SuperPope: ex Cathedra

Threadless submission: Poor Little Pluto

My latest Threadless submission, regarding Pluto losing its planetary status.

Dinosaur National Monument Vacation 2006

About a month ago now I went on a road trip with my wife, son, and parents. The impetus for the entire trip was a statement I made: “Ever since I was a little kid I’ve wanted to see that place where they built a building over all those dinosaur fossils in the cliff side.”

That place turns out to be the quarry at the aptly named Dinosaur National Monument, located near the city of Vernal, Utah.

"Even Mariachis Love Japan" Threadless Submission

Another Threadless submission. This one is based on a weird vision of a Mariachi walking the streets of Tokyo that popped into my head just as I was waking up one morning. An interesting side note: the word "Mariachi" can be translated perfectly into Japanese with no change in pronunciation.

"Divine Compliment" Threadless Submission

Another Threadless T-shirt submission of mine.  This one probably has a much greater chance of getting printed.  Please go vote and help me out.

Mars Ill video

Thought I'd try out embedding a YouTube video on my blog and share a video from one of my favorite music groups, "Mars Ill".

The Da Vinci Code

Thought I'd come out of hibernation real quick to make sure you're all aware of something:  Dan Brown's book "The Da Vinci Code" is a load of ridiculous drivel.  It is not "historical ficton".  It is fiction based on lies based on fiction.

Dan Brown claims in his book that the Dead Sea scrolls are early Christian writings and invalidate the gospels in the Bible.  In actuality, the Dead Sea scrolls predate the birth of Christ and have nothing to do with the New Testament, so Dan's statement of "truth" is an outright lie.  He also claims that the Dead Sea scrolls were originally discovered in the 1950s.  Try Googling the Dead Sea Scrolls.  It is common knowledge that they were first discovered in 1947.  Did this man do ANY research?

But my favorite error in The Da Vinci Code is when one of the characters claims that a reference in the gospel of Philip proves that Mary was Jesus' wife.  The character says, "As any Aramaic scholar will tell you, the word companion, in those days, literally meant spouse".  Sorry Dan.  The gospel of Philip (which is itself a known fake) was written in Coptic, not Aramaic, and the word for "companion" in Coptic literally means "companion".

It always intrigues me to see how quickly someone who hates Christianity will latch on to any silly conspiracy theory that proposes to invalidate it.  Case in point:  Any theories about Christ having a relationship with Mary Magdalene are groundlessly extrapolated from late texts (third century or later) that are known to be bogus...that's why they're not in the Bible.  So while people discount what the Bible says about Christ -- even though most of it can be dated to within 50 years of his crucifixion and is known to be faithful to the original writing -- they'll readily accept absurd plots from texts written by kooks pretending to be Christ's contemporaries centuries later.

You have no idea how sick I am of hearing people say, "It's just a good mystery novel."  No, it's not.  It tells a fictional story while pretending to reveal the "fact" that Jesus Christ ran off to Europe and had a child with Mary Magdalene.  So at best it is "just a good mystery novel that directly attacks the deity of Christ."

Oh, I see.  No harm done, then.

I'm not really concerned that this movie will damage anyone's faith, though.  My thinking is this:  If you already think Christianity is a joke, you'll see this movie as validation of your beliefs.  If you don't often use your brain, you might like the movie and just keep living in ignorance.  And if you're a Christian, hopefully you'll just dismiss it for the nonsense it is and get on with your life.

SuperPope on Newgrounds

Today I got a wild hair and decided to submit SuperPope Episode 1 to Newgrounds, the popular Flash animation portal.  In less than five hours it has received over 1000 views, 30 reviews and an average rating of 4 out of 5.  Not only that, but SuperPope is already featured on the front page!  How cool is that?

Faith Grounded in Logic

This post is my submission for the "Faith" edition of the Blog Carnival.

Many atheists reveal that their main obstacle to belief is their revulsion to the concept of faith.  Not a revulsion to reasonable, everyday faith (like sitting in a chair and believing it will hold you up), but specifically to faith in an unseen, intelligent creator of the universe.

