New world countdown: 10, 9, 8 …

  • I haven’t had much to say lately, and for once it wasn’t because I was all that busy. I just … well, I didn’t have much to say.

    But on a week­end get­away I dived into a lit­tle pop cul­ture, and if that doesn’t give you some­thing to think about — and have fear and dread about — noth­ing will. These days I start to feel that though we may not be com­ing to the end of THE world, we’re com­ing to the end of A world — the end of an age, the shift from one par­a­digm to another.

    .
    Elas­tic Science

    I watched a show last night on the His­tory Chan­nel called “The Quest for the Lost Ark” and was floored by its bad sci­ence. I’m not scientifically-minded and wouldn’t usu­ally put things in those terms. But what I was see­ing was so bla­tantly illog­i­cal that there are no other words for it.

    The book­ish British scholar-host — whose name really was Pro­fes­sor Tudor Parfitt — pur­ported to be out to dis­cover new things about what had hap­pened to the Ark of the Covenant. But in his explo­ration, he took text from the Bible to be fac­tual at some times and fic­tional at oth­ers — regard­ing the same book as a cred­itable and dis­cred­ited source — with no expla­na­tion for the inconsistency.

    For exam­ple, early in the pro­gram, Parfitt — billed by the His­tory Chan­nel as “the global quest-detective” — used the Bib­li­cal text from Exo­dus as a source of infor­ma­tion about the Ark. But after sketch­ing out the descrip­tion of the Ark from Exo­dus, Prof. Parfitt puz­zled over how the Ark could’ve been cov­ered with gold when the Israelites were in a region that doesn’t have any. I waited for him to pro­vide the obvi­ous, OBVIOUS answer from the Bible — that Exo­dus says not just once but three times that the Israelites plun­dered the Egyp­tians and took away gold and sil­ver from those who had once enslaved them.

    I waited in vain. The answer that a fifth grade Sun­day school pupil would’ve been able to give was utterly lost on Parfitt and the other three schol­ars he flew around to inter­view. Instead, they con­cluded that since there was no gold in the desert, the authors of the Bib­li­cal account must’ve have been mis­taken. They fur­ther spec­u­lated that Bib­li­cal authors prob­a­bly made up the descrip­tion of the Ark and didn’t know what it actu­ally looked like. Later on, Parfitt pos­tu­lates that there were two Arks of the Covenant, based on no more evi­dence than triv­ial dis­crep­an­cies in the descrip­tions at two places.

    It isn’t that these sorts of pro­grams tram­ple unapolo­get­i­cally on Bib­li­cal truths — we’ve all come to expect as much. It’s that they don’t even play by their own rules. A cer­tain brand of scholar appears totally com­fort­able with weav­ing together an amal­gam of sci­ence and reli­gion which does no credit to either. This is pop­u­lar sci­ence, to be sure. I have no idea what actual sci­en­tists are up to these days. But if they’re half as will­ing to pitch their own meth­ods in the hopes of cob­bling together an attrac­tive nar­ra­tive, we’re all in a lot of trouble.

    In the Feb­ru­ary issue of “Wired” mag­a­zine, these uber-geeks came up with a list of the things that sucked, and they included Sci­ence itself (HERE). So why in the world would these guys who wor­ship at the altar of all things bright, beau­ti­ful, tech­no­log­i­cal and athe­is­tic say that sci­ence sucked? Why, because it shows us how stu­pid we are. Or rather, how stu­pid unsci­en­tific peo­ple are. Or both:

    “…those same cor­texes that invented sci­ence can’t really embrace it. Sci­ence describes the world with num­bers … and abstrac­tions… But our intractable brains evolved on a diet of camp­fire tales. … Evo­lu­tion gave us brains that crave cer­tainty, with irra­tional fears of crash­ing in an air­plane and a built-in weak­ness for just-so sto­ries about intel­li­gent design.”

    But what if those who want to see sci­ence trump ‘just-so sto­ries’ bor­row lib­er­ally in order to over­come this draw­back? If sci­ence, which doesn’t believe in God, uses the con­cept of God in order to get peo­ple out of the churches once and for all, what would be the result? Sci­ence might be dis­cred­ited (if they got caught), but reli­gion — which is loathed by many of these schol­ars — might be fin­ished off alto­gether. I think they might be will­ing to take the chance.

    .
    Oprah-ology
    I’m just get­ting sick of Oprah. I admit that before I say any­thing else. Not that she’s a bad per­son; I just don’t feel like she and I have a lot in com­mon and so I don’t care all that much what books she reads or who she votes for.

    And that’s start­ing to mat­ter, because Oprah is no longer a woman with a show. She’s now a phe­nom­e­non with a fol­low­ing, and she has been for some time. Who else could have a glossy, monthly mag­a­zine named after them — and not the whole name, mind you, just the first ini­tial of the first name, which might be trade­mark patented any day now? Who else could have book­stores and pub­lish­ers falling into line when­ever a book is recommended?

