“… They even make virtues out of ‘humility’ and ‘turning the other cheek’ and ‘loving everybody.’ Because it alleviates their guilt. It’s much nicer to pretend to yourself that your passivity makes you a saint, rather than just another gutless puke who won’t take a stand for what’s right.”

The passage above kind of encapsulates my ambivalence about the novel HUNTER: A Thriller, by Robert Bidinotto. There’s much to enjoy and appreciate in the book, and it promotes some ideas with which I strongly agree. But in my view it’s taken a little farther than I, as a Christian, can endorse. It’s not merely that I disagree with the Randian point of view on display here; I think the treatment weakens the argument (and the story) in some ways.

I usually do a synopsis of a novel’s opening chapters when I write a review, but the peculiar structure of this story makes that hard to do without spoiling the central surprise (if surprise it is). So I’ll mostly talk about the concepts underlying the story.

The central issue of this book is the early release of dangerous felons into society. Our justice system, as Bidinotto paints it (and he says all the atrocities in the story are based on true events) is that in order to take pressure off the courts and prisons, we’ve set in place a system that automatically pleas down criminal charges, and then shortens even those abbreviated prison sentences through early release for “good behavior.” This early release is facilitated by a naïve network of social service agencies staffed by do-gooders eager to let the prisoners out, proud of their “success” in rehabilitating them. But when those prisoners kill again, these do-gooders feel no responsibility.

This story focuses on a group of three inmates who are being released ahead of schedule, and who proceed immediately to take revenge on their former victims, who testified against them.

But there’s a vigilante out there, an accomplished killer who takes it on himself to protect the innocent and impose the death penalty where the justice system will not. In a conventional thriller, this character would be ambiguous. The violence he commits would begin to destroy him, and he would make some terrible mistake that would turn him into the very thing he hates.

None of that here. The vigilante is the hero of Hunter. The author’s position appears to be that our justice system is so badly broken that the only recourse left to decent society is private revenge and an eye for an eye, until reforms are made.

I see this as a weakness in the book. Not merely because I’m a Christian and believe in forgiving my enemies (a concept this book rejects with contempt), but because it makes the hero pretty one-dimensional. He’s a man without flaws, who looks into the Abyss and is not looked back into in response. In a public confrontation with “experts” on criminal rehabilitation, he has all the facts at his fingertips and reduces his opponents to impotent silence—and the news media report it as it happens, without spinning the story to make him look like a dangerous fanatic. I found that pretty unrealistic.

If I’ve given the impression that this is an anti-Christian book, I want to correct that. Although the influence of Ayn Rand is pronounced and is acknowledged by the author, one explicitly Christian character is identified as being on the side of what the author might describe as “the angels.” And he does take pains to make it clear that some of the Christian do-gooders are sincerely mistaken, and open to correction.

I should make it clear that I actually enjoyed Hunter quite a lot, and agreed with much of what I read. That I felt the message was taken to an extreme, and that some of the characters lacked depth, doesn’t alter the fact that the book moved right along and provided many satisfactions. I do recommend it (cautions for language, violence, and adult content), provided you’re prepared for the sort of thing it is.

Lars Walker is the author of several fantasy novels, the latest of which is an e-book, Troll Valley.

In this first novel of an ongoing series, Noah Braddock, San Diego surfer/private eye, is approached by the mother of his former girlfriend. The girlfriend, whom he had deeply loved, broke up with him years ago under pressure from her parents, when she went off to college. But now she’s gone missing, and they’re desperate enough to come to Noah for help.

And he, of course, can’t resist the appeal, even coming from them. But things get messy very quickly, and soon he’s forced to delve deeply into his lost love’s personal life, discovering things he’d much rather have never learned.

I’ve often written about the archetype of the American private eye. Particularly the fact that he’s often a figure of male fantasy. What guy, in his heart, doesn’t sometimes dream of living unfettered, setting his own hours, having uncommitted sex with a series of dangerous dames, and being the Spillaneian Jury?

Noah Braddock seems like a prime example of this paradigm. He combines two occupations that appeal to every guy’s inner Peter Pan—the P.I. and the surf bum.

And yet, Noah is an oddly responsible man. I thought his strength of character, paradoxically, a weakness in his character, if “character” is understood in its purely literary sense. It seemed odd to me that a guy this mature would choose a lifestyle that might as well have a sign reading “Perpetual Adolescent” taped to it. He seemed to me more suited to conventional police work (though he tells the reader he tried that and got bored) and a traditional marriage.

