DRF

Some useful info, lots of baloney

Revisado: 03-24-23

Occasionally the author actually stayed on point and reported on Area 51, but she can’t help but wandering (literally) all over the map to include other places and unrelated stories. Some of the stories about the development of the Oxcart precursor to the SR-71 Blackbird are well documented and useful. The testing and production of the stealth fighter was also very interesting. It was shocking to hear of the cavalier attitude to nuclear weapons testing and the exposure of human subjects to the effects of radiation.

However, where the author really goes off the rails is her account of the so-called Roswell incident. Supposedly a disc-shaped, radar eluding flying machine capable of stopping abruptly in midair crashed near Roswell and its wreckage was carted off to Area 51, or somewhere. This craft was supposed to be found to be of Soviet origin, based on the Cyrillic writing inside. Most astonishing was the presence of child-sized bodies with oversized heads.

The explanation by the author, based on hints dropped by people she interviewed who wouldn’t say much and in the scarce available documents is that Stalin was pissed off at Truman after the Potsdam conference and so had his captured German scientists build this thing and fly it over the US to thumb his nose at the Americans. Where did the child-like people come from? Well, of course, they were the post-war creation of Dr Joseph Mengele and their purpose was to create panic in the US upon their discovery, a la a “War of the Worlds” scenario.

Now it comes to mind that if the Soviets had the capacity to build a stealthy flying wing aircraft with incredible maneuverability in the 1950s, where has that technology been since that time? They have just recently produced a jet fighter that finally is reasonably stealthy, so apparently they lost the blueprints for the thing they built 70 years ago?

Years ago some slick salesman sold my elderly aunts an acre of sand in the middle of the Mohave Desert, I’m sure with stories of how the property would skyrocket in value in the coming decades. I inherited the property and the taxes are still $40 per year. Maybe someone will come up with an essential use for the creosote bushes on it. I’m not holding my breath.

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Great story, incomparable narrator!

Revisado: 02-12-23

This is a fabulous story that comes alive with this narrator’s presentation. His command of the various accents (Scots, Yorkshire, high class, working class), every grunt and moan and laugh, just makes this whole thing come feel as if you were there. I could never imagine just going back to reading it.

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The best in the last 100 years.

Revisado: 12-14-22

Andy Serkis was what these precious books needed. No offense to previous readers, but the great dignity and majesty of Gandalf, Aragorn, and the high elves was missing from past recordings. All that has been rectified by Mr Serkis. Not only has he the snarling, sniveling, whining voice of Gollum that he did so well in Peter Jackson’s movies, but the other characters are presented in a way that I always imagined they should be. Just fabulous!

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It is Still Whistling in the Dark

Revisado: 09-13-22

Gee but Sabine is an upbeat lady! You have to be to buck yourself up every morning to roll out of bed, glance at your husband and two children, and stagger off to yet another day in the lab solving esoteric equations when you believe it was all predestined and you had no choice in the matter and it doesn’t make any difference anyway since you know you are a tiny lump of sentient molecules on an insignificant planet in one of 200 billion galaxies sliding down the entropic slope to oblivion. But we can rejoice in the wonder of it all!

I’ve heard most of Sabine’s arguments before in her other works and on her YouTube channel, but was good to get it all in one place. I believe she makes the mistake of drinking her own scientific Kool-aid, in that anything that smacks of religion she dismisses as “a-scientific.” She isn’t overtly hostile like the New Atheists, just dismissive, as religion is outside of the scientific realm as being unprovable.

The trouble with this view is that yes, there is not an air-tight argument for the existence of God. But there is an air-tight argument for the existence for the man Jesus Christ. His life and times are attested to by irrefutable documents (look at the evidence for them). When he was here on earth, he claimed to be God (read the book of John, for instance). He was crucified and rose from the dead (read N T Wright’s “The Resurrection of the Son of God).

These are examples of events that broke into Sabine’s predestined, predetermined universe to evince an entirely other level of power and intelligence. She speculates on whether the cosmos might have a “mind” of some sort as some of her esoteric-minded colleagues believe and she concludes that it does not.

The irony, of course, is that there is a mind behind all the laws of physics and biology and chemistry, and “we were eye-witnesses to his glory.”

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esto le resultó útil a 11 personas

Could have presented some positive examples as well

Revisado: 05-21-22

This book provided an excellent roadmap of how large segments of evangelical Christianity have gone off the rails over the past 70 years and accepted a hyper masculine hierarchical theology that has allowed them to support a man who would appear to share none of their core values.

The author goes on to detail the failings of a number of male church leaders whose arrogance and unrestrained sexual appetites have led to their undoing. She also shows why the temptation to involve themselves in politics is an ever-present danger to Christian leaders and how it leads to compromised behavior and diverts attention from the true mission of the church.

The disappointing thing to me about the book is that it fails to present a balanced picture. There are any number of Christian pastors and ministries who do not espouse the “Jesus and John Wayne” theology and stick to “Mere Christianity”, as Lewis would have it. She could could have mentioned, to name but a few, Rick Warren, Tim Keller, and organizations like Educational Media Foundation, parent company of Air1 and KLOVE radio networks. I have personal knowledge that the latter group purposely avoids political intrigue to concentrate on presenting the gospel of Christ, which is the church’s primary mission. She does name these men in passing, but does not hold them up as examples of how things should be done.

Finally, my quibble with the narration is in the way the reader substitutes pauses for what in the text would be quotation marks. I suppose this is somewhat better than saying “quote…unquote” a thousand times, but since there are a great many of single word and phrase quotes, it gives the narration a jerky quality.

