Monthly Archives: January 2015

WOODY WEDNESDAY 40 songs from Past Woody Films plus song I suggested for Woody Allen’s new film from Pee Wee Spitelera (Clarinetist at Al Hirts’ Club, New Orleans)

40 songs from Past Woody Films plus song I suggested for Woody Allen’s new film from Pee Wee Spitelera (Clarinetist at Al Hirts’ Club, New Orleans)

Pee Wee Spitelera was born on December 21, 1937 in Louisiana, USA as Joseph T. Spitelera Jr. He was an actor, known for The Dinah Shore Chevy Show (1956), Dixieland at Disneyland (1964) and The Lawrence Welk Show (1955). He died in September 1985 in Louisiana.

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Woody Allen – Songs from Woody Allen’s Films

Published on Oct 7, 2013

Woody Allen – Songs from Woody Allen’s Films
Upload the album here : http://bit.ly/17BenPD
iTunes : http://bit.ly/1jIwUiu
Amazon : http://amzn.to/1xNVh5r

From “Blue Jasmine” to “Stardust Memories”, from “Midnight in Paris” to “Hannah and her sisters”, from “Radio Days” to “Mighty Aphrodite”, from “Annie Hall” to “Bullets over Broadway”, Woody Allen has always used jazz in his films. The music underlines the storyline and merges beautifully with each scene. Some of the greatest names in jazz and many of the greatest big bands have featured in his creations: Tommy Dorsey, Billie Holiday, Harry James, Django Reinhardt, Glenn Miller, Bix Beiderbecke, Ben Webster, Sidney Bechet, Louis Armstrong, Chick Webb, Lester Young, Erroll Garner, Artie Shaw, King Oliver, Red Garland, Jelly Roll Morton, and many more …

https://play.google.com/store/music/a…

http://www.emusic.com/album/-/-/12856…

1 – Sidney Bechet “Si tu vois ma mère” (from Midnight in Paris)
2 – Josephine Baker “La Conga Blicoti” (from Midnight in Paris)
3 – Lizzie Miles “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” (from Blue Jasmine)
4 – King Oliver “West End Blues” (from Blue Jasmine)
5 – Louis Armstrong “Back O’ Town Blues (from Blue Jasmine)
6 – The Ink Spots “If I Didn’t Care (from Radio Days) 7 – The Mairy Macs “Mairzy Doats” (from Radio Days)
8 – Tommy Dorsey “I’m Getting Sentimental Over You” (from Radio Days)
9 – Glenn Miller “In the Mood” (from Radio Days)
10- Red Garland “Spring Will Be a Little Late This Year” (from Whatever Works)
11 – Chick Webb “If Dreams Come True” (from Stardust Memories)
12 – Louis Armstrong “Stardust” (from Stardust Memories)
13 – Harry James & Helen Forrest “I’ve Heard That Song Before” (from Hannah & Her Sisters)
14 – Harry James “You Made Me Love You” (from Hannah & Her Sisters)
15 – Artie Shaw “Moonglow” (from Annie Hall)
16 – Fred Astaire “Cheek to Cheek” (from The Purple Rose of Cairo)
17 – Tommy Dorsey “Keepin’ Out of Mischief Now” (from Interiors)
18 – Jelly Roll Morton “Wolverine Blues” (from Interiors)
19 – Benny Goodman “Whispering” (from Mighty Aphrodite)
20 – Erroll Garner “Penthouse Serenade” (from Mighty Aphrodite)
21 – Dooley Wilson “As Time Goes By” (from Play It Again Sam)
22 – Lester Young “I Can’t Get Started” (from Anything Else)
23 – Billie Holiday “Easy to Love” (from Anything Else)
24 – Django Reinhardt “Nagasaki” (from Bullets Over Broadway)
25 – Bix Beiderbecke “At the Jazz Band Ball” (from Bullets Over Broadway)
26 – Glenn Miller “Sunrise Serenade” (from the Curse of the Jade Scorpion)
27 – Duke Ellington “Sophisticated Lady” (from the Curse of the Jade Scorpion)
28 – Django Reinhardt & Stephane Grappelli “Liebstraum # 3” (from Sweet & Lowdown)
29- Ben Webster “My Ideal” (from September)
30 -Teddy Wilson “I Got Rhythm” (from Celebrity)
31 – Coleman Hawkins “Out of Nowhere” (from Deconstructing Harry)
32 – Benny Goodman “Sing Sing Sing” (from Deconstructing Harry)
33 – Benny Goodman “If I Had You” (from You’ll Meet a Tall Dark Stranger)
34 – Duke Ellington “I let a Song Out of My Heart” (Melinda &Melinda)
35 – Artie Shaw “Moonglow” (from Alice)
36 – Erroll Garner “The Way You Look Tonight” (from Alice)
37 – Tommy Dorsey “Opus n°1” (from Radio Days)
38 – Glenn Miller “American Patrol (from Radio Days)
39 – Artie Shaw “Frenesi” (from Radio Days)
40 – The Mills Brothers “Paper Doll” (from Radio Days) – JazzAndBluesExperience – SUBSCRIBE HERE : http://bit.ly/10VoH4l (Re)Discover the Jazz and Blues greatest hits – JazznBluesExperience is your channel for all the best jazz and blues music. Find your favorite songs and artists and experience the best of jazz music and blues music. Subscribe for free to stay connected to our channel and easily access our video updates! – Facebook FanPage: http://www.facebook.com/JazznBluesExp…

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This song below is my suggestion for the next Woody Allen movie and I mailed a letter to Woody Allen in December of 2014 suggesting it:

Blue Clarinet-Pee Wee Spitelera

Uploaded on Aug 16, 2010

Clarinetist at Al Hirts’ Club, New Orleans

My friend Sean Michel had an uncle named Pee Wee Spitelera and you will notice Pee Wee at the 4 minute mark take off on his  clarinet in this video below on the Dinah Shore Show in 1960. I TOOK THE TIME TO WRITE WOODY ALLEN IN DECEMBER OF 2014 AND ASK HIM IF HE EVER MET “PEE WEE” AND I ASKED HIM TO CONSIDER THE SONG “BLUE CLARINET” FOR HIS NEW MOVIE. I HAVEN’T  HEARD BACK YET.

Al Hirt on the Dinah Shore Chevy Show 1960

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Wabash Cannonball & Detour-Pee Wee Spitelera

Uploaded on Aug 16, 2010

Clarinetist at Al Hirts’ Club, New Orleans

Al Hirt on the Johnny Cash Show

Uploaded on Jan 27, 2010

Johnny joins Hirt for a quick duet on “I Walk The Line,” then surrenders the stage to his guest for what seems like a really long time. Hirt plays a brass instrument to produce what sounds suspiciously like jazz. From the Dec. 16, 1970 episode of Cash’s show. This clip is mostly for Al Hirt fans. Just because I have no idea who he is doesn’t mean he doesn’t have a passionate following.
Addendum: The following details from an Al Hirt fan just arrived this morning: The first song by Al Hirt and his band is a very fast version of the country song “Louisiana Man.” The second song by Al Hirt and his band is an extremely fast version of the classic Jelly Roll Morton Dixieland song “Wolverine Blues.”

1964 1965 NY World’s Fair Al Hirt Performs From A Unique Stage

Published on Jun 20, 2013

If you know this song..youd soon realize that these guys are Miming or lipsyncing to the soundtrack for obvious reasons micing a band on a moving stage through a Fair is no easy task in the 1960s…..However the purpose was just eye candy for the parade.This is just amazing Al hirt History!

YouTube Al Hirt in Italy 1962)

Published on Jun 20, 2013

Dinah Shore, Al Hirt, Perez Prado, Andy Williams & Ella Fitzgerald, “When The Saints Go Marchin’ In”

Published on Dec 29, 2012

Al Hirt, Perez Prado, Andy Williams & Ella Fitzgerald on “The Dinah Shore Chevy Show”.

When The Saints Go Marching In – Al Hirt jazz trumpet solo Bb version

From the album “Our Man in New Orleans” released from RCA Victor in 1963  here the transcription of the Al Hirt solo on one of the most known gospel hymn: “When the Saints go marching in” interpretated in the traditional New Orleans style. Al Hirt trumpet, Pee Wee Spitelera clarinet, Jerry Hirt trombone, Ronnie Dupont piano, Lowell Miller double bass, Frank Hudec drums.

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Friday, May 20, 2011

Pee Wee Spitelera

by Praguefrank, Kurt Rokitta, Carl G. Cederblad, Michel Ruppli
SESSIONS also recorded with Al Hirt, Pete Fountain
October 1964 RCA Victor Studio, 800 17th Ave. South, Nashville, TN – Pee Wee Spitelera (Pee Wee Spitelera [clarinet], Boots Randolph [sax] + unknown musicians + The Anita Kerr Singers. Producer: Chet Atkins)
001 RPA4-1573 TANSY 47-8606/LSP-3511
002 RPA4-1574 ANATEVKA unissued
003 RPA4-1581 HEY SHORT LEGS LSP-3511
23 February 1965 RCA Victor Studio, 800 17th Ave. South, Nashville, TN – Pee Wee Spitelera (Pee Wee Spitelera [clarinet] + unknown musicians + The Anita Kerr Singers.Producer: Bob Ferguson)
004 SPA4-1177 LEROY’S TUNE LSP-3511
005 SPA4-1178 CREOLE CLARINET 47-8606/LSP-3511
006 SPA4-1179 BLUE CLARINET 47-8886/LSP-3511
ca 23 or 24 February 1965 RCA Victor Studio, 800 17th Ave. South, Nashville, TN – Pee Wee Spitelera (Producer: Bob Ferguson)
007 SPA4-1183 OA HU (WA HOO) LSP-3511
008 SPA4-1184 LAPPLAND LSP-3511
009 SPA4-1185 CAT WALK unissued
Summer 1965 prob. RCA Victor Studio, Webster Hall, 119E, 11th St., Manhattan, New York City – Pee Wee Spitelera (arr. by Dick Hyman, Producer: Jim Foglesong)
010 SPKM-5272 SHOW ME WHERE THE GOOD TIMES ARE 47-8666
011 HARD TIMES ARE GONE LSP-3511
012 THE GYPSY LSP-3511
013 GOLDEN EARRINGS LSP-3511
014 CHIHUAHUA LSP-3511
015 SPKM-5279 EBB TIDE 47-8666/LSP-3511
ca early July 1966 RCA Victor Studio, 800 17th Ave. South, Nashville, TN – Pee Wee Spitelera (arr. by Dick Hyman, Producer: Jim Foglesong)
016 TWA4-1423 A SONG FROM ROSEMARY 47-8886
1966 RCA Victor Studio, 800 17th Ave. South, Nashville, TN – Pee Wee Spitelera (arr. by Bill Walker. Producer: Jim Foglesong)
017 COUNTRY CLARINET LSP-3638
018 I LOVE YOU SO MUCH IT HURTS LSP-3638
019 SAN ANTONIO ROSE LSP-3638
020 BOUQUET OF ROSES LSP-3638
021 TPA4-4109 DETOUR 47-9154/LSP-3638
022 I LOVE YOU BECAUSE LSP-3638
023 HAVE YOU EVER BEEN LONELY? LSP-3638
024 TPA4-4112 WABASH CANNONBALL 47-9154/LSP-3638
025 I REALLY DON’T WANT TO KNOW LSP-3638
026 I CAN’T HELP IT (IF I’M STILL IN LOVE WITH YOU) LSP-3638
027 YOU DON’T KNOW ME LSP-3638
028 NIGHT TRAIN TO MEMPHIS LSP-3638

ALBUMS
RCA Victor LPM/LSP-3511 Pee Wee Plays Pretty: Hard Times Are Gone; The Gypsy; Creole Clarinet; Hey! Short Legs; La Playa; Leroy’s Tune; Tansy; Oa Hu (Wa Hoo); Golden Earrings; Blue Clarinet; Chihuahua; Ebb Tide – 66
RCA Victor LPM/LSP-3638 Country Clarinet: Country Clarinet; I Love You So Much It Hurts; San Antonio Rose; Bouquet Of Roses; I Love You Because; Have You Ever Been Lonely?; Wabash Cannonball; I Really Don’t Want To Know; I Can’t Help It (If I’m Still In Love With You); You Don’t Know Me; Detour; Night Train To Memphis – 10-66 (MX: TPRS-1415/16(s), rev. Oct. 15)

SINGLES
RCA Victor
47-8606 Tansy / Creole Clarinet – 06-65
47-8666 Show Me Where The Good Times Are / Ebb Tide – 09-65
47-8886 Blue Clarinet / A Song For Rosemary – 07-66
47-9154 Detour / Wabash Cannonball – 03-67

Al Hirt – trumpet
Pee Wee Spitelera – clarinet
Joe Prejean – trombone
Ellis Marsalis – piano
Rodrigo Sines – bass
Mike Oshetski – saxophone
Paul Ferrera – drums

At the peak of his celebrity, from the late ’50s through the 70s, New Orleans native Al Hirt gained a national reputation for his crisp, catchy trumpet work on simple pop confections like “Java,” “Cotton Candy” and “Sugar Lips.” Affectionately known by his friends as “Jumbo,” the hulking trumpeter considered himself more an entertainer than a jazz musician, though his ebullient brand of Dixieland was imbued with swing and dazzling improvisations. At the time of his appearance at the inaugural New Orleans Jazz Festival in 1970, Hirt owned his own Bourbon Street club where he regularly performed. Fronting a professional crew consisting of pianist Ellis Marsalis (father of Wynton Marsalis, whom Hirt is said to have given his first trumpet), clarinetist Pee Wee Spitelera, trombonist Joe Prejean, saxophonist Mike Oshetski, former Louis Prima drummer Paul Ferrera and bassist Rodrigo Sines, Hirt delivered an entertaining set (with some brusque, humorous and frequently politically incorrect banter between songs).

A generous bandleader, Hirt individually features each of his sidemen during this set at the Municipal Auditorium. They open with a pyrotechnic take on Jelly Roll Morton’s “Royal Garden Blues” that makes the classic Bix Beiderbecke & The Wolverines version from 1924 sound like it’s standing still. Every one in the band gets a solo taste here, with clarinetist Spitelera and saxophonist Oshetski making the strongest contributions. At the end of this bristling opener, they each trade rapid-fire eight-bar phrases with drummer Ferrera before bringing the piece to an exhilarating conclusion. They next downshift into the ballad “Paula’s Theme,” a Hirt original from the soundtrack to Viva Max! a madcap satirical film from 1970 starring Peter Ustinov and Jonathan Winters. Clarinetist Spitelera showcases his most expressive playing on “Danny Boy,” jumping up to the high register at the conclusion of this poignant Irish anthem while trombonist Prejean delivers a lovely, lyrical reading of the Tommy Dorsey theme song, “I’m Getting Sentimental Over You.” Tenor saxophonist Oshetski, whom Hirt calls “the greatest jazz player in the band,” is then featured on a mellow bossa nova rendition of the 1967 Herman’s Hermits hit tune “There’s a Kind of Hush,” sounding a touch like tenor great Stan Getz with his warm tone and fluid lines.

Pianist Marsalis, whose own modern jazz quartet was featured on the New Orleans Jazz Festival bill the previous night, is next featured on a swinging piano trio rendition of the ballad “Secret Love,” which is underscored by Ferrera’s brisk brushwork and creatively syncopated playing on the kit. Bassist Sines, a native of Costa Rica who was attending Loyola University at the time of this concert, carries the melody on the jazz standard “Body And Soul,” which also has him improvising freely throughout the piece. Hirt steps up to the plate on the swinging set-closer, a syncopated Dixieland version of Stephen Foster’s “Old Folks at Home (Swanee River).” And dig his quote at the tag from “Way Down Yonder in New Orleans.”

Born Alois Maxwell Hirt (on November 7, 1922) in New Orleans, he picked up his first trumpet at age six. By age 16, he began playing professionally at the local Fair Grounds Racetrack. In 1940, Hirt enrolled at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music, where he studied with Dr. Frank Simon, a former soloist with the John Philip Sousa Orchestra. Following a stint in the Army, he broke in with various big bands during the Swing era, making his mark as a featured soloist with the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra. In 1950, Hirt became first trumpet and soloist with Horace Heidt’s Orchestra and by 1955 he began playing with fellow New Orleanian, clarinetist Pete Fountain. He recorded some regional albums as a leader in the late ’50s before signing a lucrative contract with RCA, debuting with 1961’s The Greatest Horn in the World. Subsequent albums like Cotton Candy and Honey in the Horn were Top 10 best sellers, but it was his million-selling, Grammy-winning hit single from 1963, “Java,” that brought Hirt international stardom. He flashed his technical prowess on the frenetic theme to the 1966 TV show The Green Hornet starring Van Williams and Bruce Lee. The following year, Hirt became a minority owner in the NFL expansion New Orleans Saints football team.

On February 8, 1970, Hirt was injured while riding on a Mardi Gras float. He claims to have been struck in the mouth by a brick thrown from the crowd, and he makes a joking reference to it in his 1970 New Orleans Jazz Festival performance. Hirt continued performing and recording for various labels through the ’80s and ’90s. He died at his home in New Orleans on April 27, 1999, at age 76. (Bill Milkowski)

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RESPONDING TO HARRY KROTO’S BRILLIANT RENOWNED ACADEMICS!! (PART 7 Professor Leonard Susskind, Physics Dept Stanford, WAS THE UNIVERSE DESIGNED?)

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On November 21, 2014 I received a letter from Nobel Laureate Harry Kroto and it said:

…Please click on this URL http://vimeo.com/26991975

and you will hear what far smarter people than I have to say on this matter. I agree with them.