    And now Oprah’s going to doc­tor our soul. Accord­ing to an arti­cle in USA Today, Oprah’s been feel­ing our pain. “I speak a lot to my audi­ence even more after the show than dur­ing it,” she says, “and I know a lot of peo­ple are seek­ing spir­i­tual enlight­en­ment and encouragement.”

    That might not seem like a very orig­i­nal obser­va­tion, but that’s okay. Even if oth­ers have said it, they haven’t done any­thing about it. But Oprah’s got a Plan. She read a self-help book called “The Power of Now” and decided that Amer­ica needed classes on the inter­net to study up on the book’s golden principles.

    “Win­frey calls the book ‘a wake-up call for the entire planet, one reader at a time. It helps us to dis­tance our­selves from our egos, … and open our­selves to a higher self.’”

    Oh no, not the higher self. The peo­ple I know with the biggest egos are addicted to self-help books, because they just LOVE find­ing their higher self. The higher the self, the eas­ier it is to main­tain an inflated sense of pride and con­sider other selves unim­por­tant. God for­bid a per­son would turn in their need for spir­i­tual enlight­en­ment and encour­age­ment to the Chris­t­ian nar­ra­tive of sin and redemp­tion. Much bet­ter to buy a book, attend Oprah’s series of ten 90-minute ses­sions to find out how to “focus on the impor­tance of being aware of the present moment.” Brilliant.

    Oprah is hum­ble about hav­ing dri­ven sales of this book through the roof (Oops, sorry. I for­got the ironic quotes. She’s “hum­ble” about it):

    “I knew peo­ple would respond to some­thing that could make their lives bet­ter. That’s what I do: I’m in the better-life business.”[gag. choke. Sorry, couldn’t help it. Don’t mind me.]

    “I’m just hop­ing to have a suc­cess­ful class and that we don’t blow out the internet.”

    So when Oprah tells peo­ple to come to class, the World Wide Web bet­ter be up to the task.

    Like I said, I’m not a fan. But I could be a whole lot more in her favor and still think there’s some­thing wrong with this. When did Oprah’s influ­ence begin extend­ing beyond cul­tural bric-a-brac? When did she start offer­ing to throw her arms around the prob­lem of sin and fal­l­en­ness? And why on earth, if these mat­ters con­cern her so, doesn’t she call them by their right­ful names? Using a book full of fortune-cookie apho­risms to address the sin of pride is like using a new tooth­paste to try to cure your own cancer.

    And the O isn’t just ask­ing Amer­ica to come to class. No, she’s also going to start redefin­ing the way we give to char­ity. She’s got a real­ity show that’s going to pit teams against each other in a com­pe­ti­tion to see who can help the most, and then She (cap­i­tal ‘s’ inten­tional) is going to give the win­ners a mil­lion dol­lars. And let me guess: there will be LOTS of tears. Buck­ets of them. The O may just cry her­self. We’ll all of us — ALL of us — be washed in this mega-million-dollar bap­tism of tears.

    I don’t even have enough vocab­u­lary to go into all the prob­lems I have with this. But the biggest prob­lem I have with Oprah is that more peo­ple don’t have a prob­lem with Oprah. That’s the sim­plest I can put it.

    .
    Who­cares for Pres­i­dent in ’08

    Con­ser­v­a­tives are screwed. No mat­ter who wins the Demo­c­ra­tic pri­mary, we’ll be look­ing at a can­di­date who is decid­edly lib­eral. And since McCain will almost cer­tainly win the GOP nom­i­na­tion, we’ll have a Repub­li­can can­di­date who hasn’t missed a sin­gle chance to let con­ser­v­a­tives know how much he dis­likes them.

    That’s not based on a lot of new infor­ma­tion. It just seems like the way this par­tic­u­lar freight train is headed, and perus­ing any news net­work you like con­firms that the momen­tum is favor­ing Obama. And whether that trans­lates to a Novem­ber vic­tory for the Democ­rats or not, con­ser­v­a­tives will lose and lib­er­als will win.

    So what’s the result? Well, those that I know that are lib­eral will have rea­son to rejoice. Obama seems likely to win, and he’s very per­son­able and well-spoken. More to the point, he seems like he’ll advance every lib­eral pro­gram ever con­ceived, tak­ing money from all those filthy prof­i­teers in Big Busi­ness and mak­ing sure that it goes to poor peo­ple and sad peo­ple and makes them happy. And those who, like the reporter from the Boston Globe, have gone on for 8 years ‘hat­ing George Bush with the heat of a thou­sand suns’ can begin to cool the heck down and get on with their lives. That would be a good thing.

