Moore's Law - The immorality of the Ten Commandments. By Christopher Hitchens
My friend Jim sent the link to this article. He liked it. It annoyed me so much I ended up writing Jim back two letters and posting a response to the article on the Slate web site.

Here're my responses:

Response 1:

It's a cute article, but I can only agree with Hitchins on one point: that Judge Moore was a grandstander, and didn't do Christianity any good from a PR perspective.

It wasn't a battle worth fighting.

But Hitchins' casual dismissal of the Ten Commandments, particularly the first four, demonstrates a lack of serious thought about them, to say nothing of actual scholarship. I think even atheists with any kind of intellectual heft would have more to say about the Commandments in the terms of their relevance to philosophy, personal morality and ethics and literature.

Hitchins is writing like a lightweight who substitutes flippancy for actual criticism.

I won't bother to go through the list point by point here, but ask me next time we're having a few drinks and I'll demonstrate how each one of his points (and I mean every single one!) starts with a straw man premise that has nothing to do with a legitimate, historic and scholarly understanding of the text. Given that many straw men, you'd think his conclusion would at least feel conclusive, but it doesn't. It's just a lazy recitation of tired anti-religious bigotry masquerading as wit.

Note 2:

Check it out: http://bbs.slate.msn.com/?id=3936&m=8001078

I was annoyed enough to respond. Of course, I'm sure I'll be savaged by the hordes of folks out there who don't actually need a base of reasoned thought to argue from, just a wealth of insults made up by other folks and repeated so often they begin to seem true (i.e. nobody's ever killed anyone in the name of atheism).

Note my fired-up-ness. I've recently discovered that not only do I believe this stuff, but that I understand what I believe well enough to argue it without feeling any shame, despite the fact the many, many people I like and love think I'm an idiot, and tell me so by saying things like: "wow, only an idiot would believe a fairy tale like that."

Course, that's what I said, too. I also said religious belief was analogous to mental illness. I also said that religion was the principle source of hatred in the world. And when I started my research, my question was: How could smart folks believe a fairy tale like that?

I got my answer, 100 percent through human reason. No divine intercession, no leaps of faith required.

That's why smartasses like Hitchins piss me off -- because they try and make it seem cool to not think, at an era in the world's history when thought is so important! Give me a serious, thoughtful atheist, and we'll have a great discussion. Give me bigotry, and I'll do my best, but there's no substance there to really argue with.

More Myth Busting on "Hitler's Pope"
Here's an article from today's Telegraph discussing even more evidence that depsite the flood of poorly researched, a-historical books that have been on the popular non-fiction market over the past few years, Pius XII didn't work with the Nazi's. He though Hitler was evil, and worked hard to save, and did save many, Jews from Holocaust.

ieSpell - Spell Checker add-on for Internet Explorer
This little program integrates with IE and lets you spell check when you're filling out online forms, posting to a Web log, etc. Before this, you had to open a separate text editor and write your stuff there first if you wanted a spell check. Now it's right in the IE tool menu. Sweet. (If you can't see the tool menu, as when you're typing in a pop-up window, you can right click to access the spell check command.)

An Afternoon on the Farm (and a nap taken way too late...)
I will agree with Ernesto that the trip to the farm was a nice little venture and it gave David a chance to see where all that meat Daddy eats comes from. But David was a little out of it that afternoon and was ready to sleep but instead, sat in the back carrier, sweating from the thick, wet air while small, non-biting, yet highly irritating bugs swarmed around his head. He looked a little dazed to say the least. Perhaps he thought he was caught in one of his story books, except these animals didn't have smiles on their faces and looked rather suspicious of us.

David did seem to enjoy the baby chicks, but his favorite farm animal of all was Jake, the neighbor's cat. This big orange and yellow striped cat followed us everywhere, and while it wasn't harrassing the donkey it was rubbing up against my leg. I let David down to see him and it was all over him. It kept batting its fluffy tail in David's face, letting loose hundreds of fine cat hairs each time, most of which stuck to David's sweaty face. Of course he didn't care. He was just delighted that this animal seemed so smitten with him and he was laughing out loud in delight.

We finally made our meat purchases, headed home and minutes later David was fast alseep- and I wasn't far behind. Maybe it was all that fresh air that us city folk aren't used to breathing, but our day on the farm wiped David and I out. And I think it just made Ernie hungry...mmmm....meat....

An Afternoon on the Farm
Kristen and I took David up to Webster this afternoon. I'd been inquiring about the products, and the owner of Webster Ridge Farm, Brandon Sussman, offered to give us a tour.
David enjoyed seeing the donkey, the goats, the sheep and the chickens, especially the chicks, as he was able to lean over their pen and watch them mill around. He kept waving to them, and that was cute and little sad, as I imagine we'll be eating one of them sometime in September. The trip to the farm was part of my project to see how much of our meat and produce we can buy locally here in New Hampshire. Between all the local farms we've gotten info from, I believe we'll only have to go to the grocery store for paper products, cleaning supplies, exotic foods and snacks (gotta have my pork rinds).

