Back of the Envelope

And now we'll divert ourselves from discussing religion to discussing webcomics. I'm getting this done early, but I'll eventually bump it to its rightful place at the end of the week.

Sluggy Freelance -- Once Gwynn defeats the evil vacuum cleaner, it's time for a Kiki activity week. Ooooh, shiny!

Day by Day -- Plenty of comments on Iraq, and I thought Chris's thoughts on the press conference were most appropriate.

It's Walky! -- Walky and Joyce. Joe and what's-her-name. Love, or maybe hate, is in the air. But back at SEMME headquarters, there's trouble brewing.

College Roomies from Hell! -- Roger meets a unicorn, Mike meets a mermaid, and Dave meets, well, fights with, anyway, a half-metal mad scientist doctor who just wants to escape. Can Dave retain consciousness long enough to stop him from abandoning the others?

General Protection Fault -- Ki's plan to visit Nick gets off to a rough start, but all's well that ends well. Right?

Schlock Mercenary -- Tagon's would-be employer is vaporized. It's a good thing he got half in advance.

Old Post: My previous post is here.

In my previous post, I acknowledged that the progressive church's efforts to reach out to groups who had traditionally been neglected by the Church indicated an admirable desire on their part. After all, Jesus reached out to prostitutes and tax collectors. Unfortunately, this desire is not matched by a respect for scripture. Indeed, they seem to be encouraging the very normalization of sin that bothered me in the previous post, and they seem to have a contempt for orthodox Christianity that is apparent on their front page:

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"?

In their desire not to offend people who are normally offended by Christianity, they forget that Christianity is a message of offense. "And blessed is he who does not take offense at Me." (Matt. 11:6) Jesus was not universally loved, and those who thought themselves sinless had the hardest time accepting him. Ignoring sin, offering acceptance without redemption, tells people that they don't really need Jesus. (Of course, this doesn't seem to bother the progessive Christians, judging from their second point: "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.") Jesus taught the legitimacy of the law, with strong warnings for those who ignored it: "Whoever then annuls one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever keeps and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven." (Matt. 5:19) While we need to love all sinners, while there is forgiveness available for them and for us, we dare not forget just how dangerous, how deadly sin is. When we do, we treat Christ's sacrifice as worthless.

My blog traffic has been up and down this week, as can be seen from this graph of visits per day from Sitemeter.

The Blogs for Bush carnival on Monday (no doubt augmented by the Instapundit link to Blogs for Bush on that day), the Christian Carnival on Wednesday, the link in Right Wing News's sidebar, all brought a lot of traffic at the beginning of the week. Of course, it tapered off near the end, helped along by my own sluggish blogging. For a while there I thought my average might be moving up to 50+ per day, but it looks like I'm still in the 25-35 range (which actually is an improvement since I last mentioned it, as I've since figured out how to ignore my own visits--well I technically knew how, I just didn't think it would work with dynamic IP addressing, but it's smarter than I thought).

Bill Hobbs has a post pointing out that a link in a high traffic blog brings a blog more traffic than a mention in any "old media" outlet. Not to be facetious, but is anyone really surprised by this? As I see it, there are two reasons:

1. Ease of use: I mean, really, if you're reading a blog, and you see a link to something you're remotely interested in, you click on it. Easiest thing in the world. Now, if you hear about it on television, or read it in a newspaper, first you have to get online, then type in the address. If you think to yourself "I'll do it the next time I'm online," are you going to even remember the intention, much less what the URL was?

2. Targeted advertising: People who read the big blogs are, after all, the people who, um, read blogs. If you see a link in a blog, then obviously you already know what a blog is, and you already read them, so you're the perfect audience for the link.

Both Letters from Babylon and the Captain's Quarters have thoughts about the new evidence concerning the Shroud of Turin. The Shroud is supposed to be evidence for the resurrection, but very few Christians consider it important evidence for their beliefs. The Catholic Church has maintained careful neutrality. It is supposed to be the cloth in which Jesus was wrapped when he was buried, and it has the image of a face that is particularly visible in photonegatives. It turns out that this image is actually visible on both sides of the shroud, thus making the possibility of forgery less likely.

I first heard the details about the shroud when I went to a lecture on it at the Virginia Junior Classical League Convention when I was in High School (the VJCL Convention is a get-together for Latin students, with contests and lectures and all sorts of fun stuff). This lecture was actually the first place I heard about the gruesome details of crucifixion. Oh, I knew about Jesus's death from the Bible, but oddly no one had ever explained to me how crucifixion actually killed someone. I had never understood how nailing someone to a piece of wood could kill them in just three hours. (It does so by asphyxiation. The arms are drawn out to expand the ribcage and make breathing difficult and painful. You can ease the difficulty by supporting yourself on your legs, but this also becomes very painful when there's a nail driven through them. Usually, though, it took days to die. They broke the thieves' legs to speed it up for them, but Jesus had already given up the ghost, apparently not fighting to survive.) The impression I got from the lecture was that the shroud had most likely been wrapped around someone who had been crucified, although no one really knew whether that person was Jesus. (The speaker was pretty neutral on this point, preferring naturalistic explanations for the image.) As for myself, I don't really consider it evidence for the Resurrection.