It's an understandable objection.  I'm disgusted with the beliefs of many people in my own church on the subject.  Very few who claim to be Christians have any interest in subjecting their beliefs to scrutiny of any kind, and some end up elevating faith to a form of deity all its own.  Faith then becomes a force we can utilize to shape our own destinies.  Many evangelists (especially the TV kind) would lead you to believe that if you would only have enough faith and "speak positive words into your life" then nothing bad would ever happen to you.

Of course, this philosophy cannot stand up under even the slightest actual examination of Jewish or Christian scripture, but that's of no concern to "Word of Faith" followers.  It's the religious equivalent of a get rich quick scheme.  "Don't bore me with doctrine.  I'm only interested in what makes me feel good about myself.  And if I get results, what I believe must be correct."

So this oft held pseudo-Christian concept of faith has admittedly earned much of the distain Christianity as a whole receives from atheists.  However, a philosophy cannot logically be judged by the actions and beliefs of those who claim to follow it.

I believe that the faith the Bible calls Christians to have is one based in sound reason, not in unquestioning acceptance. 

The more science discovers in the pursuit of truth, the more convincing the evidence for a God becomes.  In the past century we've gone from believing that the universe has eternally existed to all but proving that the universe had a definite beginning.  Of course, if a creator does exist then this is exactly what one would expect to discover.

Science must deal with what is measurable and observable.  This logically includes anything within our universe, and at the same time excludes anything that might exist outside of it.  Therefore, any theory about what might exist beyond our scope of observation is pure speculation with no hope of ever being proven through research.

The consequence of this fact is obvious:  All theories about what caused the Big Bang that began our universe -- whether it is a god, an extra-dimensional infinite universe generator, a Big Crunch, or even a spaghetti monster -- are inescapably unscientific.  Ironically, this unanswerable question is the most profoundly important question in science.  In fact, the pursuit of this question looms as the very foundation of science itself.

So how can we approach it?  To hold any convictions about the origin of the universe requires faith in that which is unseen and unmeasurable.  Since that is the case, only logic -- not evidence -- can guide us to a feasible conclusion.

We know that our universe cannot have always existed.  Not only could the cosmos not have passed through an infinite number of moments to reach any specific point in time (i.e. "now"), but the Second Law of Thermodynamics tells us that the universe would have dispersed all of its energy an eternity ago.  Our universe would be cold, dark, and lifeless. 

If we say that the Big Bang was preceded by a Big Crunch, that merely begs the question.  It's as pointless as theorizing that life on Earth was created by aliens.  You are then forced to ask, "Who created the aliens?"  A universal cycle of expansion and contraction cannot have been occurring for an infinite length of time for the same reasons I stated in the last paragraph, so we must also rule out this "oscillatory universe" theory.

How about some sort of extra-dimensional "universe generator", churning out an infinite number of possible universes that exist parallel to each other?  Okay.  I have no problem with that idea.  But where did it come from?  What created the "universe creator" with such a purpose?  Might there just as easily be a "'Universe creator' creator"?

Hopefully you're beginning to see the problem.  No matter what natural explanation we invent to explain the origin of the universe, the need for a cause behind the cause always arises.  Why?

Here are two things that we know to be true logically:

1) Every event ever observed has had a cause.
2) Every decision originates in a mind.

The universe as we know it is the product of a chain of causes.  At the beginning of this chain sits an explosion that resulted in the existence of everything we know -- matter, energy, even time itself.  By necessity this explosion had to be caused by something, and as I have already demonstrated, it is not logical to assume that this cause was something else of which the same question must be asked.  So an uncaused cause must exist at the root of all things.  And the only logical uncaused cause must be capable of making the decision to create our universe at a specific, measurable point in time.  Therefore, the only logical uncaused cause must be a transcendent intelligence.