Harry Kroto

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There are 3 videos in this series and they have statements by 150 academics and scientists and I hope to respond to all of them.  Leonard Susskind is a Professor of Physics at Stanford and  his comments can be found on the 1st video and the 35th clip in this series. Below the videos you will find his words.

50 Renowned Academics Speaking About God (Part 1)

Another 50 Renowned Academics Speaking About God (Part 2)

A Further 50 Renowned Academics Speaking About God (Part 3)

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I grew up at Bellevue Baptist Church under the leadership of our pastor Adrian Rogers and I read many books by the Evangelical Philosopher Francis Schaeffer and have had the opportunity to contact many of the evolutionists or humanistic academics that they have mentioned in their works. Many of these scholars have taken the time to respond back to me in the last 20 years and some of the names  included are  Ernest Mayr (1904-2005), George Wald (1906-1997), Carl Sagan (1934-1996),  Robert Shapiro (1935-2011), Nicolaas Bloembergen (1920-),  Brian Charlesworth (1945-),  Francisco J. Ayala (1934-) Elliott Sober (1948-), Kevin Padian (1951-), Matt Cartmill (1943-) , Milton Fingerman (1928-), John J. Shea (1969-), , Michael A. Crawford (1938-), Paul Kurtz (1925-2012), Sol Gordon (1923-2008), Albert Ellis (1913-2007), Barbara Marie Tabler (1915-1996), Renate Vambery (1916-2005), Archie J. Bahm (1907-1996), Aron S “Gil” Martin ( 1910-1997), Matthew I. Spetter (1921-2012), H. J. Eysenck (1916-1997), Robert L. Erdmann (1929-2006), Mary Morain (1911-1999), Lloyd Morain (1917-2010),  Warren Allen Smith (1921-), Bette Chambers (1930-),  Gordon Stein (1941-1996) , Milton Friedman (1912-2006), John Hospers (1918-2011), Michael Martin (1932-).Harry Kroto (1939-), Marty E. Martin (1928-), Richard Rubenstein (1924-), James Terry McCollum (1936-), Edward O. WIlson (1929-), Lewis Wolpert (1929), Gerald Holton (1922-),  and  Ray T. Cragun (1976-).

Quote from Professor Susskind:

I don’t believe that the universe was designed by an intelligence. I believe the universe was designed the same way the incredible human being was designed. It certainly looks – and before Darwin it looked like some designer must have….what else could possibly account for the complexity of a human being, the human brain and so forth, and we eventually found out what it was. It was random mutation, a bunch of carbon oxygen and other stuff for that mutation to work on, and a little bit of everything evolved. Some things did better than others. Those things are more populous than the things that didn’t do well and so it was basically randomness, statistics and the laws of physics that led to our own design.

I think the same is true of the universe. oh incidentally, in the process of designing us, it also designed a hell of a lot of stuff not nearly as intelligent as we are in fact most of the stuff out there is not intelligent. And so it wasn’t that there was an upward trend that just naturally led to intelligence, there was just, everything happened. Everything that could happen happened. Some of it’s still happening.
That seems to be the way, or at least according to one version of cosmology, and it’s by now the most popular version of cosmology, is the universe is exceedingly big, just like the bush or the tree of life, it has many different environments. So many different environments that a very small fraction of them are capable of supporting life and that small fraction of them happens to be the small fraction that ‘looks’ [Susskind’s emphasis] as if it were intelligently designed. Incidentally it’s the only fraction we can exist in which to ask the question. So that’s my view of it other people have different views.

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This statement above by Professor Susskind was similar to the statements that the former atheist Antony Flew used to make. Then finally Flew changed his mind.

“Yes, I now think it does . . . almost entirely because of DNA investigations.  What I think the DNA material has done is that it has shown, by the almost unbelievable complexity of the arrangements which are needed to produce (life), that intelligence must have been involved in getting these extraordinarily diverse elements to work together.  It’s the enormous complexity of the number of elements and the enormous subtlety of the ways they work together.  The meeting of these two parts at the right time by chance is simply minute.  It is all a matter of the enormous complexity by which the results were achieved, which looked to me like the work of intelligence.”  Page 74 – 75

I have more articles posted on my blog about the last few years of Antony Flew’s life more than any other website in the world probably. The reason is very simple. I had the opportunity to correspond with Antony Flew back in the middle 90’s and he said that he had the opportunity to listen to several of the cassette tapes that I sent him with messages from Adrian Rogers and he also responded to several of the points I put in my letters that I got from Francis Schaeffer’s materials. The ironic thing was that I purchased the sermon IS THE BIBLE TRUE? originally from the Bellevue Baptist Church Bookstore in 1992 and in the same bookstore in 2008 I bought the book THERE IS A GOD by Antony Flew. Back in 1993 I decided to contact some of the top secular thinkers of our time and I got my initial list of individuals from those scholars that were mentioned in the works of both Francis Schaeffer and Adrian Rogers. Schaeffer had quoted Flew in his book ESCAPE FROM REASON. It was my opinion after reviewing the evidence that Antony Flew was the most influential atheistic philosopher of the 20th century. Below is the finest article I have read on the reasons that Flew changed his mind. 

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Among the world’s atheists there was hardly any with the intellectual stature of Anthony Flew.  He was a contemporary with C.S. Lewis and has been a thorn in the side of theists for more than fifty years.  Quite frankly Anthony Flew’s intellectual stature far transcends the squawking and loud atheists of today like Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett, Richard Dawkins, Lewis Wolpert, Victor Stenger or Sam Harris.  These men couldn’t stand in the same room with Flew in true rigorous discussion.  I will have more on these loud mouths later, but I want to explore the recent book by Anthony Flew entitled There is A God (the A written over a scratched over NO).

First I wish to celebrate the intellect of Anthony Flew because it is to be admired for what path He put himself on that lead to God.   In his youth he adhered to the Socratic philosophy of “following the evidence wherever it leads.”  This is a powerful idea that most atheists would say that they adhere to, but actually fall far short on.  Many just follow the evidence to a pre-decided point and no further.

Anthony Flew was probably one of the most original thinkers in modern times in theological thinking or perhaps a-theological thinking.  In “Theology and Falsification”, God and Philosophy and The Presumption of Atheism he raised the question of how religious statements can make meaningful claims.  He claimed that no discussion of the concept of God can begin until the coherence of the concept of an omnipresent, omniscient and omnipotent spirit had been established.  In The Presumption of Atheism he argued that the burden of proof rests with theism and the atheism is the default position.  It was this reorientation of the frames of reference that eventually changed the whole nature of discussion.  This changed discussion eventually also lead to a revitalized theism as well.

His Youth

Son of a Methodist minister he traveled to Germany, as a child, prior to WWII.  He remembers the banners and signs outside villages proclaiming “Jews not wanted here”.  He saw the march of thousands of brown shirts in Bavaria and saw squads of Waffen-SS in the black uniforms with the skull and crossbones.  This was the face of evil and powerfully spoke to him that such evil seemed to preclude an all loving and all powerful God.

Always an avid reader and with no predilection to anything religious the young Flew read science and philosophy and gradually drew away from his religious upbringing.  He tried to hide it from His parents, but after service in the War in 1946 the word got out to his parents that he had become an atheist.   A brilliant young man, Flew, attended Oxford University in 1942 and graduated with his undergraduate degree in the summer of 1947.  He passed with top honors and arranged to pursue post graduate work in philosophy and metaphysical philosophy.  During his time at Oxford Flew joined the Socratic Club at Oxford which was headed by C.S. Lewis.  He and Lewis locked horns more than once in this club and the Socratic principle of going where the evidence leads became even more important and had a surprising impact in Flew’s a theological thought that even set the stage for his future theism.

What Makes an Atheist?

I wish to inject a truth here about the cause of atheism in our culture and especially in our church culture.  Flew is a bit unusual in his atheism direction, but we can see how the church still failed him in this though he never points out that truth.  He steps all around that truth saying that the church and religion held no interest for him and that very statement holds a profound truth.  In the preface of the book is a statement from Katharine Tait, Bertrand Russell’s daughter, from her book My Father, Bertrand Russell.  She indicated that her father would not even talk to her about religion or Christianity, which Katharine had accepted.  She said: “I could not even talk to him about religion.” Page XX.  She states later: “I would have liked to convince my father that I had found what he had been looking for, the ineffable something he had longed for all his life.  I would have liked to persuade him that the search for God does not have to be in vain.  But it was hopeless.  He had known too many blind Christians, bleak moralists who sucked the joy from life and persecuted their opponents; he would never have been able to see the truth they were hiding.” Page XXI

This is a stunning truth that I have seen in my personal debates with atheists and that I have seen in writings of some atheists.  It is that Christians in a mistaken legalistic, judgmental attitude have more to do with engendering and creating atheism than perhaps the secular humanism and the other faith killing philosophies.  Many atheists are atheists because of some encounter with a Christian somewhere that hammered the life out of them and hid the glory of a Lord who loved them.  We need to look at ourselves and become the person Jesus wants the world to really see.

Anthony Flew’s Early Impact

Flew’s first target in his incisive logic was not theology, but rather an atheistic philosophy called logical positivism.  Logical positivism was introduced by a European group called the Vienna Circle and was popularized by A. J. Ayer in his 1936 book Language, Truth and Logic.  Logical Positivists believed any statement that was truly meaningful were statements that could be only verified through the sense experience or were true simply by their form and the meaning of the words used.  This meant that a statement was only meaningful if it could be verified as true or false by empirical observations or science.   This resulted in only statements that were true or verified were statements used in science, logic or mathematics.

Anthony Flow considered his paper Theology and Falsification to be the final argument that sealed the fate of logical positivism.   In 1990 Flew stated:

“As an undergraduate I had become increasingly frustrated and exasperated by philosophical debates which always seemed to revert to, and never to move forward from, the logical positivism most brilliantly expounded in . . . Language, Truth and Logic. . . The intentions in both these papers (the versions of “Theology and Falsification” first presented in the Socratic Club and then published in University) was the same.  Instead of an arrogant announcement that everything which any believer might choose to say it to be ruled out of consideration a priori as allegedly constituting a violation of the supposedly sacrosanct verification principle – here curiously maintained as a secular revelation – I preferred to offer a more restrained challenge.  Let the believers speak for themselves, individually and severally.”  Page XIV

I will have to say that Flew’s thinking that logical positivism was utterly defeated is a little premature as the “New Atheism” has brought forth the logical positivism redux in all its illogical and arrogant glory.  Even A. J. Ayers has long abandoned logical positivism as anything worth a philosophical breath.  But is appears the new atheists have revived this errant philosophy to use in their tomes of unreason and illogic.

50 Years an Atheist

I would have to say that Anthony Flew, while a thorn in the side of Theology, with his impeccable and incisive logic and honorable ways was actually a worthy opponent as well.  His life was spent in many and varied places and his academic career spanned the continents.  The list of academic organizations at which Flew was a professor is simply astounding.  First was the University of Aberdeen in Scotland, he then became professor of philosophy at the University College of North Staffordshire.  Later he joined the philosophy department of the University of Keele and then moved to the University of Calgary in Alberta Canada.  He joined the University of Reading until the end of 1982, took an early retirement and taught at York University of Toronto.  Half way through that assignment he resigned and joined Bowling Green State University to be a part of the Social Philosophy and Policy Center for the next three years.  Three years later he retired and lives today in Reading.  It was a very long and distinguished career.

Following the Evidence

As I mentioned before the Socratic principle of following the evidence where it leads was a guiding principle of Anthony Flew and to his credit this principle lead him into many changes.  In 1966 Flew published God and Philosophy where he attempted to present a case for Christian theism where he challenged the theists to come up with a better idea.  Since that time many theists have done just that and in “following the evidence” Flew also changed his views.  He later stated: “What do I think about today about the arguments laid out in God and Philosophy?  In a 2004 letter toPhilosophy Now, I observed that I now consider God and Philosophy to be a historic relic (but of course, one cannot follow the evidence where it leads without giving others the chance to show you new perspectives you had not fully considered).” Page 52

Flew first looked at the concept of free will and determinism as propounded by Hume as the free will defense had often been put forth with the atheist “problem of evil” argument.  He tried to maintain a position that even though man could have a will that appeared free, he believed that the free choices were physically caused.  He called this system a compatibilism and later rejected this view by examining the idea of Hume’s causes.  Hume failed to properly understand the freedom of an independent person to make a choice that was not physically dependent on anything else.  Flew defined three notions of identity, one is being an agent, two is having a choice and three is being able to do something other than what we actually do.  This necessitated a distinction between the ideas of movings and motions that can explain the equally fundamental concept of action.  He states: “The nerve of the distinction between the movings involved in an action and the motions that constitute necessitated behavior is that the latter behavior is physically necessitated, whereas the sense, the direction, and the character of actions as such are that, as a matter of logic, they necessarily cannot be physically necessitated (and as a matter of brute face, they are not).  It therefore becomes impossible to maintain the doctrine of universal physically necessitating determinism, the doctrine that says all movement in the universe – including every human bodily movement, the movings as well as motions – area determined by physically necessitating physical causes.” Page 64 – 65   Flew viewed this philosophical change as just as radical as any change he made on the question of God.

Flew was one of the heavy hitters in the atheist world and in 2004 he made the change from atheism to theism, that rocked that world profoundly.  It was not a sudden change, but as presented above, a piece by piece revamping of Flew’s philosophy as he followed the evidence.

Flew had been in many debates with theists over the years and some proved to be profound in his later change.  Terry Miethe of the Oxford presented a “formidable version of the cosmological argument” in a debate with Flew.

Some limited, changing being(s) exist

The present existence of every limited, changing being is caused by another.

There cannot be an infinite regress of caused of being,

Because an infinite regress of finite beings would

Not cause the existence of anything.

Therefore, there is a first Cause of the present existence of these beings.

The first cause must be infinite, necessary eternal and one

The first uncaused Cause is identical with the God of the Judeo – Christian tradition.  Page 70 – 71

This argument by Miethe was based not on the principle of sufficient reason as most cosmological arguments of this type were, but upon the principle of existential causality.  Flew rejected this argument but it later came to him again in the idea of design in the universe and nature.

In 2004 Flew came to the last of his long line of public debates in a symposium at New York University.  In this debate about science and theology Flew, to the surprise of all announced that he had now accepted the existence of God.  This announcement has caused no small stir among those in the atheist world and those in the theist camp as well.  Many, harsh and strong statements have risen especially from those aforementioned loud mouthed, new atheists.  I will not go into these comments now, but suffice it to say they show no tolerance they so famously shout for their own ideas.

Finding the Divine

Anthony Flew in the above debate made the following statement when asked if the “recent work on the origin of life pointed to the activity of a creative Intelligence . . .

“Yes, I now think it does . . . almost entirely because of DNA investigations.  What I think the DNA material has done is that it has shown, by the almost unbelievable complexity of the arrangements which are needed to produce (life), that intelligence must have been involved in getting these extraordinarily diverse elements to work together.  It’s the enormous complexity of the number of elements and the enormous subtlety of the ways they work together.  The meeting of these two parts at the right time by chance is simply minute.  It is all a matter of the enormous complexity by which the results were achieved, which looked to me like the work of intelligence.”  Page 74 – 75

Flew has seen the very same things I and many others have observed to convince him of the divine in all creation and life.  Flew has had many writing debates with Richard Dawkins whom he has had some admiration in his earlier days, but drew, and continues to draw distinctions in Dawkin’s selfish-gene school of thought.  He says:

“In my book Darwinian Evolution, I pointed out that natural selection dies not positively produce anything.  It only eliminates, or tends to eliminate, whatever is not competitive.  A variation does not need to bestow any actual competitive advantage in order to avoid elimination; it is sufficient that is does not burden its owner with any competitive disadvantage.  To choose a rather silly illustration, suppose I have useless wings tucked away under my suit coat, wings that are too weak to lift my frame off the ground.  Useless as they are, these wings to not enable me to escape predators or gather food.  But as long as they don’t make me more vulnerable to predators, I will probably survive to reproduce and pass on my wings to my descendants. Darwin’s mistake in drawing too positive an inference with his suggestion that natural selection produces something was perhaps due to his employment of the expressions ‘natural selection’ or ‘survival of the fittest’ rather than his own ultimately preferred alternative, ‘natural preservation.’” Page 78 – 79

He goes on and continues to skewer Dawkins by saying: “Richard Dawkin’s The Selfish Gene was a major exercise in popular mystification.” Page 79   He also states that: “Dawkins on the other hand, labored to discount or depreciate the upshot of fifty or more years’ work in genetics – the discovery that the observable traits of organisms are for the most part conditioned by the interactions of many genes, while most genes have manifold effects on many such traits.  For Dawkins, the main means for producing human behavior is to attribute to genes characteristics that can significantly be attributed only to persons. Then after insisting that we are all the choiceless creatures of our genes, he infers that we cannot help but share the unlovely personal characteristics of those all-controlling monads.”  Page 79 – 80

Dawkin’s premise is that we are merely robots created by our genes to house them and spread them and we are totally subject to the physical laws of genetics.  Flew makes a final deadly thrust at Dawkins when he says: “If any of this were true, it would be no use to go on, as Dawkins does, to preach: ‘Let us try to teach generosity and altruism, because we are born selfish.’ No eloquence can move programmed robots.  But in fact none if it is true – or even faintly sensible.  Genes, as we have seen, do not and cannot necessitate our conduct. Nor are they capable of the calculation and understanding required to plot a course of either ruthless selfishness or sacrificial compassion.”  Page 80

Anthony Flew also takes aim at dogmatic atheism and it’s misapplication of science when the atheists let preconceived theories shape the way they see the evidence rather than letting the evidence shape their theories. About this he says: “And in this, it seems to me, lies the peculiar danger, the endemic evil, of dogmatic atheism.  Take such utterances as ‘We should not ask for an explanation of how it is that the world exists; it is here and that is all’ or ‘Since we cannot accept a transcendent source of life, we choose to believe the impossible: that life arose spontaneously by chance from matter’, or ‘The laws of physics are ‘lawless laws’ that arise from the void – end of discussion.’  They look at first sight like rational arguments that have special authority because they have a no-nonsense air about them.  Of course, this is no more sign that they are either rational or arguments.” Page 86 – 87

He also takes umbrage at the continuing effort of dogmatic atheism and militant evolutionists as couching every argument as their “science” confronting our “philosophy, religion and non-science.      He states: “You might ask how I, a philosopher, could speak to issues treated by scientists. The best way to answer this is with another question.  Are we engaging in science or philosophy here?  When you study the interaction of two physical bodies, for instance, two subatomic particles, you are engaged in science.  When you ask how it is that those subatomic particles – oranything physical – could exist and why, you are engaged in philosophy.  When you draw philosophical conclusions from scientific data, then you are thinking as a philosopher.” Page 89

Flew says that the three domains of scientific inquiry that he as a philosopher feels are especially important are; how did the laws of nature come to be, how did life originate from non-life, and how did the universe (all that is physical) come into being and why.  It is in this domain that Flew is so devastating to the pretend philosophers of evolution and atheism.

