Should Consumers Be Allowed to View Edited Movies?

VidAngel is a company in the business of “renting” movies that have been filtered to remove objectionable content. I’ve used their service in the past, as I prefer not to watch movies with profanity, sex scenes, and sadistic violence. If you want to better understand my thinking about this, please read my previous article “Should a Novelist Write Characters Who Use Profanity?”

Anyhow, VidAngel is now navigating the expected lawsuit brought against them by some big media companies. As far as VidAngel’s fundamental legal arguments, this short video covers it pretty well:

 

ARK — 2 March 2017

 

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Has Physicist Michio Kaku Proven That God Exists?

The short answer is no, but he has said some interesting things about who God might be.

Michio Kaku. Credit: Cristiano Sant´Anna/indicefoto.com. (CC BY-SA 2.0)

This question came to my attention this past week, when someone pointed me to articles on this topic, including “Top scientist claims proof that God exists, says humans live in a ‘world made by rules created by an intelligence’,” at the website Christian Today.  That article makes the claim:

A respected figure in the scientific community recently said he found evidence proving that there is a Higher Being, which he described as the action of a force “that governs everything.”

Theoretical physicist Michio Kaku, who is known as one of the developers of the revolutionary String Theory, said theoretical particles known as “primitive semi-radius tachyons” may be used to prove the existence of God.

However, nothing on this topic appears on Kaku’s official website, and a search of academic sources reveals nothing written by Kaku referring to “semi-radius tachyons.” According to Jay L. Wile, a nuclear chemist and textbook author,

Tachyons are theoretical particles. We have no idea whether or not they exist. If they exist, they travel faster than the speed of light, so it’s hard to know how in the world we could ever detect them, much less conduct tests on them. I have no idea how such particles can tell us something about the nature of the universe. I looked in vain for an article on the subject authored by Dr. Kaku himself. I then went to his Facebook page, which made no mention of this “monumental discovery.”

Since I couldn’t find anything written by Dr. Kaku, I decided to investigate these “primitive semi-radius tachyons” myself. I had never heard that term before, but then again, I am not a particle physicist. So today, I tried to find the term in my reference books. I could not. When I did an internet search on the term, the only hits I got were to articles about this supposed discovery. As a result, I seriously doubt that primitive semi-radius tachyons exist, even in the minds of theoretical physicists.

Wile, in fact, discovered that this assertion about Kaku’s “discovery” goes back to at least 2013, when it was apparently circulating on Spanish- and Portuguese-language websites.

So the claims that Michio Kaku has found God seem fabricated, or at least exaggerated. However, I do find that Kaku has made some interesting statements about the possibility of design in the universe. Wile characterizes Kaku as “a theoretical physicist who had done some cutting edge research a couple of decades ago, but is more of a ‘scilebrity’ today, promoting science and his ideas about the future on television shows, etc.” For that reason, it’s possible to find a number of video presentations by him. In some ways, Kaku seems to espouse a belief in the god of Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza, who believed not in a personal God, but in a god “who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists,” as Albert Einstein put it.

In a 2013 video program, Kaku said:

The goal of physics, we believe, is to find an equation perhaps no more than one inch long, which will allow us to unify all the forces of nature and allow us to read the mind of God.

And what is the key to that one-inch equation? Super-symmetry. A symmetry that comes out of physics, not mathematics, and has shocked the world of mathematics.

But you see, all this is pure mathematics, and so the final resolution could be that God is a mathematician. And when you read the mind of God, we actually have a candidate for the mind of God. The mind of God, we believe, is cosmic music, the music of strings resonating through eleven-dimensional hyperspace. That is the mind of God.

Albert Einstein in 1947. Photo by Orren Jack Turner.

And in a 2011 interview, he more specifically referenced Einstein and Spinoza:

Einstein was asked the big question, Is there a God? Is there a meaning to everything, right? And here’s how Einstein answered the question. He said there really are two kinds of gods. We have to be very scientific. We have to define what we mean by God. If God is the God of intervention, a personal God, a god of prayer, the God who parts the waters, then he had a hard time believing in that. Would God listen to all our prayers, for a bicycle for Christmas? Smite the Philistines for me, please.

