My Summer Scores

Languages Learned: 1 (Deutsch ist toll!)

Family Reunions Attended: 2

10ks Run: 1

Miles Run: Many

Longest Time Run: 90 minutes

Books Read: 11

Breakups: 1

Permanent Breakups: 0

Pounds Lost: 10

Times I Was Accused of Condoning Gay Marriage In Church: 1

Movies Watched in a Theatre: 4

Really Good Movies Watched: 1 (District 9)

Perfect Days Had: At least 2

World of WarCraft Accounts Cancelled: 1

Articles Ready to Submit for Publication: 2.1

Camping Trips: 0, sadly.

Porsche’s Driven: 1

Brothers and Sisters That I Haven’t Seen In Two Years Seen: 1 brother, 1 sister

Review: Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed; And Why Do Mormons Even Care About This “Controversy?”

This was a terrible movie. I’d just like to say this up front. I had heard bad things about it and noticed that I could watch it for free through my Netflixs so I decided to do so over a few days as I ate breakfast and stretched.

Wow.

Basically, Ben Stein walks around showing how the scientific community systematically suppresses any notion of “intelligent design” with regard to the theory of evolution. Of course this is all done with the most outrageous, heavy-handed, and juvenile documentary techniques imaginable. If you think I’m exaggerating, I’m not.

The best is that the movie implies that Darwinism lead directly to the holocaust. Right. Because anti-Semitism didn’t have anything to do with it. *rolls eyes*

Alright, I guess the only way I can “review” this movie is to beat it into a bloody pulp. *cracks knuckles* Let's get started.

First of all, the people who made the movie were dishonest when interviewing the evolutionary biologists, atheists, skeptics, and others representing the . . . rational side of things. The creators said the movie was going to be about the intersection of religion and science, a very interesting idea and one that could make a very interesting movie. But this is actually an outright attack on the Theory of Evolution.

Second, one of the major early points was about the controversy about a peer-reviewed paper that was published in the Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington.

I know the link is Wikipedia, but I couldn’t pick just a few of the actual links about it. Basically, as editor-in-chief, he nominated himself to be the sole editor for a paper in the last issue he would produce as editor-in-chief. As I myself was an editor for a journal as an undergrad, I could see how this could happen, and it was dishonest and underhanded.

Third, when they do quote Darwin, they do so in a completely misleading way—by omitting the relevant parts of the quote so that it seems to turn Darwin into a psychopath, when the actual quote means the exact opposite of what they say.

Fourth, the people making the movie didn’t want those who were interviewed to see the movie itself. So they kicked PZ Meyers out of a premier, but let the rest of his friends in. Oh, and one of his friends was Richard Dawkins! That’s like having an anti-religious seminar and kicking out Jerry Falwell, but letting Benedict XVI in. How dumb are you? Really? Dawkins is the poster child for atheists worldwide!

And last, sorry, but the reason Intelligent Design gets expelled from the science classroom is because, well, there’s no evidence for it. For example, there's the "How To Respond To Creationists" from PZ Meyers. Or perhaps Scientific American's April Fool's Joke from 2005.

There’s no conspiracy to suppress the evidence. There’s no evidence. Evolution has been pretty much established as a fact. And for those who want to say “it’s just a theory” well, sit down, go back to junior high science, and learn what “theory” means in scientific parlance. Theory of relativity? Theory of gravity? It doesn’t mean a “guess or conjecture.” And if you want to point to abiogenesis as where God is working, well, silly, that’s moving into “God of the Gaps” argument—simply put that’s when people point to where science doesn’t know what’s going on and so God must exist. Yet later science will fill in some of those gaps, and so the locations where God can operate get smaller and smaller and smaller.

Anyway, since there's no evidence, I always snicked internally at the people who want to "teach the controversy." And then I found a website that mocks that very phrase. Anybody who can get this in under 5 seconds earns 10 points of awesome. If you were a girl, and I weren’t dating Leah, looking at this on my shirt (which I intend to buy) and laughing within 5 seconds would garner an immediate “can I get your number?”


