The Evangelical Rebellion

At TruthDig.com, Chris Hedges has penned a frightening analysis of Mike Huckabee’s rise in popularity.  He writes,

“Members of the Christian right, recruited into the Republican Party and manipulated to vote against their own interests around the issues of abortion and family values, are in rebellion. They are taking the party into new, uncharted territory. And they presage, especially with looming economic turmoil, the rise of a mass movement that could demolish what is left of American democracy and set the stage for a Christian fascism. “

Follow this link for the full article. (HT to Mainstream Baptist.)

Evangelicals v. Huckabee

It’s a curious thing that ordained, conservative Baptist minister Mike Huckabee has gathered so little support from the nation’s evangelicals, even within the Southern Baptist Convention, and despite his recent surge in the polls. At Casting Stones, Deborah Caldwell traces Huckabee’s problem back to the fundamentalist takeover of the SBC in the 1980s–Huckabee was on the “winning” side, but turns out he wasn’t conservative enough. In the meantime, Big Daddy Weave questions Caldwell’s unstated assumption about the amount of influence possessed by conservative leaders.

The Virgin Birth

In getting ready for my Sunday School lesson for tomorrow (12/23), I came across an interesting analysis of the Virgin Birth by Karl Barth:

O’Reilly Factor: Fully Functioning Human Brains in Mice

I swear I am not making this up. On the “Culture War” segment of tonight’s (Fri.) episode of the O’Reilly Factor, Republican strategist Christine O’Donnell uttered the most fantastic claim I’ve heard in many a moon:

The Christian Infancy Narratives

This Sunday at Farmville Baptist Church, I’m pinch-hitting in Sunday School. Appropriately enough, the lesson text is Luke 2:1-14. It’s interesting to compare the birth narratives in Matthew and Luke. They have important elements in common, but many differences, especially in tone. Matthew’s account is cloak-and-dagger. He gives us the star, the Magi*, the Massacre of the Innocents, and a clandestine flight to Egypt. Luke’s account inspires O Holy Night, with angelic hymns, shepherds, and the manger.

*A Christmas trivia question: Magi is plural. What is the singular? (The answer is at the end of the article.)

Five-Sentence Movie Reviews: Special Edition–The Mist (2007)

Yes–this review is longer than five sentences. Sue me.

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The Mist (2007)
“You don’t have much faith in humanity, do you? None whatsoever.”

The Mist is based on a Stephen King novella of the same name. King’s story runs 133 pages, and leads the collection of horror tales in Skeleton Crew (1985). The movie was written and directed by Frank Durabont, and faithfully follows King’s text except for the ending. In a small New England town, a particularly violent thunderstorm is followed by a thick mist that rapidly descends on the townspeople before they have a chance to figure out what’s happening to them. The story focuses on a group of about thirty people trapped in a supermarket. Outside, the mist contains an assortment of bizarre, lethal creatures that attack anyone who wanders into it. Inside, the trapped occupants quickly divide into two factions, one falling under the spell of a religiously insane woman who interprets the mist as an apocalyptic judgment from God, and the other led by a level-headed graphic artist who attempts, as best he can, to reason his way through the nightmare.

Thinking About Aliens, part 3: How Many Are There?

Note: this is the third and final part in a three-part series.

How many intelligent alien civilizations might exist in the galaxy? We estimate the answer with the Drake equation. This is a somewhat unusual equation. Instead of possessing an unknown quantity for which we might solve, it contains several estimated probabilities, multiplied together to predict the number of intelligent alien civilizations in the Milky Way:

Thinking About Aliens, part 2: What Aliens Might Look Like

Note: This is the second in a three-part series.

The typical alien creature in a science fiction film or television program is best described as a grotesque humanoid. This is likely due to the limitations on the producers, viz., time, money, special effects technology, and imagination. From a cost perspective, it’s easier to dress an actor in a suit than to design and somehow animate a creature whose body bears little resemblance to a human. It’s also much easier to imagine an alien as looking essentially like a human being. And so the great majority of alien creatures in sci-fi productions have a head with sense organs, especially eyes and mouth, in the “right” places, two arms, a torso, and two legs, and possibly a tail. Prominent examples include the peaceful though somewhat mischievous visitors in Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), the unnamed, lethal stowaway in Ridley Scott’s original Alien (1979), and the aggressive, well-camouflaged hunter in Predator (1987).

Thinking About Aliens, Part 1: The Character of Alien Life

Note: This is the first of three-part series.

Among my favorite films are War of the Worlds (1953) and Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977). I’ve also been deeply influenced by 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), Solaris (1972), and Alien (1979). This short list of movies represents two dominant themes in science fiction: peaceful aliens vs. hostile aliens. At David Darling’s Internet Encyclopedia of Science, we find an interesting article on the possible character of alien intelligence.

Suppose one day aliens do arrive at the Earth. Will they be peaceful or hostile? Much good-natured speculation exists among astronomers, science fiction fans, and philosophers. As best I can gather, the following two outlines encapsulate both sides of the issue.