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Mommy Porn

By Amy Spiegel

Late at night certain people stalk the Internet, doing irreparable harm to their psyches and those of their families. They cruise from site to site, soaking up fantasy after fantasy, and with each click of the mouse they take one more step away from reality and one step closer to a life of dissatisfaction with their own circumstances. I am referring, of course, to women who blog surf. (Who did you think I was referring to?) Now before you get your modems in a twist, let me say that I have several friends who find blog surfing very edifying. They search out or stumble upon people facing enormous challenges with great faith and courage. It is not these to whom I refer. I am talking about those of us who plop down at our computers, the remnants of dinner still in our hair and the chaos of a maddening day still ringing in our ears only to reach a new personal low by visiting site after site depicting picturesque families, all wearing color-coordinated clothing, strolling through apple orchards and tenderly ministering to the elderly. Now if I actually knew these families and could put these picture-perfect days in the context of so many not-so-picture-perfect ones, this would probably not be a bad thing. Sharing in the memories of my friends, right? Certainly it is not the intention of these bloggers to make me feel inferior or subhuman. (Okay, maybe some of them do actually intend to make me feel bad, but that is a small minority; and we all see through their pettiness anyway, right?) Whatever their intentions, however, this harmless pastime can easily slip into a sinister addiction. One minute you are catching up with old friends, the next you are blog-stalking perfect strangers. Look! I did it just now. I got stuck on what to write next and started thinking about someone I wanted to know about. Soon I wandered away from her blog to read about the Thanksgiving traditions of someone I don’t even know! This is not just a harmless pastime—this is mommy porn!

Now perhaps you think pornography is too harsh a term for what you might call “taking a more than passing interest in the lives of people I don’t actually know.” But to me, it is the effect of this “passing interest” that lands it in the destructive rather than constructive category of ways to spend your time. What is it about sexual pornography that erodes fidelity and wreaks havoc on so many lives? Isn’t it the supplanting of reality with fantasy, the replacing of the real with the unreal? Let’s be honest here. One of the main reasons men (and I suppose women, too, though the idea really does take a stretch of the imagination for me) look at pictures of surgically-created and airbrush-perfected bodies is to escape the child-bearing created and age-imperfected bodies of their spouses. (I recognize this to be an over-simplification but let’s save psychoanalysis of the male mind for another day, shall we?) Similarly one of the main reasons women take such strong interest in the lives of strangers is to escape the all-too-imperfect and often mundane world in which they dwell. It really doesn’t matter whether or not the people whose lives they are peering into are celebrities or everyday folk. Maybe they read endless articles about whether or not Brad and Angelina are going to adopt triplets from Malawi or they obsessively follow Sue-the-Supermom’s trip to Washington D.C. with the kids and hubby this summer. In either case it’s just the siren call of something different, something outside of ourselves.

The reality is that Brad and Angelina get up every morning and put their pants on one leg at a time like the rest of us, albeit very expensive and excessively small pants. And Sue-down-the-street may have had a family bonding experience that was out of this world but that doesn’t mean that she isn’t yelling at the kids while making oatmeal right now. So maybe rather than lusting after the adventures and successes of others, we should look for the little stand-out moments in our own lives and take pleasure in the reality right in front of us. While there is something intoxicating about the unobtainable, there is something to be said for the bird in the hand. After all, that’s the bird we have been given even if it might not be a perfect bird and it might even bite our hand or poop on us now and then. Maybe we should start a new blogging trend—the color-uncoordinated, picture-imperfect blog. The posts would be all about the time the three-year-old laid down in the middle of the grocery store aisle and refused to budge. Or the story behindyour beautiful Christmas card picture—how you let one kid out of timeout early so he could get back in the picture or you made one cry because you lost your patience and asked in a less than kind voice why she was ruining the picture and finally ended it all by bribing them with early morning slushies if they would just all smile. Or…maybe not. Just remember Brad, Angelina and even Sue-the-Supermom get pooped on too. They’re just smart enough not to blog about it.