If you just experienced a negative knee-jerk reaction to that statement, I urge you to ask yourself why.  Is your objection like Einstein's initial objection to the Big Bang; that it sounds too much like the God of Christianity being forced into the realm of science?  By no means should we appeal to the miraculous in order to explain away causes we have not yet discovered in our universe, but we are not speaking of a gap in understanding.  We are speaking of the event that created understanding, time, physicality, and ultimately our capacity for pondering these things in the first place.

So ask yourself, "Which faith is more reasonable?":  Faith that our amazing universe -- full of staggering complexity built upon profound simplicity, with life arising and thriving seemingly in defiance of every natural law -- has a purpose, and that the need for an uncaused cause is inescapable, or faith that the existence of our universe is pure happenstance, a cosmic accident; that every beautiful thing we observe that leaves us awe-stricken is without meaning or value, and that defying all logic and reason our universe burst into existence with no cause whatsoever?

Barring empirical evidence to support either faith, I have to go with the faith that logic leads me to hold.

I thank God that he made the choice so obvious.

Television Christianity

Ugh.

Television used to represent a sort of alternate reality in which Christians were never seen or heard.  I didn’t have too much of a problem with that.  But now days it seems increasingly popular to feature guest characters who portray Christians as disingenuous, ignorant, or intolerant.

For example, a recent episode of E.R. one of the characters – a lesbian – was reunited with her mother after having been given up for adoption as a child.  Her mother was touring with a Christian singing group and stopped by to meet her.  When the mother discovered her daughter was a lesbian, she was appalled.  Later in the episode she attempted to reconcile with the daughter by saying that she loved her anyway.  The daughter threw it back in her face, saying, “I don’t want your love without your acceptance”. 

Think about what she is saying for a moment.  The daughter didn’t want her mother’s love unless she would also accept her choice to live a homosexual lifestyle.  However, the daughter was equally unable to accept her mother for her beliefs, which told her that homosexuality was a sin that cannot be condoned.

So, who’s the hypocrite here?  Of course, we are expected to side with the daughter, and the lesson learned is supposed to be that we should not only love everyone but embrace everyone for their beliefs, no matter how much we personally disagree with them.  Instead, a viewer paying attention will merely learn that people are quick to dismiss Christians as “a bunch of hypocrites,” not realizing that in saying so they are merely revealing the hypocrisy in themselves.

Another example was on an episode of "Bones."  A DJ was found dead and appeared to have overdosed on methamphetamines.  As it turns out, he had been framed, and was a Christian DJ.  His father, defending his son, says something along the lines of, “My son didn’t do drugs.  He was a good kid.  I taught him to have a personal relationship with Jesus.  Do you understand what I’m saying?  A personal relationship!  Look at this plaster cast of his hands he made as a boy.  When he was young, I took this to a palm reader, and she said she didn’t see any evil in these hands.  So please, find the killer.”

What?  In one breath you talk about a personal relationship with Jesus Christ and about consulting a palm reader?  Who writes this stuff?

The father also makes some cheesy comment about “iniquity” being a “Bible word”.  Uhhh…actually, it’s just an archaic English word.  Unless you believe the Bible to have been originally written in King James English.

But the latest and most annoying example of Christian portrayal on Television was this past week on “Lost”.  The character Eko is a Catholic priest.  He tells the character Claire that her baby needs to be baptized.  He says, “Do you know what baptism means?” to which she replies, “It makes it so you get into heaven”.  He smiles in response.  I expected him to correct her, pointing out that no just God would send someone to hell for not having water ritualistically dumped on their head.  But instead, he validates her statement.

Then he says this, “When John baptized Jesus, it is said that the heavens opened up and a dove came down.  This told John something.  It told him that he had just cleansed this man of all his sins.”  After this he baptized both the mother and the baby.

Now, I don’t care what denomination a Christian comes from:  No Christian believes that Christ was baptized in order to be forgiven of his sins.  Christ was equally God and man.  He committed no sin.  These are basic and essential tenets of Christianity.  Besides, when Jesus approaches John for baptism, John says, “Behold the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world”, says that he isn’t even fit to untie Jesus’ sandal, and that Jesus should instead be baptizing him.  And even when John is baptising others, he makes it clear that baptism is a sign of repentance, not an act that grants salvation from sin.