And now to the important part. I don’t know why Latter-day Saints care so much about this. It’s of interest to me how traditional Christians persecuted us and drove us completely out of the country and then a century and a half later we end up largely allied with people who hate us theologically in social matters. In my opinion we’ve picked up more of their approach to societal issues than we should have. This creationism is one such issue.

I completely understand why conservative Protestants care about creationism vs. evolution. If your religion is largely based on sola scriptura, and you start poking holes in Genesis (because of evolution) that starts you on a slippery slope (go vote in the poll at the end of that article) to poking holes in, say, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. If you start doubting parts of the Bible, that leaves the rest open for suspicion. It’s very easy to then move into liberal Protestantism with their “well, Jesus may or may not have been divine, but he taught some nice stuff that we should do” and suddenly you’re a Christian with no real similarity to what Christianity has been for 2,000 years. But liberal Protestants are for another blog post. Needless to say, I can understand why conservative Protestants (these are pretty huge generalizations, too) don't want to go down that path.

Mormons don’t have that problem. You can shoot holes in the Bible all day, but you never lose the parts that are important or key. Those are backed up by the Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, Pearl of Great Price, modern prophets, etc. We have a checks and balances system that protestants do not have, so we never get to the “well, Jesus may or may not have been divine” part. So evolution means a much greater deal to most other American Christians, aside from Catholics who are totally okay with evolution, than it should to us Mormons. Yet every four years in Sunday school we study the Old Testament, and we start with Genesis, and someone inevitably will bring up that the scriptures “prove” God created the world in six 24-hour periods. Usually my hand breaks the sound barrier shooting up so fast when that occurs. I actually raised my hand so fast once that I hit the wall. "Carl, do you have something to say?" asked the teacher.

Except that didn’t Bruce R. McConkie, among others, preach that evolution was a heresy?” One of the Seven Deadly Heresies, even! (Sidenote: I disagree that if there was no fall of Adam, there need not be an atonement to be made by the Savior. But again, perhaps for another blog entry.) (Sidenote 2: The edited for publication version contains an extra paragraph not present in the mp3 file. It states: "These are questions to which all of us should find answers. Every person must choose for himself what he will believe. I recommend that all of you study and ponder and pray and seek light and knowledge in these and in all fields. Emphasis mine.)

Yeah, but when the rubber hit the road and he had to write an article for the Engisn shortly after, in an official church publication, he changed his tune. Aside from “the temple account, for reasons that are apparent to those familiar with its teachings, has a different division of events,” which I don’t get, it’s a much more toned down and less let's-call-out-the-good-faithful-biologists-that-teach-at-BYU-and-call-them-idiots discussion of the issues at hand. Okay, fine, he didn't call them idiots. He called them "weak and purile" according to the second edition of Mormon Doctrine.

In short, I don’t know why Mormons care so much about this evolution thing. We don’t care, officially. D&C 101:32-3 indicates that we don’t actually have revelation on the creation on the earth. Or at least there are things about it that haven’t been revealed that are so important that God specifically mentions them.

And in case you don’t believe me, there’s a BYU Forum Address by Professor Michael Whiting on the subject entitled “Charles Darwin and the Tree of Life: Some Assembly Required.” Sadly, there’s no transcript, but you can listen to the MP3 if you want. The wikipedia entry on Mormonism and Evolution is also interesting.

Anyway, this was a review of the movie. In short, it was terrible, and made me go on a diatribe against creationists, and that includes Mormon creationists.

Overall Grade: 5/100. (There was one point in which is showed how Darwinian principles could lead to eugenics that was kind of slightly a non-huge logical leap. But that 2 minutes was about it.)

What Religion Should You Be?

I ran across This Quiz on Roger Ebert's website a while ago and I found it to be most intriguing. What I want is for all of you to take it, and post your results in the comments. (Whatever religion you most match will always be 100%, that's just the way the quiz is designed.)

And please, if you're LDS, which I assume most of my readers are, do NOT be ashamed if you don't get 100% LDS on an online quiz. I was actually surprised that I did, given my culturally unorthodox approach to Mormonism. My friend Brian was mostly Liberal Christian Protestant and I think 98% LDS. My friend Seth was labeled a Reform Jew and was 51% LDS.

