Postscript on Noah

I have been following a lot of the debate on the film "Noah" where critics like Dr. Brian Mattson, film maker Brian Godawa and others pan the film as decidedly divorced from the intent of the Biblical story.   In particular, the images that seem pulled directly from Gnostic ideas and Kaballah drive a lot of tit for tat arguments about the meaning of the film.

I guess I have to agree with Godawa and Mattson on this particular point - they are pointing to specifics in the film that seem to either contradict the Biblical text or subvert it with specific extrabiblical imagery and content one of the most obvious is naming a strange light-bearing metal after a prime text of Kaballah, the "ZOHAR".   The rebuttals all seem to say the same thing - yes those images are there, but they don't really mean anything negative.

Now this is a curious thing.  On what basis should any normal rational person believe that a filmmaker who stated that he drew on extra-biblical sources, who stated that he was making the "least Biblical" Biblical epic ever, who stated that environmental devastation was a key theme and who included specific Kaballah and gnostic imagery in the film did not intend those symbols to mean anything contrary to the admittedly sketchy Biblical text?   (more)

Darren Aronofsky's Noah - Deceived by the Snake Again

Much has been written about Darren Aronofsky's Noah, so I won't attempt a detailed review.  That has already been done.   I thought it was maybe the most unpleasant film I've ever seen, with maybe the worst score.   The acting was fine, but the telling of the ancient story, though true to the general outline of Genesis 6-9, veered into some rather troubling waters.   

We all know the basic arc of the tale:  The earth is overrun by wickedness, so the "creator" sends judgment in the form of a massive flood.  One man builds a huge floating box to rescue enough animals to repopulate the earth and not coincidentally, saves himself and his family.   That outline is intact.  

How Progressives Operate: A Case Study

One of the great disconnects of the liberal progressive mind (I have in mind both political progressives and theological progressives) is the inability to see in itself the evils it abhors in others. No better example is the endless cry for "fairness". Somehow I wonder if this is actually a disconnect or if it is instead a strategy.

I know I've picked on Tony Jones a lot in the past. I've occasionally engaged in the comments section on his blog, but usually found that to be a rather fruitless exercise. At one time, a long time ago, I thought there might be some openness to a more conservative viewpoint there, or at least room for discussion. What I have found instead is a steady pattern of dismissal of most conservative arguments and real discussion only of a range of arguments at varying points left of center. If you are right of center, your views will usually be ignored and when not ignored, characterized in the worst possible light. To avoid being accused of the same, I will provide links and quotes to my comments below.  (more)

Immaterial Reality Times Two

Not too long ago, I posted about the notion that information is the immaterial reality that cannot be explained by reference to material causes.

Now this.  

Not only is the genetic code a language, it is two languages with two different purposes stacked onto the same chemical sequence. 

From the original article:  "The genetic code uses a 64-letter alphabet called codons. The UW team discovered that some codons, which they called duons, can have two meanings, one related to protein sequence, and one related to gene control. These two meanings seem to have evolved in concert with each other"

David Klinghoffer responds:  "But think about how implausible this is. Let's say I write an article in English about Subject A. But ingeniously I choose my words in such a way that the article can also be read in a different language, providing information about a related but separate Subject B. Meditate for a moment on the ingenuity this would take -- not only that, but the forethought, with imagining a complex, distant goal being the first step in the process."

The genetic code uses a 64-letter alphabet called codons. The UW team discovered that some codons, which they called duons, can have two meanings, one related to protein sequence, and one related to gene control. These two meanings seem to have evolved in concert with each other. - See more at: http://www.evolutionnews.org/2013/12/genome_composes080111.html#sthash.KHQsXchU.dpuf

The genetic code uses a 64-letter alphabet called codons. The UW team discovered that some codons, which they called duons, can have two meanings, one related to protein sequence, and one related to gene control. These two meanings seem to have evolved in concert with each other. - See more at: http://www.evolutionnews.org/2013/12/genome_composes080111.html#sthash.KHQsXchU.dpuf

The genetic code uses a 64-letter alphabet called codons. The UW team discovered that some codons, which they called duons, can have two meanings, one related to protein sequence, and one related to gene control. These two meanings seem to have evolved in concert with each other. - See more at: http://www.evolutionnews.org/2013/12/genome_composes080111.html#sthash.KHQsXchU.dpuf

CS Lewis, 50 Years Ago

Hard to believe it was 50 years ago that JFK was assassinated.  One of my earliest childhood memories was watching the flag draped coffin with Kennedy's body slowly passing down the streets on our old black and white TV with my parents.   I had just turned four.

Unknown to me at that time was the life and death, the same day, of C.S. Lewis who probably influenced me more than any other person, save Christ Himself.   I started reading Lewis in high school, first Mere Christianity, then The Screwtape Letters an later the Narnia books and the space trilogy.   Lewis was a brilliant mind, but many have had a brilliant mind.  No one wrote like Lewis, as Sherwood Wirt once said, Lewis had the ability to "make righteousness readable".   His clever turns of phrases, proper British prose and logical argumentation combined to make thinking enjoyable.

Three articles caught my attention today.

Language Games

One of the tenets of the postmodern drift is that "language is a mask to power".   I've been chewing on a brief post at Powerline for a few days that tersely dismisses that postmodern credo as a failed canard.

Basically, the claim of the secular progressive academia has often been that truth is determined by cultural consensus.  Different cultures make different truth claims.  Since ultimate truths are beyond the reach of reason, if they exist at all, we are left with the uncomfortable suggestion that whoever has power gets to control the language, and as a result gets to impose its version of truth on everyone else.  So the "rich" usually have the most power, thus they are usually the oppressors who control the language, creating words and destroying un-words according to their whim.

What they don't tell folks until they have been indoctrinated, is that their remedy to this injustice is for someone else to control the language.  (More)

Naturalist Claim: Global Flood Explains the Cambrian Explosion

Interesting article at Evolution News.

Stephen Meyer's new book Darwin's Doubt raises questions about how a vast array of life forms and body plans for those life forms could arise during the Cambrian explosion.  Critics of the book apparently mostly trashed it without engaging it, but Casey Luskin makes note of some attempts to deal with the specific question raised.

Here's the gist of a significant problem:  (more)