Tuesday, July 10, 2007

Radio Lab

This week's This American Life podcast featured an excerpt from Radio Lab a cool show out of WNYC. Radio Lab has some very unique production methods such as narration that talks over interviews. The production tends to make the show engaging, but the content is the thing, of course, that makes at least the current episode stellar. The current episode is on morality, and how a moral sense is most likely ingrained in our our brain structures as well as in the brains of some other animals. As a research scientist Dr. Joshua Greene states of a genetic disposition to morality: "We think of basic human morality as being handed down from on high, and it is probably better to say that it was handed up from below--that our most basic, core, moral values are not the things that we humans have invented, but the things that we've actually inherited from other people. The stuff that we humans have invented are the things that seem more peripheral and variable" (Radio Lab, "Morality," 12:28-12:48).

Fascinating stuff.

Labels: biology, morality, philosophy, podcast, psychology, radio, religion, science

¶ 8:33 AM 9 comments

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Friday, April 27, 2007

Verily I say unto you, there will be much gnashing of teeth

Oh my, Christopher Hitchens takes on the LDS Church.

I expect a great tumult. It should be interesting to watch. No doubt it will be fraught with cries of persecution of the people, who, I was once told by a zealous student writer, are "the most persecuted people of all time!" (complete with exclamation point.) That person apparently forgot about, oh let's say, black people, the Jews, and Armenians for a really sad, and small, sampling of the history of human atrocities.

Verily.

Labels: gnashing, religion

¶ 6:41 PM 0 comments

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Monday, April 09, 2007

Why I don't write about the Catholics occupying channel 3 on Comcast or How to piss another religious group off

Channel 3 on my loverly Comcast[TM] cable network is current showing nothing but the ever-famous ETWN (Eternal Word Network) a.k.a. the angry Nun channel. I used to watch ETWN for fun when it was on channel 72 or whatever on Comcast[TM], but after being removed from the cable network for a year or so, they are back, decidedly so, on channel 3 where they used to show Park City TV and a ton of fun snowboarding and skiing highlights.

Now I salute Comcast[TM] for being committed to religious diversity, especially since they offer 2 channels devoted to LDS concerns and one (channel 72) devoted to fundamentalist concerns, but come on! Put ETWN back on the high end of the dial where I can surf between evolution and poker.

In any case, I was very amused while wandering around between the Simpsons (who had a great slam on Utah, by the way) and Family Guy, to find either a Benedictine or an Augustine Monk (can't tell the difference between their gray garb) proclaiming that "Jesus was offensive to all the religions of his day" since he proclaimed himself or was proclaimed the son of God. He also mentioned that Mohamed would have been very offended by such a proclamation, because (like the Jews) followers of Islam believe that God is one god and that there can be no "son" of god.

Now all of that is sound, in that both Islam and Judaism proclaim that. His next claim, however, was extraordinarily specious: pagans (i.e. the Roman/Greek religion) would also never accept that a man could be god.

I stood (yes I was standing), stunned, not thinking of my next hit of the button to change channels. I had to wonder if this monk really believed that. Did he not know that Julius Caesar was declared a god by the Romans? Did he not know that Augustus (while seemingly denying his elevation in lifetime) was also declared a god?

What about the ever-problematic Caligula? He proclaimed himself to be Jupiter himself.

Nero too.

Claudius, the god.

Ignoring cultural context and proclaiming something unique seems to be a rather human foible.

Labels: history, religion, Rome

¶ 7:13 PM 5 comments

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Friday, April 06, 2007

ksl.com - Some Christians Celebrated Palm Sunday

Oy, with a decidedly insular view, KSL informs us that Some Christians Celebrated Palm Sunday. Yes while most Christians did not? Gimme a break, KSL. It should read "Most Christians Celebrated Palm Sunday While a Small Percentage Tuned Their TVs to LDS General Conference and Went About Cleaning Their Houses or General Not-paying-attention-related-activities-but-still-the-tv-is-on-Bishop-Christiansensonson!"

At least they didn't really keep up the intentional or unintentional snootiness in the body of the story:

Christians around the world celebrated Palm Sunday today. Christians of many denominations marched through their churches throughout Utah, carrying palm fronds and singing hymns at the official beginning of the Easter week.

Labels: Jesus, media, news, religion

¶ 5:38 PM 2 comments

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