A friend alerted me to this wonderful poem on the brain by Pier Giorgio Di Cicco (1949-) “Brain Litany: Or, Overlooking the Existential Factor”, poet laureate of Toronto and Augustinian priest:

*” … and when we think of coconuts and pigs, there are no coconuts or pigs in the brain.” — Gregory Bateson

[ … ]

Where are the pigs Where are the coconuts

The brain is a compendium of holographic mechanisms

Help me find the coconuts Help me find the pigs

The brain is a neuro-physiological metaphor

The brain is an illusionist’s exercise in Euclidean geometry

The brain is a vibrational amplifier for ambient field quanta

Find me the goddamned coconuts the pigs

The brain is a cybernetic miracle with a three-ring triune brain circus at its centre [ … ]

Read the rest here. It is simply the best sendup I have ever heard of materialist neuroscience.

So rarely does a poet actually take on the nonsense rigorously, as opposed to simply sneaking away into some romantic or nihilist haze.  - Denyse O’Leary

PS: If you find the pigs, lose them again, will you, and keep the coconuts for your trouble. - d.

We recently received a large brown envelop from our mail carrier with no return address. Inside we found photocopies of what appear to be internal memos from the Natural Sciences Department at the University of Ivory Tower. A note inside indicated that the sender was a graduate student at the university who felt these documents needed to be made available to the public. The sender simply referred to himself/herself as “Sager”. We will be posting these memos (that our staff dubbed the “Ivorygate” documents) one at a time as we are able to review and authenticate them. Today we are releasing the memo entitled “Educators Guide to dealing with intelligent design“.

Would you go to see a film about a pregnant New York waitress from a deprived background - estranged from her family, dumped by her lover, fired for being late, and about to arrange an abortion? Really?

If you said no, you would certainly be affirmed in your decision by critics at the top Entertainment sections. Independent upstart Metanoia Films’ first effort (Bella, 2006) was roundly trashed, as this sample from Rotten Tomatoes shows:

- “Bella is certainly a sweet, life-affirming picture, but it’s just not authentic or captivating enough to justify its wildly concocted scenario.” - Gary Goldstein, Los Angeles Times -

“A barely disguised anti-abortion tract, Bella is simple-minded, heavy-handed and as subtle as a gorilla in a tutu.” - Tom Long, Detroit News -

“… defiantly unsubtle, structurally clunky specimen. ” - Lisa Schwarzbaum, Entertainment Weekly -

“A Mexican movie in which the outcome is never in doubt, the scenes are endless — sorry, we meant poetic– and the false beard on the central character’s face looks as though it could use a little extra gum.” - Desson Thompson, Washington Post

All from the “cream of the crop” critics, compiled at Rotten Tomatoes, where the film averaged a low 36% rating

New York Times reporter Stephen Holden dismissed Bella as a “saccharine trifle” and worse:

If Bella (the title doesn’t make sense until the last scene) is a mediocre cup of mush, the response to it suggests how desperate some people are for an urban fairy tale with a happy ending, no matter how ludicrous.

The Toronto Star didn’t get around to running a review of Bella by Susan Walker until April 11, 2008. But under the circumstances, why did the Star run a review at all? Ah, there is a story in that …

But what did the audience think?

Bella prompted a sudden second look when it won the 2006 Toronto Film Festival People’s Choice award - that, of course, is the audience rating, not the critics’ rating. As Hollywood Reporter (September 27, 2006) announced breathlessly

Hollywood handicappers always think they know who stands to win top honors at film festivals, but as we saw in Toronto earlier this month surprises are always possible. Going into the festival, absolutely no one, including the team of filmmakers that made “Bella,” ever imagined it would capture the People’s Choice Award voted on by festival audiences. Now in the wake of “Bella’s” breakthrough victory, it’s being screened for domestic distributors whose interest in acquiring the heartwarming drama is understandably greater than it was only a few weeks earlier.

