise him anytime they wanted.

The real test was whether we'd tolerate speech critical of us, and so far we have. Which is in the long run good. But it also meant we had to leave hands-off a lot of people in Iraq which we knew represented a terrible threat in the long run.

If we'd crushed them just for speaking against us, we would have been revealed as hypocrites, and the people of Iraq would not have come to support the process. By leaving them alone, they represented a danger but our tolerance also convinced other Iraqis we really meant what we said, and ultimately that was more important.

Now, however, we now have been given the opportunity to take the worst of them out without damaging broader Iraqi confidence in our commitment to freedom. We have proved that we will tolerate peaceful dissent, but we never promised we'd tolerate armed rebellion.

The thing to keep in mind is that these people are not the ones we believed would be happy and productive citizens of the new, democratic Iraqi society. al-Sadr has been causing trouble since the beginning, agitating for an Islamic republic. The ones in Fallujah, assuming they're Baathist holdovers, are the ones saying that they want Saddam back. As long as they were just talking, there wasn't a whole lot we could do without being hypocritical in our advocacy for free expression. Even when they advocated violence, there were limits to what we could do about them, and nothing we could do about their followers. An armed rebellion is different, however. Now they're out in the open, exposed, and they can be arrested, charged, and sentenced if they surrender. That or commit suicide by US Marine.

It will be spun very negatively in the press and by the Democratic leadership. However, I think it will be all over in a month (maybe as little as a week), and Iraq will be better off when these very dangerous people are gone.

New Post: It's been almost a week. What's the progress? See above.

Donald Sensing is worried about judicial activism, so worried that he's afraid that within a generation the US will be a tyranny. He feels that neither of the major parties has a strong position against judicial activism. The Republicans at least pay lip service to judicial restraint, and Republican judicial appointees generally show a greater respect for the Constitutional text (see Scalia and Thomas), but Sensing and others can point to plenty of counterexamples. They make the argument that the Republicans are only complaining about judicial activism because liberals are in charge of the judiciary, and that if they were in charge (and in a few cases cases where they have been in charge), they would be doing the same thing as the liberals. Maybe the Republican talk about judicial restraint is just lip service, and they aren't really interested in reforming the judiciary.

So what? At least they give it lip service, and while that may not be enough, it's a starting point. It's in Republican self-interest to oppose judicial activism, because they never seem to win those games. Maybe if they could make enough judicial appointments, they could start to win, but it doesn't look like that will ever happen. Democrats always appoint liberals, but Republicans never have much luck getting conservatives appointed. Senate Democrats vote against any Presidential appointee whose politics they can impugn, and they're quite good at that, while Republicans usually feel it's their duty to approve any appointee who's qualified. This difference in philosophy means that Democratic presidents can pack the courts with liberals, while Republican presidents only seem able to get moderates through.

The Republican position, even if it's not sincere, has drawn those who are sincere about it to the Republican banner. Today, those who want judicial restraint have no choice other than the Republicans. And since these people are now part of their base, the Republicans are more responsive to the sentiment. Those who believe in it are becoming more important in Republican circles, both as politicians and opinion writers. Read National Review. I'm fully convinced most of the writers believe in judicial restraint as a matter of principle, often arguing against Republican pet causes that they believe overreach the bounds of government and the courts. The gay marriage issue has galvanized the Republican base, but a large number of them, including myself, are arguing that the solution is not to ban gay marriage itself, but to stop the out-of-control judiciary which would impose it on us. It is Republicans who are proposing a bill which would give Congress a means to overrule the Supreme Court. This won't stop government overreach in general, but it would at least ensure that our elected representatives get the last word.

Constitutionalists won't find either of the major parties perfectly in tune with their goal. Judicial activism is just too accepted in our culture for either party, which are after all broad coalitions of many different political movements, to be totally against it. But they're going to have to choose the lesser of two evils, and they're only kidding themselves when they say that there's no difference between the two parties.

Update: I fixed the link which was supposed to point to my post on the Republican bill but instead led to a post by Donald Sensing. (Not that it was a bad post, just not what I was referring to; it's the same as the one which appears earlier in this post.)