My results (at least the answers I care about, including the major world religions):

1. LDS-100%
2. Eastern Orthodox-98%
3. Roman Catholic-98%
4. Mainline to Liberal Christian Protestants-97%
5. Mainline to Conservative Christian Protestants-94%.
. . .
7. Jehovah's Witness-86% (gaaah! Really?!?)
8. Orthodox Judaism-84%
. . .
13. Hinduism-66%
14. Islam-66%
. . .
16. Mahayana Buddhism-58%
17. Theravada Buddhism-56% (was disappointed that Theravada was lower than Mahayana, but I guess it makes sense)
. . .
21. Neo-Pagan-43%
. . .
23. Secular Humanism-37%
24. Taoism-36%
25. Non-Theist-27%
27. Scientology-20% (I dunno why this even shows up at all.)

I actually took the quiz again (I had saved my results from when I took it the first time) and got more or less the same results, but with Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholicism a bit lower. The first results that I've posted here feel more accurate. My personal beliefs match up with LDS Orthodoxy, but if this quiz were more about how we live our lives I think my approach would be more Buddhist or Taoist than the results indicate. The Buddhist principle of non-attachment is one that resonates with me, and I feel that the way I work with the Spirit of the Lord is very much the Taoist principle of Wu Wei, with occasional moments of direct revelation and instruction. I also feel that my personal approach to gathering and sorting information is actually very secular, bordering on skepticism, and I feel that approach is closely mirrored by folks like Richard Dawkins.

Yeah, I'm pretty eclectic. But I'm an eclectic Mormon. "Eclectic" modifies "Mormon," not the other way around.

Isn't Freedom of Religion grand?

So, what religion should you be?

Musings on the Dark Side, or Why George Lucas Shouldn't Have Gone Buddhist

I broke up with George Lucas sometime in 2004. I watched a fan-made trailer for Episode III and decided that it was right. Previous to my watching it, no matter how terrible Episodes I and II were, there was always the hope that George would resurrect his old self and do something amazing and make a great movie. But the moment the title “Episode III: A Lost Hope” flashed across the screen, I indeed lost all hope. I consider that the moment my inner child died.

That’s right. You heard me. George Lucas killed my inner child. (But don’t go looking up that fake trailer on youtube. I first encountered an edited version, and there’s definitely a far-too-long tasteless pregnancy test joke in the original cut.)

I eventually of course did see Episode III, but really only because all my friends were going opening night and Allan bought my ticket as part of my birthday present. I found the movie to be the best of the prequel trilogy, mostly because Anakin is a 2-and-a-half-dimensional character for 10 minutes in the middle of the movie. And then it all goes to pot.

You see, Anakin’s downfall is that he loves someone. (Enough to kill her, apparently, but that’s only one of the major flaws in the plotline of that movie.) So he loves his wife and fears her death above all things, but then in a fit of rage kills her because she doesn’t want to rule the galaxy? Wait? What? Suddenly the genesis of Darth Vader is an abusive husband! Gaaah!

Well, there’s that whole dark side thing, but really he wasn’t in tune with the light side of the Force because he loved her. Because the Jedi are all about non-attachment. And the Sith are all about attachment, assuming the dark and light side are opposites. This is very Buddhist sounding. And it would be interesting for a magic system if it didn’t already contradict, oh, the entire explanation of the magic system that came before it! What happened to “anger, fear, aggression, the Dark Side are they,” right Master Yoda? Suddenly the path to the dark side is about losing your Mom to Tusken raiders and not wanting your wife to die in childbirth.

Lame.

(Sidenote: The light side of the Force was never fully described in the original trilogy. That’s perhaps a post for another day—musings on the light side!)

One reason this particular blog post came about was because I read over the last few weeks two Star Wars books, Darth Bane: Path of Destruction, and Darth Bane: Rule of Two. I know it’s blasphemy to some of my nerd friends out there, but in many ways I like (some of) the Star Wars novels because they’re allowed to get more into the heads of the characters which can make lame scenes actually really psychologically interesting. And one thing I liked about these books . . . the Sith Lords were actually evil! Darth Bane actually kills all of the other Sith warriors to cull the weak and create the rule of two, where there are only two Sith at a time. One to embody the power of the dark side, the other to crave it. Eventually, the apprentice will overpower and kill the master. But not until the time is right and the master’s knowledge has been fully obtained by the apprentice. And I liked that. It was about power, yet control. Rage, yet focus. Evil, but in a non-self destructive manner. At least, not ultimately.