    I wish I could share the happy dance, but I doubt I can. Lib­er­al­ism mar­gin­al­ized Chris­tian­ity to a dan­ger­ous low in the ’70s and then had to back off in the ’90s when a new gen­er­a­tion of con­ser­v­a­tives found some advo­cates in the gov­ern­ment. It was a breath of fresh air, but it lasted just about as long. It would be great to think that the lovely ideas about a benef­i­cent state run­ning things with char­ity and fair­ness for all could be taken up again with­out any more sec­u­lar­iza­tion. I wish I could join lib­eral Chris­tians who feel that the expanded agenda of the left will effec­tively tar­get social prob­lems that have been with us since recorded his­tory, all with­out inter­fer­ing with the power of the Church to try to reach peo­ple and change their lives with the uni­ver­sal truth of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. But those would seem to be unrea­son­able expec­ta­tions. As C. S. Lewis noted, the State and the Church are adver­saries — if one wins, the other will lose. And he would’ve known, since the hand­writ­ing was prob­a­bly already on the wall in Eng­land sixty years ago. In Europe and North­ern Europe, lib­er­al­ism has gone ahead vir­tu­ally unchecked and the results for the Church are plain to see.

    .

    Sorry to put such a long face on it. It may just be my nature. Or I may be wrong to put these things together and get a baaad feel­ing about how the next cou­ple decades will go.

    Like I said, not the end of THE world, just the end of A world.


    Related posts:

    1. Oprah’s new exer­cise: backpedaling
    2. Shak­ing off Obliv­ion, rejoin­ing the real world
    3. New insights on poverty around the world
    4. Harry Pot­ter and the Splin­tery Broomstick
    5. A post about Tom Cruise

    March 3rd, 2008 | Grace | 8 Comments |

8 Responses and Counting...

  • s-p 03.03.2008

    Ah, Grace… a dou­ble shot of real­ity! LOL! Yeah, “higher selves” are just “big­ger selves” = ego­ma­ni­acs. And no mat­ter how you cut it, whether it is Byzan­tium, “Holy Rus­sia”, Ser­bia, or the USA/evangelical right wing: when the church and state get in bed together the kids are always ugly. Its the end of the world as we know it, but it just ush­ers in another world that looks a heck­uva lot like the old one, only uglier. sigh…

  • DebD

    I don’t think I know any­one who likes Oprah. But then again, I have some weird friends. ;)

    I think Tom Cruise must have chan­neled some­thing over to her when he did his odd couch dance on her show a few years ago.

  • Grace

    s-p:
    “When the church and state get in bed together, the kids are always ugly.” snort! That’d make a good bumper sticker, except you know that every­one would assume I was say­ing that the church would ruin the state, not the other way around.

  • Grace

    Deb:
    I think I know one per­son who watches the show, but I haven’t checked lately. And she’s shy to own up to it, just like I usu­ally don’t men­tion that I like Star­bucks cof­fee — you just tend to get jumped on.

    I’ll say this: for a media fig­ure who has been in a posi­tion of trust for so many peo­ple for so long, Oprah could be a lot worse. I just wish peo­ple would find some­one closer to them to put that kind of trust in.

  • Mimi

    My book club is made up of a lot of women who love Oprah. I’m not a fan so it is always inter­est­ing to see how much peo­ple enjoy her.

  • Grace

    When I’ve seen the show at the gym, I see the same qual­ity to it that I see in “The View” (another ‘chick’ show I can’t watch). It looks like a kind of female dis­cus­sion that I don’t really enjoy: feel­ings and per­sonal infor­ma­tion (usu­ally TOO per­sonal to be on national tele­vi­sion) and sad sto­ries and more feel­ings. This doesn’t make me feel closer to these peo­ple, it makes me want to throw water bal­loons at them. But then, I’m a cold-hearted wench.

  • Grace

    s-p:
    Belated sec­ond thought: On re-reading, I see that you’ve inge­niously snuck a dig against the ‘evan­gel­i­cal right wing’ in there.

    I’d love to hear your thoughts on this. It’s obvi­ous, prob­a­bly, that I don’t think I’ve got as much to fear from activist Protes­tants as I do from activist non-Christians, but I’m more will­ing to be edu­cated on this front than I used to be.

  • s-p

    Hi Grace,
    I guess when I try to imag­ine a 21 cen­tury evan­gel­i­cal ver­sion of “Byzan­tium” or “Holy Rus­sia” it makes me cringe. As some­one put it (when­ever Pat Robert­son was run­ning for pres­i­dent), “Do you want some­one with a fin­ger on the “but­ton” who thinks it is his God ordained des­tiny to usher in the apocalypse/end times?“
    A lot of mid­dle east pol­icy is already informed by protes­tant dis­pen­sa­tional the­ol­ogy in ref­er­ence to Israel etc. I’m VERY a-political, but evan­gel­i­cal pol­i­tics scare me.

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