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Two Cheers for the Manhattan Declaration

By Jim Spiegel

If you haven’t done so yet, check out the recent Manhattan Declaration, a Christian manifesto on issues related to abortion, marriage, and religious freedom.  Co-authored by Charles Colson, Robert George, and Timothy George, the statement was initially signed by over 170 Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant religious leaders.  Since then (November 20, 2009), more than 238,000 people have signed the declaration, including Amy and me.  We agree with every word of this document and are greatly encouraged by it.

In addition to providing lucid statements about the ethics of abortion, euthanasia, and gay marriage, the Manhattan Declaration affirms the appropriateness of civil disobedience in cases where state or federal laws would compel complicity with immoral practices:  “We recognize the duty to comply with laws whether we happen to like them or not, unless the laws are gravely unjust or require those subject to them to do something unjust or otherwise immoral….  We…embrace our obligation to speak and act in defense of these truths.  We pledge to each other, and to our fellow believers, that no power on earth, be it cultural or political, will intimidate us into silence or acquiescence.”

Amen.

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Snapshots

By Amy Spiegel

Brief comments on film by Amy.
Some old, some new.  Domestic films and foreign too

CRANESCranes Are Flying: I fear this 1957 award winner was the only movie of substance I managed to watch this month. (I’ve been too busy catching up on Castle, I’m afraid. It’s no Firefly, but this detective show will definitely do. I liken the experience to visiting your local grocery only to discover they are out of your favorite Ben and Jerry’s flavor and being “forced” to buy your second choice. It’s not New York Super Fudge Chunk but it will certainly hit the spot.) But if you are only going to watch one foreign film a month, this should definitely be one of them. Set in Moscow at the outset of World War II, Cranes are Flying is breathtaking in its simple tragedy. Weaving the story of star-crossed lovers Veronika and Boris with the national story of Russia during the war, it is poignant without being melodramatic. One can’t help but wonder if this seemingly patriotic film had a deeper message of the tragedy of life under communist rule. The final scene is a bit propagandistic but doesn’t defeat the overall beauty of this classic.

UGLYThe Ugly Truth: Ugh. I am not sure I have much more to say about this film. How can a movie with Katherine Heigl, whom I appreciate for her no-holds-barred approach to comedic acting, and Gerard Butler, whom I just love to watch, be bad? Poor direction, muddled logic, and bad writing, for starters. Take my advice and go watch The Proposal again. Or better yet, go check out some classic romantic comedies made during a time when people knew how to respect both love and comedy. Here are just a few of my faves:  Pillow Talk, That Touch of Mink, and It Happened One Night.  

WHATEVERWhatever Works: Whatever works, it certainly isn’t Woody Allen’s latest movie. Starring Larry David, one of my all-time favorite cynical innocents, this film fails on so many levels it’s hard to know where to begin. I don’t know why I keep punishing myself by continuing to dream the impossible dream, which is that Allen will come to his aesthetic senses and start making real art again. The irony of this film is that unlike some of his more recent offerings such as Match Point and Cassandra’s Dream, it has a happy ending; and that’s the problem. There is no longer any tension in Allen’s filmmaking, no struggle to understand the meaning of it all. I guess the title sums up his shoulder-shrugging resignation to the meaninglessness of life. And I don’t think I’m just bitter over his shallow depiction of southerners and Christians (each of whom is either moronic, hypocritical, repressed, or all of the above).

JAPJapanese Story: Perhaps I was mistaken earlier when I said I had watched only one film of substance this month. A more correct statement might be that I watched only substantive film that I liked this month. There are some movies that I dislike because they are flawed in some way that makes them ultimately self-defeating as art. In these cases, I can point to particulars that lead me to discredit, disparage or simply “dis” the movie and its makers. Others evoke such strong emotional responses that it is difficult for me to determine whether the movie is of poor quality or I just don’t like it. Japanese Story is one such film. The acting is good (it stars Toni Collette, so the quality her performance goes without saying), and the writing isn’t bad.  Nevertheless, this was not an enjoyable viewing experience. I am certainly able to appreciate movies in which the characters share a different moral perspective than I, if that perspective is truthful in its presentation. So my distaste isn’t entirely due to a conflict of worldview. Actually, the film seemed to have no moral perspective at all, and perhaps this is what bothered me. All I can say is that at the end of the movie I thought, “Well, that was a waste of time.” After all, I could have been watching Castle.