And Rotten Tomatoes grudgingly conceded,

Consensus: A sweet, but ultimately pedestrian drama. Critics labeled Bella as a simplistic and mostly pedestrian, but positive word of mouth gave this tiny indie surprising theatrical legs.

Indeed, Bella soared in audience popularity in 2007, winning Best Picture and Best Actor at the 2008 MovieGuide Awards. It was also #1 in a New York Times’ readers’ poll, and at Yahoo and Fandango (WorldNetDaily, November 3, 2007) , as well winning as many other awards and honours - and doing just fine at the box office.

One reason Bella was trashed by elite critics is that they apparently perceived the film as anti-choice or even anti-abortion. To them, that meant that it was unrealistic about the limited and possibly unlivable future of working class people.

True, Bella has been enthusiastically plugged by prolife and profamily groups, but the film is in no sense an anti-abortion tract. The word abortion is not used, though the subject is discussed (”termination).” Jose obviously does not want his new friend Nina to abort her baby, but he refrains from offering “arguments” against it. He has a much larger project in mind, as we shall see.

The most interesting question about the film’s popularity is, why didn’t the elite critics’ condemnation matter much? Two reasons, I suspect: Not only is there a huge divide between elite culture and popular culture in North America, but elite culture is losing its hold on the Internet, which is fast becoming the primary medium of communication. For example, recent stats (April 15, 2008) show that time spent at news media Web sites is declining. Web users merely drive by and then go on to seek a variety of alternative views.

Bella and the design of life

If I told you exactly how I think Bella relates to intelligent design, I would spoil critical scenes and, - worse - tempt you to read it as some kind of an allegory. So let me hint: Nina starts out assuming that life is determined in advance, and it is very limited. No one cares, and no one will ever care what she does. Therefore, she must have an abortion.

She doesn’t exactly “want” an abortion. It would be more accurate to say that she cannot imagine a future in which she did not have one. An abortion will accomplish the only goal she can imagine: set her back on the treadmill to nowhere instead of tipping her into the abyss of nothingness. And that is her future - her full stop is delayed a while.

We are not encouraged to judge Nina for her past or proposed choices, but rather to see them in the context of her limited expectations.

But Jose, the chef at Nina’s former workplace, has plunged into the abyss himself. He has emerged, knowing that life is not as Nina thinks. On the contrary, there is a design to life, and that design is much larger and more promising than we usually imagine. If we cooperate with it, we become our best selves. If we don’t, we wander, aimless and self-destructive, forever bound by limits of our own making. Jose impulsively walks away from his frantic kitchen and sets out to demonstrate that to Nina. 

He senses that he is one of the few men who can truly relate to the dilemma Nina and many other pregnant single women face. His own life, like theirs, was forever altered by the outcome of a few moments of unwise choices. After Nina learns Jose’s story, she will not likely ever say to him, “You don’t understand what it is like.” He does understand.

Bella avoids tipping over into mere sentiment in large part because Jose’s close family are the survivors of his tragedy. Their relationships are all they were left with - love among the ruins.

Bella is a beautiful film, and I can think of no higher praise than to say it is loved by the right people - and hated by the right people as well. Only at the very end do we discover the meaning of the title, and I will not spoil that for you.

Redemption motif: Redeeming the Latin lead

For Eduardo Verastegui, co-owner of production company Metanoia Films, the role of Jose was the outcome of a profound personal discovery and commitment. As Deborah Gyapong relates, in Western Catholic Reporter (May 28, 2007),

Verastegui had reached the zenith of Mexican celebrity as a soap opera star and singer who had toured at least 13 countries to sold-out concerts. He’d appeared as Jennifer Lopez’s love interest in her popular music video Ain’t It Funny. His growing Hollywood TV and movie credits included the starring role in the 20th Century Fox movie Chasing Papi and a co-starring role in the independent film Meet Me in Miami. He’d been listed as one of the 50 most beautiful people in the world in People en Espanol.

