The Host Part I

The Host is a relatively new movie with Saoirse Ronan that was written by the same person as the Twilight series (I found this out just now). I never watched any of Twilight, but this Host movie was creepy.

It was creepy because it reminded me of a reverse demon possession.



Usually, in the Bible and in movies, when people are possessed by a demon, they try to destroy their host. For example, "Lord [Jesus], have pity on my son, for he is a [possessed] lunatic and suffers severely; often he falls into fire, and often into water." (Here's another example (Legion).)



There was a reversal of this tendency in The Host. The alien "souls" who were possessing the humans were stopping them from being violent to other humans and the Earth.

Why is this a bad thing? (Why don't you tell me in the comments below?) Perhaps it is because taking away someone's freewill is against God's prime directive (God's will).

(Speaking of prime directive, the Trill on Star Trek (Dax et al.; Dr. Beverly's Trill) had hosts who freely submitted to being used as hosts. So, the same objection can't really be raised in that case.)

Sunday Snippets--A Catholic Carnival Post I

This is for the weekly Catholic Carnival! This is my first one!

Be sure to visit RAnn at This, That and the Other Thing and check out some posts from other bloggers participating in Sunday Snippets this week. Why not join us and share a blog post or two from last week?

Question of the week: Name a favorite book and tell us what you like about it.
My favorite book for now is Fill These Hearts by Christopher West.
I like this book since it presents the Theology of the Body of Pope John Paul the Great in a casual style. This style is further accentuated by his connections between the topic and popular music (a niche of my blog). It was so understandable, in my opinion, that I suggested it to a non-Catholic acquaintance for further understanding of the Theology of the Body (she's from Turkey).

For the week of February ninth:

February tenth:
Commentary on the movie The Lone Ranger with Johnny Depp.
http://wonderingzygoteemeritus.blogspot.com/2014/02/the-lone-ranger-part-i.html
http://wonderingzygoteemeritus.blogspot.com/2014/02/the-lone-ranger-part-ii.html

February twelfth:
Commentary on the movie The Lone Ranger with Johnny Depp.
http://wonderingzygoteemeritus.blogspot.com/2014/02/the-lone-ranger-part-iii.html
Commentary on the creationism/scientism debate between Bill Nye and Bill Ham.
http://wonderingzygoteemeritus.blogspot.com/2014/02/nye-ham-debate-wacky-wednesday.html
Commentary on the TV show The Big Bang Theory theme song.
http://wonderingzygoteemeritus.blogspot.com/2014/02/the-big-bang-theory-theme-song-part-iv.html

February fourteenth:
A video of my Valentine from my wife.
http://wonderingzygoteemeritus.blogspot.com/2014/02/happy-saint-valentines-day.html

Ender's Game Part II

***Spoilers Alert!*** One other big thing in Ender's Game was that Ender unknowingly wiped out the entire alien species, except for what looked like a worker and a queen. This reminded me of that story in the Bible where the Israelites where commanded to put the ban on an entire people, or tribe.



The Israelite king tried to save one person from this enemy nation, but the Israelite prophet Saul chastised him and killed the last one himself.

Just like the whole creation/evolution debate, this genocide problem in the Bible had been thought about from the beginning of Christianity.

The one obvious move was to deny that the Old Testament is really inspired by God or reveals a God that Jesus was talking about in the New Testament. This banning of the Old Testament was declared a heresy called Marcionism by the early Church.

Another option was to see if these and other vexing stories in the Bible (like the creation story in Genesis) could be seen as more allegorical. Origin of Alexandria was a leading proponent of this idea.

Father Barron can say more about this option.



I think this allegorical option is a good one, especially since the Old Testament, "contain[s] matters imperfect and provisional".

Ender knew that the genocide he unknowingly carried out was wrong. He tried to make amends at the end of the movie.

The Church officially has the same take on genocide, it is to be rejected. She is with Ender. She teaches that "One is morally bound to resist orders that command genocide."

Here's Part I.

CA Splitting Up

On yesterday's Wacky Wednesday, I reported that Seal and Heidi Klum may be patching up their marriage.

Not so good news for their state of California: it may be splitting up into six states.

[Tim Draper] proposed dividing California into six states. San Diego and Orange County would make up [1] "South California." [2] "West California" would include Los Angeles and Santa Barbara, while Bakersfield, Fresno and Stockton would make up the larger [3] "Central California." San Francisco and San Jose would be in the new [4] "Silicon Valley." [5] "North California" would include the Sacramento area, and [6] "Jefferson" would be home to the Redding and Eureka areas.

http://news.yahoo.com/petition-split-california-6-states-gets-green-light-213801353--abc-news-topstories.html

Well, Facebook is already prepared. It just added six more gender options to its list.



I already put in brackets ("[ ]") the six regional names that were proposed in the quote above. What do you think the names or nicknames of these regions should be?