But that’s just my quibble. Others may disagree. I enjoyed Killer Swell, and will probably return to the Noah Braddock series.

The usual cautions for language and adult themes apply.

Lars Walker is the author of several fantasy novels, the latest of which is an e-book, Troll Valley.

[The researchers] harvested the bulbs produced by the [spider lily] plants and measured their biomass, along with the concentrations of several substances they contained that had previously been proven to be effective in fighting various human maladies.

In doing so, they found that the 75% increase in the air’s CO2 concentration resulted in a 48% increase in aboveground plant biomass and a 56% increase in belowground bulb biomass. In addition, the extra CO2 also increased the concentrations of five bulb constituents that possessed anti-cancer and anti-viral properties. [Emphasis added]

— NIPCC, “Here’s to Your Health! … Courtesy of Carbon Dioxide”, May 9, 2012

It would appear that more carbon dioxide in the air could potentially lead to the elimination of a number of human ailments:

What is especially exciting about these findings is that the substances the six scientists studied have been demonstrated to be effective in fighting a number of debilitating human diseases, including leukemia, ovary sarcoma, melanoma, brain cancer, colon cancer, lung cancer, renal cancer, Japanese encephalitis, yellow fever, dengue fever, Punta Tora fever and Rift Valley fever, as reported (with pertinent supporting citations) in [the researchers'] paper. Furthermore, there is reason to believe that many other such substances in other medicinal plants may also be benefited by atmospheric CO2 enrichment.

… This larger body of work also points to the tantalizing possibility that there may be a number of still other health-promoting substances in the tissues of the foods we regularly eat that may additionally have their concentrations enhanced by the ongoing rise in the air’s CO2 concentration. — Ibid.

Millions of people might live who would otherwise perish:

So here’s to our health … and the health of our children’s children … courtesy (in part) of the atmosphere’s steadily rising carbon dioxide concentration; for if the world’s climate alarmists can attribute nearly everything bad that happens nowadays, to the ongoing rise in the air’s CO2 content, surely a possible benefit or two can be pointed out. And the potential benefit described here is a huge one. — Ibid.

Image source: icanhascheezburger.com

This is why when I see articles like this one in USA Today that calls for a “new form of Christian civic engagement” the old Italian blood gets to boiling. What this “new form” seems to mean is embracing the modern liberal political agenda, and they’ll graciously let you can keep being pro-life in there and you’ll still be OK. Here’s the intro:

Three decades ago, the evangelical faithful was galvanized by public debates over abortion, the size of the federal government, the future of the traditional family, and religious liberty. Many responded by following divisive leaders into the culture wars with the promise that voting for “moral” leadership would end abortion, protect traditional marriage and put our country on the right track.

I wonder why left-wing politicians and “activists” are never described as “divisive.” Of course we know the answer, but what is troubling about this article is that so many especially younger Christians are buying into the narrative. I can’t find it now, but there was a study put out a couple years ago by I think the Barna Group (they are referred to in the article) that showed that young people and even young Christians see the Church as bigoted and intolerant.

The reason conservative Christians are seen as bigoted and intolerant is not because they are bigoted and intolerant, but because our cultural elites believe they are bigoted and intolerant and portray them that way every chance they get. Christians, for them, are a caricature to be beaten down as ideological enemies; they are not real people, because they’ve likely never even met one or had an intelligent conversation with one.

But this highlights a real problem for Christians and the Christian faith in modern America; Christian cultural influence is minimal if it exists at all. David French at National Review Online recently wrote about Evangelicals collapsing cultural influence. He contrasts this with the conservative Christian political influence, which has grown substantially over the last several decades. The problem is that politics alone doesn’t move a society; institutions of cultural influence do.

Every day the vast majority of American children sit in classrooms that indoctrinate them with a secular view of reality, whose assumptions are never questioned. Every day, the vast majority of Americans through mass media and popular entertainment are spoon fed a world view antithetical to traditional orthodox Christianity, where such people are often portrayed as Martians. Is it any wonder that many Americans buy the caricature of intolerant and narrow minded Christians they are being sold every day? Of course not. I think Naomi Schaefer Riley knows who the real intolerant ones are in American culture!