He goes on to point out that the God Aristotle believe in as presented in David Conway’s book The Recovery of Wisdom: From Here to Antiquity in Quest of Sophia.  Conway says and Flew agrees: “In sum, to the Being whom he considered to be the explanation of the world and its broad form, Aristotle ascribed the following attributes: immutability, immateriality,   omnipotence, omniscience, oneness or indivisibility, perfect goodness and necessary existence.  There is an impressive correspondence between this set of attributes and those traditionally ascribed to God within the Judaeo-Christian tradition.  It is one that fully justifies us in viewing Aristotle as having had the same Divine Being in mind as the cause of the world that is the object of worship of these two religions.”

Anthony Flew had correctly perceived that the universe and life itself had to have a vast intelligent designer behind it as it was impossible to have been self caused or uncaused.  He looks further into the laws of the universe and the concept of the first cause of all we see.  He quotes the physicist Paul Davies: “in his Templeton address, Paul Davies makes the point that ‘science can proceed only if the scientist adopts an essentially theological worldview.’  Nobody asks where the laws of physics come from, but ‘even the most atheistic scientist accepts as an act of faith the existence of a lawlike order in nature that is at least in part incomprehensible to us.” Page 107

Davies in again quoted: “Science is based on the assumption that the universe is thoroughly rational and logical at all levels.’ Writes Paul Davies, arguably the most influential contemporary expositor of modern science. ‘Atheists claim that the laws (of nature) exist reasonlessly and that the universe is absurd.  As a scientist, I find this hard to accept.  There must be an unchanging rational ground in which the logical, orderly nature of the universe is rooted.” Page 111

Flew examines the finely tuned universe or the idea of a man centered universe called the anthropic universe.  It appears that the constants in the universe from the cosmic to the quantum are all finely tuned to cause life to occur.  It appears that the universe was waiting for us.  Flew says: “In his book Infinite Minds, John Leslie, a leading anthropic theorist, argues that the fine tuning is best explained by divine design.  He says that he is impressed not by particular arguments for instances of fine tuning, but by the fact that these arguments exist in such profusion. ‘If, then, there were aspects of nature’s workings that appeared every fortunate and also entirely fundamental,’ he writes, ‘then there might well be seen as evidence specially favoring belief in God.” Page 115

Many physicists have explored the idea of ultra high density physics of multi-verses in hyper dimensions that are truly speculative and very hard to prove. In fact another universe outside of our universe would by our technology and any technology we can envision impossible to examine  Very few physicists actually hold to this multi-verse idea with the exception of those who do not want to believe in a intelligent creator.  Physicist Davies weighs in again: “It is trivially true that, in an infinite universe, anything that can happen will happen.’ But this is not an explanation at all.  If we are trying to understand why the universe if bio-friendly, we are not helped by being told that all possible universes exist. ‘Like a blunderbuss, it explains everything and nothing.”  Page 118   Physicist Richard Swineburne rejects the multi-verse and says: “It is crazy to postulate a trillion (causally unconnected) universes to explain the features of one universe, when postulating one entity (God) will do the job.”  Page 119   Flew likens the argument to a child coming to his teacher and saying “The dog ate my homework.”  When the teacher indicates unbelief the child changes his story to” “A whole pack of dogs ate my homework.”  It is an answer waiting for a question as it will not answer any current questions.

Anthony Flew, as mentioned before also saw the idea of biological life and the complex coding necessary for that life to be an insurmountable problem with atheism and evolution.  He perceived through is incisive logic that the age of the universe and the current theories of abiogenesis left too little time for life to happen in the random way that it had to occur.  He states: “A far more important consideration is the philosophical challenge facing origin-of-life studies.  Most studies on the origin of life are carried out by scientists who rarely attend to the philosophical dimension of their findings.  Philosophers, on the other hand, have said little on the nature and origin of life.  The philosophical question that has not been answered in origin-of- life studies is this: How can a universe of mindless matter produce beings with intrinsic ends, self-replication capabilities, and ‘coded chemistry’?  Here we are not dealing with biology, but an entirely different category of problem.”  Page 124   Flew understood the deep issues.  It is not what the current abiogenesis study is and how maybe a few amino acids can be formed in a test tube, but why does life depend on the hyper complex code even at all and what does it point out in the big picture of causality. Most evolutionists are utterly lost in the details of this missing link or that whale vestigial foot or whatever they can club the creationist over the head with.  They never raise their head like Flew did, and look at the big picture this code points too. One of the issues Flew raises is that life is teleological in nature, it posses intrinsic ends, goals and purposes.  We are self aware, we think, we plan, we love, we are alive in a profound teleological way.  The very origin of this life presents profound problems for the scientist who doesn’t understand the philosophy inherent in his work.  Flew says: “The origin of self-reproduction is a second key problem.  Distinguished philosopher John Haldane notes that origin-of-life theories ‘do not provide sufficient explanation, since they presuppose the existence at an early stage of self-reproduction, and it has not been shown that this can arise by natural means from a material base.”  Page 125   It is the profound problem of the biological scientist who wants to adhere to the evolutionist philosophy.  If you cannot start out life by abiogenesis then the rest tends to fall down and become irrelevant.  George Wald a Nobel Prize winning physiologist once said: “we choose to believe the impossible: that life arose spontaneously by chance.”  But years later he changed his belief to a preexisting mind.  He said: “How is it that, with so many other apparent options, we are in a universe that possesses just that peculiar nexus of properties that breeds life?  It has occurred to me lately – I must confess with some shock at first to my scientific sensibilities – that both questions might be brought into some degree of congruence.  This is with the assumption that mind, rather than emerging as a late outgrowth in the evolution of life, has existed always as the matrix, the source and condition of physical reality – that the stuff of which physical reality is constructed is mind-stuff.  It is mind that has composed a physical universe that breeds life, and so eventually evolves creature that know and create: science, art and technology making creatures.”  Page 131 – 132.

Flew in his paper The Presumption of Atheism argued that we had to take the universe and its most fundamental laws as ultimate.  But you see this is the materialist trap, if all is material and there can be nothing that is not material then God a priori doesn’t exist.  It blocks out the possibility of something that can transcend that universe.  The idea of the infinite and unending universe was the cosmology of Flew’s early years and that view allowed plenty of time and energy for the atheistic views.  But is has been fairly well documented that the universe had a beginning and this had a profound impact on Antony Flew.  It reminded him of the first sentence in the Bible: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”  He stated that while the universe was assumed to be eternal and unending then it was the ultimate by brute fact.  But a beginning postulated another something the caused the beginning.  This presented a problem.  Cosmologist were also disturbed by this problem and presented many ideas that would allow them to retain their nontheist status quo.  We have previously looked at those attempts.  But suffice it to know that if one universe requires an explanation for a beginning then multiverses will also require multiple explanations as well.  One of the troubles is that science has a severe problem with the cause of the universe.  Swineburne arguing about the Humean idea of a beginningless series of nonnecessary existent beings, being the sufficient cause for the universe as a whole said: “The whole infinite series will have no explanation at all, for there will be no causes of members of the series lying outside the series.  In that case, the existence of the universe over infinite time will be an inexplicable brute fact. There will be an explanation (in terms of laws) of why, once existent, it continues to exist.  But what will be inexplicable is it existence at all throughout infinite time.  The existence of a complex physical universe over finite or infinite time is something ‘too big’ for science to explain.”  Page 141  So we see that the, now known, finite universe is not the brute fact and ultimate thing and it is also too big for science to explain and certainly they cannot explain away that nothing never creates something.

Anthony Flew in his publications argued that the concept of God was not coherent because it presupposed the idea of an incorporeal omnipresent being.  Again this is the materialist trap and Flew finally found his way out.  Theologians were busy with their answers.  They stated that a body is necessary for being to exist; the condition for a being to be an agent is to be simply capable of intentional action.  God is spoken as being a personal being; this is to talk of Him as an agent to intentional action.

God also dwelling outside of space and time was entirely consistent with the theory of special relativity.  Brian Leftow in his book Time and Eternity showed that God could be transcendent of the universe and went on to explore what He would be like.  It is these studies that showed Flew that an incorporeal spirit could exist and have an impact in our world.  He says: “At the very least, the studies and Tracy and Leftow show that idea of an omnipresent Spirit is not intrinsically incoherent if we see such a Spirit as an agent outside space and time that uniquely executed His intentions in the spatio-temporal continuum. The question of whether such a Spirit exists, as we have seen, lies at the heart of the arguments for God’s existence.”  Page 154

Flew made the transition from atheist to theist.  It was a path of simply following the evidence to where it leads.  He says: “Science qua science cannot furnish an argument for God’s existence.  But the three items of evidence we have considered in this volume – the laws nature, life with its teleological organization, and the existence of the universe – can only be explained in the light of an Intelligence that explains both its own existence and that of the world.  Such a discovery of the Divine does not come through experiments and equations, but through the understanding of the structures they unveil and map.”  Page 155   Flew was willing to learn more and connect with others in their thoughts and was open to new ideas.   He now believes in an infinitely intelligent mind that created the universe.  He knows many who have claimed to have contacted that mind and remains hopeful that that mind may contact him.  His final statement is: “I have not (contacted the mind) yet.  But who knows what could happen next?  Someday I might hear a Voice that says, ‘Can you hear me now?”

I have no doubt that Anthony Flew with his humility will soon hear that wonderful voice of the Lord who loves him.

Evan Wiggs

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Robert Jastrow on God and the Big Bang

 

 

Published on Jun 26, 2012

 

Henry “Fritz” Schaefer comments on a popular quote made by scientist Robert Jastrow. Jastrow (who Carl Sagan was too scared to debate) is an agnostic but believes that the Big Bang leaves room for the existence of God.

 

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Discussion (3 of 3): Antony Flew, N.T. Wright, and Gary Habermas

 

 

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William Lane Craig vs Peter Atkins: “Does God Exist?”, University of Manchester, October 2011

 

 

Published on Apr 10, 2012

 

This debate on “Does God Exist?” took place in front of a capacity audience at the University of Manchester (including an overspill room). It was recorded on Wednesday 26th October 2011 as part of the UK Reasonable Faith Tour with William Lane Craig.

William Lane Craig is Research Professor of Philosophy at Talbot School of Theology, La Mirada, California and a leading philosopher of religion. Peter Atkins is former Professor of Chemistry at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Lincoln College.

The debate was chaired by Christopher Whitehead, Head of Chemistry School at the University. Post-debate discussion was moderated by Peter S Williams, Philosopher in Residence at the Damaris Trust, UK.

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Making Sense of Faith and Science

Uploaded on May 16, 2008

Dr. H. Fritz Schaefer confronts the assertion that one cannot believe in God and be a credible scientist. He explains that the theistic world view of Bacon, Kepler, Pascal, Boyle, Newton, Faraday and Maxwell was instrumental in the rise of modern science itself. Presented as part of the Let There be Light series. Series: Let There Be Light [5/2003] [Humanities] [Show ID: 7338]

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FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 29 W.H. Thorpe and “The Search for an Adequate World-View: A Question of Method” (Feature on artist Jeff Koons)

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 28 Woody Allen and “The Mannishness of Man” (Feature on artist Ryan Gander)

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 27 Jurgen Habermas (Featured artist is Hiroshi Sugimoto)

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 26 Bettina Aptheker (Featured artist is Krzysztof Wodiczko)

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 25 BOB DYLAN (Part C) Francis Schaeffer comments on Bob Dylan’s song “Ballad of a Thin Man” and the disconnect between the young generation of the 60’s and their parents’ generation (Feature on artist Fred Wilson)

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 24 BOB DYLAN (Part B) Francis Schaeffer comments on Bob Dylan’s words from HIGHWAY 61 REVISITED!! (Feature on artist Susan Rothenberg)

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 23 BOB DYLAN (Part A) (Feature on artist Josiah McElheny)Francis Schaeffer on the proper place of rebellion with comments by Bob Dylan and Samuel Rutherford

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 22 “The School of Athens by Raphael” (Feature on the artist Sally Mann)

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 21 William B. Provine (Feature on artist Andrea Zittel)

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 20 Woody Allen and Materialistic Humanism: The World-View of Our Era (Feature on artist Ida Applebroog)

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 19 Movie Director Luis Bunuel (Feature on artist Oliver Herring)

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 18 “Michelangelo’s DAVID is the statement of what humanistic man saw himself as being tomorrow” (Feature on artist Paul McCarthy)

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 17 Francis Schaeffer discusses quotes of Andy Warhol from “The Observer June 12, 1966″ Part C (Feature on artist David Hockney plus many pictures of Warhol with famous friends)

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 16 Francis Schaeffer discusses quotes of Andy Warhol from “The Observer June 12, 1966″ Part B (Feature on artist James Rosenquist plus many pictures of Warhol with famous friends)

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 15 Francis Schaeffer discusses quotes of Andy Warhol from “The Observer June 12, 1966″ Part A (Feature on artist Robert Indiana plus many pictures of Warhol with famous friends)

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 14 David Friedrich Strauss (Feature on artist Roni Horn )

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 13 Jacob Bronowski and Materialistic Humanism: The World-View of Our Era (Feature on artist Ellen Gallagher )

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 12 H.J.Blackham and Materialistic Humanism: The World-View of Our Era (Feature on artist Arturo Herrera)

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 11 Thomas Aquinas and his Effect on Art and HOW SHOULD WE THEN LIVE? Episode 2: THE MIDDLES AGES (Feature on artist Tony Oursler )

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 10 David Douglas Duncan (Feature on artist Georges Rouault )

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 9 Jasper Johns (Feature on artist Cai Guo-Qiang )

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 8 “The Last Year at Marienbad” by Alain Resnais (Feature on artist Richard Tuttle and his return to the faith of his youth)

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 7 Jean Paul Sartre (Feature on artist David Hooker )

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 6 The Adoration of the Lamb by Jan Van Eyck which was saved by MONUMENT MEN IN WW2 (Feature on artist Makoto Fujimura)

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 5 John Cage (Feature on artist Gerhard Richter)

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 4 ( Schaeffer and H.R. Rookmaaker worked together well!!! (Feature on artist Mike Kelley Part B )

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 3 PAUL GAUGUIN’S 3 QUESTIONS: “Where do we come from? What art we? Where are we going? and his conclusion was a suicide attempt” (Feature on artist Mike Kelley Part A)

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 2 “A look at how modern art was born by discussing Monet, Renoir, Pissaro, Sisley, Degas,Cezanne, Van Gogh, Gauguin, Seurat, and Picasso” (Feature on artist Peter Howson)

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 1 HOW SHOULD WE THEN LIVE? “The Roman Age” (Feature on artist Tracey Emin)

_________________

God and Carpeting: The Theology of Woody Allen Details Written by David M. of the group “Jews for Jesus”

______________________

God and Carpeting: The Theology of Woody Allen Details Written by David M. of the group “Jews for Jesus”

Woody Allen about meaning and truth of life on Earth

Dick & Woody get semi-metaphysical

Woody Allen interview 1971 PART 2/4

Woody Allen interview 1971 PART 1/4

 

God and Carpeting: The Theology of Woody Allen
Details Written by David M.

A red-haired boy sits next to his mother in the psychiatrist’s office. She is describing her son’s problems and expressing her disappointment in him. Why is he always depressed? Why can’t he be like other boys his age? The doctor turns to the boy and asks why he is depressed. In a hopeless daze the boy replies, The universe is expanding, and if the universe is everything…and if it’s expanding…someday it will break apart and that’s the end of everything…what’s the point?”

His mother leans over, slaps the kid and scolds: “What is that your business!”

This scene from Annie Hall typifies Woody Allen’s quest for understanding! Allen touches on various topics and themes in all his cinematic works, but three subjects continually resurface: the existence of God, the fear of death and the nature of morality. These are all Jewish questions or at least theological issues. Woody Allen is a seeker who wants answers to the Ultimate Questions. His movie characters differ, yet they are all, in some way, asking these questions he wants answered. They are all “Woody Allens” wrestling with the same issues. He explains:

Maybe it’s because I’m depressed so often that I’m drawn to writers like Kafka, Dostoevski and to a filmmaker like Bergman. I think I have all the symptoms and problems that their characters are occupied with: an obsession with death, an obsession with God or the lack of God, the question of why we are here. Almost all of my work is autobiographical—exaggerated but true.1

But Woody Allen does not allow himself to dwell too long on these universal problems. The mother’s response to her red-haired son’s angst is typical of the comedic lid the filmmaker presses over his depressing outlook to close the issue. True, Woody Allen has made his mark by asking big questions. But it is the absence of satisfactory answers to those questions that causes much of the angst—and humor—we see on the screen. Off screen we see little difference.