He didn’t think so. However, he believed in the God of order, harmony, beauty, simplicity, and elegance, the God of Spinoza. That’s the God that he believed in, because he thought the universe was so gorgeous. It didn’t have to be that way. It could have been chaotic. It could have been ugly, messy. But here we have the fact that all the equations of physics can be placed on a simple sheet of paper. Einstein’s equation is only one inch long. And the quantum theory is about a yard long, but you can squeeze it onto a sheet of paper…

… And with string theory, you can even put those two equations together, and string theory can be squeezed into an equation one inch long. And that equation, but the way, is my equation. That’s String Field Theory. That’s my contribution.

But we want to know, where did that equation come from, you know. This is what Einstein asked. Did God have a choice? Was there any choice in building a universe? When he woke up in the morning, he would say, “I want to create a universe. I want to be God today. What kind of universe would I create?” This is how he created much of his theory.

So, Kaku doesn’t really claim to have proven the existence of God through physics. However, he does acknowledge that the physical universe implies that there is something more going on than just a big random mess.

ARK — 19 June 2016

 

 

 

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Awesome Indies Gives Approval to ‘The Cursed Ground’ Fiction Series

I’m proud to let readers know that the first two books in my historical series The Cursed Ground have been approved by Awesome Indies and listed on their site. Awesome Indies is a volunteer organization dedicated to reviewing and evaluating the works of independent authors. Awesome Indies Approved (AIA) books are “independently published books that meet, or improve on, the standard of books published by major mainstream publishers and their imprints,” according to the organization.

The first two books of The Cursed Ground, The Child-Stealers and Children of the Keeper are now both available on Kindle eBooks. I’m currently working on Book 3 of the series, The Safeguard, which I expect to release in September 2015.

ARK — 12 May 2015

 

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‘Children of the Keeper,’ Book 2 of ‘The Cursed Ground,’ Was Released Today

I’m very happy to let readers know that Children of the Keeper, Book 2 of my historical fiction saga, The Cursed Ground, was released today on Amazon Kindle eBooks. This new book follows Book 1 in the series, The Child-Stealers. I’ve written Children of the Keeper as a standalone story, and I’m told that it reads quite well that way.

I’ve been categorizing The Cursed Ground series as historical fiction, but in truth the story is a crossover from historical into Biblical fiction and even contains elements of what you might call historical fantasy. As far as age category, the story appeals to both adult and young-adult readers. The story is set in the ancient world before the Biblical great deluge. Recently I wrote a blog entry here explaining my approach to world-building for this series: “The Ancient World of ‘The Cursed Ground.’”

I hope you’ll consider reading both of the books I’ve written so far in this series. Here’s the Amazon description of Children of the Keeper, to give you an idea of the story:

Temper and her brother, Victor, serve as captains on the Keeper’s Guard, the rough-and-tumble security squad that patrols the city ruled by her grandfather, the Keeper of Wit.

Today just isn’t her day.

As soon as she comes on duty, Temper chases a thief through the filthy alleys of the city, only to fall on her face in the mud as the criminal escapes. Then somebody pelts her with sheep’s dung at the marketplace. And on top of that, she has to confront a band of hecklers harassing a harmless troupe of entertainers in the city center. Maybe such struggles are to be expected among the unruly Borne, a rebellious race long ostracized from the rest of the human family.

But darker conflicts are stirring in the city of Wit. Power-hungry conspirators are plotting to wrest the city away from the family of the Keeper, goaded on by his ancient enemy, the Plainspeaker.

As if that weren’t enough, Temper and her fellow patrollers discover that outsiders from the enemy race of the Put have entered the city and are promoting their religion: The ancient fellowship known as Friends of the Becomer. And, surprisingly, some of the Borne are listening to these foreign fanatics.

Temper is an expert at chasing criminals, at stick-fighting, and at breaking heads, but place too many conflicts in front of a hothead like her, and trouble is bound to erupt.