Rapid and widespread changes in the world’s human population, coupled with unprecedented levels of consumption present profound challenges to human health and wellbeing, and the natural environment. This report gives an overview of how global population and consumption are linked, and the implications for a finite planet.

— Royal Society, “People and the Planet Report”, April 26, 2012

If there’s one thing that spoils a socialist’s tea, it’s those “unprecedented levels of consumption” brought on by the spread of free-market capitalism. He can’t even conceive of an open system of freedom and enterprise that recognizes no limits and which belies the very notion of “a finite planet.”

It has long been self-evident that poverty is endemic — and thoroughly “redistributed” — within and among those nations that discourage free market capitalism and adopt command and control economies instead.

We say this is “self-evident,” but apparently the Royal Society doesn’t see it that way. Among their ”Key recommendations”:

1. The international community must bring the 1.3 billion people living on less than $1.25 per day out of absolute poverty, and reduce the inequality that persists in the world today. This will require focused efforts in key policy areas including economic development, education, family planning and health. — Ibid.

Here we need to deploy a glossary: “The international community” = successful Western countries; ”economic development” = taxing the crap out of those Western nations and forcing their collapse; ”education” = Marxist indoctrination; “family planning” = abortion and/or 7.62 mm contraceptives; ”health” = a term nobody can definitively define.

The Royal Society’s prescription implicitly embraces the image of the world as a big pie that can only be divided up into a limited number of slices:

2. The most developed and the emerging economies must stabilise and then reduce material consumption levels through: dramatic improvements in resource use efficiency, including: reducing waste; investment in sustainable resources, technologies and infrastructures; and systematically decoupling economic activity from environmental impact. — Ibid.

Translation: The successful free market economy nations are doing too well to suit us Marxists, and they really should be ashamed of themselves for providing so abundantly for their citizens. Instead, they should take a vow of poverty and put on sackcloth and ashes. The best way — the Marxist approach — is by “systematically decoupling economic activity from environmental impact,” which is a quaint way of telling the free market capitalists that no matter what they do and no matter how much or little they do it, their economic activities will always be regarded as harming the environment. The term “sustainable” is doublespeak for Marxist “green” programs that gobble up taxes and produce no efficient energy sources to speak of. (Caveat: If, in the vanishingly small likelihood that safe thermonuclear fusion reactors the size of a Volkswagen are ever developed, then all bets are off!)

3. Reproductive health and voluntary family planning programmes urgently require political leadership and financial commitment, both nationally and internationally. This is needed to continue the downward trajectory of fertility rates, especially in countries where the unmet need for contraception is high. — Ibid.

“Reproductive health” is always a Liberal Progressive-Marxist code phrase for abortion, and “family planning” never stays “voluntary” for long when governments push it as a “programme.” No, the very last thing prospective parents need is “political leadership” (code for unaccountable bureaucracies) in deciding how to plan their families.

And “financial commitment” is more code for massive — verging on confiscatory — taxation on the international level (e.g., the global poverty tax).

Also, since the world needs MORE people, continuing “the downward trajectory of fertility rates” is clearly suicidal.

4. Population and the environment should not be considered as two separate issues. Demographic changes, and the influences on them, should be factored into economic and environmental debate and planning at international meetings, such as the Rio+20 Conference on Sustainable Development and subsequent meetings. — Ibid.

Can it be merely a coincidence that the Royal Society’s report presages the Rio+20 Marxfest?

But, wait, there’s more! ‘People and the Planet’ also “discusses” the following (our comments are in [brackets]):

the potential for urbanisation to reduce material consumption [the aim being to crowd people into smaller and smaller land areas and implicity reduce the size of the population to some nebulous "optimal" level];
removing barriers to achieve high-quality primary and secondary education for all [in "free" government-run propaganda factories laughingly called "schools"];
undertaking more research into the interactions between consumption, demographic change and environmental impact [with the "findings" always condemnng free market capitalism as the prime culprit in destroying the "environment" — which, by the way, is another hazy term in itself];
implementing comprehensive wealth measures developing new socio-economic systems [which requires overthrowing free market systems and socializing all economies under centralized command and control Marxist-style planning]. — Ibid.

Here are some gems from the report itself. We’ve found it nearly impossible to cut through all of the gobbledygook, buzzwords, and phrasing that codes for Marxist intervention. Perhaps you can do better:

“Human impact on the Earth raises serious concerns, and in the richest parts of the world per capita material consumption is far above the level that can be sustained for everyone in a population of 7 billion or more.”