Allen’s (authorized) biography, published in 1991, sheds some light on his life and times. Woody Allen, whose given name was Allan Konigsberg, was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. Allen describes his Jewish family and neighborhood as being from “the heart of the old world, their values are God and carpeting.”2 While he did not embrace the religion of his youth, his Jewishness is ever present in his characters, plots and dialogue. Jewish thought is intrinsic to his life and work.

One can see this in the 1977 film Annie Hall, where Allen’s character, Alvy, is put in contrast to his Midwestern, gentile girlfriend. In one scene he is visiting Annie’s parents. Her grandmother stares at him, picturing him as a stereotypical Chasidic Jew with side locks, black hat and a long coat. The screen splits as Alvy imagines his family on the right and hers on the left. Her parents ask what his parents will be doing for “the holidays”:
“We fast, to atone for our sins,” his mother explains.

Annie’s mother is confused. “What sins? I don’t understand.”

Alvy’s father responds with a shrug: “To tell you the truth, neither do we.”

Nothing worth knowing can be understood by the mind.3

Allen suggests that the greatest thinkers in history died knowing no more than he does now. He often uses humor to poke fun at pretentious intellectuals who spout textbook answers. In another Annie Hall scene Alvy is standing in line at a movie theater. The man behind him is trying to impress his date. Alvy is annoyed, and when the man begins commenting on pop philosopher Marshall McLuhan, Alvy turns and informs him that he knows nothing about McLuhan. To prove his point, he escorts McLuhan himself into the scene. The philosopher deftly puts the object of Alvy/Allen’s scorn (a Columbia University professor of TV, media and film) in his place. Alvy steps out of character and, as Woody Allen, he looks into the camera and sighs: “Boy, if life were only like this.…”

Allen’s films do not merely expose and poke fun at pseudo-intellectuals; they point out that no school of human thought can provide ultimate solutions. Allen’s lack of faith in the world’s systems generates some great one-liners:
He tells how he was caught cheating on a college metaphysics exam: “I was looking into the soul of the boy sitting next to me.”4

He also pokes fun at existentialism, commenting on a course he took in the subject: “I didn’t know any of the answers so I left it all blank. I got a hundred.”5

His first wife studied philosophy in college: “She used to prove that I didn’t exist.”6

Psychology also figures into Allen’s scripts—many of his characters are seeing a therapist.

In Sleeper, Allen’s character wakes up 200 years in the future, where he quickly discovers that the future holds the same old problems as ever. Lamenting the wasted years, he remarks:

“My analyst was a strict Freudian. If I had been going all this time I’d probably almost be cured by now.”7

In another film he describes the unproductive nature of his own therapy:

“My analyst got so frustrated he put in a salad bar.”8

So much for faith in therapy! And when it comes to science, Allen asks and answers the questions, “Can a human soul be glimpsed through a microscope? Maybe—but you’d definitely need one of those very good ones with two eyepieces.”9

The political process as a means of change is also shrugged off:

“Have you ever taken a serious political stand on anything?” he is asked.
“Sure,” he responds, “for twenty-four hours once I refused to eat grapes.”10

And, finally, it is the questions of the human soul—its mortality and morality—that seem really to preoccupy the filmmaker.

I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it through not dying.11

In his early writings fear of death provided a great platform for a punch line:

“It’s not that I’m afraid to die, I just don’t want to be there when it happens.”12
“It is impossible to experience one’s own death objectively and still carry a tune.”13

“Death is one of the few things that can be done as easily lying down.”14

“What is it about death that bothers me so much? Probably the hours.”15

Allen’s concern for his own mortality is ever present in his writings as well as his filmmaking. In one short story he dreams he is Socrates in ancient Greece, about to be executed for crimes against the state. His friend tries to calm his fear.

Friend: “What about all that talk about death being the same as sleep?”
Woody: “Yes, but the difference is that when you’re dead and somebody yells, ‘Everybody up, it’s morning,’ it’s very hard to find your slippers.”16

The absurdity of Allen’s humor helps to cushion the seriousness of the subject. Could it be that his comments are so clever and funny that the laughter drowns out the genuine note of anxiety over those issues? In his later films Allen began dealing with death more realistically:
In Hannah and Her Sisters his character Mickey Sacks is tested for a serious medical problem. He agonizes over the possible results only to learn they are negative. Mickey is elated—he leaves the office literally jumping for joy. Yet the next scene shows him depressed again. He realizes that the encouraging test results are but a postponement of death which is still inevitable. In despair, he attempts suicide. Failing that, he goes to a movie theater. The Marx Brothers’ film Duck Soup, an old favorite of his, is playing. The film provides a temporary escape; it even cheers him. His immediate answer to depression is that one should enjoy life while one can. However, that answer apparently did not satisfy Woody Allen, the writer, as Hannah and Her Sisters is one of the few films in which Allen provides a happy ending. Later films raise the same concerns—and usually conclude on a less optimistic note.
To you I’m an atheist, to God I’m the loyal opposition.17

Allen’s fear of death is inextricably linked to his uncertainty about the existence of God. He ponders in an early essay:

“Did matter begin with an explosion or by the word of God? And if by the latter, could He not have begun it just two weeks earlier to take advantage of some of the warmer weather?”18

Again, glibness is his antidote to grappling with the hard questions. The eternal is brought down to the level of the earthly, and therefore minimized.

Yet, Allen never fully embraces the position of atheist. Once, when asked if he believed in God, he replied with a typical Allenesque formula:

“I’m what you’d call a teleological, existential atheist—I believe that there’s an intelligence to the universe, with the exception of certain parts of New Jersey.”19

He ponders spiritual matters, but a punch line always yanks the focus to the sublime, then to the ridiculous. Other examples include:

“I keep wondering if there is an afterlife, and if there is, will they be able to break a twenty?”20
“There is no question that there is an unseen world. The problem is, how far is it from Midtown and how late is it open?”21

Woody Allen is, in the words of his biographer, “a reluctant [he hopes there is a God] but pessimistic [he doubts there is] agnostic who wishes he had been born with religious faith [not to be confused with sectarian belief] and who believes that even if God is absent, it is important to lead an honest and responsible life.”22

Never kill a man, especially if it means taking his life.23

The existence of God is an issue which would not only answer the questions of death and an afterlife, but also the problem of how we ought to live now. Two of Allen’s films which best deal with this issue were made 14 years apart: the 1975 cinematic spoof on the Napoleonic wars and Russian novels, Love and Death, and the 1989 critically acclaimed piece, Crimes and Misdemeanors.

Love and Death was the last of his all-out, zany comedies and the beginning of his on-screen grappling with issues of God and morality. In it Allen plays the part of Boris who denies the existence of God but would truly like to have real faith.

“If I could only see a miracle,” Boris argues, “a burning bush, the seas part.…Uncle Sasha pick up a check.” Or, “If only God would give me some sign. If He would just speak to me once, anything, one sentence, two words. If He would just cough.”

Boris is often debating with his wife Sonia on these important issues of life:

Boris: What if there is no God?…What if we’re just a bunch of absurd people who are running around with no rhyme or reason?
Sonia: But if there is no God, then life has no meaning. Why go on living? Why not just commit suicide?

Boris: Well, let’s not get hysterical! I could be wrong. I’d hate to blow my brains out and then read in the papers they found something!

Later in the film Boris attempts to assassinate Napoleon. Standing over the French emperor, he prepares to shoot. But his conscience (not to mention his cowardice) prevents him from pulling the trigger. His previous philosophical ramblings come to a halt when the rubber meets the road. Boris concludes that murder is morally wrong. There are universal standards and there is even a reason to act morally.

The film ends with Boris being executed for a crime he did not commit. Could it be that Woody Allen was punishing his own character for believing, even momentarily, that there are indeed moral standards and even accountability?

After all, the logical conclusion in following such a path would be to acknowledge the existence of God. Keeping his own role of skeptic intact, Allen gives the plot a twist. In the jail cell his character is visited by “an angel of God” who promises Boris that he will be released. Since the angel’s word proves to be false, Boris again has a reason to be cynical. But in his final scene he speaks optimistically (after all, this is a comedy),

“Death is not really an end; think of it as an effective way to cut down on your expenses.”

As always, Allen’s one-liners are successful in reducing or obscuring the seriousness of the subject matter.

In Crimes and Misdemeanors Woody Allen tackles the issue of morality on a much more serious level. Wealthy ophthalmologist Judah Rosenthal has been having an extramarital affair for two years. When he attempts to end his illicit relationship, his mistress threatens to tell his wife. When backed into an impossible corner and offered an easy way out, Judah finds himself thinking the unthinkable.

Judah’s moral confusion is presented against a backdrop of the religion of his youth. Though he has long since rejected the Jewish religion, he is continually confronted with memories that activate his conscience. He remembers the words of his childhood rabbi:
“The eyes of God are on us always.”

Judah later speaks with another rabbi, a contemporary of his. The rabbi remarks on their contrasting worldviews:

“You see it [the world] as harsh and empty of values and pitiless. And I couldn’t go on living if I didn’t feel with all my heart a moral structure with real meaning and forgiveness and some kind of higher power and a reason to live. Otherwise there is no basis to know how to live.”

These words are ultimately pushed aside, as Judah succumbs to the simple solution of hiring a hit-man to murder his demanding lady in waiting. After the crime, Judah experiences gut-wrenching guilt. Judah Rosenthal finds the case for morality so strong that after the murder he blurts out:
“Without God, life is a cesspool!”

His conscience pushes him to great despair as, again, he examines the situation from a past vantage point. He envisions a Passover seder from his childhood. The conversation becomes a family debate over the importance of the celebration. Some of the relatives don’t believe in God and consider the ritual a foolish waste of time. The head of the extended family stoutly defends his faith, saying, “If necessary, I will always choose God over truth.”

Perhaps this is why Judah rejected his religion—he could not see faith as anything other than some sort of noble delusion for those who refuse to accept life’s ugly truths. As Judah continues to dwell on his crime, he has another vision in which his rabbi friend challenges him with the question: “You don’t think God sees?”

“God is a luxury I can’t afford,” Judah replies. There is a final ring to the statement as Judah decides to put the entire incident behind him.

Judah almost turns himself in; however, the price is too high and so he chooses denial, the most common escape. “In reality,” he says in the last scene, “we rationalize, we deny or else we couldn’t go on living.”

Another character, Professor Levy, speaks on morality in one of the film’s subplots. Levy is an aging philosopher much admired by the character played by Woody Allen, a filmmaker. The filmmaker is planning a documentary based on Levy’s life, and we first see the professor on videotape, discussing the paradox of the ancient Israelites:

“They created a God who cares but who also demands that you behave morally. This God asks Abraham to sacrifice his son, who is beloved to him.…After 5,000 years we have not succeeded to create a really and entirely loving image of God.”

Levy eventually commits suicide. Despite his great learning, his final note discloses nothing more than the obvious: “I’ve gone out the window.”

Professor Levy’s suicide leaves Allen’s character stunned. Still, his humor ameliorates the situation as the filmmaker protests,

“When I grew up in Brooklyn, nobody committed suicide; everyone was too unhappy.”

The final comment on Levy’s suicide is a surprising departure from Allen’s security blanket of humor:

“No matter how elaborate a philosophical system you work out, in the end it’s gotta be incomplete.”

Remember, all of the dialogue is written by Woody Allen. Though his own character supplies comic relief to this dark film, his conclusions are just as bleak. Everyone is guilty of something whether it’s considered a crime or a misdemeanor.

Yet, Allen’s theological questions rarely address the nature of that guilt. The word “sin” is reserved for the grossest offenses—the ones that make the evening news—or would, if they were discovered. Judah Rosenthal’s crime is easily recognizable as sin, while various other infidelities and compromises are mere misdemeanors.

Sin against God is not something Allen appears to take seriously in any of his films. When evangelist Billy Graham was a guest on one of Allen’s 1960s television specials, the comedian was asked (not by Graham) to name his greatest sin. He responded:

“I once had impure thoughts about Art Linkletter.”24

However, when he distances himself from the personal nature of sin and looks to crimes or sins against humanity, Allen speaks with a passion.

In Hannah and Her Sisters the viewer is introduced to the character of Frederick, an angry, isolated artist who is disgusted with the conditions of the world. Of Auschwitz, Frederick remarks to his girlfriend:

“The real question is: ‘Given what people are, why doesn’t it happen more often?’ Of course, it does, in subtler forms.…”

In Allen’s theology, all have fallen short to a greater or lesser degree, but ironically, his view of human imperfection never appears in the same discussion as his thoughts about God.

He does admit to being disconnected with the universe:

“I am two with nature.”25

But he doesn’t mention a connection with a personal God because he doesn’t see a correlation between human failures and the question of connectedness to God.

While Allen is a unique thinker, he seems to be pedestrian when it comes to wrestling with problems of immorality and even inhumanity. While he calls the existence of God into question, he does not deal with our responsibility in acknowledging God if he does exist.

It is simple to analyze sin on a human level. The more people get hurt, the bigger the sin. But the biblical perspective is quite different: Any and all sin causes separation from God. One cannot view such a cosmic separation as large or small based on degrees of sin. Ironically, one of Allen’s short stories underscores the foolishness of comparison degrees of sin:

“Astronomers talk of an inhabited planet named Quelm, so distant from earth that a man traveling at the speed of light would take six million years to get there, although they are planning a new express route that will cut two hours off the trip.”26

The biblical perspective of separation from God is similar. Having “better morals” than the drug pusher, the rapist or the ax murderer makes a big difference—in our society. We should all strive to be the best people we can be, if only to improve the overall quality of life. But in terms of a relationship with God, doing the best one can is like being two hours closer to Quelm. God is so removed from any unrighteousness that the difference between “a little unrighteous” and a lot is irrelevant.

The question his films and essays never ask is: Could being alienated from God be the root cause of our alienation from one another…and even our alienation from our own selves?

“It’s hard to get your heart and your head to agree in life. In my case they’re not even friendly.”27

Woody Allen has a unique way of expressing the uneasy terms on which many people find their heads and their hearts. Perhaps that is why he has received 14 Academy Award nominations. Allen will shoot a scene as many as twenty times, hoping to capture the actors and scenery perfectly. His biographer says “he doesn’t like to go to the next thing until what he’s working on is perfect—a process that guarantees self-defeat.”28

Is filmmaking Woody Allen’s escape from the world at large? His biographer notes, “He assigns himself mental tasks throughout the day with the intent that not a moment will pass without his mind being occupied and therefore insulated from the dilemma of eschatology.”29

It is a continual process—writing takes his mind off of the ultimate questions, yet the characters he creates are always obsessed with those very same questions. Allen determines their fate, occasionally handing out a happy ending. And he seems painfully aware that he will have little to say about the ending of his own script.

There is much to be appreciated and enjoyed in Woody Allen’s humor, but it also seems as if he uses jokes to avoid taking the possibility of God’s existence very seriously. Maybe Woody Allen is afraid to find that God doesn’t exist, or on the other hand maybe he’s afraid to find that he does. In either case, he seems to need to add a comic edge to questions about God to prove that he is not wholehearted in his hope for answers.
Will Woody Allen tackle the problem of his own halfhearted search for God in a serious way in some future film or essay? Maybe, but if the Bible can be believed, it’s an issue that God has already dealt with. The prophet Jeremiah quotes the Creator as saying: “You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.” (Jer. 29:13)

Endnotes
1.Eric Lax, Woody Allen, (New York: Knopf Publishing, 1991), p. 179.
2.Ibid., p. 166.
3. Manhattan, 1979.
4.Lax, p. 141.
5. Stardust Memories, 1980.
6.Lax, p. 150.
7. Sleeper, 1973.
8. Hannah and Her Sisters, 1986.
9.Woody Allen, “My Speech to the Graduates,” Side Effects, (New York: Random House Publ., 1980), p. 82.
10. Sleeper.
11.Lax, p. 183.
12.Woody Allen, “Death (A Play),” Without Feathers, (New York: Random House Publ., 1975), p. 106.
13.Woody Allen, “My Philosophy,” Getting Even, (New York: Warner Books, 1971), p. 25.
14.Allen, “Early Essays,” Without Feathers, p. 108.
15.Allen, “Selections From the Allen Notebook,” Without Feathers, p. 10.
16.Allen, “My Apology,” Side Effects, p. 54.
17.Stardust Memories.
18.Allen, “My Speech to the Graduates,” Side Effects, p. 82.
19.Sleeper.
20.Allen, “Selections From the Allen Notebook,” Without Feathers, p. 8.
21.Allen, “Examining Psychic Phenomena,” Without Feathers, p. 11.
22.Lax, p. 41.
23. Love and Death, 1975.
24.Lax, p. 132.
25.Ibid., p. 39.
26.Allen, “Fabulous Tales and Mythical Beasts,” Without Feathers, p. 194.
27. Crimes and Misdemeanors, 1989.
28.Lax, p. 322.
29.Ibid., p. 183.

