Writing versus Reading

Just got done with a year long binge of reading.  Yeah, reading, not cocaine, not porn, not watching the entire run of Weeds.  Well, I did the Weeds thing, how could I not.  I'm from the West Coast right?

As you've seen, not much writing has been getting done around here.  And it's probably because of all the reading.  Apparently, I can't read and write at the same time.  Let me clue you in to the monumental task that it is to keep my considerable intellect occupied.

In the last year, I read:
The Lord of the Rings
Dune
Dune Messiah
Children of Dune
God Emperor of Dune
Heretics of Dune
Chapterhouse: Dune
Speaking of Jesus by Carl Madearis
The Next Christians by Gabe Lyons.
Love Wins by Rob Bell
Sex, Mom and God by Frank Shaeffer and that rounds out back to about March at which point it gets a little fuzzy.

Before that, I read Crazy for God by Frank Shaeffer, Rebooting the American Dream by Thom Hartmann, They like Jesus but not the Church by Dan Kimball, and When Christians Get it Wrong by Adam Hamilton. That goes back to when I got Kindle for iPhone in the early part of the year.

If that weren't enough, after Lord of the Rings, I read:
The Hobbit
The Rapture Exposed
Liespotting
Pornland
Fuse of Armageddon
And I'm currently working on Wind Power by Paul Gipe, but that's for class.  I'd read it anyway.

That's a year's reading for me.  I read more books in the last year than many people read in their entire life.  If you're wondering which books to read, I don't often finish a book if I don't like it.  You could read any of these and find them stimulating

But I think I'm going to start writing again.  I've already been working on my beekeeping website.  It's my own personal encyclopedia of beekeeping.  Check it out at parkerfarms.biz.  I also have a beekeeping blog at parkerfarms.blogspot.com.

I'm still looking for ideas, though I have plenty of fodder in politics.  I like hypocrisy especially.  Not to watch it, to criticize it.

I am,
WiredForStereo

@wiredforstereo on Twitter too.

Book Review: Fuse of Armageddon

In modern apocalyptic fiction, there is but one name known throughout the world, Left Behind.  It is a novelized account of what will happen when the beast of Revelation shows up and decides to do his work.  But it's terrible.  Popular among the young and impressionable evangelical conservatives, but to any discerning reader, just terrible.  The plot lines are thin, convoluted, completely lacking in reality or human condition and at some points, patently bogus.  Like the part where as soon as the conservative Christians are raptured away, the world goes to heck in a rocket sled and just signs the whole planet over to the 'antichrist.'  Like liberals could ever agree on anything.  I put 'antichrist' in quotes because of how horribly they misuse the term.  Nowhere in the Bible is mentioned "the antichrist."  In the few places it does appear, it's "an antichrist" or "of antichrist."  The antichrist is not a single person, but anyone with a certain attitude or ambition.

I digress.

Anyway, Sigmund Brouwer and Hank Hanegraaff started their own series which is the partial-preterist answer to the Left Behind series.  It's called "The Last Disciple."  Instead of showing a future plot line, it is historical fiction as what John was talking about took place during the decade or so before the fall of the Temple in 70 AD.  The wrote the first two books and then took a break to write "Fuse of Armageddon."  Fuse is a tomorrow sort of book where you get the idea that the lead up to the climax of the book is taking place right now.  In novel form, it shows what could happen if dispensational eschatologists took their beliefs to ultimate fruition and tried to bring about Armageddon by sacrificing a red heifer and cleansing the temple mount with its ashes.  It shows what could happen if radical christian Zionists get their hands on the controls.

Mr. Brouwer as the novelist is the analog to Jerry Jenkins, the novelist of the LB series, and Mr. Hanegraaff is the theologian behind the story the same as Tim LaHaye.  The prime difference is, Brouwer and Hanegraaff write things that could actually happen.  Their characters say things people would actually say and they do things people might actually do.  Their characters are smart and there's no spiritual heeby jeeby nonsense going on to finagle things in to fitting the biblical narrative counter to the way real people actually do things.

In all my exploration of theology and eschatology, the partial preterist viewpoint is the only one that has ever made sense to me.  And it doesn't rely on doing grammatical douchebaggery to make everything fit together like a jigsaw puzzle of a beautiful sunset which ends up being a mustard stain on a pair of mechanic's overalls.  It fits together and it makes sense and all you have to do is take the literal things literally and the apocalyptic things apocalyptically.  Also throw in a bit of 'tradition is slightly mistaken about when certain things happened.'  I'm always a sucker for getting rid of outmoded traditions.  It works because it makes sense for real people who said these things, who heard these things, and who did these things.

Being told that Armageddon was going to happen in 1997 is tantamount to child abuse in my view.  Hope you had a better childhood.  That's all I got to say about that.

The only trouble I have with this book is something that was a terrible aspect of the Left Behind series, portraying the other side.  How do you write dialog for an argument for which one side is your side?  When should the opposing side be left dumbfounded?  How weak should the opposing side's arguments be?  The Left Behind series portrayed the other side exactly as they saw the other side, the trouble is, that's not how the other side is.  Brouwer and Hanegraaff do a much better job as far as I can see it, but it's still not perfect.  What is perfect?  I don't know.  I'm on their side.  I've never believed the stuff on the other side.  Sometimes you genuinely try to show what the other side believes, and sometimes you're just pushing propaganda.  Walk that line.  These guys don't push the agenda too hard, it's just part of the facts of the story.  In the end, the televangelist doesn't just magically switch sides on the issue, he thoughtfully admits that maybe his view isn't the only one, and that's something enlightenment does to real people.