“… in the most developed and the emerging economies unsustainable consumption must be
urgently reduced. This will entail scaling back or radical transformation of damaging material
consumption and emissions and the adoption of sustainable technologies, and is critical to ensuring a sustainable future for all.”

“In the long term a stabilised population is an essential prerequisite for individuals to flourish.”

“Humanity needs to learn to act collectively and constructively in the face of long term and
therefore sometimes elusive threats, not just when faced with immediate and tangible ones.”

“The implication of these constraints is that the material throughput of the economy cannot grow forever. The economy of the future must produce goods and service of value to humanity with dramatically reduced physical impact. But today’s market system is distorted by failure to price environmental and social impacts, leading to perverse incentives for unsustainable activities.”

“Humans have interacted strongly with the environment since people mastered fire, settled in every continent except Antarctica, invented agriculture, and launched the industrial revolution. Humanity is now approaching a crucial time in this ongoing interaction, making this a critical moment for policy makers. Over the next 30 – 40 years the confluence of the challenges described in this report provides the opportunity to move towards a sustainable economy and a better world for the majority of humanity, or alternatively the risk of social, economic and environmental failures and catastrophes on a scale never imagined. This report has outlined some possible pathways to achieving a sustainable economy, through the combination of application of socially applicable technology, political leadership and institutional reform.”

— The Royal Society, ‘People and the Planet’, April 2012, 134 pages, PDF

Notice the recurrent use of negative, alarmist, and fear-mongering terminology in the limited sampling above: “impact”; “serious”; “unsustainable [and] damaging material consumption”; “elusive threats”; ”the economy cannot grow forever”; “today’s market system is distorted”; “perverse incentives”; ”unsustainable activities”; “Humanity is now approaching a crucial time”; “the risk of social, economic and environmental failures and catastrophes on a scale never imagined.”

To judge from their report, the Royal Society seems to have adopted today’s most successful political propaganda ploy: Never let a crisis go to waste, especially one that has been so laboriously manufactured.

GOVERNMENT MOTORS’ CAR OF THE FUTURE

A SHO(R)T LESSON IN CAPITALISM AND SOCIALISM

RONNIE vs. THE OTHER GUY

“I don’t know.” These are the final words of Sound of My Voice and might be taken to characterize the film as a whole. Peter Aiken (Christopher Denham) and Lorna Michaelson (Nicole Vicius) are lovers who join a cult in order to secretly make a documentary film about it. For Aiken, this is a kind of mission since his late mother joined a different cult with disastrous consequences. The leader of the cult, Maggie (Brit Marling, who also co-wrote the screenplay with director Zal Batmanglij), claims to have been born in 2030 and to have returned to our present from 2054 in order to save a chosen few from a dire future. Formally, this is a pretty conventional film and at first it seems to be what was called in the 1950s a problem film one dealing with a social problem. But while the film quite successfully conveys the creepiness and psychobabble of the cult, it is not ultimately concerned with examining the cult phenomenon. As the movie progresses, it seems to focus more on the character of Aiken but even this is not the ultimate payoff. This is a generally understated thriller and the key to the film’s success as engaging entertainment is its skillful use of uncertainty. Who is Maggie and what is she up to is the primary, but not the only, question posed. Uncertainty in the hands of the master filmmaker Robert Bresson is a way of exploring the human condition. Sound of My Voice does not aim so high. In it, uncertainty is merely a plot device, and an effective one. It is the primary element that makes it above average, sophisticated entertainment.

It is commonly supposed that when in the early modern period individuals began to look at the world in a different way, they could no longer believe what they read in the Bible. In this book I shall suggest that the reverse is the case: that when in the sixteenth century people began to read the Bible in a different way, they found themselves forced to jettison traditional conceptions of the world.

Had it not been for the rise of the literal interpretation of the Bible and the subsequent appropriation of biblical narratives by early modern scientists, modern science may not have arisen at all. In sum, the Bible and its literal interpretation have played a vital role in the development of Western science.