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Plato, Calvin, and Internet Anonymity

By Jim Spiegel

It is a sad fact about the Internet that thoughtful news commentaries and blog posts are often appended with strings of comments that degenerate into hostility, name-calling, or obscene language.  Lately, I have encountered more of these than usual (not on this blog, thankfully), and it makes me wonder what happened to mutual respect and good manners in public debate.  Evidently, in the minds of some people these days, the Internet put an end to that.

Like many aspects of contemporary life, this got me to thinking about Plato, specifically a famous passage in his Republic.  In Book II, a character named Glaucon relates a story of a shepherd named Gyges who discovers a ring which has the power to make him invisible.  Realizing the potency of his new possession, Gyges uses it to seduce the queen and murder the king, thus establishing himself as the new ruler.  Yet, prior to discovering the ring, Gyges was a rather ordinary guy, a humble shepherd who worked hard for his pay and never hurt anyone.  Glaucon’s point is that the only reason Gyges behaved himself was to avoid reprisal.  He obeyed the laws because he feared he’d get caught and punished if he disobeyed.  So when he happened upon a means to avoid such consequences, he exploited it to the extreme.  Furthermore, Glaucon suggests that all of us are like Gyges.  The only reason we act morally—to the extent that we do so, that is—is because we are compelled by the laws governing society.  The truth is, says Glaucon, we are immoral by nature, and if any of us had the Ring of Gyges, we’d act no differently than that ordinary shepherd.  Under the cloak of invisibility, even the most righteous would prove their perversity by stealing and snooping, if not seducing and killing just like Gyges.

As a Calvinist, I wholly affirm the doctrine of total depravity, and I consider Plato’s myth to be profoundly insightful (as did J.R.R. Tolkien, whose Lord of the Ringsseries was inspired in part by Plato’s story).  Though I think Glaucon goes too far in suggesting that given the power of invisibility everyone of us would succumb to such extreme temptations, I do think many folks “fake it” and act morally only because, as Glaucon suggests, they fear the consequences of detection.  In a strange way, the internet confirms this truth, as so many people are willing to ditch all decorum when posting comments on various websites.  When I read such hostile or abusive language I think, “Who are these people?” (Naturally, they never identify themselves.)  Well, they are no doubt the same people I encounter every day—at the store, on the street, perhaps even in the classroom.  In public (presumably) they behave themselves, but on-line they acquire a limited form of Ring of Gyges.  And while invisible in that domain, they let their true moral colors show.

They say you can judge a person’s character by how they handle themselves in small matters.  If that is true, and anonymous comments on websites are any indication, then there appear to be a lot of bad characters out there.  Old Glaucon had a point.  On the other hand, lest I sound like a moral pessimist (some would say all of us Calvinists are), most people do behave themselves on-line, even while “wearing” the electronic Ring of Gyges—restraining themselves and managing a respectful tone when making comments.  Is this a falsification of Glaucon’s thesis?  Perhaps.  But then again, maybe not.  This might actually serve to further confirm Glaucon’s point, since (at least many of) these same people might behave themselves out of fear divine reprisal.  After all, the internet cloak of invisibility doesn’t obscure God’s view.

Of course, we will never know how many of us are motivated out of a desire to please (or not to displease) God.  But Scripture does clearly and emphatically teach both that God knows all things and that he will judge all of our actions, words, and even thoughts.  For example, we are told that “God will bring every deed into judgment, including every hidden thing, whether it is good or evil” (Ecc. 12:13; see also 2 Cor. 5:10).

So let’s keep this in mind as we post comments on websites, particularly when we find someone’s opinion disagreeable or even repugnant.  Ultimately speaking, there is no anonymity.  And no one is ever really invisible.

Comments anyone?   🙂

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If I Could Turn Back Time

By Amy Spiegel

Next month will mark a milestone birthday for me. I have approached the midway point between 30 and the big 4-0, and many moons have passed since dictates of Western culture have deemed it appropriate for me to meet birthdays with anything but sackcloth and ashes. While I regret this attitude towards aging (I prefer to think of it as ripening, like fine wine or really good cheese), as another anniversary of my birth approaches I have taken the opportunity to take stock of my time on earth thus far. So, rather than keep my failures and regrets to myself, I thought I would share a bit of my wisdom…and folly. Hopefully you can either relate to the errors of my ways or, even better, learn from my missteps. Without further ado, here are eight things I wish I had done differently.