“The Cursed Ground” historical-fantasy saga brings to life a long-gone era when humans lived for hundreds of years and all spoke the same language. This series tells the story of a group of defenders who struggle to protect their communities from the growing violence in the world around them. Meanwhile, a small brotherhood is charged with carrying an unpopular message to humankind: The Creator has declared that this violent world will soon come to an end.

Children of the Keeper is available for $1.99 on Amazon’s Kindle eBook store.

ARK — 5 May 2015

 

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Reflection on Pascal’s Wager

I was reflecting on Pascal’s Wager about God, which as  I understand it goes something like this:

If you believe in God and it turns out that there really is a God, you win because when you die you get an eternal reward.

If you don’t believe in God and it turns out there really is a God, you lose because when you die you get an eternal punishment.

If you believe in God and it turns out there really is no God, you lose, but the worse that happens is you waste time when you are alive and when you die you are just dead forever.

There’s a lot to say about this whole chain of reasoning, but my basic thought is that it would be foolish to think simply believing in God is enough to get the eternal reward in any case. Accepting Pascal’s reasoning in a simplistic way could lead you to just throw in your lot with the first religion that comes your way — you could end up wasting your time while you are alive and then be dead forever anyway. It’s certainly worth investigating whether there really is a God and then making a diligent search and a reason-based investigation to find out who that God is and what he expects of us — that information is available.

ARK — 22 April 2011

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New Translation of Holman Bible Increases Use of Yahweh in Its Text

I was impressed recently to see the ad shown to the right from Biblical Archaeology Review for May/June of 2010. In an age where most churchgoers effectively don’t even know the name of the God they profess to worship, it is impressive that translators would have the courage to include the name of the Bible’s divine Author in its text.

The Holman Christian Standard Bible (HCSB) is published by B&H Publishing Group, a division of Lifeway Christian Resources. The organization has an earlier version of the HCSB available for free at MyStudyBible.com. This online version has some great study features. If you hover over key words in the text, you get a rollover displaying things like the word and pronunciation in the original language, definition, and information about how the HCSB renders that word in English throughout the text.

On playing around with the online version, one thing I noticed immediately was that in Gen. 2:4, the first place where the Tetragrammaton (YHWH or JHVH) appears in the Hebrew text, the HCSB disappointingly renders it “LORD,” as you would find in the King James version and its many derivatives. Hovering over “LORD” in that verse reveals that the online HCSB translates the name of God as a real name only 484 times, whereas it use the title “LORD” 5,925 times and “God” twice.

So the HCSB translators know how the original text reads, but they made a conscious decision to stick to the practice of post-Biblical Judaism and Christendom of using a euphemism most of the time and including God’s name fewer than 8 percent of the 6,413 times it appears in the Hebrew scriptures.

This was surprisingly to me, especially in light of the strong message conveyed in the Biblical Archaeology Review ad. So I sent a feedback message on the MyStudyBible Web site asking for their reasoning. I was happy to receive a very nice message from E. Ray Clendenen, associate editor and one of the HCSB translators.

Ray tells me that the online version of the translation is an older one and that the newer version of the translation uses Yahweh over 600 times and that the translation team intends to increase the divine Name’s usage more over time.

Ray says the team used the following guidelines for rendering the Tetragrammaton as Yahweh:

We use it as the rendering of YHWH (which the Hebrew Bible editors first rendered as Adonai, “Lord”) whenever God’s “name” is being given (either explicitly, using the word “name,” or implicitly), when He is being identified (“I am Yahweh”), when He is being contrasted to other gods such as Baal, in certain repeated phrases such as “Yahweh the God of your fathers,” or when YHWH has been rendered by Yahweh in the immediate context.

He admits that the translators have probably been inconsistent in some cases, but provides an interesting insight into why they thought it wiser to continue the practice of substituting “LORD” most of the time:

… our objective is to introduce to the contemporary church what is the most likely pronunciation of the divine name YHWH in the Hebrew Bible. We did not render the majority of occurrences of YHWH as Yahweh because our goal is not only to be accurate but to use an English style that is most familiar to people. Since most Christians today probably do not commonly speak of “Yahweh,” but rather of “the Lord,” we felt it would be insensitive to use Yahweh for YHWH in every case and would make the Bible seem too uncomfortable for most people.