New Post: More on the ongoing discussion above.

I've added a new blog to my blogroll. letters from babylon is a blog by Christian grad students focusing on matters of faith and academia. They all hail from Boston, and two of them have ties to MIT, including Tony Jimenez, with whom I worked in MIT's United Christian Organizations. The issues they discuss are the sorts of things I'd be discussing if I weren't so easily distracted by politics. They've kindly added me to their blogroll anyway.

To no one's surprise, except perhaps that of Spanish voters, giving terrorists what they want doesn't seem to deter terrorism:

The suicide apartment house blast that killed the alleged ringleader of last month's Madrid train bombings and four other terror suspects left the core of the terror group either dead or in jail, Spain's interior minister said on Sunday.

Explosives discovered in the building where the five killed themselves to avoid capture Saturday night indicated they were plotting more violence and were linked to the failed bombing of a high-speed rail line Friday.
...
The 22 pounds of dynamite and 200 detonators found in the apartment are the same as that used in the March 11 attacks and in the bomb that was discovered Friday before it could explode along the high-speed rail line between Madrid and Seville, Acebes said.

"They were going to keep on attacking because some of the explosives were prepared, packed and connected to detonators," he said.
...
The investigation into the Madrid attacks has focused on the Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group, which has links to Al Qaeda and is related to a group suspected in last year's Casablanca bombings, which killed 45 people including 12 suicide bombers.

As the US found out after decades of half-hearted responses, with each reprisal-free success the terrorists grow bolder, with each concession they demand more. As their ultimate goal is a world-spanning Islamic caliphate (although they'll settle for the Mideast and most of Europe for now), total surrender is not an option as long as we secular, decadent Westerners aren't willing to convert to Islam. While to most of us (including myself) 9/11 seemed out of the blue, looking back over the past decade we could see the steady progression of deadly terrorist acts, by which measure 9/11 was merely one more step. That is when the US popular will woke up and said "No more." No more concessions, no more reprieves. The US has decided to do something about the terrorists, removing the organizations root and branch, ending those regimes which have supported it, and changing the culture of the Middle East in order to address the root cause.

Given this terrorist group's apparent success in altering the political will of a nation by setting off bombs just before the election, might terrorists try the same thing in the US? We might debate whether it would have the same effect, and they must be wondering the same thing, but I wouldn't be surprised if they tried. We Westerners are convinced that terrorism cannot destroy a civil society, and I agree, but I'm not so sure that the terrorists understand this. If you recall the "smoking gun" video that showed Osama bin Laden's involvement in 9/11 (transcript here), the man he was talking to, Shaykh, said of the US thoughts at the time of the attack, "They [the Americans] were terrified thinking there was a coup." Now, I don't know of any American who thought the planes were part of a coup attempt; most of us can't imagine the possibility of a coup in the United States. Who would do something like that? How could he find anyone who would go along with it? The point is not that there could be a coup in the US, but that there are many terrorists and terrorist supporters who believe there could be. While we're certain they can't destroy the US with their attempts, they believe they can. Thus while we may think that a terrorist attack just before the election would only strengthen our resolve, how can we know what they're thinking? Perhaps they think that with just the right attack, they can bring our political system crashing down.

What sort of attack would they attempt? It's hard to say. As I've already noted, they don't understand us, and I can't claim to understand them. However, I wouldn't bet on a big, showy attack. It's possible that what they have in mind is an assassination attempt. During the campaign, both presidential candidates, and their running mates, are more exposed than under normal circumstances. I think they'd certainly be happy to get rid of Bush, and if they think getting rid of both candidates can throw the electoral process into chaos, they'd want to try it. I'm not predicting that's what they'll do, I'm only saying that it wouldn't surprise me, and I hope that the Secret Service is taking every possible precaution.

Here's what I've been writing about this week.

Vampires -- My post challenging my readers on their beliefs about Vampires generated as many comments as anything else I've ever written. Granted, it still came to only four comments, but still...