#8—I wish I had had better taste in men—or boys, really—in high school. Better yet, I wish I had not sampled that particular dish at all until the opposite sex was given a bit more time to “ripen.” As the mother of three boys and the wife of a great man, I hate to say it but most males under the age of 25 are like tadpoles, not really hatchlings but most definitely not yet frogs. Also, I knew some great gals in my early years, and I wish had given them more of my attention.

#7—I wish I had taken my studies in college more seriously and given more thought to what I enjoyed learning about. When else in your life do you get to hang out with such learned people whose express purpose is to help you to become learned as well? Luckily, I am married to one of them so all is not lost.

#6—I wish I had figured out earlier how wise my parents are. It would have saved a great deal of trouble for me and many sleepless nights for them. I know it’s a cliché but it’s true. Hopefully I am making it up to them now.

#5—I wish I hadn’t confused politeness and kindness. Recently, I have realized the damaging effects of not speaking your mind and being up front with others. If nothing else, it often leads to gossip when, out of a desire not to give offense, you “speak your mind” to someone completely unrelated to the situation. I have learned that it’s better to ruffle a few feathers than to stab the bird in the back, so to speak.

#4—I wish I had said “no” to the tattoo. Nothing more needs to be said on this subject.

#3—I wish I had figured out earlier that being morally good and being interesting are not mutually exclusive. Thank goodness I met my husband who dispelled this myth but a lot of morally upright and fascinating people passed me by before he came along.

#2—I wish I had learned to balance my check book at 20 rather than 30. It’s only money, but the daughter of a banker should know better.

#1—I wish I had thought more about what I should be doing than what I wished to be doing. I have never been happier than when I was doing the former and never more miserable than when pursuing the latter. Getting older may have given me a few more wrinkles and slowed my metabolism a bit, but my experience has also taught me to be less selfish and more eternally minded. So this year, when I see all those candles burning on my birthday cake of choice (chocolate cake with marshmallow frosting, since you asked), I will choose to see marks of maturity rather than the fires of doom. The old grey mare may not be what she used to be, but that may not be such a bad thing after all.

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Wolf at the Door

By Jim Spiegel

On Monday Anita Dunn stepped down from her position as White House communications director—the culmination of recent controversy over her remarks that Chairman Mao was one of her “favorite political philosophers.”  Two DUNNmonths ago, Obama’s so called “Green Jobs Czar,” Van Jones, resigned from his post following furor over his sympathies with Marxism.  Fox News, more particularly conservative JONEScommentator Glenn Beck, led the charge in exposing the Marxist stripes of these two Obama appointees.  And it has been interesting to observe how among other media sources more attention has been given to Fox’s “outing” of these two Marxist sympathizers than to the fact they were in the Obama administration in the first place. 

How many other Obama appointees have Marxist convictions?  And what are we to think of the President himself in light of this, especially given the fact that he has had numerous other Marxist associates throughout his career, including his early mentor, Frank Marshall Davis?

It wasn’t long ago that public figures avoided any linkage to Marxism, whether or not they actually subscribed to the principles of this foolish and oppressive ideology.  Even in the days of McCarthyism it was generally agreed that the Reds were evil.  The controversy concerned Joe McCarthy’s tactics, not his concern to root out communists from the U.S. Federal government.

It wasn’t long ago that nearly all U.S. citizens agreed that Marxism fundamentally opposes the American system of government and recognized that to the extent that socialist ideals are taken seriously by those in power our basic constitutional rights are threatened.  Indeed, the very fact that we have a Constitution which guarantees the freedoms it does seemed to be a reliable firewall against Marxist infiltration.

And it wasn’t long ago that the Marxist belief in the necessity of government force to institute a classless society seemed either innocuously ensconced in the pages of The Communist Manifesto or, practically speaking, restricted to distant lands from which we are safely buffered by both great oceans and great moral wisdom.

But things have changed, and a political destiny that was once so unthinkable in our country now seems a distinct possibility.  Fellow lambs of constitutional polity take note.  The Marxist wolf is at the door.