I thought this was a frank and humble admission from someone with extensive credentials as a Biblical scholar, acknowledging the limitations of his fellow believers. He tells me that “We hope that the name will grow on people and that we can expand the uses of Yahweh in future editions.”

At the same time, there is something sad about this confession — that eminent Bible translators feel that they have to hold back the truth because their readers would feel uncomfortable with the name of the true God.

[Update from 16 August 2014:] This engaging video was just released, presenting some good reasoning why the name of God should be included in the Bible: http://www.jw.org/en/publications/books/good-news-from-god/who-is-god/video-gods-name/

ARK — 23 Nov. 2010

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Is Agnosticism Really Atheism?

This question occurred to me a few days ago, and it is really still just a question (comments welcome below). It came up a few days ago when I was looking at the Facebook profile of an old friend, and under the “Religion” field he had written “Agnostic.”

Supposedly an agnostic is someone who admits to the possibility of God but just hasn’t seen evidence. But really, for most people who identify themselves that way, could there possibly be enough evidence?

In reality, the evidence is freely available to people who are humble enough to consider it, so that, to me agnosticism seems like willing ignorance (see Romans 1:20, 21).

ARK — 28 June 2010

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Is Easter named after the pagan goddess Eostre?

Is the holiday Easter, so named in English and observed by many members of the churches of Christendom, in fact named after a pagan goddess?

Up until recently, the primary reference I was aware of that made this assertion was The Two Babylons, by Alexander Hislop, a 19th-century Scottish protestant theologian. However, Hislop’s work has received criticism, so I decided to find out whether there is a more readily accepted source for the origin of the name Easter.

According to the Wikipedia article about the goddess Eostre, the English name for the churches’ celebration of the resurrection of Christ does in fact come from the name of this goddess.

What Bede Says About Eostre and Easter

The original source cited by the Wikipedia article is chapter 15 of De temporum ratione (The Reckoning of Time) by Bede (aka Saint Bede or the Venerable Bede), an English monk of the 7th and 8th centuries CE. See an online text of that chapter, “De mensibus Anglorum,” at this link — if you can read Latin.

In case you can’t read Latin, here is a translation of the relevant passage, quoted in the Wikipedia article, evidently taken from the English translation of De temporum ratione by Faith Wallis:

Eosturmonath has a name which is now translated “Paschal month”, and which was once called after a goddess of theirs named Eostre, in whose honour feasts were celebrated in that month. Now they designate that Paschal season by her name, calling the joys of the new rite by the time-honoured name of the old observance.

As with many other celebrations in Christendom, tradition western observances of Easter include pagan features such as rabbits and eggs, traditional symbols of fertility.

Alexander Hislop’s Comments About Easter in The Two Babylons

I mentioned that Hislop has received criticism. The Wikipedia article on The Two Babylons appears to be written by someone who agrees with that criticism, some of which has as its source an “evangelical” organization called the Christian Research Institute. This stresses that when using Wikipedia as a reference, you have to recognize what kind of reference it is — an open-source online encyclopedia written and maintained by many authors and editors, some of whom have their own agendas.

The entire text of The Two Babylons can be found online in more than one place, including Google Books — here is a link to the chapter on Easter.

One interesting thing about Hislop is that he points to the name Easter/Eostre and its striking cognates found in the Babylonian goddess Ishtar, the Greek goddess Astarte, and the Phoenician goddess Ashtoreth — really all the same deity and all associated with sex and fertility.

Here’s a representative excerpt from Hislop:

What means the term Easter itself? It is not a Christian name. It bears its Chaldean origin on its very forehead. Easter is nothing else than Astarte, one of the titles of Beltis, the queen of heaven, whose name,… as found by Layard on the Assyrian monuments, is Ishtar….

Such is the history of Easter. The popular observances that still attend the period of its celebration amply confirm the testimony of history as to its Babylonian character. The hot cross buns of Good Friday, and the dyed eggs of Pasch or Easter Sunday, figured in the Chaldean rites just as they do now.

ARK — 30 March 2010

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