So far, Verastegui was well on the way to a career as a conventional Latin star, but

In Los Angeles, while studying English, he found himself drawn to a deeper faith in Christ through his devout Catholic teacher. He began to see all the reasons he had wanted to be an actor - fame, money and pleasure - as empty and vain. He realized he’d been typecast into portraying the unfaithful, lying Latin lover and playing those parts promoted negative stereotypes. The media portrayal of Hispanics in general demeaned both men and women, resembling nothing like the dignity and beauty of his mother and sisters in Mexico.

He understood he had hurt people through the work he had done and the messages in his movies were “poisoning society.”

“It broke my heart,” the actor told the annual Rose Dinner in Ottawa May 10, following the annual March for Life in Ottawa.

“I realized I had offended God.”

Verastegui spent months in tears, sold his goods, and vowed never to play another role that demeaned his culture.

Later, he ran into director Alejandro Monteverdi, co-writer of the screenplay with Patrick Million, and they formed an independent film company to produce the film, which was shot in New York in 24 days. 

Resources:

Bella official site

Bella Fan Club

Bella trailer

Bella box office

by Dennis Wagner

One of the most profound spiritual experiences I’ve ever had was my first encounter with the Hubble Deep Field Photographs. What appears to be a little dark space in the heavens as we gaze up with the naked eye turns out to be filled with hundreds of odd shaped galaxies when examined more closely by the Hubble Space Telescope. You can hear a hundred lectures on how big the universe is, but when your mind starts extrapolating what your eye sees in this photo, you are suddenly overwhelmed by the largeness of the universe and the smallness of your life, and yet somehow you fell connected to that largeness, and privileged to be here to observe it. I think folk guitarist Peter Mayer has captured that experience beautify in his song My Soul from his Midwinter CD.

My Soul by Peter Mayer

There are a hundred billion snowflakes swirling in the cosmic storm
And each one is a galaxy, a billion stars or more
And each star is a million earths, a giant fiery sun
High up in some sky, maybe shining on someone

And deep inside a snowflake, I am floating quietly
I am infinitesimal, impossible to see
Sitting in my tiny kitchen in my tiny home
Staring out my window at a universe of snow

But my soul is so much bigger than the very tiny me
It reaches out into the snowstorm like a net into the sea
Out to all the lovely places where my body cannot go
I touch that beauty and embrace it in the bosom of my soul

And so brief and fleeting is this tiny life of mine
Like a single quarter note in the march of time
But my soul is like the music, it goes back to ancient days
Back before it wore a human face, long before it bore my name

Because my soul is so much older than the evanescent me
It can describe the dawn of time like a childhood memory
It is a spark that was begotten of the darkness long ago
What my body has forgotten, I remember in my soul

So we live this life together, my giant soul and tiny me
One resembling forever, one like smoke upon the breeze
One the deep abiding ocean, one a sudden flashing wave
And counting galaxies like snowflakes, I would swear we were the same

Oh my soul belongs to beauty, takes me up to lofty heights
Teaches sacred stories to me, sanctifies my tiny life
Lays a bridge across the ages, melts the boundaries of my bones
Paints a bold eternal face on this passing moment, oh my soul

Research on how the brain processes music is emerging as a rich and stimulating area of investigation of perception, memory, emotion, and performance. This 25 page paper from the Annual Review of Psychology does an excellent job of reviewing the state of research on music and the brain and provides citations to the original literature for those who want to dig deeper. Based on current knowledge researchers are attempting to build a sound model of how the brain processes music. We’d love to hear the Darwinian “story” about how the musical supercomputer between our ears developed by mutations.

