Jottings on science, religion, technology, pop culture and faith from the Antipodes.
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Inspired by Steve’s use of the book (e~mergent kiwi: spirituality resources) I’m going to use Richard’s Burridge’s “Faith Odyssey: A Journey Through Lent” for my Lenten reflections this year. A quick skim of the back of book shows a significant lack of Babylon 5, Firefly and Stargate references though I might be surprised when I actually read the book.
Pancakes tonight with the kids and their friends too.
There’s a collection links to articles on science, theology and pop culture over at Science & Theology News - Pop Culture. It’s not a big selection but each of the articles has further links to other things. Mostly related to cinema and television with a couple of books thrown in too.
Loren posts some interesting thoughts on Douglas Rushkoff’s Testament comic book series over at Suspension of Disbelief: Gimme That Old Time Religion.
A while back I had to choose between heading into Old Testament studies or into (systematic) theology. I chose the latter, though the Old Testament intrigues me and I enjoy working with OT texts as part of my theological studies (though my Hebrew hasn’t had a good workout lately). So when I see a comic book that attempts to integrate an interpretation of Old Testament narrative with socio-political commentary and cyberpunk genre I’ll be first in line to buy a copy to see what it’s like. (Rushkoff’s motivation including his idea of the Bible as open-source can be found here.)
So having read the first three issues here’s some thoughts.
Rushkoff’s approach of taking three narratives and interweaving them is interesting. In each of the first three issues he takes a story from the Genesis narrative, adapts it, and juxtaposes it against a contemporary story set in an America in the not too distant future. So he takes the Abraham and Isaac story (Gen 22) in issue #1 and sets that against a US military complex that seeks the sacrifice of young persons in multiple “wars against terror”, and then in #2 he uses the stories of Sodom and Gomorrah (Gen 18-19) and Lot’s incest (Gen 19) in #3. Linking these ancient and contemporary narratives is the third narrative within a mostly spiritual dimension. Here the figures of Astarte and Moloch vie with agents of Abraham’s god, though the use of human agents in the narratives.
It’s a novel approach which works sometimes and other times doesn’t. Some people have found a lack of Ancient Near Eastern background a problem with understanding the deities and others have found that Rushkoff’s allegories are too heavy-handed. Personally, I thought #1 and #2 did it pretty well, but #3 didn’t work for me.
In order to do this Rushkoff has to play imaginatively with the biblical narratives - his method asserts the text is a fluid framework that we then interweave our own narratives and imagination into. So literary context falls victim (e.g. Gen 22 occurs before Gen 18-19) in places (see also Loren’s comments). But it does an almost Ignatian meditative approach in allowing figures in the narrative to ask questions of the text. So Abraham’s people ask why he goes to sacrifice his son if he follows this new god, and Lot’s wife asks why is it okay to save the visitor(s) to Sodom by “sacrificing” his daughters to the mob. Good questions that people might ask of the text. But the additional material linking Lot’s daughters to the cult of Astarte’s temple prostitution (#3) is not supported by the text - though necessary for Rushkoff’s contemporary narrative.
As well, the comic is definitely for adults - it has a “suggested for mature readers.” Any comic with that disclaimer, and has an active fertility goddess in it can expect nudity and sexual content, though the violence isn’t as overt as it could be. Various characters become associated with the different deities and so manifest behaviour associated with them.
So does it work? As a style I think it has merit, though I’m not sure Rushkoff can pull it off in the long term. Halfway through #3 I had decided I’d seen enough of the style to get the idea of how it was being used, but the narrative in #3 didn’t grab me. So I’ll file the three issues together in the comics file and look out for the TPB when it comes out. Maybe I’ll pick it up them. In the meantime I’ll be looking out for other comic material in a similar vein.
Official DC Comics information
Relevant articles and interviews
Blog postings
Useful Wikipedia articles
Paul Windsor, principal of Carey Baptist College, starts a blog at Paul’s blog. Anyone else know of other theological college principals who blog?