Dick & Woody talk about food & health

Woody Allen vs William Buckley – FUNNY

Dick & Woody discuss particle physics

This is not my list:

 

10

Small Time Crooks (2000) trailer

Small Time Crooks 10

9

7
Zelig
1983

Zelig

6

Sleeper
1973

Sleeper (1973) – Trailer

Take the Money and Run
1969

WOODY ALLEN TAKE THE MONEY AND RUN CELLO MARCHING BAND SCENE

Bananas
1971
Bananas (1971) – Trailer

2

Play it Again, Sam
1972

Play It Again, Sam trailer

1

Annie Hall
1977

Annie Hall – Movie Trailer

Related posts:

I love the movie “Midnight in Paris” by Woody Allen and I have done over 30 posts on the historical characters mentioned in the film. Take a look below:

“Midnight in Paris” one of Woody Allen’s biggest movie hits in recent years, July 18, 2011 – 6:00 am

(Part 32, Jean-Paul Sartre)July 10, 2011 – 5:53 am

 (Part 29, Pablo Picasso) July 7, 2011 – 4:33 am

(Part 28,Van Gogh) July 6, 2011 – 4:03 am

(Part 27, Man Ray) July 5, 2011 – 4:49 am

(Part 26,James Joyce) July 4, 2011 – 5:55 am

(Part 25, T.S.Elliot) July 3, 2011 – 4:46 am

(Part 24, Djuna Barnes) July 2, 2011 – 7:28 am

(Part 23,Adriana, fictional mistress of Picasso) July 1, 2011 – 12:28 am

(Part 22, Silvia Beach and the Shakespeare and Company Bookstore) June 30, 2011 – 12:58 am

(Part 21,Versailles and the French Revolution) June 29, 2011 – 5:34 am

(Part 16, Josephine Baker) June 24, 2011 – 5:18 am

(Part 15, Luis Bunuel) June 23, 2011 – 5:37 am

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Woody Allen video interview in France talk about making movies in Paris vs NY and other subjects like God, etc

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“Woody Allen Wednesdays” can be seen on the www.thedailyhatch.org

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I really enjoyed this documentary on Woody Allen from PBS. Woody Allen: A Documentary, Part 1 Published on Mar 26, 2012 by NewVideoDigital Beginning with Allen’s childhood and his first professional gigs as a teen – furnishing jokes for comics and publicists – WOODY ALLEN: A DOCUMENTARY chronicles the trajectory and longevity of Allen’s career: […]

“Woody Wednesday” Discussion of Woody Allen’s 1989 movie “Crimes and Misdemeanors” (Part 6)

Crimes and Misdemeanors: A Discussion: Part 3 Uploaded by camdiscussion on Sep 23, 2007 Part 3 of 3: ‘Is Woody Allen A Romantic Or A Realist?’ A discussion of Woody Allen’s 1989 movie, Crimes and Misdemeanors, perhaps his finest. By Anton Scamvougeras. http://camdiscussion.blogspot.com/ antons@mail.ubc.ca ______________ One of my favorite Woody Allen movies and I reviewed […]

“Woody Wednesday” Discussion of Woody Allen’s 1989 movie “Crimes and Misdemeanors” (Part 5)

Crimes and Misdemeanors: A Discussion: Part 2 Uploaded by camdiscussion on Sep 23, 2007 Part 2 of 3: ‘What Does The Movie Tell Us About Ourselves?’ A discussion of Woody Allen’s 1989 movie, perhaps his finest. By Anton Scamvougeras. http://camdiscussion.blogspot.com/ antons@mail.ubc.ca _________________- One of my favorite Woody Allen movies and I reviewed it earlier but […]

In 2009 interview Woody Allen talks about the lack of meaning of life and the allure of younger women

I have spent alot of time talking about Woody Allen films on this blog and looking at his worldview. He has a hopeless, meaningless, nihilistic worldview that believes we are going to turn to dust and there is no afterlife. Even though he has this view he has taken the opportunity to look at the weaknesses of […]

“Woody Allen Wednesdays” can be seen on the www.thedailyhatch.org

Crimes and Misdemeanors: A Discussion: Part 1 If you like Woody Allen films as much as I do then join me every Wednesday for another look the man and his movies. Below are some of the posts from the past: “Woody Wednesday” How Allen’s film “Crimes and Misdemeanors makes the point that hell is necessary […]

Woody Allen on the Emptiness of Life by Toby Simmons

I have spent alot of time talking about Woody Allen films on this blog and looking at his worldview. He has a hopeless, meaningless, nihilistic worldview that believes we are going to turn to dust and there is no afterlife. Even though he has this view he has taken the opportunity to look at the weaknesses of […]

“Woody Wednesday” Discussion of Woody Allen’s 1989 movie “Crimes and Misdemeanors” (Part 4)

Crimes and Misdemeanors: A Discussion: Part 1 Uploaded by camdiscussion on Sep 23, 2007 Part 1 of 3: ‘What Does Judah Believe?’ A discussion of Woody Allen’s 1989 movie, perhaps his finest. By Anton Scamvougeras. http://camdiscussion.blogspot.com/ antons@mail.ubc.ca _____________ One of my favorite films is this gem by Woody Allen “Crimes and Misdemeanors”: Film Review By […]

“Woody Wednesday” Discussion of Woody Allen’s 1989 movie “Crimes and Misdemeanors” (Part 3)

Crimes and Misdemeanors: A Discussion: Part 3 Uploaded by camdiscussion on Sep 23, 2007 Part 3 of 3: ‘Is Woody Allen A Romantic Or A Realist?’ A discussion of Woody Allen’s 1989 movie, Crimes and Misdemeanors, perhaps his finest. By Anton Scamvougeras. http://camdiscussion.blogspot.com/ antons@mail.ubc.ca ______________ One of my favorite Woody Allen movies and I reviewed […]

“Woody Wednesday” Discussion of Woody Allen’s 1989 movie “Crimes and Misdemeanors” (Part 2)

Crimes and Misdemeanors: A Discussion: Part 2 Uploaded by camdiscussion on Sep 23, 2007 Part 2 of 3: ‘What Does The Movie Tell Us About Ourselves?’ A discussion of Woody Allen’s 1989 movie, perhaps his finest. By Anton Scamvougeras. http://camdiscussion.blogspot.com/ antons@mail.ubc.ca _________________- One of my favorite Woody Allen movies and I reviewed it earlier but […]

“Woody Wednesday” Discussion of Woody Allen’s 1989 movie “Crimes and Misdemeanors” (Part 1)

Crimes and Misdemeanors: A Discussion: Part 1 Uploaded by camdiscussion on Sep 23, 2007 Part 1 of 3: ‘What Does Judah Believe?’ A discussion of Woody Allen’s 1989 movie, perhaps his finest. By Anton Scamvougeras. http://camdiscussion.blogspot.com/ antons@mail.ubc.ca _____________ Today I am starting a discusssion of the movie “Crimes and Misdemeanors” by Woody Allen. This 1989 […]

 

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MUSIC MONDAY Christian review of songs about God by R.E.M., Smashing Pumpkins, Creed, Tori Amos, Sarah McLachlan, Madonna, and Lauryn Hill

Christian review of songs about God by R.E.M., Smashing Pumpkins, Creed, Tori Amos, Sarah McLachlan, Madonna, and Lauryn Hill

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Spirituality and Pop Music - from Tori Amos to Lauryn Hill spacer Spirituality and Pop Music – from Tori Amos to Lauryn Hill
BY: David John Seel, Jr.
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Spirituality is hip and was omnipresent in pop music in 1998. From pop to hip-hop, Sanskrit to Scripture, popular culture displayed a renewed spiritual consciousness. At the year’s Video Music Awards, Madonna, the former Material Girl, performed “Shanti/Ashtangi,” a Sanskrit sloka off her award-winning album, Ray of Light. At the Grammy Awards, Lauryn Hill accepted the award for “Album of the Year” by reading a passage from Psalm 40, and adding “Know that God is great and he conquers all.”And the growth in spiritual interest is hardly limited to the universe of music. One could also point to the popularity of the angel-to-the-rescue dramas on TV, the apocalyptic blockbusters in theaters, and the bestsellers on the soul in bookstores. Some cultural analysts have even suggested that the 1990s may well be remembered in the publishing world as “the decade of the soul.”Is this simply a fad—a shallow fashion statement like wearing a crucifix or Tibetan mala beads? A reader responds in the April 1999 issue of Spin, “This current emphasis on spirituality is just another confirmation of the state of emptiness we all feel at times. But for a chic guru to flaunt it like the newest Tamagotchi is pretty pathetic.” And you too may want to explain this away to a crass commercialism of matters best left in private.Nevertheless, spirituality is going platinum in the music world and it may well portend to a deeper longing in the contemporary consciousness. It is to this possibility that my comments are addressed.

The Beat of the Heart
Music has a unique place within youth culture. Even more than fashion or entertainment choices, music is the identity trademark of teens. Historian Garry Wills once wrote, “Show me your leader and you have bared your soul.” Likewise, show me your CD collection and you have bared your soul. Tell me what music you most identify with, what posters hang in your dorm room, and you say a lot about the state of your heart. Whether you listen to pop, electronica, metal, Ska, grunge, Goth, hip-hop, country, Phish or the women of Lilith Fair, your choice says something about who you are. For example, if I were to tell you that my nineteen-year-old son who attends Colby College in Maine listens to Phish and my fifteen-year-old son who attends a boarding school in New York listens to Ska, then you would be able to place them in a particular social group within any college or prep school.

Music, then, is the beat of the heart and explores the most basic questions of identity: “Where do I find security?” and “How do I find significance?” Put differently, teens long to “find a home” and to “make a name” for themselves. In the parlance of hip-hop, identity is about “finding blood” and “getting big.” The New York Times Magazine editor Charles McGrath, commenting on a photo essay of American teens, observes, “The really powerful feeling here, the emotion animating almost all these pictures in one way or another, is not so much physical desire as simply the wish to connect: to belong, to fit in. It may not be too much to say that all these kids are looking for surrogate families, for people who will take them in and accept them without question, and what’s fascinating is how much the process is reduced to symbols and uniforms.”

“Will you be there for me?” is the central religious question for youth today, writes Tom Beaudoin, author of Virtual Faith: The Irreverent Spiritual Quest of Generation X. At its most basic, it is a relational rather than a philosophical question. It is personal rather than abstract. It is a question born of broken relationships, laced with realism, poignant with need. It unmasks the fear of abandonment as well as the loss of meaning. It is the cry for an embrace, the passion for intimacy, the longing for fidelity at the deepest levels of the heart. It is the longing for a love that will not leave in the morning light. Augustine, reflecting on his youth, admits in his Confessions that “The single desire that dominated my search for delight was simply to love and to be loved.” It is the desire expressed in Madonna’s 1998 song “Drowned World/Substitute for Love:” “I traveled round the world / Looking for a home / I found myself in crowded rooms / Feeling so alone.” The song ends, “My substitute for love / This is my religion.” Music is an experience that often speaks in a language more profound than words. Here we find expressed the soul’s longings and loves that we don’t often dare to express ourselves.

Spirituality is an important theme within pop music and music is an important vehicle through which teenage identity is expressed. We will look now at three frequent themes expressed through pop spirituality: a crisis of meaning, a critique of Christianity, and a celebration of paganism. This analysis will not examine explicitly gospel or Christian music, even though I am well aware of the popularity of such groups as Jars of Clay and DC Talk as well as artists such as Kirk Franklin. What is of particular interest to me is how spirituality is being expressed musically in venues where it is most unlikely.

Pop Spirituality Unplugged
1. Crisis of Meaning
In the summer of 1996, Rolling Stone magazine declared that the “Hot Mood” of 90s youth was confusion. In the article, Will Dana referred to a line in Yeats’ poem, “The Second Coming:” “Things fall apart; the center cannot hold.” Of contemporary youth culture, he wrote, “We used to think the center couldn’t hold. All of a sudden, there doesn’t seem to be a center at all.” Contemporary music does not simply speak of the loss of meaning, but the loss of the possibility of meaning. Michael Stipes of the rock group R.E.M. sings, “I can’t taste it / I’m tired and naked / I don’t know what I’m hungry for / I don’t know what I want anymore.” Or Smashing Pumpkin’s lead singer Billy Corgan’s shout “God is empty / just like me,” from the song “Zero.” Sheryl Crow asks, “If it makes you happy / Then why the hell are you so sad?” Grunge band, Creed’s My Own Prison album, asks pointedly, “What’s this life for?”

R.E.M. – Bittersweet Me (Video)

Uploaded on Oct 26, 2009

© 2007 WMG
Bittersweet Me (Video)

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Zero-Smashing Pumpkins

Published on Feb 24, 2013

A video for my uni project on the negative side of technology, i focused on weaponry and war, nuclear war in particular. I used clips released by the American government during the Cold War to inform the public (and on the whole) mislead them, by suggesting procedures they could carry out to ensure their safety. Of course in a nuclear war situation, they would make little difference! I used the fantastic Zero by Smashing Pumpkins as the soundtrack.

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Creed – What’s This Life For (Video 2009)

Uploaded on Dec 2, 2009

Music video by Creed performing What’s This Life For. (C) 2009 Wind-up Records, LLC

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Reality doesn’t leave many options. Most of the time our answer is simply whatever is fun—follow Jimmy Buffett’s “parrot-heads” to “Margaritaville.” Sometimes our answer is the freedom to have and do whatever we want, a freedom that comes with wealth and power—follow hip-hop’s Master P to the land of No Limit. On rarer occasions, we might think of helping out someone else—realizing with Jewel that the “ugly girl,” “faggot,” and “Jew” are all just “pieces of you.” Education for most people is just a means of delayed gratification for wealth, power, and pleasure. The getting of wisdom, it seems, inspires few songs. And that leaves spirituality. When everything else seems like a wild goose chase, when the diversions seem like dead-ends, some may stop and ask the deeper questions of the heart. There are many songs that explore these cul-de-sacs of meaning-when all our life’s aspirations seem out of synch with our life’s actualities.

Stuck in an abusive relationship, Tori Amos asks on her 1991 album, Little Earthquakes, “Why do we crucify ourselves / Every day I crucify myself / Nothing I do is good enough for you / Crucify myself every day / And my HEART is sick of being in chains.” Jewel explained on her 1998 album, Spirit, “When you’re standing in deep water / And you’re bailing yourself out with a straw / And when you’re drowning in deep water / And you wake up making love to a wall / Well it’s these little times that help to remind / It’s nothing without love.” But “Is love possible in a world like this?” Amos asks whether love is only a series of one-night stands where sex substitutes for intimacy. Is there more than sex? Can you hold what I hold dear? Will you be there for me?

Songs about sex, love, and relationships are essentially spiritual explorations about the meaning of life at heart-level. Listen to Tori Amos’ song “Leather,” to the poignancy of her questions. There is nothing theoretical or abstract about the fear, loneliness, and finally despair exposed in her music.

Tori Amos Leather

Uploaded on Jan 7, 2007

Tori Amos, Leather

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“Leather”
Tori Amos, Little Earthquakes (1991)

Look I’m standing naked before you
Don’t you want more than my sex
I can scream as loud as your last one
But I can’t claim innocence

Oh god could it be the weather
Oh god why am I here
If love isn’t forever
And it’s NOT THE WEATHER
Hand me my leather

I could just pretend that you love me
The night would lose all sense of fear
But why do I need you to love me
When you can’t hold what I hold dear

I almost ran over an angel
He had a nice big fat cigar
“IN A SENSE” he said
“You’re alone here
So if you jump you best jump far”…

The angel’s spiritual counsel is that you are, in fact, alone here, and so if you want a solution, you’d best jump far. Many are following Tori Amos’ lead by abandoning traditional religious answers for newer forms of spirituality. But in route, a few cheap shots at one’s upbringing are standard fare. This is the second theme of pop spirituality—a critique of Christianity.

2. Critique of Christianity
Tori Amos was born the daughter of a North Carolina Methodist minister. She long since abandoned Christianity for a mythical, pagan, fairy world. Amos is the “Anne Rice of rock,” or as another observer put it, “a moon child for lost souls and misfits.” Her hostility toward Christianity—in part explainable to her experience of rape—is legendary. (Listen to her song, “Me and a Gun,” on Little Earthquakes.) Rolling Stone’s Steven Daly says of Amos, “The woman has few peers in the God-baiting stakes. Compared with the Amos oeuvre, Madonna’s blasphemous stunts look positively devout; and when this little minister’s daughter starts exorcising the ‘shame’ of her ‘Victorian Christian’ upbringing, she makes soi-disant Satanist Marilyn Manson seem cartoonish and ineffectual.”

“Yes, I do have a mission,” Amos says bluntly, “To expose the dark side of Christianity.” Of her song, “God,” on the 1996 album, Boys For Pele, she comments, “Why don’t people want to hear about God getting a blow job? I thought those born-again Christians would love that.”

Emily Saliers of Indigo Girls is also a preacher’s kid. In her 1989 song, “Closer To Fine,” she proclaims her liberation from moral absolutes, “The less I seek my source for some definitive / The closer I am to fine.” On R.E.M.’s 1991 Out of Time album, Michael Stipes sings about “Losing My Religion.” Alanis Morisette, on her 1995 Jagged Little Pill album, takes aim at her Catholic upbringing in her song, “Forgiven:” “We all had delusions in our heads / We all had our minds made up for us / We had to believe in something / So we did.”

Pop spirituality is largely spirituality without God, if God is understood as the transcendent God of the Bible. Sarah McLachlan in her 1997 cover of XTC’s song “Dear God,” sings a cosmic “Dear John” letter blaming God for all the evil and disease in the world. Listen to her musical testimony to the rejection of God.

Sarah McLachlan Dear God

Uploaded on Dec 19, 2010

Heartwrenching cover of the XTC song…a commentary on the authenticity of the traditional portrayal of the universal construction which shockingly retains its creationist ideologies. To question is to illuminate.