— Peter Harrison, Andreas Idreos Professor of Science and Religion at the University of Oxford, Fellow of Harris Manchester College

Here is a final paradox. Recent work on early modern science has demonstrated a direct (and positive) relationship between the resurgence of the Hebraic, literal exegesis of the Bible in the Protestant Reformation, and the rise of the empirical method in modern science. I’m not referring to wooden literalism, but the sophisticated literal-historical hermeneutics that Martin Luther and others (including Newton) championed. It was, in part, when this method was transferred to science, when students of nature moved on from studying nature as symbols, allegories and metaphors to observing nature directly in an inductive and empirical way, that modern science was born. In this, Newton also played a pivotal role. As strange as it may sound, science will forever be in the debt of millenarians and biblical literalists.

— Stephen Snobelen, Assistant Professor of History of Science and Technology, University of King’s College, Halifax, Canada

The biblical presuppositions, without which modern science cannot function:

1. The universe is real (because it was created—Genesis 1), not an illusion as New Agers believe.

2. The universe is orderly, because God is a God of order not of confusion—1 Corinthians 14:33. But if there is no creator, or if Zeus and his gang were in charge, why should there be any order at all? If some Eastern religions were right that the universe is a great thought, then it could change its mind any moment.

3. Man can and should investigate the world, because God gave us dominion over His creation (Genesis 1:28); creation is not divine.

4. Man can initiate thoughts and actions; they are not fully determined by deterministic laws of brain chemistry. This is a deduction from the biblical teaching that man has both a material and immaterial aspect (e.g. Genesis 35:18, 1 Kings 17:21–22, Matthew 10:28). This immaterial aspect of man means that he is more than matter, so his thoughts are likewise not bound by the makeup of his brain. But if materialism were true, then ‘thought’ is just an epiphenomenon of the brain, and the results of the laws of chemistry. Thus, given their own presuppositions, materialists have not freely arrived at their conclusion that materialism is true, because their conclusion was predetermined by brain chemistry. But then, why should their brain chemistry be trusted over mine, since both obey the same infallible laws of chemistry? So in reality, if materialists were right, then they can’t even help what they believe (including their belief in materialism!). Yet often call themselves ‘freethinkers’, overlooking the glaring irony! Genuine initiation of thought is an insuperable problem for materialism ….

5. Man can think rationally and logically, and that logic itself is objective. This is a deduction from the fact that he was created in God’s image (Genesis 1:26–27), and from the fact that Jesus, the Second Person of the Trinity, is the logos. This ability to think logically has been impaired but not eliminated by the Fall of man into sinful rebellion against his creator. (The Fall means that sometimes the reasoning is flawed, and sometimes the reasoning is valid but from the wrong premises. So it is folly to elevate man’s reasoning above that God has revealed in Scripture.) But if evolution were true, then there would be selection only for survival advantage, not rationality.

6. Results should be reported honestly, because God has forbidden false witness (Exodus 20:16). But if evolution were true, then why not lie?

While the usual secular materialist and therefore atheist account of the origin of modern
science “proves” how Christian thought retarded its development, Rodney Stark, a Professor of Comparative Religion, paints a different picture:

A Christian scientist — but not a Christian Scientist

India, China, Persia, Greece and Rome all had venerable traditions of scholarship but why did only Christian Europe develop science? Stark’s answer is simple but profound—the Christian God was rational, responsive, dependable and omnipotent and the universe was his personal creation in which his divine nature was put on display for man’s benefit and instruction. Among the passages most commonly cited by medieval scholars was: ‘Thou has ordered all things in measure and number and weight.’ Christians believed that science could be done and should be done.

… To illustrate the role of Christians in the rise of science, Stark researched ‘scientific stars’ from 1543 to 1680, the era usually designated as the ‘scientific revolution’, and came up with a list of the top 52. Of these, 26 were Protestant and 26 Catholic; 15 of them were English, 9 French, 8 Italian, 7 German (the rest were Dutch, Danish, Flemish, Polish and Swedish respectively). Only one was a sceptic (Edmund Halley) and one (Paracelsus) was a pantheist. The other 50 were Christians, 30 at least of which could be characterized as ‘devout’ because of their evident zeal. It is not until the time of Darwin that atheism appeared to accomplish anything significant in science (Halley’s work in astronomy and mathematics owed no debt to atheism). And the obvious flaw in Darwinism is that it ‘falls notably short of explaining the origin of species’. So atheism is left nakedly ideological, with all its attempts to wrap itself in science thwarted.

— Book review, ‘For the Glory of God’ by Rodney Stark, CMI, August 2004

Stark’s book is available here.