Link here to a recent Reuters article on an approach by US clergy to science and religion that differs from the intelligent design/creationism-type approaches. See US Scientists enlist clergy in evolution battle.
A recent defense of a dualist view of human nature by philosopher Richard Swinburne over at Science & Theology News - Science and the soul.
For a physicalist view - that the body is all there is - see Science & Theology News - Whole people don’t need souls says theologian.
Science and Theology News has an article commenting on the tension between different world views - primarily science and faith - in the TV show “Lost”. Main conclusion is that this tension is played up, rather than looking at how different views can complement or assist each other. Also the quest for meaning is a regular theme. I don’t watch “Lost” myself but here’s the link - Science & Theology News - Science and faith a TV regular on “Lost” as well as another related link - Science & Theology News - TV takes a leap of faith.
Finished reading Hicksville and loved it. Enjoyed the New Zealand themes entwined with the comic book themes. There’s several bits in it where Charles Heaphy, James Cook and Hone Heke continue their conversation about why the islands of Aotearoa-New Zealand seem to be physically drifting (read the book for more explanation), and there’s a strand to do with the maps we impose upon the land - from Heaphy’s surveying and painting, to Cook’s exploration through to Maori maps of words and stories. Heke remarks that sometimes we treat the land as a corpse, a dead thing, and that we’re surprised when our geography changes - both physically, and in some way, spiritually - as the land is actually not static. Resonated for me with Steve’s e~mergent kiwi: place, spirituality and mission.
Oh, and Horrock’s included a nice glossary at the end of the book to explain people, places and terms to the uninitiated. He quotes cartoonist Wally Wood who said,
working in comics is like sentencing yourself to a life at hard labour in solitary confinement. If I had to do it all over again, I wouldn’t do it…and yet, I’m not sorry for where I am.
That’s very close to how feel about the PhD at the moment.
Scotland beat England in the 6-Nations! Woo hoo! First France and now England. Party time up north. See Planet-Rugby.com : Hadden lauds his ‘magnificent’ Scots.
Saw this today - wind generation that uses a different sort of “propellor” that is quieter than the regular sort. See Quietrevolution. The LED-lit version looks good and might be able to be intergrated into the cityscape with minimal impact.
Excellent little essay here by Dylan Horrocks, comic book artist and writer, who has been appointed the 2006 University of Auckland/Creative New Zealand Literary Fellow. In it he says,
We are used to thinking of Tolkien or Raymond Feist as writers who create imaginary worlds, but the same is also true of Elizabeth Knox, Barbara Anderson or Maurice Gee. The worlds in which their stories take place each have their own history, atmosphere, and sense of time. No matter how much it may resemble the “real world,” it is actually something else. This is neither good nor bad – it is simply an inescapable fact. Every time a writer tells a story, they also create a world.
and
In comics, even the laws of physics are side effects of the cartoonist’s ‘way of drawing’ – the way clothes drape across a body, the way shadows fall and water flows. In this sense, the cartoonist is a kind of God, creating a whole universe in their own image.
Horrocks goes on to look at this idea of world-building or sub-creating with the genres of comics, role-playing games and electronic gaming (incl. online gaming). Some interesting parallels with some of the stuff I’ve been reading about virtual reality and the metaphysical quests of technologists.
The essay can be found on Horrocks’ web site at THE PERFECT PLANET: Comics, Games and World-Building.
There was also an interview with him last Saturday morning on Radio New Zealand - Saturday, 18 February. (Link active for at least the next week)
I heard about Horrocks’ comic book Hicksville a while back but had never gotten around to reading it. Today I picked it up from the library so I’ll be thumbing through it tonight.