An editorial by Matt R. Ealist

It seems like every time we turn around a scientist is pointing out the genetic similarities between humans and chimps - our closest evolutionary ancestors. For some of us, this constant preaching can grow old. Why is it that scientists feel it necessary to continually remind us that we are not made in the image of God, but in the image of an ape? I propose that they are doing it for our own good. The belief of human exceptionalism is a sin of the worst kind. Most evil and atrocity in the world can be traced back to this belief. The “Fall of Man” was not when humans denied God and became selfish, as the Christians say. It is exactly the opposite. The Fall occurred when humans began believing in a God and started denying their selfish genes. When scientists remind us that we are 98% ape, they are graciously attempting to save us from our sin and restore us to an apish virtue. We should be grateful. However, I believe the reason that many of us have become deaf to the Darwinist gospel is because we are disillusioned. When we hear scientists tell us that we are apes and that morals are an accidental by-product of nature, but then they turn around and talk of human “inalienable rights,” as if there is some objective moral law, we immediately recognize the hypocrisy. Therefore, I think that we owe some praise to scientists who have the courage and integrity to act with an apish virtue before they preach it to others. Although instances of this type of high character are rare, the academic community has recently witnessed just such an example.

Professors in the Astronomy, Physics, and Religious Studies departments at Iowa State University have come under scrutiny for conspiring to unfairly deny tenure to Guillermo Gonzalez (a heretic and advocate for Intelligent Design) and then lying about their reasons. While some simple minded people will criticize the behavior of these professors, I say it is commendable. They are acting consistently with the beliefs they espouse. If it is true that our closest relatives are chimps, then we should not be surprised when some of us exhibit chimp-like behavior. Nor should we apologize for it. Chimps are known to be aggressive, unfair, brutish little bullies at times. The professors’ behavior is strikingly similar. The behavior exhibited by these professors merely corroborates their own hypothesis that they are 98% ape. And while there are some Darwinists who would take that as an insult, the more enlightened ones (the true believers) should take it as a compliment. Why should they feel insulted by someone merely agreeing with a hypothesis that they proudly and boldly profess?

Some of you may be thinking, “What about the bonobo? They are our ancestors too and they are kind, sweet, and fair. Shouldn’t we harness our inner bonobo and shun our inner chimp? Isn’t the bonobo just as much a part of us as the chimpanzee?” Well, no. Our DNA is not as close to a bonobo as it is to a chimp. Furthermore, why should we prefer bonobo behavior over chimp behavior? They are both the products of purposeless processes of nature. To say that one is any better than the other is to imply an objective standard of some sort, which is rubbish.

I know that a lot of this may sound unpleasant. But I am simply stating the facts of Darwinism and applying them consistently. Not all Darwinists have the courage to admit these things, much less the stomach to act upon them. It seems our heroes at ISU have both. Their example stands as a symbol of Darwinian truth for all the world to see. Students can look to this inspirational story and glean from it an important lesson: It may take a real man to admit he is merely a sophisticated chimp, but it takes a real ape to act like one.

by James Hoskins

I recently had the honor of being interviewed for a podcast on idthefuture.com. The main topic of the interview was some short stories I had written that have been featured here on idarts.org. The podcast sparked some fierce debates in the comments between Darwinists and ID proponents. From what I can decipher of the Darwinists’ comments, their main argument seems to be that ID proponents are liars for denying the claim that we believe in ID because we are Christians. Ironically, I addressed this issue briefly in the first Socrates debate, which was featured in the podcast. Evidently, the Darwinists didn’t feel it necessary to read the stories before dismissing them. So, I thought I would go further in depth and fully address this accusation from the Darwinists in the second installment of the Socrates debate series. In order to accurately represent the Darwinist position, I will use some quotes taken directly from some posts in the comments of the podcast.

We are pleased to introduce ID Artist Gil Dodgen. A professional musician earlier in his career, Gil offers up some thoughts on music and ID, along with downloadable copies of his classical piano solo albums:

“As a child and young man, music spoke to my soul in a way that nothing else did. I can’t explain it and won’t attempt to. It seems to me that the arts, and music in particular, present a real problem for Darwinism. How would such an ability come about in a step-by-tiny-step fashion and what would be the survival value of the transitional intermediates, or even the end product? (Never mind what mutations would be required to rewire the central nervous system for musical ability, and the probability of those mutations occurring.) Of course, for Darwinists, Darwinism must explain everything, so they will invent stories about how ancient jungle drummers got the girls, just like rock stars get the groupies. But everyone enjoys music with absolutely no evidence that it offers any survival or reproductive advantage. It just seems to be programmed into us at a very fundamental level.