When I had envisioned the fall of Anakin Skywalker to Darth Vader, I had expected something more along the lines of Arthas from the WarCraft series. Arthas has to fight a relentless, never-tiring enemy of the undead scourge, and takes more and more extreme measures to save his kingdom. Eventually he becomes so lost in his search for a way to destroy them that he loses his soul and becomes that which he has been fighting against. Actually, he becomes their leader! I had expected Anakin to gradually give into his rage while fighting the clone wars. He should have been the best, most respected Jedi Knight in the galaxy, not some whiny teenage brat who never grew up. In order to be a tragic hero you need to be a hero first. You’ve clearly failed at that part when the audience largely feels like saying “will you hurry up and turn evil so you can be awesome!” George Lucas should have read Aristotle’s Poetics.

The point is there was nothing evil about his conversion. There was no giving in to rage, or losing control, or gradual anything. He was just suddenly . . . evil. Kid-killing, wife-choking, government-overthrowing, genocide-committing, planet-obliterating evil.

This is frequently a problem I’ve noticed in fiction. We always see the bad guy as the bad guy, but we rarely see how they got there. When we meet him Iago is already jealous of Othello. Lady de Winter is just a cold-hearted bitch. (I really don’t have a better word for her. Most. Evil. Female. Character. Ever.) Dexter is suffering from some serious post-traumatic stress disorder. Voldemort was always a bit odd, even as a magically precocious child.

A notable exception would be The Lord of the Rings. The One Ring tempts each character in a very personal way. Gandalf knows that he would start out using it for good, but would get addicted. Galadriel wants everybody to worship her. Boromir wants to use it to destroy Sauron, but wouldn’t stop there. Only Faramir is immune, a character so virtuous that he doesn’t give it a second thought in the books (a change I heartily disagree with in the movies). Gollum is basically an addict, and we get bits and pieces of his story, but we don’t really see the hero go dark. We are told how that could happen, but it doesn’t.

I suppose the real reason this has been bouncing around my head is for two reasons, aside from just having read the Darth Bane books. First, my friends and I are possibly considering starting an evil campaign in Dungeons and Dragons, where we would play characters of evil alignment. I’ve been doing some research on how it could be done without our characters backstabbing each other and it’s interesting to see how “evil” is defined. It’s also interesting to think of what kind of evil character I would play. I’m drawn to either some kind of cold, calculating, manipulative character, probably a dark cleric or sorcerer, or perhaps some kind of reaver, barely in control of himself and just wanting to go “Hulk Smash!” as a blackguard or something. But really, a Dungeons and Dragon character doesn’t need to have a backstory, though I will probably come up with one. He or she can just be evil.

Second, I’ve been digging up the old fantasy novels I began writing in high school. It’s a project that I’ve been working on for a long time and it seemed the right time to start up again just for fun. However, there’s a problem. I have a character, Agron, who will be a tragic hero. He starts out as one of the good guys, so talented at magic that he is given permission to study the forbidden magic arts. But he ends up being the major enemy of the other magic-users. What I have not decided on is what happens in the middle. How does he become evil? Will he be an addict? A sadist? Insane? Hubristic? A combination of all of the above? It’s a reason I’ve been avoiding writing the second novel in my planned series of seven.

What I do know is that George Lucas’s quasi-Buddhist re-interpretation of the Force for the prequel trilogy doesn’t lead to actual evil. Evil needs to actually be evil.

But how does it get there? What makes one go to the dark side? Is it actually possible to become pure evil? How did little Adolf go from being an aspiring artist to . . . Hitler? Or did he have a mental illness? What about Saddam Hussein? Hutu’s and Tutsi’s? What about the students in my love and sexuality class at Catholic U that suggested the Inquisition wasn’t all bad because at least the love was “properly ordered?” (I had a fit in class, don’t worry, and I am not suggesting the other students and professor were all pure evil.) But where do these guys come from?

P.S. There is one way for Darth Vader to redeem himself. From this year’s Comic Con (just to not end on such a downer note):