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“Dear God”
Sarah McLachlan, Sampler (1997)

Dear God,
Hope you got the letter down here.
I don’t mean a big reduction in the price of beer
But all the people that you made in your image,
See them starving on their feet
‘Cause they don’t get enough to eat
From God
I can’t believe in you.

Dear God,
Sorry to disturb you, but
I feel that I should be heard loud and clear.
We all need a big reduction in the amount of tears
And all the people that you made in your image,
See them fighting in the street
‘Cause they can’t make opinions meet
About God,
I can’t believe in you.

Did you make disease, and the diamond blue?
Did you make mankind after we made you?
And the devil, too?!

Dear God,
Don’t know if you notice, but…
Your name is on a lot of quotes in this book,
Us crazy humans wrote it, you should take a look,
And all the people that you made in your image,
Still believing that junk is true
Well I know it ain’t, and so do you

Dear God,
I can’t believe in…
I don’t believe in…

I won’t believe in heaven and hell.
No saints, no sinners, no devil as well.
No pearly gates, no thorny crown.
You’re always letting us humans down.
The wars you bring, the babes you drown.
And it’s the same the whole world ‘round.
The hurt I see helps to compound
That Father, Son, and Holy Ghost
Is just somebody’s unholy hoax
And if you’re up there you’d perceive
That my heart’s here upon my sleeve.
If there’s one thing I don’t believe in….

It’s you…
Dear God.

There are many people who may still use “god-talk,” but in more and more cases the meaning has changed. The immanent gods of Nature are replacing the historic transcendent Creator God of Christianity. This is the third trend in pop spirituality: the celebration of paganism.

3. Celebration of Paganism
With a few notable exceptions, God is largely dead in pop spirituality. Instead we are offered a design-it-yourself, cafeteria approach to religion that is non-institutional, individualist, subjective, and syncretistic. The cover of July-August 1998 UTNE Reader reads, “Designer God: In a mix-and-match world, why not create your own religion?” Pop spirituality is infused with an eclectic array of Eastern and neopagan spiritualities. “Contemporary American spirituality is largely a cut-and-paste affair,” writes Spin’s Erik Davis, “perfectly in tune with today’s musical mixology.”

The central characteristic of contemporary spirituality is an “inner pluralism.” All of the world religions are found in a single psyche. Traditional boundaries between religion dissolve and individuals hold multiple citizenship in a number of separate faiths with no complete allegiance to any. Princeton sociologist Robert Wuthnow recently interviewed a 26-year-old disabilities counselor for a study on American spirituality. She described her religious preference as “Methodist-Taoist-Native American-Quaker-Russian Orthodox-Buddhist-Jew.” Spirituality today is a divine deli where consumers of meaning pick and choose among increasingly exotic pagan alternatives. Art historian Camille Paglia argues that “Popular culture is an eruption of paganism… Judeo-Christianity never defeated paganism but rather drove it underground, from which it constantly erupts in all kinds of ways.”

The rebirth of paganism is a return to varieties of pantheism, the worship of nature. Pantheism, C.S. Lewis observed, is “humanity’s natural religion.” Here one doesn’t get “saved,” one gets “connected.” Pagan wisdom consists in the attempt to understand how our lives are to be properly placed and perceived within the forces of Nature. The aim is to open one’s heart to these unseen realities. “Consumed with how much you get,” Madonna chides, “you’re frozen when your heart is not open.” Pop spirituality combines personal autonomy with cosmic meaning. “You hold the key,” Madonna explains. Everyone follows their own road as they follow the signs of their heart. Listen to Madonna’s techno-influenced “Sky Fits Heaven” on the 1998 Grammy Pop Album of the Year, Ray of Light.

Madonna – 07. Sky Fits Heaven

Uploaded on Apr 27, 2011

Sky Fits Heaven
Madonna
Ray Of Light [1998]

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“Sky Fits Heaven”
Madonna, Ray of Light (1998)

Sky fits heaven so fly it
That’s what the prophet said to me
Child fits mother so hold your baby tight
That’s what my future could see

Fate fits karma so use it
That’s what the wise man said to me
Love fits virtue so hold on to the light
That’s what our future will be

Traveling down this road
Watching the signs as I go
I think I’ll follow the sun
Isn’t everyone just

Traveling down their own road
Watching the signs as they go
I think I’ll follow my heart
It’s a very good place to start

Traveling down my own road
Watching the signs as they go
Traveling down my own road
Watching the signs as I go
Traveling, traveling
Watching the signs as I go

Hand fits giving so do it
That’s what the Gospel said to me
Life fits living so let your judgments go
That’s how our future should be

Traveling down this road
Watching the signs as I go
Think I’ll follow the sun
Isn’t everyone just

Traveling down their own road
Watching the signs as they go
Think I’ll follow my heart
It’s a very good place to start

Traveling down my own road
Watching the signs as they go

Just in case anyone misses her religious direction, “Sky Fits Heaven” flows seamlessly into the next song, Madonna’s Sanskrit version of a Hindu prayer.

Examined more closely, however, theoretical pantheism quickly degenerates into practical “metheism.” The worship of nature becomes the worship of one’s own nature, even the spiritualizing of one’s instincts, bordering on autoeroticism.

Neale Donald Walsch’s book series Conversations With God is a multi-year run-away best seller. What is it that makes these books so popular? Walsch’s central argument is simply that God is me. Listen to these excerpts: “Blessed are the Self-centered, for they shall know God… The highest good is that which produces the highest good for you… A thing is only right or wrong because you say it is. A thing is not right or wrong intrinsically… So be ready, kind soul. For you will be vilified and spat upon…from the moment you accept and adopt your holy cause—the realization of Self.”

G. K. Chesterton was right to warn, “That Jones shall worship the god within him turns out ultimately to mean that Jones shall worship Jones.” Again Spin’s Erik Davis observes of the current music scene, “Mystical options such as yoga and pop cabala offer direct access to deeper essence, without the pesky moral codes of conventional religion. Unfortunately, this search can easily degenerate into another American cult of the self, a cult that already enshrines celebrities as the closest thing mortals come to being realized beings.” Likewise, Princeton theologian Thomas Molnar concludes, “A good case can be made for the proposition that what attracts members of a weakened Christian civilization to Oriental creeds and occult doctrines is not Buddhism, the Tantra, the Tao, the Zen, Brahmanism, or shamanism. Much more important, is the presence in each of these new religions…of the hope of self-divination.”

This is consumer spirituality well suited for the celebrity limelight and lifestyle. Paganism is spirituality attuned to the postmodern zeitgeist; for in the end, it celebrates self and sex. Whenever meaning is sought in Nature its practice takes a predictable course—and it has been this way from the beginning of time: a personal deity offers a personal morality reinforced by a personal power, which ends in the worship of the person and their passions. Paganism always ends in that which is violent and orgiastic. Chesterton again observes, “A man loves Nature in the morning for her innocence and amiability, and at nightfall, if he is loving her still, it is for her darkness and her cruelty.” Paganism is a theology of hubris and hedonism.

Pop spirituality, then, quickly becomes the highest form of self-worship—the divination of ego, the spiritualizing of desire. This is religion adapted to therapeutic consumerism: cosmic meaning without personal morality, self-affirmation without self-constraint. Jewel, whose debut 1995 album Pieces of You sold over 10 million copies, asks, “Who will save your soul, if you won’t save your own?” Who’s my savior in pop spirituality? In the final analysis, I am. God is me and what I want is god.

The Miseducation of Spirituality Lite
But the story doesn’t end here. Enter Lauryn Hill. In her truly remarkable debut solo hip-hop album, The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, she raises the stakes on pop spirituality lite. Here is a 23-year-old with spiritual unction. “There is always a spiritual war, but there’s a battle for the souls of black folk, and just folk in general, and the music has a lot to do with it,” she says. In interviews, Hill unequivocally describes herself as Christian (tinged with Rastafarian influences). Locating her prophetic message within the Christian narrative gives her words an unusual gravity and grace. Life is lived not for personal freedom, but personal responsibility. One’s choices are made before the face of God. In her song, “Final Hour,” she challenges the avarice of hip-hop: “You could get the money / You could get the power / But keep your eyes on the final hour.” In “Superstar,” Hill warns that no one—not even hip-hop superstars—can live above spiritual laws: “Now tell me your philosophy / On exactly what an artist should be / Should they be someone with prosperity / And no concept of reality? / Now who you know without any flaws / That lives above the spiritual laws / And does anything they feel just because / There’s always someone there who’ll applaud.”

The significance of Lauryn Hill’s accomplishments—10 Grammy Award nominations, 5 Grammy Awards (more than any other artist in history), a triple-platinum album—cannot be appreciated without understanding hip-hop. Mall America has become hip-hop. Hip-hop is pop style. No other musical genre has as much influence today in youth culture than rap. “Hip-hop is the rock of today,” boasts MC Jean Wyclef. “It is the folk music of this generation,” says Beck. Music critic Nelson George writes, “Now we know that rap music, and hip-hop style as a whole, has utterly broken through from its ghetto roots to assert a lasting influence on American clothing, magazine publication, television, language, sexuality, and social policy as well as its obvious presence in records and movies.” In 1998, for the first time ever, rap out-sold what previously had been America’s top-selling format, country music. White kids purchase more than 70% of hip-hop albums. There is an increasing influence of white rap artist such as the Beastie Boys, Everlast, and the artist Eminen, (a.k.a. Marshall Mathers) a white 19-year-old rapper from Detroit backed by Dr. Dre.

Nor is hip-hop known for its positive message. “Hip-hop is the rebellious voice of youth. It’s what people want to hear,” explains MC Jay-Z in Time’s cover story, “Hip-Hop Nation.” “Kids don’t want to be like Mike anymore. Their heroes are rappers,” claims MC Sean (Puffy) Combs. The central tenets of hip-hop are rebellion, aggression, and materialism. It is pop culture’s answer to commodified rebellion. “Hip-hop is perhaps the only art form that celebrates capitalism openly…. Rappers make money without remorse,” writes Time’s Christopher Farley. Hip-hop is hoppin’, writes Nelson George, because “materialism replaced spirituality as the definer of life’s worth…. A voracious appetite for ‘goods,’ not good.”

Hip-hop is the most image-driven part of pop music and has spawned a revolution in fashion. By 1996, Tommy Hilfiger had become the leading apparel company traded on the New York Stock Exchange largely due to its embrace of hip-hop. Finally, hip-hop promotes an in-your-face aggressive attitude toward others. Hip-hop rules the world of youth culture for a reason. It reflects what kids are thinking, an uncaring attitude about rules or responsibility.

Not so Lauryn Hill. She is on a mission to change the world for the good. Change will come, she argues, from the inside out. “How you gon’ win / When you ain’t right within?” she asks in her hot single, “Doo Wop That Thing.” Hers is a message of hope and optimism like Jewel. But unlike Jewel, her confidence is in a God who is more than a New Age dream or a neopagan natural force. She sings of our responsibility to plant the seeds of change. Hill does not have a Polyannaish faith in faith, but a realistic confidence that everything is in God’s hands. It is because she is adjacent to the King that she fears no human being and believes that after winter comes the spring. Here is “Everything Is Everything,” where Hill addresses the hopelessness of urban youth and the possibility that their dreams will one day find their place.

Lauryn Hill – Everything Is Everything

Uploaded on Jun 23, 2010

Music video by Lauryn Hill performing Everything Is Everything. (C) 1998 Sony BMG Music Entertainment

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“Everything Is Everything”
Lauryn Hill, The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill (1998)

Everything is everything
What is meant to be, will be
After winter, must come spring
Change, it comes eventually

I wrote these words for everyone
Who struggles in their youth
Who won’t accept deception
Instead of what is truth
It seems we lose the game
Before we even start to play
Who made these rules? We’re so confused
Easily led astray
Let me tell ya that
I philosophy
Possibly speak tongues
Beat drums, Abyssinian, street Baptist
Rap this in fine linen
From the beginning

My practice extending across the atlas
I begat this
Flippin’ in the ghetto on a dirty mattress
You can’t match this rapper/actress
More powerful than two Cleopatras
Bomb graffiti on the tomb of Nefertiti
MCs ain’t ready to take it to the Serengeti
My rhymes is heavy like the mind of Sister Betty
L. Boogie spars with stars and constellations
Then came down for a little conversation
Adjacent to the king, fear no human being
Roll with cherubims to Nassau Coliseum
Now hear this mixture
Where hip hop meets scripture
Develop a negative into a positive picture

Sometimes it seems
We’ll touch that dream
But things come slow or not at all
And the ones on top, won’t make it stop
So convinced that they might fall
Let’s love ourselves then we can’t fail
To make a better situation
Tomorrow, our seed will grow
All we need is dedication

Lauryn Hill portrays a traditional spiritual search in the most unlikely of musical forms. A point not lost on Hill herself. Accepting the Grammy she beamed, “Wow, ya know what, this is amazing. I thank you God. Thank you Father, so much. This is crazy ‘cause this is hip-hop music.” Hill is larger than life, because unlike Amos, McLachlan, Madonna, and Jewel her spiritual resources are finally outside herself.

Pop Spirituality Assessed
We began with the question what is pop spirituality? And I’ve explored three dominant themes. Its depiction of the crisis of meaning; its conscious critique of Christianity; and its celebration of paganism. I have also suggested that Lauryn Hill stands alone in the music world today speaking like the Old Testament prophetess Deborah. But more important than what is pop spirituality, is the more personal question, what does it say about us?

The popularity of pop spirituality says that many are stopping the distractions long enough to ask the deeper questions of life. In this way, this trend in pop music is a significant spiritual accomplishment. Here is an honest look at the deeper longings of the heart. Here is a critique of the unreflective life. Here is an admission of the vanity of fame, fashion, and fortune. We all live cluttered lives. Pop spirituality challenges the distractions that fill our hours and indifference that fill our hearts with the honest seeker’s question: “There must be something more?” “Hell is not populated mainly by passionate rebels,” writes philosopher Peter Kreeft, “but by nice, bland, indifferent, respectable people who simply never gave a damn.” For the Mod Squad soundtrack, Lauryn Hill wrote these lyrics: “There ain’t no excuse / ‘Cause in every situation man chooses / His own plate / His own fate / His own date at redemption / And only fools and babies get exemptions / In the hereafter school / See, we all stay for detention / And, uh, did I mention / It’s either ascension or descension / No third dimension / So pay attention.”

Paganism may offer spirituality without morality, a religion that celebrates self and sex. But even paganism—with all its talk of fairies and spirits—puts to the lie the arrogant materialism that rules out the inner realities of the soul. C. S. Lewis observed, “Christians and pagans had much more in common with each other than either has with a post-Christian. The gap between those who worship different gods is not so wide as that between those who worship and those who do not.” The discerning question is not “whether spirits,” but “which spirits.” In pop spirituality there is the recognition that we are not human beings having a spiritual experience, but spiritual beings having a human experience. The spiritual is our highest and natural environment: life lived at its fullest. As Augustine concluded after years of hard partying and intellectual seeking, “You have formed us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you.” Pop spirituality is the outer voice of this inner search.

Celtic scholar John O’Donohue has written a new book entitled, Eternal Echoes: Exploring Our Yearning to Belong. Our heart’s longings to belong are, in fact, eternal echoes. O’Donohue said recently, “Maybe divinity is actually that secret tissue which links everything that is—matter, spirit, future, past, possibility, fact, question, quest. Maybe the divine is the great belonging.” The Apostle John says, “Perfect love drives out fear.” It is for this love that we long.

This is beautifully captured in Jewel’s song, “Absence of Fear.” Listen to her haunting lyrics and music and ask yourself this question: For what are you wanting and waiting?

“Absence of Fear”
Jewel, Spirit (1998)

Inside my skin there is this space
It twists and turns
It bleeds and aches
Inside my heart there’s an empty room
It’s waiting for lightning
It’s waiting for you

And I am wanting
And I am needing you here

Inside the absence of fear

Muscle and sinew
Velvet and stone
This vessel is haunted
It creaks and moans
My bones call to you
In their separate skin
I make myself translucent
To let you in, for

I am wanting
And I am needing you here
Inside the absence of fear

There is this hunger
This restlessness inside of me
And it knows that you’re no stranger
You’re my gravity
My hands will adore you though all darkness aim
They will lay you out in moonlight
And reinvent your name

For I am wanting you
And I am needing you here
I need you near
Inside the absence of fear

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Questions:
1. When Dr. Seel gave this address at Chatham Hall, he played the five songs, “Leather,” “Dear God,” “Sky Fits Heaven,” “Everything is Everything,” and “Absence of Fear” so the students could listen to them with him. We recommend that you do the same, especially if you meet with friends in a small group to discuss this article—something we also highly recommend. (If you are not familiar with this music, listen to each song more than once. It would also be wise to take the time to listen to some—or preferably all—of the rest of the songs on each album.) 2. “Spirituality in Pop Music” is an example of a Christian using pop music as a window of insight into our culture. How does Dr. Seel go about accomplishing this? To what extent are you developing skill in finding windows of insight into the surrounding culture? What plans should you make? 3. Because this was a talk given to a group of college students, it is also an example of how believers can use pop culture as a point of contact with non-Christians to prompt discussion about the Big Questions of life. (What Francis Schaeffer called pre-evangelism.) How does Dr. Seel go about accomplishing this? 4. To what extent are you developing skill in finding points of contact in the surrounding culture to prompt discussion with non-Christians? What plans should you make? 5. “Show me your CD collection,” Dr. Seel says, “and you have bared your soul. Tell me what music you most identify with, what posters hang in your dorm room, and you say a lot about the state of your heart.” What does your CD collection say about you? 6. Some Christians would raise questions—or serious objections—to purchasing, listening to, or displaying some (or all) of the albums Dr. Seel mentions. What might their questions / objections consist of? What passages of Scripture might they raise? How would you respond to their questions / objections? 7. To what extent is the Christian community prepared for the interest in spirituality which is occurring on post-modern culture? What reading (or listening) might you plan to do in order to better understand this cultural shift? If you are involved in either home-schooling or Christian schooling—especially with junior- or senior-high students—to what extent is that schooling preparing your children with the discernment skills Dr. Seel models in this article? To what extent is that schooling introducing your children to this cultural shift? To what extent is that schooling teaching your children to think Christianly about pop music so they can listen to it with discernment?