Music is based on the physics of sound — in particular, the overtone series which is produced when a string or column of air vibrates. The division of the octave into 12 semitones is not an accident or a matter of personal preference; this produces notes that coincide with the overtone series. This is the basis of melody and harmony, and why some sounds are dissonant and some sounds are consonant.

Imagine a world without music: no music accompanying the movies you watch, no music in your church services, no music on the radio or television, no violinists, no pianists, no guitarists, no singers, no songs — no music at all! Wouldn’t your life be indescribably impoverished?

And here’s the weird thing: music is a totally abstract art form, but has tremendous power. When I was in college I took a number of courses in music theory. I remember a chapter in a book about melody. All the technical elements of melodic composition were discussed but there was one final comment that struck me (I paraphrase): Most people associate “melody” with something that cannot be described, but they know it when they hear it, and there is no way to teach how to write a good melody.

In closing I would like to offer some of the great piano music that inspired me, in hopes that it will inspire you as well. You are free to make CDs and distribute the music in any way you like, and I would encourage you to include the program notes when you do. In them I include a tribute to my wonderful music teacher, Ruby Bailey, who taught me from the time I was a child through high school, and then again in college. She was unbelievably gifted as a musician, pianist, and pedagogue, and was a wonderful person in general.

I am something of an evangelist for classical music. When one has been blessed so profoundly by something, one feels compelled to share it with others. Although I no longer perform concerts (with rare exceptions) I do continue to perform classical music informally and play keyboards for a praise band.”

Philosophy student James Hoskins has a knack for turning philosophical arguments about the Darwin v. Design debate into interesting fictional stories. Several of his creative works here at IDArts are featured in this recent Podcast interview including Confession and A Debate Between Socrates and Hector Dawkins.

by Denyse O’Leary

ARN correspondent

I first determined to make a point of reading historian Richard Weikart’s meticulously researched book, From Darwin to Hitler because Darwinists were very clearly upset by the implications of his work. Some seemed obsessed with proving Weikart, who teaches at California State University (Stanislaus) not only wrong but dishonest and irresponsible - which he certainly isn’t.

I am glad I read this magisterial work, because I now understand much better the relationship between 19^th century Darwinism and the rise of Hitler. Weikart unearths so many old, almost buried 19^th and early 20^th century German sources. Indeed, one can only wonder at his patience, systematically reading through the many, many articles and books of long-dead eugenicists, imperialists, pacifists, socialists, and such.

Weikart unearths several lines of evidence that are critical for understanding what happened. Darwin himself was a wealthy, upper crust, peaceful British racist, regretting the inevitable demise of the lesser forms of human life. No one, least of all Darwin, thought that he should do anything to make it happen. However, in Germany, both rightists and leftists wanted to use Darwin’s theory to rid the nation of people that they felt were holding it back. They had no problem with the idea of struggle or violence; it was their job, in their own opinion, to make sure that the right side won.

Racist eugenics was accepted as science and many scientists were complicit with the Nazis. Nazis generally prided themselves on being “scientific”, and by that they meant being eugenicist - and by that, in turn, they meant that they were loyal to Darwin after their fashion.

One discovery I found enlightening is that German pacifists were not like the peaceniks who carry anti-war signs in today’s societies. German pacifists regretted that wars destroyed fit people, as opposed to unfit ones. In short, destruction itself did not trouble them, rather the fact that war’s destruction could not be engineered against those they deemed inferior. Under the circumstances, if an idea like natural selection or survival of the fittest gained popular approval, it could end only in disaster.

Hitler himself was not a man who read deeply, but, as Weikart shows, he gained a lot of social Darwinism from the popular literature he read. The genocidal policies he enacted had become popular over a period of about seventy years.