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Great story, views on Christianity not so much

Revisado: 05-14-22

First of all, Mr Krakauer offers the reader an excellent and well-researched story of two brothers who went off the rails as Mormon fundamentalists and believed they were instructed by God to commit a terrible crime. Around this he wraps the story of the origins of Mormonism, from its charismatic founder, Joseph Smith, to its current iteration as a world-wide religion.

The author is careful to point out the many flaws of Mormonism in general and the fundamentalist sects in particular. All of this information is available elsewhere, but it serves the purposes of his story well.

Where things go awry with his book is in his effort to conflate the failings of Mormonism with the solid basis of Christianity. It is clear that he did not apply the same rigorous standards of research to the Christian faith, but paints them both with the same mythological brush.

While Mormonism indeed has a laundry list of problems (the Golden Plates, the entire fantastic story of ancient civilizations in the new world, plural marriage, racism, men becoming their own gods, etc.), Christianity is supported by a mountain of evidence, including robust textual verification (see, for instance, the fragment of the Gospel of John discovered in Egypt and dating to 125 AD in Wikipedia’s article on the Bible book), huge amounts of archeological evidence (many sources available), and finally, to the attestation of the central miracle of Christianity: the resurrection of Jesus.

Christianity rises or falls on the literal, bodily resurrection of Jesus from the dead (the apostle Paul said “And if Christ has not been raised, then all our preaching is useless, and your faith is useless.” 1 Cor 15:14). That he did rise was supported by a great number of reliable witnesses and by the absolute faith in the risen Lord by the early church, such that their message changed the then-known world. ( The scholarly work is “Jesus and the Eyewitnesses” by Richard Bauckham).

On polygamy by Old Testament characters such as Abraham, Jacob, and David: yes, they practiced it, but several recent writers have pointed out that it was not God’s plan to begin with and the Bible is replete with accounts of the miserable results of plural marriage, including jealousy, murder, incest, and multigenerational tragedy, not unlike the stories associated with its modern use.

Finally, the other insurmountable gulf between Mormonism and Christianity is that the former emphasizes man’s performance and strict adherence to a moral code to win favor with God. This results in either of two outcomes: those who can regulate their behavior acceptably become proud of that fact and feel that God owes them something, while those who cannot conform become bitter and disillusioned and leave the church. Christians believe that their behavior is inherently selfish, and that without Christ’s grace they are sunk. Therefore it is Christ that gets the praise for saving the Christian and making him or her into someone that they could have never become on their own.

Perhaps Mr Krakauer will turn his investigative talents to “mere Christianity” (as C S Lewis calls it) in his next book.

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Andy Serkis is the narrator we needed

Revisado: 04-04-22

This is the greatest modern fiction in the English language, but the old audio book was substantially diminished by the narrator. It was transformed into a silly children’s story, having been stripped of its majesty and greatness. Everyone sounded like a hobbit, even the kingly Aragorn and the powerful Gandalf.

Thank goodness for Andy Serkis! I held my breath until I heard Aragorn speak for the first time in the inn at Bree. Finally, a voice that fits the future king! And Frodo is so dignified, an unexpected pleasure, and Sam is perfect in his shrewd but simple language. Gimli has a wonderful deep voice befitting a dwarf, and the elves speak with an ineffable lilt.

And Gollum! Perfect, just perfect!

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An apologist who lets the atheists speak!

Revisado: 03-25-22

Most of the Christian apologetic books I’ve read devolve into generalized atheist-bashing without letting the atheists speak for themselves. D’Souza is refreshingly different in that he relentlessly quotes Darwin, Nietzsche, the Huxleys, Weinberg, Dawkins, Dennet, Hitchens, Wilson, and the whole crew, so that the reader or listener can appreciate what these great savants had to say about religion and Christianity. One begins to appreciate how narrow and misinformed they are about what constitutes “mere Christianity” (as Lewis would say). One is led to understand that these various antagonists have set up straw men in the place of real heroes. The great loveliness with which the author presents the concept of Christian grace in the final chapter after wading through the muck and mire hurled by the militant unbelievers is so very refreshing. I found myself assigning each atheist to a specific character in Lewis’s That Hideous Strength.

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An effective book if it gets you to take “conventional wisdom” with a grain of salt

Revisado: 03-15-22

I guess the take-home message that matters is make sure you understand the real reasons why some things are the way they are, or, put another way, don’t believe the hype. It is not surprising that most of the things that people accept as true fall in the category of “conventional wisdom” and are not supported by data. But this makes sense to anyone who thinks about almost anything objectively.

In my own field, taking statin drugs after one has a heart attack is a cost-effective way to prolong survival, but taking a statin just because one’s cholesterol is elevated in the absence of known coronary disease is much more difficult to prove cost-effective.

Or how about this one: where is the data that says that eating “organic” foods is any better for one’s health than eating nonorganic foods? Or GMO vs non-GMO foods? Millions of dollars are at stake in the markets for these items.

One quibble: these are apparently secular authors. Not everyone, hopefully, is driven by self-interest, as they claim. There are clearly secular people who have a system of morals that they derive from some source. There are religious people who follow a moral code derived from their system of beliefs. These individuals may act distinctly differently than in what the authors would consider their self-interest, and may well form an outlying data set. At least one hopes.

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Jesus is Lord

Revisado: 03-08-22

This short book condenses what the author presents in much more detail in his other works. This is a great introduction to the most essential man in history.

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