Judicial Appointments -- I explain why fighting Bush over his judicial appointments may backfire on the Democrats.

Kerry's Sermon -- My thoughts on Kerry's speech before a Black church.

CNN bias -- Is the CNN article on Bush's reversals biased? You betcha.

Engineer writers -- I "join" the Corner debate about Engineer writers.

Is Christianity inherently anti-Semitic? -- If you say the gospels are anti-Semitic, then so is the entirety of Christianity.

Muslims and The Passion of the Christ -- I add my two cents to the debate over The Passion's popularity in the Mideast.

It's time to take a look at what's going on with our favorite online comics.

Sluggy Freelance -- It looks like Riff's business is going under, and he can't get back to save it. Meanwhile, Zoe's trying to get Torg and Gwynn to help out around the house.

Day by Day -- I'll admit, sometimes I don't quite get Day by Day, Wednesday's being Exhibit A. I enjoyed the rest of the week's commentary on Richard Clarke, however.

It's Walky! -- With SEMME shutting down, Joe has one last chance to find a meaningful relationship.

College Roomies from Hell! -- Roger finds help for Dave while Mike manages to stave off insanity.

General Protection Fault -- Trudy has second thoughts about using Yoshi. Trudy, sympathetic? I never expected to see that.

Schlock Mercenary -- The mercenaries have found a job. Much humor and violence are certain to ensue.

Doc Rampage has a post where he discusses Christian science fiction and fantasy writers as part of his discussion of conservative science fiction and fantasy. It's an interesting list. I've already read the books he mentioned by C.S. Lewis (with the exception that I've never gotten ahold of a copy of Out of the Silent Planet), but I haven't read Chistopher Stasheff or C. Dale Brittain. Based on the Doc's suggestion, I plan to check them out, just as soon as I get through my present stack of books, which is heavy on Stephen King and Dean Koontz. Doc also includes me in his list of Christian writers. Being included in the same list as C.S. Lewis is an honor I'm not certain I'm worthy of, but I appreciate Doc's endorsement. He was apparently too humble to include himself, but he should have.

I read a lot of fantasy and science fiction myself. While I haven't notice a lot of Christian writers, there are a few. Tolkien comes to mind, for example. One thing you will notice immediately is that there are a lot of Mormon writers of speculative fiction (a catch-all term that includes both fantasy and science fiction and everything in between). Along with Orson Scott Card, whom Doc Rampage has already mentioned, there's also Tracy Hickman, one of the principle authors of the Dragonlance series, as well as plenty of other series he's co-authored with Margaret Weis. From what I understand of Mormon doctrine, other worlds are quite consistent with their beliefs, which explains their overrepresentation in speculative fiction. Mormons are not Christians, precisely, but Mormonism does derive from Christianity and thus you'll find many Christian beliefs reflected in writings by Mormon authors.

Update: Based on Doc's update, I fixed the spelling of C. Dale Brittain. I also added a link to one of Doc's earlier posts.

Now that's it's clear that The Passion hasn't been causing widespread anti-Semitism among American Evangelicals, there's another group to be worried about. Middle Eastern Muslims have suddenly become very interested in this movie, most likely precisely because it's been accused of being anti-Semitic. Having Arafat declare that the movie is not anti-Semitic is about as convincing as Kim Jung Il's endorsement of Kerry. (Although I'd be curious how the anti-Passion Europeans respond to this endorsement from their patron saint of Mideast peace.) As I mentioned below, Doc Rampage has a great post on this:

I think there is enormous cause for hope here. And if the film has positive effects in the Muslim world, a great deal of the credit will have to go to the Jewish groups that protested its release. This would be a double irony: the film gains popularity because they opposed it, and they benefit from the increased popularity. I hope that in twenty years we will be having great arguments about what was the more powerful influence leading to the great modernization and pacification of the Middle East: the liberation of Iraq or the release of The Passion of the Christ.

Most Mideast Muslims have never heard the gospel story, only a highlights version heavily filtered through Islam. What an incredible opportunity this is! Their own hatred is leading them to seek out a telling of the gospel story.

