The Ethics of Elfland, the (temporary) closing of this blog, and the flight of Birdman

GK Chesterton has perhaps the greatest sermon ever told written in this chapter. And it's how I choose to close out this blog.

One of the reasons that I think Girardian thought is so important is because it understands God in ways that almost no school of thought I know of does. It is able to understand the grand play of humanity, where Homo erectus gave way to Homo sapiens some 70,000 years ago, then
through generation and generation of countless cultures since human history was recorded in some shape or form, where countless gods existed to countless people through immeasurable violence and death. And to bring it all under a Divine Plan, a Divine Union, where humans evolved to understand just enough. Where now, with our brains continuing to shrink (3,000 years and counting I think is the last estimation) and violence on this planet increasing, and the Sacred decreasing, we may know as little as we ever have, and, even more dangerous, think we knew as much as we ever thought we have. As Edward Harrison points out in his gem, "Masks of the Universe", every culture has understood their (lowercase) universe and their (lowercase) god(s). But who really understands the Universe and God?

Case in point of humans' shrinking brains: my wife and I are part of that long, annual consumer line that has ate up that "Elf on the Shelf" stuff. He/She? (I'm thankful I don't know for sure) shadows our young kids in late November and December. He "mysteriously" moves around every night to a new location where he can "watch" our kids and make sure they behave. He buys us some quiet meals. Some less dramatic trips to bed at night. Some long toothbrushing. Some extra good behavior from 4 kids for a good 3-4 weeks. He's actually a great investment.

But really. How is it that a goofy looking, one foot long (when your stretching him out to get him to
"stay" on an uneven, elevated surface) elf suddenly mounting the chandelier can be perceived as threat by anybody?

Well, if you haven't noticed, young kids live in bewilderment. For example, my daughter (my princess), now five, has focused some of her attention to the Disney princesses.

It is in The Ethics of Elfland that Chesterton recounts the story of Cinderella, and asks the question, when is the last time you told the story to a child, and read the Fairy Godmother's words to Cinderella, "if you don't come back by midnight you will turn into a pumpkin?"

It's not like they don't know pumpkins. We know pumpkins. One of my favorite pictures is when it was just my wife and I, and my daughter, and we were picking out pumpkins back in Boston and brought them back for Halloween. She picked up nearly every pumpkin. Some were so heavy I was waiting for her intestines to shoot out. Now with her brothers we do that every year. It would be an utterly ridiculous thought -- less the bewilderment and joy of the moment - for my daughter even at five to think a princess could turn into a pumpkin.

But she, like every kid, tends not to stop the story and interrupt. "Why does she turn into a pumpkin? How can that even happen? Thats ridiculous!"

None of that.

Instead their minds move to the possibility of pumpkin transformation because they can, and, most importantly, are willing. The wonderfulness of the story. Of the possibility.

Why can't Cinderella turn into a princess? They may think to themselves .After all, those marvelous stars hang in the sky, Ice cream taste amazing, and I just love running around and not knowing what is next around the corner....

But what if they shot back at the Fairy Godmother. What if they shouted to the Fairy Godmother, "Hey wait a minute!. How come?????

As Chesterton masterfully concludes. "Because if the child asks how come, the Fairy Godmother may very well come back and say, "Well my child,  how come there is a Fairyland in the first place?"

This isn't a fairyland. Certainly not a place of a living, loving, benevolent Creator. This is too often a brutal place. And the older I get, the more I think, its always a brutal place. We are just better at deceiving ourselves and distracting ourselves some of the time. And, on top of that, post-modernism is giving way to something even less palpable and more contrived. Integrity is much of a thing of the past. So are heroes.

 We know better than a five year old, right? So we ask. "How come"?

But not the Fairy Godmother. Instead we ask God (uppercase) even if some think we ask the Universe (uppercase).

We ask. Everyone asks.  And the reply?