Source:

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about the author
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David John Seel, Jr.
John Seel is a cultural renewal entrepreneur, film producer, and educational reformer. He is a Senior Fellow at the Work Research Foundation and adjunct professor at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. He and his wife, Kathryn, live in Cohasset, Massachusetts. He can be reached at djsjr@earthlink.net.

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“Schaeffer Sunday” Taking on Ark Times Bloggers on the “Absurdity of Life without God!!” Part 15 (Robert Lewis of Men’s Fraternity suggested too many are focused on things that will pass away and not on making an eternal difference in others lives)

The Bible and Science (Part 03)

There Is A Difference Between Absolute and Objective Moral Values

Published on Dec 6, 2012

For more resources visit: http://www.reasonablefaith.org

The Bethinking National Apologetics Day Conference: “Countering the New Atheism” took place during the UK Reasonable Faith Tour in October 2011. Christian academics William Lane Craig, John Lennox, Peter J Williams and Gary Habermas lead 600 people in training on how to defend and proclaim the credibility of Christianity against the growing tide of secularism and New Atheist popular thought in western society.

In this session, William Lane Craig delivers his critique of Richard Dawkins’ objections to arguments for the existence of God, followed by questions and answers from the audience. In this clip, Dr Craig addresses a question about objective moral values and distinguishes them from absolute moral values.

Dr. Francis Schaeffer – The Biblical Flow of Truth & History (part 2)

Francis Schaeffer pictured below:

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Life without God in the picture is absurdity!!!. That was the view of King Solomon when he wrote the Book of Ecclesiastes 3000 years ago and it is the view of many of the modern philosophers todayModern man has tried to come up with a lasting meaning for life without God in the picture (life under the sun), but it is not possible. Without the infinite-personal God of the Bible to reveal moral absolutes then man is left to embrace moral relativism. In a time plus chance universe man is reduced to a machine and can not find a place for values such as love. Both of Francis Schaeffer’s film series have tackled these subjects and he shows how this is reflected in the arts.

Here are some posts I have done on the series “HOW SHOULD WE THEN LIVE? : Francis Schaeffer’s “How should we then live?” Video and outline of episode 10 “Final Choices” episode 9 “The Age of Personal Peace and Affluence”episode 8 “The Age of Fragmentation”episode 7 “The Age of Non-Reason” episode 6 “The Scientific Age”  episode 5 “The Revolutionary Age” episode 4 “The Reformation” episode 3 “The Renaissance”episode 2 “The Middle Ages,”, and  episode 1 “The Roman Age,” .

In the film series “WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE HUMAN RACE?” the arguments are presented  against abortion (Episode 1),  infanticide (Episode 2),   euthenasia (Episode 3), and then there is a discussion of the Christian versus Humanist worldview concerning the issue of “the basis for human dignity” in Episode 4 and then in the last episode a close look at the truth claims of the Bible.

I have discussed many subjects with my liberal friends over at the Ark Times Blog in the past and I have taken them on now on the subject of the absurdity of life without God in the picture. Most of my responses included quotes from William Lane Craig’s book THE ABSURDITY OF LIFE WITHOUT GOD.  Here is the result of one of those encounters from June of 2013:

DeathByInches asserted, “You are doomed to die Saline, get used to it.”

It is funny that you said that last night I was at church and heard Ecclesiastes 7:2 read,
“It is better to go to a house of mourning than to go to a house of feasting, for death is the destiny of everyone; the living should take this to heart.”

Robert Lewis the founder of “Men’s Fraternity” quoted this verse last night at Fellowship Bible Church in a meeting I attended. He noted that many people spend so much time on their careers that it is very interesting that usually the things mentioned at their funerals have very little to do with how much they accomplished in their careers but what impact they had on close friends and family members. Lewis suggested that many are out of balance today because they are focused on things that will pass away and not on making an eternal difference in others lives.

I THINK THAT ROBERT LEWIS IS RIGHT ABOUT THE IMPORTANCE OF MAKING AN ETERNAL IMPACT, BUT IF YOU, DEATHBYINCHES, ARE RIGHT ABOUT DEATH BEING THE ABSOLUTE END THEN WHO CARES HOW WE ACT IN THIS LIFE.

On this subject William Lane Craig noted:

If life ends at the grave, then it makes no difference whether one has lived as a Stalin or as a saint. Since one’s destiny is ultimately unrelated to one’s behavior, you may as well just live as you please. As Dostoyevsky put it: “If there is no immortality, then all things are permitted.” On this basis, a writer like Ayn Rand is absolutely correct to praise the virtues of selfishness. Live totally for self; no one holds you accountable! Indeed, it would be foolish to do anything else, for life is too short to jeopardize it by acting out of anything but pure self-interest. Sacrifice for another person would be stupid. Kai Nielsen, an atheist philosopher who attempts to defend the viability of ethics without God, in the end admits,

We have not been able to show that reason requires the moral point of view, or that all really rational persons, unhoodwinked by myth or ideology, need not be individual egoists or classical amoralists. Reason doesn’t decide here. The picture I have painted for you is not a pleasant one. Reflection on it depresses me…. Pure practical reason, even with a good knowledge of the facts, will not take you to morality.8

But the problem becomes even worse. For, regardless of immortality, if there is no God, then any basis for objective standards of right and wrong seems to have evaporated. All we are confronted with is, in Jean-Paul Sartre’s words, the bare, valueless fact of existence. Moral values are either just expressions of personal taste or the by-products of socio-biological evolution and conditioning. In the words of one humanist philosopher, “The moral principles that govern our behavior are rooted in habit and custom, feeling and fashion.”9 In a world without God, who is to say which actions are right and which are wrong? Who is to judge that the values of Adolf Hitler are inferior to those of a saint? The concept of morality loses all meaning in a universe without God. As one contemporary atheistic ethicist points out, “To say that something is wrong because … it is forbidden by God, is … perfectly understandable to anyone who believes in a law-giving God. But to say that something is wrong … even though no God exists to forbid it, is not understandable….” “The concept of moral obligation [is] unintelligible apart from the idea of God. The words remain but their meaning is gone.”10 In a world without a divine lawgiver, there can be no objective right and wrong, only our culturally and personally relative, subjective judgments. This means that it is impossible to condemn war, oppression, or crime as evil. Nor can one praise brotherhood, equality, and love as good. For in a universe without God, good and evil do not exist—there is only the bare valueless fact of existence, and there is no one to say that you are right and I am wrong.

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“Sanctity of Life Saturday” Debating Kermit Gosnell Trial, Abortion and infanticide with Ark Times Bloggers Part 2

C. Everett Koop, 1980s.jpg
Surgeon General of the United States
In office
January 21, 1982 – October 1, 1989
President Ronald Reagan
George H. W. Bush
Francis Schaeffer
Francis Schaeffer.jpg

Founder of the L’Abri community
Born Francis August Schaeffer
January 30, 1912

Died May 15, 1984 (aged 72)

I truly believe that many of the problems we have today in the USA are due to the advancement of humanism in the last few decades in our society. Ronald Reagan appointed the evangelical Dr. C. Everett Koop to the position of Surgeon General in his administration. He partnered with Dr. Francis Schaeffer in making the video below. It is very valuable information for Christians to have.  Actually I have included a video below that includes comments from him on this subject.

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Francis Schaeffer Whatever Happened to the Human Race (Episode 1) ABORTION

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Francis Schaeffer “BASIS FOR HUMAN DIGNITY” Whatever…HTTHR

Dr. Francis schaeffer – The flow of Materialism(from Part 4 of Whatever happened to human race?)

Dr. Francis Schaeffer – The Biblical flow of Truth & History (intro)

Francis Schaeffer – The Biblical Flow of History & Truth (1)

Dr. Francis Schaeffer – The Biblical Flow of Truth & History (part 2)

I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortionhuman rightswelfarepovertygun control  and issues dealing with popular culture . This time around I have discussed morality with the Ark Times Bloggers and particularly the trial of the abortionist Dr. Kermit Gosnell and through that we discuss infanticide, abortion and even partial birth abortion. Here are some of my favorite past posts on the subject of Gosnell: ,Abby Johnson comments on Dr. Gosnell’s guilty verdict, Does President Obama care about Kermit Gosnell verdict?Dr. Gosnell Trial mostly ignored by mediaKermit Gosnell is guilty of same crimes of abortion clinics are says Jennifer MasonDenny Burk: Is Dr. Gosnell the usual case or not?, Pro-life Groups thrilled with Kermit Gosnell guilty verdict,  Reactions to Dr. Gosnell guilty verdict from pro-life leaders,  Kermit Gosnell and Planned Parenthood supporting infanticide?, Owen Strachan on Dr. Gosnell Trial, Al Mohler on Kermit Gosnell’s abortion practice, Finally we get justice for Dr. Kermit Gosnell .

In July of 2013 I went back and forth with several bloggers from the Ark Times Blog concerning Dr. Kermit Gosnell’s abortion practice and his trial which had finished up in the middle of May:

Couldn’t be better wrote, “No, Saline, failure of the state of PA to monitor the doctors in their state, all of them, is the cause of how a Dr Giosnell gets by. That is a system failure by the state government of PA and had zero, nothing, naught, to do whether it was an abortion clinic or a foot surgeon or an ENT speciialist. Bad doctors are bad doctors, no matter what their speciality is. You won’t find one person on the blog who defends Gosnell.”

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Many of my relatives grew up in the Methodist Church and many of them have regretted the liberal direction the church has taken in the last few years. I enjoyed reading the words below of Matt O’Reilly on the recent statement of the United Methodist Church on the Gosnell verdict. Matt is the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Union Springs, Alabama, and an adjunct member of the faculties of New Testament at Wesley Biblical Seminary and Asbury Theological Seminary.

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The General Board of Church and Society (GBCS) has released a statement on the guilty verdict handed down earlier this week in the trial of Kermit Gosnell, who killed numerous newborns and at least one woman. I’m glad the statement from GBCS condemned the horrible crimes committed by the former abortion practitioner as reprehensible. They certainly were. I’m also very glad that the statement does not contradict our United Methodist Social Principles. There are, nevertheless, a variety of features that make the statement inadequate….The statement goes on to say that both supporters and opponents of abortion find Gosnell’s crimes reprehensible. This only is accurate to a degree. IT WOULD HAVE BEEN MORE ACCURATE TO SAY THAT SOME ABORTION SUPPORTERS FIND GOSNELL’S CRIMES REPREHENSIBLE. A GROWING NUMBER OF ABORTION ADVOCATES ARE ALSO CALLING FOR THE LEGALIZATION OF INFANTICIDE. Ethicist Peter Singer has been saying this for years, and others are beginning to join him. The key example is the most recent edition of the Journal of Medical Ethics, which is devoted to debating infanticide and contains articles arguing both for and against the killing of newborns. I point to other examples of this trend in a recent piece for The United Methodist Reporter, and you can follow Michael Bird who is chronicling the “Infanticide Blitz”. This is a debate we are now having. Certainly not all supporters of abortion reject infanticide, but GBCS should not lead us to think that supporters of abortion are of one mind with regard to infanticide. Many abortion advocates find Gosnell’s crimes horrific, but the arguments that gave us constitutionally protected abortion are being applied to newborns in a growing number of diverse arenas. The folks at GBCS need to read the relevant journals and websites and do their homework rather more carefully in order to stay on top of this highly important issue.

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http://www.mattoreilly.net/2013/05/gbcsumc…

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FRIEDMAN FRIDAY “How to Stay Free” in Milton Friedman’s FREE TO CHOOSE Part 7 of 7 “I believe that there is a strong enough component of freedom in our society that we will be able to preserve it, that we’re going to turn this trend back, that we are going to cut government down to size, we’re going to lay the ground work for a resurgence for a, a flowering, of that diversity which has been the real product of our free society”

In 1980 I read the book FREE TO CHOOSE by Milton Friedman and it really enlightened me a tremendous amount.  I suggest checking out these episodes and transcripts of Milton Friedman’s film series FREE TO CHOOSE: “The Failure of Socialism” and “The Anatomy of a Crisis” and “What is wrong with our schools?”  and “Created Equal”  and  From Cradle to Grave, and – Power of the Market.

In this episode “How to Stay Free” Friedman makes the statement “What we need is widespread public recognition that the central government should be limited to its basic functions: defending the nation against foreign enemies, preserving order at home, and mediating our disputes. We must come to recognize that voluntary cooperation through the market and in other ways is a far better way to solve our problems than turning them over to the government.”

Milton Friedman says this in the following episode:
I believe that there is a strong enough component of freedom in our society that we will be able to preserve it, that we’re going to turn this trend back, that we are going to cut government down to size, we’re going to lay the ground work for a resurgence for a, a flowering, of that diversity which has been the real product of our free society.
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Pt 7
Lawrence E. Spivak: Milton, how bad is the state of freedom in this country today?
Friedman: It’s a mixed bag. In some areas we have more freedom than we’ve ever had before. In some other areas our freedom has been drastically reduced. Our freedom to spend our own money as we want has been cut sharply. Our freedom to go into whatever occupation we want has been reduced sharply. Our freedom to have various businesses has been reduced sharply. And these restrictions in our economic freedoms have carried over to restrictions on the freedom with which we speak and we talk, the activities we carry on, our attitudes toward governmental officials and all the rest. In those areas, our freedoms have been very seriously restricted.
Lawrence E. Spivak: What about your yourself? You as an individual and we really have to do with, deal with millions of hundreds, two hundred million, two hundred twenty million individuals. What about you? What freedom do you think you’ve lost?
Friedman: Well, I have been a very fortunate individual. I always have…
Lawrence E. Spivak: That sounds like a cop out.
Friedman: No, it’s not a cop out because I’m going to add to it. I’ve always said about the only people who have effective freedom of speech these days in the United States are tenured professors at private universities who are on the verge of retirement or have retired. And that’s been my situation in these recent years. Consider the freedom of, for example, a professor of medicine at any one of our great institutions. He’s almost certainly having his research financed by the Federal Government. Don’t you suppose he’d think two or three times before he gave a lecture on the evils of socialized medicine? Or consider one of my colleagues at the University who happens to be getting grants of money from the National Science Foundation. Do you think he really feels free to speak out on the issue of whether government ought to be financing such research. Of course, you ought not to have freedom without costs. But the costs ought to be reasonable. They ought not to be disproportionate, there’s no businessmen in this country today who can speak out. Why is it, why is it that the businessmen today are so mealy-mouthed in what they say? There are very few of them who are willing to come out and say openly what they believe. Why?
Lawrence E. Spivak: About what?
Friedman: About anything. Take for example the recent attempts by President Carter to impose voluntary wage and price controls. There’s hardly a businessman in this country who doesn’t think it’s terrible. There are only about two or three businessmen who have had the courage to stand up and say something about that. But again, as I say, go to my academic colleagues. Many of them feel as I do that government is devoting altogether too much money. That there’s been altogether too much subsidization of state universities and colleges all along the line. Yet very few of them are willing to speak out.
Lawrence E. Spivak: What about the generation that doesn’t know what freedom is as you knew it, and therefore, doesn’t mind so much what has happened. Just takes for granted what he’s living under now.
Friedman: I think that’s a very real problem. I think we’re living on our inheritance. We have inherited a philosophy and a set of attitudes and they tend to be eroded. People get accustomed to what they know. There’s an enormous tear in the status quote and most people, most of the time, accept the circumstances that are around them. There’s a natural human drive for freedom which always expresses itself. But, its stronger or weaker and I think a great danger in continuing along the path that we’ve been going on is that we will lose still more of our inheritance, still more of our basic values of our basic beliefs in freedom and that we will have still less protest as more and more freedoms are taken away. The real value of freedom is that it provides diversity and diversity is in turn the real protection of freedom. People who like to live in small cities, can live in small cities. People who like the impersonality of the metropolis can live in a metropolis. We have loyalties to our churches, we have loyalties to our universities, to our schools, to our clubs, to our cities, to our states. It’s this diversity. That fact that there isn’t a monolithic conformity imposed on us, that is, the source of protection for our freedom and also the fruit of freedom. It’s because freedom protects diversity, allows, you will remember the phrase when Mao said he was going to allow a 100 flowers to bloom. But of course he didn’t. As soon as people spoke out and 100 flowers bloomed, he cut them off. But it’s the blooming of many flowers, the fact that you have all of these different expressions of people’s individuality and produces the great achievements of civilization and that provides the great hope a protection of our freedom.
Lawrence E. Spivak: Why are you saying that there are pockets of freedom still existing in the countries?
Friedman: As I said before, the picture’s a mixed bag. In certain respects we have more freedom than we’ve ever had, but in other respects we’ve had very much less freedom. Of course there are great pockets of freedom, this is predominantly still a free country. We must not confuse the trend with the situation. We have been moving away from freedom. Our freedom is in jeopardy but by no means has been completely destroyed. I believe that there is a strong enough component of freedom in our society that we will be able to preserve it, that we’re going to turn this trend back, that we are going to cut government down to size, we’re going to lay the ground work for a resurgence for a, a flowering, of that diversity which has been the real product of our free society.

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Woody Allen’s recent films have done very well!!!