Overall, I enjoyed this book.  I love the way Brouwer interweaves his plot lines, telling each story in little snippets and moving back and forth between them right at the most suspenseful moments.  I read this book pretty rapidly and would have read it faster had I had more time.  I give it 9/10, for the message and for the story.

I will be reading the next book in the Last Disciple series, it's coming out later this year and will be called "The Last Temple."

Update: Was the New World Translation mentioned as the most accurate translation of the Bible on Jeopardy?

I wrote about this several years ago and I have continued to get plenty of hits on the subject.  So having this subject kept fresh in mind, I have had plenty of chances to go back and re-look for evidence of its happening.

The myth is (via chain email) that on Jeopardy, Alex Trebek once presented an answer to the effect of "The most accurate translation of the Bible" to which the question was "The New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures by The Watchtower Bible and Tract Society."

Did this ever happen?

The short answer is no.

I have never found any evidence of it.  Not on YouTube, not on Google Video, and not now that the entire archive of Jeopardy questions and answers is available online.  http://www.j-archive.com/

You are free to check for yourself.  But I have found more evidence for Michael Jackson still being alive.  Michael Jackson was a Jehovah's Witness as well, but that's neither here nor there.

The important thing here, aside from the evidence or lack thereof, is that you need to learn to think critically.

Let's review the situation here:

1.  The claim is from an email forward.  Anyone familiar with these, or Snopes.com or other debunking websites knows that email forwards are almost invariably universally unequivocally always false.  In my estimation, I'd say that upwards of 90-95% of all emails are completely bogus or at the very least offer a real picture with a false explanation.  NEVER place any trust in ANY email forward, it's like going to the casino and betting that you'll win every time.  It doesn't work that way.

2.  The claim is that the topic appeared on Jeopardy, a pop culture and history quiz show where people win actual money, is widely viewed, and features geniuses.  'The most accurate translation of the Bible' is a 100% subjective item, especially between the camps of Jehovah's Witnesses and the rest of Christendom.  Such a thing I dare say would never appear on Jeopardy.

3.  Consider the state of religion today.  If such a thing had happened, it would have been leaped upon by every religious media program there is.  It would be on the Bible Answer Man, it would be heard from the podcasts of innumerable pulpits, and it would be on every apologetics website there is.  However, the truth is, it isn't in any of these places.  There is a simple and overwhelming lack of evidence.  It's as if someone said "in the middle of a cornfield in Nebraska sometime between the years of 1984 and 2005, a man played checkers with a cornbread bust of Abraham Lincoln."  There's just no evidence.

I have heard several anecdotal reports of the question.  However, as we know, anecdotal evidence is one of the most unreliable pieces of evidence there is.  All humans have a propensity to remember things not as they were, but as some sort of glorified or horrified version of events.  The truth is, we make things up and we forget things and in our own minds without corroborating evidence, it always all still fits together seamlessly.  That's how our minds work.  But its only when you go back and watch that old film of the vacation at the lake do you realize that the boat was actually blue and not red.

The best explanation I have found for this happening is that there was some sort of church youth event which taught about different religions and at the end there was a Jeopardy style quiz for the youth to answer questions about what they had learned.  There was a question about which Bible JW's read and the answer was of course the New World Translation.  From there, it morphed into what we know as this phenomenon today where people still insist despite the evidence and logic that they saw that particular episode of Jeopardy even though they can't point to a time and even though the archive of Jeopardy questions contains it not.

It's sad that even today people will hold on to belief in something that doesn't matter in the slightest and that there is absolutely no evidence for.

Let it go.

It didn't happen, and it wouldn't matter if it did.

It's a Great Time for Democracy

Just wanna throw my hat in support for the democratic uprisings we're seeing all over the Muslim world, and in the US too in the fight for union rights.  These are all good things.

WiredForStereo

Nothing's Really Moving Me Right Now

Nothing that I can properly talk about anyway.

Sorry.

I really need to be inspired to make good posts, to write with feeling.

Just not feeling much right now.

I have been working on my beekeeping blog a bit lately, check it out if you're interested in bees at all.  They really are fascinating creatures.  In beekeeping, there's an excellent opportunity to practice organic farming right now.

Once again, I ask for suggestions on subjects about which to write.  I have been thinking lately about the literal-ness of the Bible.  It could make for a lengthy post, but quite interesting.  What do you think?

WiredForStereo

Movie Review: Temple Grandin starring Claire Danes

I've been following Dr. Temple Grandin the person for several years.  Well, let me qualify that, she's over fifty already anyway.  She didn't just get discovered or anything, she designed the handling facilities for half the cattle slaughtering houses in the country.  She's an autistic who has the ability to remember in pictures and has used her abilities to change the way we deal with animals on the way to slaughter.  I have heard a number of interviews with her and a presentation or two that she's given.  She's a very brilliant person.

To the movie.

Now this is acting.  Acting is worthless when you're just watching the person on screen in some form of themselves.  Claire Danes is brilliant in this film.  Her portrayal of Grandin is very close, her mannerisms, speech patterns, and tone.  She's not perfect, but it's hard to know exactly since the good doctor is a bit older now.  When I heard her opening line in the movie, I said "That's not how Temple Grandin talks, but it's close enough."  Of course Danes portrays her when she was much younger than she is now.  Grandin herself in the special features remarks as to how close Danes' portrayal is.

This is one of those stories you wouldn't believe if it wasn't real.  Grandin has done so much with her life, and she came from a time when autistic children were more often than not institutionalized.  She was the first person to explain what it was like to be autistic.

I absolutely loved this movie and I would recommend it to anyone, and in fact, you should really see it. 

10/10

WiredForStereo