Something to bear in mind as I work through the interpretation and implications of the imago Dei in a techno-cultural society. In commenting on the interpretation of the imago Dei by figures such as Ambrose, Augustine, the Reformers, Hegel and Troeltsch, Barth writes of the Gen 1:26ff passage and its interpretation,
We might easily discuss which of these and the many other similar explanations is the finest or deepest or most serious. What we cannot discuss is which of them is the true explanation of Gen. I26f. For it is obvious that their authors merely found the concept in the text and then proceeded to pure invention in accordance with the requirements of contemporary anthropology, so that it is only by the standard of our own anthropology, and not according to the measure of its own anthropology and on exegetical grounds, that we can decide for or against them. Indeed, is it not almost refreshing to observe that in the end Troeltsch quite obviously makes no attempt whatever to expound Gen. I26f. but decides for an independent reconstruction of the concept? The procedure is characteristic of the tendency in much that has been said at this point by other writers both ancient and modern.
– Karl Barth, The Doctrine of Creation, Church Dogmatics, vol. 3 No. 1 (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1958), 192-193.
Brilliant opening spell on Saturday by the Hurricanes before losing shape (and Smith) to get through in the end to a bonus point. I thought the Western Force played better than the score (29-5) indicated and expect them to knock off a couple of teams later on in the competition. Maybe even the Chiefs next week?
Big blow for the Hurricanes losing Conrad Smith to a broken leg for the season, plus not good news for the ABs either. Still with Tana, Ma’a and Tane in the mid-field the ‘Canes are better off than some teams in that area.
I’ve always liked Smith’s play - the perfect foil to Nonu’s style - and his intelligence and organization will be missed greatly.
Oh, and it was good to see the Highlanders come through well against the Blues.
The UN World Food Programme has a video game out to educate people about different aspects of emergency food relief operations. it looks well done and runs on both Macs and PCs, with the only hitch being the several hundred megabyte download.
More information at WFP Foodforce - The Game, The Reality, How to Help and Wired News: U.N. Game Wins Hearts and Minds.
See also Greenflame: Education Arcade, day 1 for some links on edu-gaming.
On a related theme AKMA has some thoughts on religion in online multiplayer games and virtual worlds. See AKMA’s Random Thoughts: Faith In Terra Nova.
An article by Guy Kawasaki on generating community - Let the Good Times Roll–by Guy Kawasaki: The Art of Creating a Community. Aimed primarily at generating communities to support business it has some points that would translate into building communities - particularly online ones - for other purposes. The article is being updated and revised every so often too. Here’s a list of points raised that are expanded in the article.
(BTW - a “thunderlizard” is like an “evangelist”)
Any post that combines the theme of creation with quotes about the greening power of God from Hildegard and another quote from Madeline L’Engle gets the thumbs up from me. Check out way out west: From Dreaming to Creation…
Thanks to Paul’s posting Prodigal Kiwi(s) Blog: Space - 2002 for the link.
A couple of links. The first to a robot that is controlled by the behaviour of a slime mould that has been integrated with control circuitry, and the second link a robot (EcoBot II) that is powered by a Microbial Fuel Cell that produces energy from dead flies and rotten fruit. See New Scientist Breaking News - Robot moved by a slime mould’s fears and Energy Autonomy: Towards a truly Autonomous Robot.
A year ago I posted a link to the New Zealand Short Films web site where, strangely enough, you could watch NZ short films online. Now you can download some of them as MPEG-4 files for your iPod. The MPEG-4 files should play in Quicktime on PC and Mac too.
One man’s quest to make his own life-sized Dalek. See Relative Dimensions: The Dalek.
A reflection on science and religion by by Gordon Atkinson at The Christian Century: The lion and the lamb.
Editing a chapter I wrote several years ago on the historical interpretation of the imago Dei. Yesterday I went through the Protestant Reformation, so Luther, Calvin and others like Osiander and Flacius and leading into comparisons with Socinian interpretations (Racovian Catechism), as well as tidying up the stuff around Eastern Othordoxy and theosis. Today it’s Augustine, Aquinas and others like Lactantius, Justin Martyr and Origen.