While The Passion hasn't shown any tendency to stir up anti-Semitism among the generally philo-Semitic American Evangelicals, will it fire up already anti-Semitic people? Possibly. Generally you expect people to get out of a movie what they bring in with them, but I wouldn't be so quick to discount the power of God. I have been praying, without a whole lot hope, that the Middle East would be opened to the Gospel. (I haven't been praying for mass conversions so much as that the people will be given the chance to hear the Gospel and freely choose whether to believe without fear of reprisal.) Now I'm starting to hope. I would encourage all Christians to pray that the Holy Spirit will work in the Middle East, and that The Passion might be an instrument of this work. That, as in Genesis 50:20, what men mean for evil, God means for good.

Old Post: I told you I was working on a means to sell my short stories online below.

Doc Rampage kindly tested the system for me, and it looks like it works. Drop by the Doc's blog, by the way. He has an excellent post on The Passion and the Muslim world. As for Amazon, it's changed what it charges for the transactions, so I'll have to think about the pricing again. $1.25 was precisely calculated to give me $1 after Amazon took its cut; based on this, I had worked out a whole pricing scheme based on length. Of course, this is a moot point until I have some actual stories ready to sell, and then I should worry more about how much people might be willing to pay for them than how to round it to nice even amounts added to my banking account.

Tonight, I was writing Chapter 20 of The War of the Elementals (of which Fire was Part I, so think of it as Chapter 20 of Fire). This explains why I'm up at 3 AM. I like how it's turning out, but it's getting rather long for a single chapter, so I could end up splitting it. I've considered publishing the chapters serially (and selling them individually), but I tried that idea with Fire and eventually gave up. After I finished Chapter 5, I went over a year without putting anything up, then published 12 chapters, and a revised version of the first five, at once. I hadn't been writing any slower, I just felt that the section I was working on needed to be written as one piece to make it consistent and readable. Afterwards I was working on my thesis, and I didn't write much fiction during that academic year, but I wrote two short stories afterwards. One of them came out pretty well, and I may send it around a couple of print magazines to see if it can get published. The other one grew to be much longer than I intended, so I couldn't send it to any magazines without seriously gutting it. However, this very length might make it a good candidate to publish here. The problem is I'm still not sure of how well the story reads, and I won't be sure until it's been through a couple of revisions. If I'm happy with it then, I may make it the first story I officially sell over the Internet. If I'm not, I may post it for free. Then again, if I'm really unhappy with it, I'll bury it and you'll never hear from it again. Just as soon as I'm finished with Chapter 20 (or Chapters 20 and 21), I'll get to work on it.

Update: I really should know better than to post at 3 AM. There was nothing gramatically wrong with this post, but stylistically it was choppy and disjointed. Hopefully it reads better now.

I haven't said anything about the Fallujah attacks yet. (That's not surprising, when you consider that I very rarely express my thoughts on a news item right away. I'm not a fast enough blogger to get there first, and I prefer to let my thoughts percolate. Then, if I have something to add to the debate, I will post something.) If you don't know what it's all about, terrorists bombed vehicles carrying civilian contractors, then a mob dragged the contractors out of the vehicles and mutilated their bodies.

Plenty of people have posted on this already. Donald Sensing argues that it's important to act, while Steven den Beste argues that it's important not to overreact. I agree with both.

One thing I'm not too worried about is being able to find the members of the mob. The whole thing was caught on video, and the mob wasn't camera shy. This isn't another Mogadishu. We clearly aren't going to run; we will instead respond forcefully, but not inhumanely.

I'm experimenting with being able to sell some of my short stories online. As a test, I've created an Amazon Honor System Paypage which allows access to digital content. The story I've chosen for this experiment is "A Stranger in the Library," which is available online for free, so I wouldn't recommend using this option unless you are looking for an excuse to give me money. In any case, the link is below. I may start offering some stuff from the sequel to Fire for pay.



Update: Dang. I was going to test the payment system, but it won't accept payments from myself. Anyone else want to test the system and make sure it works?

New Post: Doc Rampage tests the system so you don't have to. More above.