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Don’t Judge the Candy by the Wrapper

By Amy Spiegel

Halloween has come and gone and all the kids’ weeks of planning out their costumes have been rewarded with a large bowl of candy, filled to overflowing and sitting in our pantry. I have noticed that there is a distinct hierarchy among these confectionary treats, with the miniature candy bars reigning over the noble class of Starbursts and gummy snacks, which in turn lord it over the bottom rung of suckers and Tootsie Rolls. As an act of compassion, I often rescue a downtrodden Reese’s Cup and show it the respect it deserves. Whether it is a part of our Imago Dei desiring order or our fleshly nature wanting to value one thing at the expense of another, it does seem ubiquitous in human experience. Of course, as we get older, our criteria for discrimination move beyond candy wrappers and sugar content and focus more on skin color and socio-economic status. Not that most of us would actually say, “Pardon me but I felt compelled to tell you that I am choosing not to be your friend and that this choice is based primarily on your financial bracket and the color of your skin.” But we might as well, as we segregate ourselves into neatly divided neighborhoods and social groups.

51tKABH4JXL._SL500_AA240_This past week I finished reading a book about the power that is unleashed when we choose to look past our differences and extend the hand of friendship to those with whom we seem to have nothing in common. Same Kind of Different as Me by Ron Hall and Denver Moore is one of the most moving and honest books I have read in a long time. A chronicle of how a homeless black man from the deep South becomes friends with an international art dealer, Hall and Moore tell their story with refreshing honesty and humility. I don’t want to say anything else about the book other than that you should read it.

Too often in life, we look at people like they are a piece of candy in the big bowl of humanity. As we pick and choose our friends and associates, we tend to go for the familiar and comfortable. What I like about Same Kind of Different as Me is that it doesn’t present the idea of making friendships across economic and racial divides as some sort of social experiment. It doesn’t put broccoli in the bowl and say “Now kids, we know it isn’t pleasant but hold your nose, chew and swallow.” Rather it is more like chocolate-covered broccoli, if you will. Moore’s and Hall’s relationship, though a great source of joy and comfort for them both, stretches them as well. To use a different analogy, a spoon full of sugar may help the medicine go down but that doesn’t mean you don’t taste the medicine. In the same way, at times, both men act out a sense of what they think is right even if their lesser instincts tell them to duck and cover. The depth of their relationship is a result of both the organic connection that develops over time and the conscious decisions they make along the way. One of my favorite parts of the book is when, speaking of Moore, Hall simply says “I had come to consider him my brother.” Moore expresses his commitment and love in acts of great compassion and devotion which I am sure will move you deeply.

So when you are picking through the treat bowl this post-Halloween season, don’t just look to the familiar metaphoric Twix bar. Give the fruity tootsie roll a try. You just might find, as Hall and Moore did, a new and unexpected source of great and lasting joy.

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Inglourious Basterds: A Review

By Jim Spiegel

Since his landmark 1993 film Pulp Fiction, Quentin Tarantino has been rightly heralded as one of the finest film directors of our time.  The films he has made since, including Jackie Brown, Kill Bill, and Death Proof, have been consistently strong, but most critics agree that none of these efforts quite achieved the magic of his sophomore effort (Reservoir Dogs being Tarantino’s debut).  The pre-release hype for this year’s long-anticipated Inglourious Basterds intimated that it might be his best yet.  So being confirmed Tarantino fans, we were eager to check it out.  Was all the praise overblown?  Not at all.  Amy and I agree that the film is an instant classic.

200px-Inglourious_Basterds_posterSet in German-occupied France during World War II, Inglourious Basterds depicts two (wildly fictitious) plots to assassinate Hitler and his Nazi cronies.  One of these plots is executed by a ragtag vigilante team of Jewish-American soldiers.  Led by Aldo “The Apache” Raine (played by Brad Pitt), the group terrorizes Nazi soldiers by scalping all of their victims and disfiguring the few survivors.  The other plot is masterminded by one Shoshanna Dreyfus (Melanie Laurent).  Shoshanna and her boyfriend run a cinema in Paris.  When they learn that top Nazi officials, including the Fuhrer himself, plan to attend a premier at their theater, they concoct an assassination scheme that is as ironic as it is devastating.  Eventually, these two storylines converge, and the results are spellbinding.