Anyway, it’s been interesting seeing where my thoughts when years ago and what needs to be reworked now to fit with the thrust of the thesis. It’s like exploring a long, lost continent. You have the myths of what is there but I keep surprising myself with new discoveries while I following up references etc.
BTW - I know the title of the post is from Hamlet and is more about death than the past but it worked for me.
Obligatory space opera reference - Star Trek and Shakespeare.
Brief article at Science & Theology News - A cyborg explores what it means to be human looking at whether things like cochlear implants threaten humanness and personhood. Includes comments from Michael Chorost (see Greenflame: Hi, I’m Bionic) and Anne Foerst (Greenflame: God In The Machine: What Robots Teach Us About Humanity And God).
The latest Australian Sky and Telescope magazine (Jan/Feb 2006) comes with a DVD on the cover with a 2 hour long documentary produced by ESA on the history, work and future of the Hubble space telescope. I started to watch it and the kids drifted in and stayed to watch it too. A mixture of video and still footage, talking heads and CGI that seems to work quite well.
The magazine, which I don’t normally get as I tend to buy Astronomy every now and then, was not bad with (as one might expect) more Australian and New Zealand related material and sky charts.
Picked up a copy of “the gospel according to mark: with an introduction by nick cave” a while back. This introduction was one of the things that we were asked read in an introductory NT course that I did when I started my B.D. It was a really interesting read bringing the drama and humanity of Jesus out into connection with the real world in a way I hadn’t seen before. So I was glad to find the book on a secondhand shelf. Cave says,
The Christ that emerges from Mark, tramping through the haphazard events of His life, had a ringing intensity about him that I could not resist. Christ spoke to me through His isolation, through the burden of His death, through His rage at the mundane, through His sorrow. Christ, it seemed to me, was the victim of humanity’s lack of imagination, was hammered to the cross with the nails of creative vapidity.
(Complete text here and here.)
The book forms part of the Canongate/Text Publishing series “Pocket Canons” that has all sorts of people writing introductions to books of the Bible which then preface the KJV text. I’m now on the lookout for others. Canongate put them together in two boxed sets - Boxset - The Pocket Canon - Series I and Boxset - The Pocket Canons - Series II. In the latter series Bono writes about the Psalms.
Well, that was good. Nice to see we can play well in the rain once we woke up. See NZ Herald - Hurricanes hand out opening night Blues - 10 Feb 2006 - Sport.
Radio documentary from Radio Netherlands that was broadcast in the “Windows on the World” slot on National Radio last night. There’s a Real Audio stream on the following page RNW: Man and machine, part 1. Here’s the blurb from that page,
From the myth of Pygmalion down to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, to films such as Metropolis, Blade Runner and I Robot, we can see a rich vein of creativity sparked by our fascination and our horror at the idea of artificial life.
The Babylon Podcast has started up. This is a good thing.
Also, while link surfing today trying to find an article on science fiction and religion I came across this - Joe’s Store : CafePress.com. A veritable treasure chest of B5 stuff to wear and drink from while watching re-runs. Would go nicely with Shepherd’s Abbey : Out To The Black Outfitters : CafePress.com.
These look interesting. Glasses that contain controllable pixels that can compensate for aberations in the eye giving enhanced vision. See Wired News: Super Vision Sans Bionics.
Booked my tickets today to go to the Science and Theology Consultation in Canberra in late March. It’s being hosted by St Mark’s National Theological Centre and the Australian Centre for Christianity and Culture (29 & 30 March 2006) and the theme is From Resurrection to Return: Perspectives from Theology and Science on Christian Eschatology. Key note speakers include Tom Wright, Bob Russell and Ted Peters plus a variety of other papers and talks.
As there’s no direct flight to Canberra I’m going via Melbourne either side of the conference with time to (hopefully) catch up with some various people.
More information on the conference here.
It’s Serenity Day!