'Mad Mel's' Movie Not Anti-Semitic
Recently a whole bunch of folks, including self-appointed critics purporting to represent the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (cringe, the USCCB has since apologized and disassociated itself with said critics) and the Anti-Defamation League, have denounced Mel Gibson's new movie the passion for being anti-Semitic. Their reason? It depicts the decision to crucify Christ as having been made by Jewish authorities of the Roman period. But wait, isn't that how all the Gospels tell the Passion story as well? Yes. But, critics argue, the New Testament is unreliable because it was written "some 40 to 70 years after Jesus' execution." It was really the Romans. (In which case, shouldn't Italians be griping about the film?)
Two problems here: The first is that biblical scholars hardly agree on that point. Theologians certainly would. In fact, most would probably argue on the other side. The second is, what they are really saying is that the Bible is anti-Semitic. The league should be (what am I saying? they probably are...) lobbying to have the Bible rewritten so nobody, no matter how poor a critical reader, could possibly be offended.
It's clear that the Gospels are not anti-Semitic. They pit Jesus not against the Jews (that's who he is and who he's ministering to in the story!), but against some Jewish religious leaders who were behaving in a hypocritical and legalistic fashion. It doesn't say all Jewish religious leaders, were so. It also doesn't imply that the Jewish faith or people were inherently so. It simply isn't an anti-Semitic story.
So if Gibson's movie is faithful to the Gospel versions of the story, and if these folks are saying it's anti-Semitic and historically inaccurate because of that, and because they have a completely different (completely speculative, undocumented and scientifically groundless) take on what happened, born a desire to revise history for the sake of political correctness... well ... I don't know what. Here's a link to a new, longer version of the movie trailer. I can't wait.

An Early Morning Engineering Marvel
In the dark of the early morning you're holding a baby in one arm. He's just dropped back into a doze after you've stripped his pajamas off him and changed his diaper, which he'd managed to pee up the side and out of, soaking not only his pajamas, but his bedclothes as well. This is compounded by the fact that his mother has already been up with him about six times, and so you are trying not to wake her up by rousing him to another bout of crying. Sleep, you think in a sort of mentalist voice, you are in a deep sleep. The challenge? Change a fitted sheet in a crib without waking the baby in your arms. The first step? Find out where mama keeps the baby's linens!

More Style, Please
Here's an excellent style guide writer for BBC broadcaster writers but clearly useful for all writers, in .pdf format, online and free! This one goes on the tools list.

Think Too Much?
John Derbyshire thinks so, and so, he says, does David Hume. Read on, just don't think too hard about what you're reading.

The Genders Really Are Different, Thank God!
This fascinating essay from Psychology Today lays out a wide variety of significant biological differences between men and woman, differences that are "surreptitiously molding our responses to everything from stress to space to speech." Obviously, and happily, this is no attempt to argue superiority or inferiority on either side, but simply, viva la différence!

Health Food
I'm at Market Basket this evening, and I go to the counter with three items: a package of full-fat pepperoni and two bags of pork rinds. The woman who scans my stuff barely raises one tweezed eyebrow but doesn't say anything. I nevertheless want to tell her: "They're health food snacks. I'm on a diet." And it's true. And it's working.

A Chance to Read John Dufresne on Writing
Had drinks last night with novelist Merle Drown (Suburbs of Heaven). We enjoyed some terrific conversation and dry martinis and eventually ended up talking about John Dufresne, whose book Love Warps the Mind a Little has been one of Kristen's favorites ever since her mom turned us on to it. I liked it quite a lot as well. For Kristen and her mom, Dufresne is a hometown guy, raised in Worcester.
Turns out Merle knows John and mentioned that he edits a literary mag down in Miami. I checked out the site this morning and found that he writes a piece on writing for the publication. Here's a link to the most recent, a piece on writers, reading and research: "The Writer Reads". Good advice from a great writer! Of course, Merle gives some great advice too, but it's not posted on the Internet anywhere ... yet.

Turtle pond at dusk, after Kristen and I have put David to bed. I held him in my arms and rocked him after she'd nursed him, and then I laid him with Douglas Bear into the crib. It's been raining for two days straight, a boiling gray sky one minute, torrents the next. But the air has gone still and the clouds risen away from the earth leaving humid mist draped like cotton bunting on the low hills around the still, black water. The rain begins again as I push the canoe away from the landing and paddle toward the shadow-obscured tree-lined far shore. The air is so warm and wet the rain doesn't seem to make a difference. The damp has settled like a jungle humidity, and pond feels exotic. I catch a big perch and a bass and after a while hang up a fly in some duckweed near the shore. I reach down to untangle the fly and feel a momentary fear; the pond is full of snapping turtles and snakes, and the night is dark now. I think, you have to be a certain kind of creature to think this is as fun as I do, swatting mosquitoes, smelling of fish, sweat and Deep Woods Off, reaching into who knows what... I was going to write this post about the huge bass I caught on a big topwater bass bug, the one that I saw out of the corner of my eye, slurping a insect off the water like a bluegill would. But I like the image of the mist, the dark, the water and the sound of rising fish. I'll leave it here.

Debunking Bad Media Spin from the Right and the Left
Spinsanity.com does a nice job shredding bull into such tiny pieces it's clear that the big piece was, well, just bull...

Interview with Mel Gibson on 'The Passion'
Here's a link to Real Audio file of an EWTN interview with Mel Gibson regarding the film he's directing, 'The Passion.' The film, entirely in Aramaic and Latin, recounts the last 12 hours of Christ's life. Gibson, a devout Catholic, says he strove for biblical accuracy, even when it meant including scenes of suffering that would be painful to watch. I can't wait for this film for a number of reasons, including its principle subject, its daring choice of languages and the fact that Gibson's proven himself to be a great visual director. (The interview starts at about 9 minutes, 20 seconds into the file.)

A Bioethicist's Take on Genesis
This Edward Rothstein review of the book The Beginning of Wisdom by Leon R. Kass, the controversial chairman of the President's Council on Bioethics, looks at Genesis not just as a history, or a fable for a secular world, but as philosophy, with tensions that still resonate in our culture arena today. I'm looking forward to getting hold of a copy.

New Pictures in The David Album!
I finally got around to posting months 9 and 10, and boy are they cute!