"Well, my child,  why is there a universe to begin with? Better, how can something living in another reality (mathematics) explain this (your) reality (physics and biology)?  Better, how can your physical brain give you something utterly incomprehensible, your mind? Better, why can you trust your mind?  Better, why is it humanity is obsessed with not the feeling of love, but selfless love proper, where it cannot be accounted for in any law of science that we know of?  Better, how can laws exist without a law giver? How can DNA store information more efficiently than anything we can imagine? Better, How can Miller and Urey fail, and how is it that we now look hopeless to ever understand how any part of a cell emerged never mind the most complex thing anyone has ever invented? Better, how is it again that everything we know of that exists is caused, and was caused by something? And best of all, why is it your shrinking brain (yes, 3,000 years and counting) a dot of a dot on a google map, on a dot of a planet, on a dot of a solar system, on a dot of the Milky way, among 100,000,000,000 galaxies, can comprehend it all?

Birdman just won the Oscar last night. I thought it was OK. One lesson could be don't shoot yourself in the nose. But another could be this: How would a child view the end of that movie?

My ending was seeing Sam look out the window at her Dad, seeing him as the success he always wanted to be, soaring majestically around Broadway.  A metaphor of sorts. But I would have to conclude my eyes and mind were playing a trick on me, or at least Sam's were. She was, after all, looking up and actually seeing something.

How would a child see the ending?

Well the obvious way. Sam was looking up.

Birdman flew away.

How dare the Theists

The New Atheist movement was basically born on September 11^th, thirteen and a half years ago. Even before that, Dawkins, derivative of Russell (as much of his “theology” and “philosophy” has always been) would routinely complain about all the bad, and no good, that Religion has done for mankind.

Forget the Healthcare system, educational system, and charity. Science was in earnest born because of the belief stemming from monotheism (that by the way ended up being true), starting with Socrates, in opposition to the Stoics (early atheists) that this world was somehow understandable to the human mind. While this and much else has repeatedly been pointed out to how obviously false this Atheist claim is, Atheists cannot help but keep up this charade. 

A perfect example of this was the recent Ebola crisis. Brain Palmer, Slate’s pop culture Science writer and avid Atheist, recently wrote an unsurprising and rather transparent attack on Christian doctors who were continuously on the forefront of treating and ultimately helping stop the Ebola crisis, see http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_examiner/2014/10/missionary_doctors_treating_ebola_in_africa_why_people_are_suspicious_of.html

A high-profile response came from the keyboard of Ross Douthat, the young New York Times op-ed writer (who happens to be a Christian).  Douthat first points out that,  the only reason secular humanism hasn’t faltered yet is because monotheistic still largely influences morals, service and culture here and in Europe.

Douthat is subtle but you can read clearly between the lines and it's a valid point: what has Atheist groups done for humanity? When is the last time you saw an Atheist group feeding the poor, risking their lives to help the sick, raising money for a widow, sacrificing themselves for others? How about something much more objective: let’s calculate the amount of money raised by Theist groups to help those in Africa during the crisis and compare it to how much Atheist groups did. I’m guessing it’s somewhere in the millions versus zero.

Of course the crux of the difference is the faith-system. The Atheist worldview/faith system does not by definition concern itself with these matters. In fact, it's the most honest, integrity-filled Atheists who are upfront about this. They are living with integrity, something most of us Theists fail at doing.  Among these are the late Hitchens, Dawkins, and Peter Singer. If you want to see how different the values of honest Theists with integrity and the values of  honest Atheists with integrity, familiarize yourself with Dawkins' or Singer's value system (for instance, according to them, only some human lives are of value, those that are selfless are evolutionary rejects, etc.). While it should be alarming to Theists, the integrity should be refreshing.

But that doesn’t change the critique from Palmer. He is deeply troubled that Christian doctors were at the forefront of the Ebola crisis, mingling their Christian Worldview with medicine. So, here is a good idea. Next time there is a crisis in which sacrifice is called for, putting one’s livelihood (and genetic pool) at risk to help others, let the Atheist group(s) take action. And then Douthat or Yancey or Metaxas can complain some months later, after the risk has been taken and the Atheist-driven ideals that led to the selfless acts that helped saved numerous lives are acknowledged, that “Atheism and life-saving medicine mingling at the frontlines of crisis X is just not fair.”

Here’s another good idea. Don’t hold your breath.