Figuring prominently in both storylines is Nazi Colonel Hans Landa, a.k.a. “The Jew Hunter” (played by Christoph Waltz).  As the film follows him, we are equally appalled by his cool racism and charmed by his sophisticated wit.  The humanizing effect of developing his character in this way has caused some controversy, but viewers are nonetheless satisfied when he meets his fate—a sure sign that Tarantino did not make the Landa character too sympathetic.

So why do we love this film so?  Let us count the ways in tag-team fashion.

Amy: Let me begin by sharing a story that will hopefully shed light on my thoughts and feelings regarding Inglourious Basterds. When asked recently what I liked about the film, I was honesty puzzled by the question, first thinking “What do I like about it?” and then thinking “What do I like about it?”  This is like trying to analyze what you like about ice cream, capri pants, or sex.  It’s too basic to put into words, but you sure know you like it—a lot.  Of course, you can analyze, break down all the component that make it great but there is still that mysterious element when taken as a whole that sets it apart and makes it special.

Jim: Tarantino’s talent for blending and reinventing genres is well-known, but he out-does himself with Inglourious Basterds.  To tell a WWII story in the style of a spaghetti Western, seasoned with dashes of and comic superhero effects, is original enough, but to do so in such compelling fashion is what prevents the film from being a mere experiment.  In fact, the story is so gripping and, in its own way, realistic, that one actually forgets the genre twisting devices being used.  The (not very) secret of Tarantino’s success in this regard is his brilliance as a screenwriter.  He tells a story as well as anyone in film today, and his dialogue is consistently rich, enthralling, and believable.  Inglourious Basterds is Quentin Tarantino at his very best as a screenwriter.

Amy: Though there is a seemingly intangible magic to Inglourious Basterds, it is in fact the mundane in many ways that casts its spell.  I am a big believer in the idea that it is the little choices by filmmakers that make or break a film.  Details in casting, art direction and costume design all add or subtract layers in a way that either draw a viewer into the film as a participant or keep one at arm’s length all the while screaming “You are now watching a movie!”  It is the authentic feel of Tarantino’s settings, casting and costuming which, for me, give him greater freedom in storytelling; the atmosphere is so plausible that the sometimes absurd events seem completely natural.

Jim: When Tarantino is at his best, he manages to incorporate humor into serious, even dark and morbid plots.  Inglourious Basterds showcases his genius in this regard, featuring lots of amusing, memorable dialogue and scene premises, clever plays on language and cultural clichés, and even  physical comedy.  In most cases, the humor comes from the performances, especially by Pitt and Waltz, but many other subtleties and details, as noted by Amy, add to the film’s charm and comic qualities.

Amy: Of course, you can have amazing locations and clothing but without great acting it simply doesn’t work.  Fortunately, Inglourious Basterds is not lacking in outstanding performances.  I hesitate to even use the word “performance” because for the most part the actors were virtually flawless.  Rather than having the usual struggle to suspend your disbelief, you have to struggle to remember they are only acting.  I had bones to pick with Brad Pitt’s southern drawl, being from the area that his character claims to hail from, but other than that, the cast was remarkable.  (I feel I am quickly running out of positive adjectives:  tremendous, excellent, peachy keen?)  Even casting Pitt, along with a few other well-known actors who make surprise appearances, is perhaps all part of Tarantino’s master plan.  He has a habit of taking easily recognizable performers and casting them against type.

Jim: The performance by Christoph Waltz is one of the best of the decade.  He manages to be both endearing and sinister, which is a difficult line to walk.  Oh, and by the way, he very capably speaks four different languages in the film.  And his presence in every scene is commanding.  Tarantino has been quoted as saying that Waltz “gave me my movie back,” as he had essentially concluded that the part was “unplayable.”  It simply demanded too much of an actor.  Yet Waltz pulled it off and likely earned himself an Oscar in the process.

We’d like to conclude with some remarks about the profanity and violence in Inglourious Basterds.  Understandably, some viewers are bothered more by Tarantino films than by most in regards to these matters.  Part of the reason is the sheer volume of profanity in, say, Pulp Fiction, or the realism of the violence in most of his films.  Inglourious Basterds doesn’t have as much profanity as many popular contemporary films, and there is little sexual content and no nudity.  But there is plenty of violence, though not as much in terms of volume or realism as some other war films, such as Saving Private Ryan or To End All Wars.  For those who are sensitive to this, take warning.  But if your threshold of tolerance for violence is reasonably high, then prepare yourself for an aesthetic feast.