So I wonder:  Is it that hard for the script writers on these shows to find somebody in Hollywood to consult with who has at least opened the Bible before having characters pretend to share what it says?  Could be.  But I’d rather Christians not be represented on television at all than be portrayed as a pack of hypocrites and superstitious fools.

SuperPope Animation / My Life Update 1-4-06

  In SuperPope Episode II news, I’ve been animating on it the past few months when I have the chance (*cough* not playing games *cough cough*).  Here are a couple teaser screenshots.  The title is either going to be “Jaded!” or “Fistful of Demons”, and the plot will endeavor to answer the oft asked question, “Why does God let bad things happen to good people?”  Of course, the short answer is, “There’s no such thing as a good person when compared to a perfect God,” but I’ll try and make a more uplifting point than that.  And rest assured that plenty of demon blood will be spilt in the process.

For my friends and the voyeuristically curious, let me give you an update on what’s been happening in my life lately.

I was sucked into City of Heroes back in September when a free 21 day trial came with my PC Gamer magazine.  No, I have not been playing it to an addictive degree, but I do have a Level 28 Illusion/Radiation Controller named “7-Year Cicada”.  My son and I also got City of  Villains for Christmas.  He mainly loves the character creation utility, and frequently asks me to fire it up just so he can create a new character.  I like how quickly I can get in the game, get on a team, tear through a mission, and log off again.  I have a family, after all.

In other news, I made the mistake of reorganizing my console game collection and putting all of the “Games I Intend to Finish When I Have the Time” on one shelf.  There are more than 45 games sitting there, mocking me.  I need to swear off new games until I get these finished (and I need to swear off of them until I get SuperPope Episode 2 finished, I know!).  On several games I’m very close to the ending (Star Ocean, Paper Mario 2, etc.), but Dragon Quest VIII is awfully hard to put down…

For Christmas I got Sid a few cool things.  He’s really been wanting an original Soundwave toy, but they go for crazy amounts on eBay.  Well, I finally discovered that they created a reissue of him in Japan recently, in black and silver with a remodeled cassette door that holds two tapes at once.  It also includes Buzzsaw and Ravage cassettes.  He was appropriately excited about it.

Sid is infatuated with video game controllers in general, and also loves the little blue slimes from Dragon Quest.  Could I give a more perfect gift, then, than a controller made to look like a Dragon Quest slime?  I submit that I could not.  He was equally pleased with this.

Stand Your Ground

Another Threadless T-shirt design I made. We'll see.

Review: Transformers Generation 1 DVD Box Set

I stumbled across this set on eBay, and figured it was a bootleg.  Turns out, it is an official Chinese release of all 98 episodes of the original Transformers TV series.  Twenty-four DVDs with four episodes on each, plus Transformers: The Movie, all contained in an attractive wooden (well, particle-board) box.  There’s even a poster of Optimus Prime and Hot Rod included.

Even better, though, is the fact that all episodes are presented in the original English.  All you have to do is turn off the Chinese subtitles.  The image quality is as good as can be expected, with no compression artifacts that I can see.

So far, my son Sidney and I have watched about 32 episodes.  I had forgotten almost everything about the show except for the characters, and really didn’t expect much from the stories.  I’ve been pleasantly surprised to find that the stories for many of the episodes are actually interesting.

There are three seasons of Generation 1, with the movie falling between Seasons 2 and 3.  Season 1 is short, and full of animation mistakes (All three Decepticon jets randomly colored like each other, reversed transformation sequences, the occasional blue Optimus Prime, etc.).  Season 2 has new Transformers popping in out of nowhere around episode 28, as if they’ve always been there and we just haven’t met them.

The best thing about this set is how cheap it is!  You can get the whole thing for less than $60 on eBay, shipping from China included.  Considering that the series was broken up into about 6 DVD sets here in the US, each one sold for between $30-$40, it’s a real bargain.