From the "In case you were wondering" desk, the revising proceeds apace. I'm about 77% through the first revision of the still unnamed short story.

Old Post: My previous post was here.

John Zimmer at Letters from Babylon commented on my post on the progressive church:

I found the statements about welcoming those groups not traditionally associated with Christianity (like homosexuals) particularly notable. It seems to me that the positions espoused by these "liberal Christians" are born of a commendable desire to extend the love of God to all. Indeed, it is desirable for the Church catholic to be as welcoming as possible, just as Jesus was to the traditionally unrighteous people of his day, like the tax collectors. But how do we strike the right balance between the desirable unconditional acceptance of people and the diligent adherence to the teachings of Scripture (e.g., homosexual practices are sinful)? How do we make it clear that we strive for the holiness of God but also accept all people who, like we, are failing miserably in that pursuit?

Perhaps part of the problem is labeling in our minds some sins as more abhorrent than others. For example, we may not consciously hold the idea that homosexuality is a greater evil than pride, but we often behave as if we did believe so. We should denounce both with the same spirit.

I think it is true that we have a tendency to denounce certain sins as greater than others, and the actions of various Christians in regards to homosexuality has done much to hurt the cause of the Gospel. What caused Christians to take such offense at homosexuality was not the perceived abhorrence of the sin itself, but the desire to normalize it, to say that there's nothing wrong with it, that there is in fact something wrong with you for thinking there is something wrong with it. The homosexual movement has been quite successful in this effort, so that in Canada a pastor can be charged with a hate crime for publishing an ad saying that homosexuality is sinful.

But homosexuality is hardly the first or the last sin to be normalized. Certainly extramarital sex has long been so, and only "prudes" in "fundamentalist" churches say otherwise. And what of greed, envy, and pride, are we not so inured to the appeal to them in each television commercial that we rarely recognize the sin anymore? The Church has almost always functioned in a society that doesn't believe in the wrongness of the things the Church says are sinful, and in some ways I think it is better that way. In a society which agrees too closely with the Church, we're less likely to recognize those sins our society fails to recognize.

New Post: More above.

A Small Victory and Dean's World have begun a blogwar to see who can raise the most money for Spirit of America, which funds projects by troops to help Iraqis. The specific project they're supporting is one that helps Iraqis start up TV news stations to counter the prevalence of Al Jazeera. I think this is a great idea, and I'd gladly help out, although neither is courting me to become a part of either alliance. Hey, I may only get 1% of their traffic, but I'm sure I can contribute something. And frankly, I come cheap.

Old Post: I mentioned Gerard Alexander's article below.

Gerard Alexander, the author of this article on the GOP in the South, is coming to speak at Rochester. Does anyone have suggestions for questions I should ask him?

Update: For anyone near or around the Rochester area, the talk is in Hoyt Hall at the University of Rochester, at 8 pm on Thursday, April 22nd. It's sponsored by the College Republicans, with whom I'm not associated.

New Post: I blog Gerard Alexander's talk above.

John Hawkins from Right Wing News put a link in his sidebar to my post about Bush visiting wounded soldiers at Walter Reed Hospital. I'm surprised he linked to that rather than the original Kausfile I got it from, but that's the advantage of Permalinks, I guess. This has been responsible for about 2/3rds of my traffic today. Thanks for the link, John! I guess my strategy of shamelessly promoting myself in other people's comments is still working. (I do try not to overdo it, though.)

The Christian Carnival is up at the GodBlog. This is the first time I've had a post included, the one on Heliocentrism and the Church. Check out what other Christian bloggers are saying.

Old Post: I live-blogged Bush's press conference last night in the post below.

Well, I live blogged it, but that was mostly just the facts. What did I think of it? I wasn't as impressed as I wanted to be. As much as I might wish it, Bush is just never going to be very articulate. (Fortunately for him, Kerry comes across as worse. He doesn't mangle his words, but he can't give a straight answer to save his life.) The President's opening speech was good, emphasizing that the June 30th date will hold firm and that our commitment to Iraq remains strong and will remain strong well past the turnover date (we'll probably continue operations for a year or so, and keep bases there for on the order of a decade). When it came to answering questions, I wish he had done better. In the immediate aftermath I was disappointed with his answers, but having had a day to think about it, I think I was more disappointed with the reporters. That sort of passive-agressive "Why won't you just admit you're a miserable failure?" questioning made them look much worse than it did Bush, even if I don't think he came off so well either. The answer to why Bush won't admit to his mistakes can be found here. Bush's ideas, and mine, about his mistakes are not the same as the press's. They want him to admit he shouldn't have gone to Iraq, while I think his only mistake was basing his reasoning on WMDs to win over Tony Blair and the UN. You don't need WMDs to make the argument, as I (and many others) have shown. Yet that answer would surely just infuriate the press, so why bother? On the other hand, maybe that's plenty of reason to do so. Enough with what the press thinks, or the Democrats, he should just say what he's thinking.

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.