The Serenity was released today in NZ (DVD Region 4). A display stand at the door of the local Whitcoull’s had a pile on display with the sign “Get your free gift too.” And so I’m now the excited owner of the “Limited Edition” double-disc edition and I have a Serenity mouse pad to complete my desk. A Serenity poster would be nice for the office too but I haven’t seen any for sale in NZ.
Anyway, I’m looking forward to enjoying the movie again and I’ll actually be interested in the extra features on the DVD this time - unlike many other DVDs I have. (The other exception to this rule is the “I, Robot” double disc set that has some quite good documentary stuff on the second disk - a veritable who’s who from my thesis bibliography.)
At some point I’ll have to watch all the Firefly episodes, read the comics and watch the movie in a marathon to get that real fan boy experience. 
BTW - Steve has a review here. Written from the point of an “outsider” but still contains many good points. See EmergentKiwi: Serenity Film Review.
Retelling biblical stories from different perspectives seems to be flavour of the month at the moment in comics. Following on from Douglas Rushkoff’s Testament there is the retelling of the Exodus story from the point of view of Rameses II.
See Comics Should Be Good: This Comic Is Good - The Lone and Level Sands and ASP Online Lone and Level Sands Preview.
Also don’t forget Marked graphic novel - a gospel retelling in the contemporary world.
BTW - I’ve got the first two issues of Testament. After the third comes out I’ll see if I have time to write something on them.
digitalorthodoxy blog » When Hollywood Gets it Wrong… has some thoughts on the religious interpretation of Superman in the new movie.
See also the older posts here: Greenflame: Superblogging and Greenflame: Holy Warrior Nuns, Batman!
The latest issue of Dialag, a Lutheran theological journal, has a collection of articles on technology and the human being in it’s latest issue. And that issue is now their current sample issue - it wasn’t a week or two back when I was getting ready to interloan it - with PDFs of the articles available for a while. See - Blackwell Synergy: Dialog, Vol 44, Issue 4: Table of Contents.
Nice collection of links to Western artwork for theological reflection. See: Faith and Theology: Essential paintings for theologians and Faith and Theology: More essential paintings for theologians.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again - some lawyers and intellectual property “suits” have way too much time on their hands. See Cingular applies to patent smileys :@ | The Register and Cingular emoticon grab not so serious say experts | The Register.
Interesting article over at Weblogg-ed - The Read/Write Web in the Classroom : Caring About the Content about children, blogs and community.
I’ve taught at various times on the different genres present within the biblical texts and there are some students who find the whole concept of genre really hard to grasp. So several times I’ve set up a game show in class with student participants called “Name that Genre!” I’ve taken a variety of different pieces of music representing different genres, loaded them into iTunes, given each participant a squeaky toy as a buzzer and run a game show - with the appropriate prizes of chocolate, of course. It works as a fun, general introduction to the concept of genre. Which like the concept of metaphor is alien to some people’s reading of the text. (See Douglas Coupland’s neologism “Metaphasia - the inability to recognise metaphor”)
In the process of the game though it becomes clear that the concept of genre is often a pretty fluid one. One person’s jazz is another person’s blues or another person’s gospel. And this gets hotly debated at some points. It’s the same too with the biblical texts. A gospel passage might be “gospel” genre to one person and “historical narrative” to another, or there’s debate of what kind of “lament” a psalm is, or why a “prophetic” text suddenly switches into “wisdom” genre.
I was thinking about this the other day when trying to sort out some music in iTunes. It only allows one genre to be assigned to each song. But what if I want to assign more than one genre to a song. In the end I’ve set up smart playlists that filters the comments field attached to a song. In the comments field I list the genres I want: for example, **jazz**, **blues** and then select using those “tags”. It’s clumsy but it works.
Another example of human beings being colonized by technology - an MP3 player/swimming goggles combination. See SwiMP3.
ADSL link has given up the ghost and doesn’t look like it’ll be back soon. However, I did get lots of stuff written over the past few days with it down. Divine providence?