Finishing the book, I found myself wondering why anyone would find it worth their while to argue whether Darwinism played a role in Nazi eugenics policies, because it so obviously did. Yet some do indeed wish to argue that, as my combox attested last year. Reviewer Sander Gliboff, for example, anxious to defend modern Darwinism, completely misses the point of the book - that Darwinism was an important, but not essential, plank in the growth of Nazism. It would have been possible to construct Nazism without Darwinism, but Darwinism was very much part of the mix.

If you lined up all the early Darwinists and eugenicists and such from Germany fifty years before the glorious Reich ended in the suicides in the bunker in 1945 and asked them, “What do you think now that it has come to this?” - they would doubtless be stunned. They only thought they were getting rid of the detritus of evolution, the people who didn’t matter anyway.

Other resources

Here are two of Weikart’s articles that are available online:

Does Darwinism devalue human life?

A number of years ago two intelligent students surprised me in a class discussion by defending the proposition that Hitler was neither good nor evil. Though I kept my composure, I was horrified. One of the worst mass murderers in history wasn’t evil? How could they believe this? How could they justify such a view?

They did it by appealing to Darwinism. Their pronouncement on Hitler occurred while we were discussing James Rachels’ book, Created from Animals: The Moral Implications of Darwinism (Oxford University Press, 1990). Darwinism, these students informed us, undermined all morality. This was not the first time I had heard such a view. In fact, at that time I was in the beginning phases of a research project on the history of evolutionary ethics, and I had already reviewed the work of some scientists and social scientists who believed that Darwinism undermined human rights and equality.

Killing them kindly

Decades ago a prominent euthanasia proponent stated that “there is a place in humanity for murder, that is to say by killing the unfit.” Another commanded, “Chloroform unfit children. Show them the same mercy that is shown beasts that are no longer fit to live.” One might be forgiven for thinking that these were rantings of a Nazi leader, for they do reflect the ideology underlying the Nazi euthanasia program, during which about 100,000 handicapped Germans were murdered by physicians under government direction. But alas, these statements came from prominent British and American progressives–the former from the British physician Havelock Ellis, and the latter from the controversial American lawyer Clarence Darrow.

Here are some reviews of From Darwin to Hitler. Here is a favorable review by Orthodox priest Johannes Jacobse:

To most Germans, Hitler never appeared to be an evildoer, and thus subsequent attempts to portray him as a fanatical madman betray a misunderstanding of the epoch in which he ruled, Weikart argues. Instead, Hitler was very much a man of his age. The moral justifications for the evil he unleashed were developed long before he rose to power.

 

I asked Richard Weikart to comment on the reviews:

The reviews by historians have been a mixed bag. The anonymous referees who reviewed it for the publisher praised it and gave it high marks, which led Palgrave Macmillan to publish it in the first place (so, yes, it is peer-reviewed). The historians Richard J. Evans of Cambridge Univ., Ian Dowbiggin of Univ. of Prince Edward Island, and Alfred Kelly all provided glowing dustjacket blurbs (see my website). I received a very positive review in German Studies Review, a review that was largely positive but also contained some criticisms on H-Ideas (available on-line), a review that tilted toward the negative, but also contained some positive comments, in Central European History, and some rather vicious reviews in American Historical Review (where readers were told that I was advancing a “theocratic agenda”) and in Journal of Modern History (where the reviewer ridiculously claimed I was arguing that Darwinism leads logically and inevitably to the Holocaust).

All the reviewers admitted that my writing and research were good and none pointed out any significant errors of fact. Most of the criticisms I have addressed in a response posted to my website. (Scroll down to Response to critics.)

Apparently, Dr. Weikart will be speaking at the Darwinism after Darwin conference at the University of Leeds, England in September. His talk is open to the public.

Toronto-based Canadian journalist Denyse O’Leary (www.designorchance.com) is the author of the multiple award-winning By Design or by Chance? (Augsburg Fortress 2004), an overview of the intelligent design controversy. She was named CBA Canada’s Recommended Author of the Year in 2005 and is co-author, with Montreal neuroscientist Mario Beauregard, of the forthcoming The Spiritual Brain: A neuroscientist’s case for the existence of the soul (Harper 2007).