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Darwin’s Ten Worst Nightmares

By Jim Spiegel

Since this year is the bicentennial of Charles Darwin’s birth (and also the sesquicentennial of his landmark book The Origin of Species) I thought I’d post something related to the modern champion of evolutionary theory.  While I do believe in natural selection and affirm the explanatory power of this mechanism when it comes to many biological adaptations and modifications, I am no Darwinist.  That is, I don’t think natural selection can explain the evolution of whole new biological families, much less new classes or phyla, of animals.  And the fallacy of the Darwinian paradigm, insofar as it affirms the common ancestry of all organisms, can be summed up in two words:  hasty generalization.  Just because variation within species (or, to be generous, new species and perhaps even new genera) can be produced through natural selection, it does not follow that all plants and animals evolved from a common ancestor.  In fact, there are many reasons to believe that common ancestry is false, even impossible.

So while many tributes to Darwin this year have celebrated the reputed fulfillment of the man’s dreams of a scientific explanation of all living things, I’d like to list some of his worst nightmares.  Here are, to my mind, some of the bigger problems with Darwinism, proceeding from particular problems to more general issues.

1. The Monotremes – These are the egg-laying mammals (including the platypus and the spiny anteater).   It’s not just these anomalous beasts that are problematic for Darwinism, but the whole step from egg-laying to live births.  One wonders how such a transition could ever take place.  Also, if it was somehow environmentally necessary, then why are there still so many thousands of species of successful egg layers?  All of these animals are doing just fine, thank you very much.

2. The Elephant – Consider the elephant’s trunk, an appendage so nimble that it basically has the functionality of both a hand and a water hose.  The trunk is, or is often called, a fusion of the “nose” and “upper lip.”  Also, the elephant appears to be the only animal with four knees.  Or, if the front knees are actually more like wrists, as some maintain, it remains the case that these joints function like knees.

3. Marsupials – In marsupials, such as kangaroos, koalas, and possums, embryos (at just 4-5 weeks!) leave the womb, crawl up the mother’s abdomen, and then crawl down into a pouch where there is a milk-producing nipple waiting for them.  Which came first, the life-sustaining pouch or the premature embryonic ex-cervical adventures?  And how to explain the embryo’s excursions in the first place?

4. Flight – Explaining the emergence of flight is not just a problem for Darwinism.  It is four separate problems, since there are (or have been) flying insects, bats, reptiles (Pterosaurs), as well as birds.

5.  The Eye — Darwinists typically point to light-sensitive spots in primitive organisms as precursors of the eye.  But such structures are so far from what we find in fish, amphibians, reptiles, and mammals as to be useless in providing a genuine account of eye evolution.  The coordination of meticulous musculature, circulatory, neurological, and anatomical structures in even the fish eye is mind-boggling.  And mere sensitivity to light is categorically different from what a true eye produces:  a mental image or a visual experience, which leads us to the next item on our list.

6. The Emergence of Consciousness – Not only is it impossible for Darwinism to explain how brains first produced awareness and cognition, but Darwinism cannot tell us why this extraordinary capacity should evolve.  Philosopher of mind David Chalmers puts it like this:  “The process of natural selection cannot distinguish between me and my zombie twin.  Evolution selects properties according to their functional role, and my zombie twin performs all the functions that I perform just as well as I do…  It follows that evolution alone cannot explain why conscious creatures rather than zombies evolved” (from The Conscious Mind [Oxford, 1996], p. 120)

7. Sexual Reproduction – The evolutionary development of reproductive organs that are morphologically and physiologically complimentary is unthinkable.  Evolutionary biologists tend to focus on the value of sexual reproduction for strengthening species.  But this is not the point at issue.  The question is how the mechanism could emerge in the first place and how such massively complex reproductive systems could change so dramatically in parallel (mutually complimentary) fashion.