Some ideas of mine:

[1] "South California." California Caliente
[2] "West California" California Cara
[3] "Central California." California Liberal
[4] "Silicon Valley." California Próspera
[5] "North California" California Corrupta
[6] "Jefferson" California Ventosa

Wacky Wednesday Klum and Seal

http://shine.yahoo.com/love-sex/could-heidi-klum-seal-reportedly-back-together-202700107.html

 

A Kiss From A Rose is a classic.
Is seems like Seal's range is elastic.
I hope that's it's true:
This picture's a view
Of runways re-latching. Fantastic!

Ender's Game Part I

I read Ender's Game, the 1985 science fiction novel by Orson Scott Card, in a book club a few years ago. The Ender's Game movie, like many movies-from-books, took out many necessary items and added some political jabs (if something is repeated enough, it must be true).

This post is about one of the political jabs in the movie.



Despite the lack of communication from the aliens in the movie (who were not excessively referred to as "bugs" in the movie as they were in the book; more on this in Part II), the humans knew that they were being attacked/annihilated for more land. The additional land for the bugs was necessary since they over-bred on their own planet (they sort-of looked like a cross between an ant and a bee in the movie, at a human scale).

That was the first instance of the so-called over-population meme in the movie. Watch out! or the Earth may turn out like the bug planet.

Second, Ender was the third child of his family. Normally, in the movie universe, a family was permitted to have only two children. Hmm, a two-child policy was the second instance of the over-population meme.

Why do many Christians care about the proliferation of the so-called over-population movement? First, it is not true. We usually don't like falsehood, being one part of the Decalogue n' at.

Second, it treats a family as a ward of the state. The family is pre-state and each particular one determines how that family is constituted within the natural-law framework (man-woman; open to life). Jesus, in the Gospel of Matthew said, "no man must separate" the couple, including in the process of procreation (one-flesh union).

Communist China's one-child policy treats each family as a unit of the state that must follow state laws above all else. However, natural law, which is to regulate state law, takes precedence. The number one natural law is that people are rational creatures who are due respect and dignity of the state, not for the state to claim them as commodity units for its own means or ends.

Many Christians have reported on the brutality and immorality of population control programs, especially in China.

The producers and/or writers of Ender's Game have just jabbed another fictional example of the Malthusian lie of over-population that quite often looks up to China as an ideal for population control.

If it's portrayed enough, it must be true. (sarcasm)

The Big Bang Theory Theme Song Part V

Here are Part I, Part II, Part III, and Part IV.

So, the Ham-Nye debate on creationism-scientism revealed something noteworthy about The Big Bang Theory theme song. It is dead wrong in one stanza.

It all started with the big BANG!

It's expanding ever outward but one day
It will pause and start to go the other way.
Collapsing ever inward, we won't be here, it won't be heard
Our best and brightest figure that it'll make an even bigger bang!

According to Bill Nye in the debate, in 2004, observations were conducted to show that the universe is actually expanding at a greater rate (accelerating) and not going "the other way. / Collapsing ever inward".

It was indeed theorized that the universe was sort-of like a yo-yo that continually expanded asymptotically to a "pause" and then collapsed into another big bang. This idea supposedly helped show that the universe was infinite in age (helped an Atheist argument against God).

Well, without going into philosophical problems about this infinite-universe-from-the-yo-yo idea (how did yo-yo start?), science has further supported the Christian assertion that the universe has a creator, whom Christians call God.

Happy Saint Valentine's Day

Happy Saint Valentine's Day!

From Catholic Online:

Valentine was a holy priest in Rome, who, with St. Marius and his family, assisted the martyrs in the persecution under Claudius II. He was apprehended, and sent by the emperor to the prefect of Rome, who, on finding all his promises to make him renounce his faith ineffectual, commanded him to be beaten with clubs, and afterwards, to be beheaded, which was executed on February 14, about the year 270.

 

My Valentine

 

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The "Follow By Email" widget that's on the right-hand side of this blog wasn't working. It is now fixed. Please feel free to follow by email.

If you get a chance, please leave a comment or two on a post. I would love to hear from you.

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Gerry M

The Lone Ranger Part III

Here's Part I of The Lone Ranger.
Here's Part II of The Lone Ranger.

I was wondering about the possibility that The Lone Ranger movie helps to prove Dr. Craig's knock-down point about Atheist Sam Harris and his Moral Landscape (see the video below at 8:44 for the knock-down argument to Harris' definition of "good").



Perhaps the flourishing of the Cavendish brothers ("conscious creatures"), and really the flourishing of the rest of the country for the "progress" they provided, over the destruction of the tribes they massacred would prove Dr. Craig's point that the definition of the "good" Harris provides is a deal-breaker for his moral landscape argument.