8. The Cambrian Explosion – Classical Darwinism predicted that the geological strata (layers of rock in the Earth’s crust) would reveal a gradual increase of complexity in living forms.  With the advance of geology and paleontology, exactly the opposite was discovered.  The earliest strata in which multi-cellular life appears, Cambrian period, features a sudden appearance of very complex organisms.

9. The Lack of Intermediate Fossil Forms – In addition to the problem of sudden appearance of complex life, there is the stunning lack of fossil evidence for intermediate forms between the classes of animals, e.g. from reptile to bird (sorry, Archaeopteryx is a true bird), reptile to mammal, land mammal to sea mammal (cow to whale?), etc.  Darwin himself seemed to sense the seriousness of this problem:  “Why … is not every geological formation and every stratum full of… intermediate links?  Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely graduated organic chain; and this, perhaps is the most obvious and gravest objection which can be urged against my theory” (The Origin of Species [Penguin, 1968], p. 292).

10. Self-Defeating Implications – Philosopher Alvin Plantinga has brilliantly demonstrated that a naturalistic Darwinist perspective undermines itself.  If all aspects of living organisms were produced solely because of their survival value, then this means that even human cognition exists just because it is practical in this way.  But nowhere in this account is there a concern for truth as an aim of cognition.  In short, if human cognition (e.g., beliefs, reasoning, concept formation, etc.) were produced through evolution, then we have no reason to trust its capacity to produce true beliefs.  So we have no grounds for trusting any of our beliefs, including our theories about origins.  This means that if Darwinism is true then we have no reason to believe that it is true.  G.K. Chesterton seems to have glimpsed this point when he said, “Evolution is a good example of that modern intelligence which, if it destroys anything, destroys itself.  Evolution is either an innocent scientific description of how certain earthly things came about; or, if it is anything more than this, it is an attack upon thought itself” (Orthodoxy [Doubleday, 1908], 34).  Amen.

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Is Busyness the Modern Cross to Bear?

By Amy Spiegel

History is a fascinating business:  to see, with the 20/20 vision of the present, the themes of years past; to study eras from beginning to end with the comfortable assurance that you have already read the last page of the story and know whether the bad guys won or lost. Being a Christian brings, of course, an even great poignancy to the events of the past, because we believe that all of those events are leading toward something, serving a greater good.

I fear sometimes that my love of history taints my vision a bit. While my current surroundings seem bleak and dull, times of yore begin to appear rather rose colored. I look back longingly and see romance and sunshine rather than disease and deprivation. This starry-eyed longing for days gone by is usually directly proportional to the stress and frustration I am experiencing here and now. “Oh those pioneer women,” I say to myself, “they never had to deal with doctors’ waiting rooms and crowded grocery stores.” Of course, they also had to deliver their own babies, often dying in the process, and they had to eat whatever they could manage to grow themselves. When we near the end of some sports season or another (currently it’s soccer), I begin to corner Jim, threatening to pull the kids out of all their extracurricular activities and move to the backwaters of Montana, preferably with him. Whatever the cause, be it baseball, art lessons or just the social demands of life, I tend to see this harried pace as an obstacle to be overcome, a problem to be solved rather than just a characteristic element of everyday life in the 21st century. But perhaps that isn’t so.

Now there is busyness and there is busyness. Jim and I are fairly conservative with regards to outside stuff. We each have a regular Bible study and the kids have one or two outside commitments that we feel are important. While our schedule does take some organization of the You-pick-up-so-and-so-while-I-stay-at-home-with-everyone-else variety, it doesn’t require strategists from the Pentagon to plan or accomplish. So maybe all my complaining about the pace of modern life is chronological envy or simply ingratitude. Many of the technologies I grouse about (enrichment activities for the kids, slow internet connections, mini vans) bring with them a host of advantages that seem to be overlooked in my quest for “simplicity.” What would a pioneer woman have given to have been able to pile the kids in the car in order to meet a friend at the park, or to email her family thousands of miles away?

This is not to say that we should follow blindly after the latest thing just because we can. But perhaps I need to show a greater appreciation for the era in which I have been placed. It is unique, and a limited number of us will experience it first-hand. If God can speak to humanity through the Black Plague and the French Revolution, then surely He can make something beautiful out of Starbucks and mini vans. You just need the right perspective to see it.