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Woody Allen’s recent films have done very well!!! Below Allen discusses them.

12 Questions for Woody Allen

Woody Allen: American Master

The reluctant auteur opens up

Woody Allen CREDIT: Emily Assiran/New York Observer

Would it kill you to know that Woody Allen is just like us? He’s got two teenage girls who listen to pop music on their iPhones. He’s always worried that something bad will happen to them. He exercises every morning but struggles to keep his weight up. (Okay. He’s not totally like us.)

He’s also 78 years old, has won four Academy Awards, has directed actors to six more wins (18 nominations), and has never missed a year releasing a film since 1977. This past weekend came No. 44, a comedy called Magic in the Moonlight. Whether it’s a hit or not doesn’t matter to him particularly, because it’s done, and there’s nothing he can do about it. He’s busy finishing No. 45 and thinking about No. 46. But so far, so good: in 17 theaters, Magictook in a very healthy $426,000.

His frequent collaborator, Marshall Brickman, co-author of such classic Allen films as Annie Hall and Manhattan Murder Mystery, tells me: “He secretes movies like honey. It’s an astonishing record. I don’t think anyone’s come close to it.”

Mr. Allen’s had some problems, but we all know about them. That’s not what this is about. Mr. Allen’s had a life since 1992, when he left Mia Farrow and subsequently married her adopted daughter, Soon-Yi Previn. It’s been 22 years. There must be something else to talk about.

There is: he’s still thinking about life and death, the end of the world, and why we’re all here. All the years with Ms. Farrow, Mr. Allen lived alone on the East Side of Central Park. He wasn’t domiciled until he married Soon-Yi and they started a family. When I meet him at his shambling, low-profile production office off of Fifth Avenue, it’s one of the first things to come up: are the big questions easier now?

“No, it only becomes more tragic,” Mr. Allen says. He’s dressed like, well, Woody Allen, compactly and neat in a button down shirt and chinos. His feathery gray hair is always a jolt because the Mr. Allen you have in your mind is Alvy Singer. But he’s really, pleasantly, the same as ever. He explains: “Because when you have more loved ones, that becomes their fate. I think these poor kids, they become aware of their mortality. When they become aware of it, it’s life changing and traumatic. I feel sorry for them, but the cold hard facts don’t change.”

How about his own vulnerability? “I worry not only about me. But that something bad won’t happen to three other people. That my wife won’t get run over, that my kids won’t die in a plane crash. I used to worry about just me and maybe one other person!”

The children are Bechet, who’s 15, and Manzie, 14. They’re adopted. Each is named for a famous jazz musician. When I met them this past spring at the opening of Mr. Allens’s Bullets Over Broadway premiere, they were incredibly normal teenage girls.  Does he like having two teenage girls in the house? “No! They’re a lot of work. When they hit the teenage years they become more difficult. They’re great before then, charming. But they hit the teenage years and they become like Bonnie Parker.”

Web_Woody_Allen_Philip_Burke

The girls and Soon-Yi have been with him most of the summer in Providence, Rhode Island, where Mr. Allen has been shooting his next film, a drama. As usual, there’s no title. But the key players are his new “it” girl, Emma Stone, Joaquin Phoenix and Parker Posey.

He’s clearly enamored of Mr. Phoenix: “He’s full of emotion and agony. If he says, ‘Pass the salt,’ it’s like the scene where Oedipus puts his eyes out.”

For years Mr. Allen worked with a close circle of actors who rotated through his movies, from Diane Keaton and Tony Roberts to Ms. Farrow, Julie Kavner, Caroline Aaron and Alan Alda. But then he started to branch out.

“I’ve been very lucky. I was thinking about this because [Elaine] Stritch died.” The Broadway legend and quintessential brassy New York broad starred in his 1987 drama, September. The two of them used to poke fun at each other: “We were at rehearsal shooting. She would come out in just her body stocking. People would say, ‘Go back inside!’ I would say, ‘No one wants to see you that way because we’re going to eat in a few minutes!’” Rim shot.  “Every time I saw her we used to kid each other.

“It reminded me that I’ve worked with all these great actresses—Meryl Streep and Maureen Stapleton and Judy Davis and Penelope Cruz and Diane Keaton and Geraldine Page, Gena Rowlands, and Gemma Jones, she was fantastic, now Eileen Atkins. I’ve worked with all the great women—Marion Cotillard.”

Among the men, one offbeat choice that worked was Owen Wilson, who played the lead in Midnight in Paris, Mr. Allen’s most successful movie ever. “He was completely wrong for it when I wrote it. I wrote the character as a New York Eastern intellectual. And we’re thinking who can do this? There’s no one available, no one right. Someone said what about Owen Wilson? I said, I always loved him, but he’s a surfer in Honolulu. He’s not an Eastern intellectual. And [casting director] Juliet Taylor said, rewrite it and send it to him.’”

I interrupt him at this point. “Wait a minute! Juliet can tell you to rewrite a script?” Ms. Taylor has been casting director on 39 of Mr. Allen’s projects in a row starting with Annie Hall and including his TV adaptation of Don’t Drink the Water and his segment of New York Stories.

He laughs. “She can suggest it. She can’t order me to do it. Yes, I’m very close with Juliet. I always run my scripts by her and she’s always giving me feedback.”

What if Mr. Wilson had turned it down?

“Then I would have a version rewritten for no reason. But to rewrite it wasn’t so hard. I just had to rewrite it as a Hollywood scriptwriter, a big success but it meant nothing to him, who went to Paris and regretted that he hadn’t stayed there.”

Woody Allen CREDIT: Emily Assiran/New York Observer

Midnight in Paris kicked off a succession of hits that no one, including Mr. Allen, would have expected at this point in his long career. To Rome with Love followed and did very well. Then Blue Jasmine, a drama that captured the zeitgeist of a society confused about money, possessions, wealth and sanity. Cate Blanchett won the Oscar for Best Actress. Mr. Allen says: “I thought when I was writing it if I could get Cate Blanchett I would be very lucky. There aren’t a lot of actresses who can go that deep. She can.”

Did he give her a lot of direction? “I gave her some direction. But to say you direct Cate Blanchett, she’s one of the great actresses in the world. She and Meryl Streep. There’s two or three, and she’s one of them. I thought it was like when I hired Anthony Hopkins. That I could just phone it in.”

His method of directing—or lack thereof—is always an issue. Both Colin Firth and Ms. Stone claim they were very much directed in Magic in the Moonlight. When I tell Mr. Allen that, he almost blushes. “Then I was tricking him! You’ve seen Colin like this. I have nothing really to direct with Colin. He is that elegant, handsome Englishman.

“He’s a very, very skillful actor. You can see it in The King’s Speech. Here he’s a charming leading man. There he’s the mumbling, stuttering king. He’s great in both of them. And she’s”—he indicates Ms. Stone—“a natural movie star. She’s a movie star. She’s beautiful,” he says, “in an interesting way.”

That brings us to Magic in the Moonlight. It’s set in 1928, when psychics were all the rage. Great magicians like Houdini were deployed to debunk them. That’s the character Mr. Firth plays. Emma Stone is the psychic. Eileen Atkins plays Mr. Firth’s aunt, and almost steals the movie in a scene where she persuades Mr. Firth that he’s in love with Ms. Stone. Magic turns up a lot in Woody Allen movies, starting with Kenneth Mars in Shadows and Fog. Mr. Allen played a magician in the under-appreciated Scoop with Scarlett Johansson. As a child, Mr. Allen was an amateur magician.

“I bought tricks and did them. I was interested in sleight of hand. I always read a lot about magic. I would do the tricks, put the cigarette in my mother’s silk handkerchief. It wouldn’t work. The guys who do it are constantly practicing. David Blaine, Ricky Jay. David Blaine told me he and a friend went to the card factory and had special decks of cards made with the perfect weight and thinness.”

Alas, despite magic being a big part of his films, Mr. Allen is realistic. “There’s no magic, unfortunately … And there are no psychics.”

Woody Allen CREDIT: Emily Assiran/New York Observer

As a stand-up comic in the mid-1960s, Mr. Allen could never have foretold that this would be his fate. But he always loved jazz, even then, playing the clarinet. Nowadays he does it with his band on Mondays at the Café Carlyle. There are big differences. Back then, Mr. Allen tells me, he carried at least 20 jazz LPs with him on the road as he made his way from Chicago to San Francisco to Detroit.

“I’d carry a lot of albums with me for variation. They were always New Orleans jazz, Louis Armstrong, Sidney Bechet … When I got to a town, I’d buy a record player. When I was done, I’d leave it in St. Louis, or wherever … it was too heavy to carry a record player from town to town.”

Now, he actually carries an iPhone loaded with music. “My assistant programmed into the music thing 120 jazz tunes into it. Now when I go out of town, I put the earphones on and it’s great.”

The iPhone is only for music and/or making and taking calls. He doesn’t email or surf the web. Ms. Stone, he says, recently showed him how to text. “I’m so untechnical. I don’t have a word processor. I still have my typewriter, the Olympia portable.” When I mention clips of him on YouTube, he shrugs. He’s never seen it. His daughters, however, are appropriately tech savvy. He says, sounding like every other parent, “They’re on their phones obsessively. And their mother catches them at 12:30 at night. It drives her crazy.” What do they listen to? “Something called One Direction,” he pauses, thinking, “and Katy Perry, and Rihanna.” Does he ever listen? “They have earphones. It’s their music, their generation.”

He rarely wanders out of his comfort zone. And when he does, it’s not always successful. He was ambivalent about turning Bullets Over Broadway into a live stage show. Now it’s closing on August 24 after a disappointing 156 performances. “I thought, it will open, I’ll make money in my sleep!” Is there such a thing? “No, not for me … I’ll never understand why some shows have huge audiences.”

Mr. Allen says he’s always had trouble drawing a live audience. “Even when I was a comic, I’d be on the Johnny Carson show, I’d take over the Johnny Carson show, I’d host it and promote and promote. The next week I’d go to Vegas, and they’d start moving around the potted plants to make the room look smaller. And they’d move them in so it didn’t look so empty. I’ve never been a draw in my life, in any medium … my record album came out when Newhart, Shelley Berman, Cosby, Mort Sahl, Nichols and May [all had hits]. And I was a hot comic at the time. Very disappointing.”

The audience thing is not completely true. There was a time when the opening of a Woody Allen film was an event in New York. Fans lined up around the block to see the auteur’s films at the Coronet, Baronet and Beekman theaters in the late ’70s through the mid-’80s. It was a phenomenon.

“I was aware that in those theaters I did very well. Sometimes, my movies were only playing in those theaters. Then they went to Queens, Staten Island and did okay. By the time they got to Yuma and Tulsa, they weren’t doing so well.”

Woody Allen CREDIT: Emily Assiran/New York Observer

It was Mr. Allens’s halcyon era in New York—playing the clarinet at Michael’s Pub, eating at Elaine’s. “She was a loyal friend,” he says of the late restaurateur Elaine Kaufman. “There was a period when I had dinner there every single night for 10 years. I was loyal to her. I used her place for several movies. I used Elaine’s in Celebrity, Manhattan, always Elaine’s. And that was a home for a while.” When Kaufman celebrated her restaurant’s 45th year in 2008, Mr. Allen, wife Soon-Yi and daughter Bechet arrived on the button at 8 p.m. and stayed for hours, much to Kaufman’s delight.

Three years later, Kaufman and her eatery would be gone. And when Midnight in Paris screened in Cannes, people went wild. At the dinner in the Palais des Festivals following its official showing, I asked Mr. Allen if he’d known this would happen. I can still remember him saying, very meekly, “No, it was just an idea on a piece of paper …” He was shocked. There’s simply no way to calculate or manufacture a hit.

“It’s a complete surprise,” he says, if a film takes off. “And I live with it for a year. Right now I’m shooting a picture with Emma and Joaquin Phoenix. I see them every day, we shoot and reshoot, it’s agonizing work, we edit and do the music and the mix, you don’t know … I don’t know if people are going to say, ‘Are you kidding? This is the worst thing I’ve ever seen.’”

When Midnight broke records, “I was pleasantly surprised. People were coming in abundance. All over the world. I didn’t think anyone would come to Blue Jasmine. I thought that kind of picture would not be popular. A serious picture is an uphill fight. Just like a serious play is a brutal fight on Broadway.”

He has not worked alone on the 44 films. Besides Ms. Taylor, his closest associates have been the cinematographers: Carlo Di Palma, Gordon Willis, Sven Nykvist—all now deceased—and more recently Darius Khondji. It hasn’t always been easy getting everyone on the same page.

Woody Allen CREDIT: Emily Assiran/New York Observer

Mr. Allen recalls: “Gordon Willis”—who shot seven of his films (Annie Hall, Manhattan, Zelig) as well as The Godfather trilogy—“worked very differently than I liked to work. But it was not that comfortable. I accommodated him. He was very detailed and meticulous. He’s very professional. He wanted to rehearse so he knew [what was going to happen].

“Carlo was a happy-go-lucky guy. Carlo was like me, he didn’t know what we were going to shoot until we got there. He was an artist, with a vision. But he didn’t know what he was doing. For Everyone Says I Love You, Carlo had lit everything on the other side of the Seine from Notre Dame—he used every light in Paris. Then you get Sven Nykvist, he’s fast, with no lights, and it’s beautiful. Carlo makes it beautiful with all the lights in Paris. Darius was such a dedicated artist for MIP he researched the filaments and street lights. I said, ‘It looks marginally different.’”

He worries that as a filmmaker, he hasn’t influenced anyone. Unlike Martin Scorsese, for example, Mr. Allen says he rarely reads about young directors getting their inspiration from him. Only one: Nora Ephron, who wrote When Harry Met Sally. “She said, ‘You always say no one’s influenced by you but what about me?’ But she’s the only one. And that movie probably did better than Annie Hall.” It’s ironic to him, too. “Annie Hall I think was the lowest earning Oscar winning.” Up til then it was.

As much as Annie Hall makes other people’s best of lists, it barely makes Mr. Allens’s list. When I ask him to name his favorites of his films, his first answer is: Purple Rose of Cairo. He says he likes about 12 of the 45 films, and continues: “Husbands and Wives, Midnight in Paris, Match Point, Zelig,” come out immediately. That’s five. Now what? He adds “Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Blue Jasmine, Broadway Danny Rose.” We’ve got eight. “Annie Hall?” I ask. “Yeahhhh.” Then he remembers the ones he wants: “Manhattan Murder Mystery, Bullets Over Broadway.” He makes no mention of popular favorites like Manhattan or Crimes and Misdemeanors or Hannah and Her Sisters.

Even though he is regularly nominated for Oscars, and he’s directed many actors to Oscars, Mr. Allen is a not member of the Academy and doesn’t vote a ballot. He’s only attended the Oscars once, in 2002, after 9/11, to promote New York. “I’m not a person who believes in awards. I don’t think it’s a right thing to give awards. I think they could say ‘These are our favorite films.’ Crash is better than Brokeback Mountain?”

Was it, I ask?

He replies: “I don’t know. I didn’t see them.”

He claims never to have watched a DVD screener. The only time he’s seen new movies has been from a print, in his small screening room. He did see Wolf of Wall Street. Argo is a vague memory. How about the Coen brothers? They’re sort of like young Woody Allens gone askew—quirky, Jewish, transplanted New Yorkers. Mr. Allen tells me he didn’t see Inside Llewyn Davis, which vaguely covered a time and place he knew—Greenwich Village, 1960. But he adds quickly, “I thought Fargo should have won the Academy Award and not The English Patient.”

Earlier this year, in an effort to derail Ms. Blanchett’s Oscar campaign, a couple of anonymous complaints turned up in the tabloids about Mr. Allen not using black actors. He’s horrified when I bring up the subject. We talk about the new generation of wonderful black actors like Viola Davis and wonder if they’ll ever be cast in a Woody Allen film. He doesn’t hesitate to respond: “Not unless I write a story that requires it. You don’t hire people based on race. You hire people based on who is correct for the part. The implication is that I’m deliberately not hiring black actors, which is stupid. I cast only what’s right for the part. Race, friendship means nothing to me except who is right for the part.”

Woody Allen CREDIT: Emily Assiran/New York ObserverI ask him why, by the way, Chris Rock appeared in Robert Weide’s PBS documentary about him last year? Are they friends?  “He loved my work. When I got married to Soon-Yi he bought me a wedding present,” Mr. Allen reports, surprised and grateful. “When I ran into him in Rome, we took him out for dinner.” He adds: “I’m friendly with Spike Lee. We don’t socialize, but I don’t socialize with anyone.” There’s a punchline: “I don’t have white friends either.”

He does have heroes, however. Mr. Allen is still obsessed with Bob Hope, for example. “I just finished reading this wonderful biography of Bob Hope, by Richard Zoglin. For me it’s a feast. Full of funny lines, quotes you can hear Hope saying them. I would love to make a Bob Hope movie, even an homage to Hope called Hope Springs Eternal, but I fear no one would see it. I’m always defending him to people.”

Modern comics don’t interest him much. He draws a blank when I ask about Jerry Seinfeld. “What I’ve seen of Seinfeld and Louie C.K. I’ve liked,” he says, but TV eludes him other than news and Knicks games. He says he can’t keep up with The New Yorker—“it comes so fast.” But when I mention Paul Rudnick and Andy Borowitz, that he knows. “I find those guys funny definitely.”

What’s a typical Woody Allen day like? He writes not long after he gets up. He uses a treadmill for exercise. “Exercise trumps diet,” he says. He can brag. “Someone just found my driver’s license from when I shot Take the Money and Run in San Francisco.” That’s 45 years ago. “I’m the same weight. I try and gain weight. I switched from wine to beer 10 or 15 years ago. I heard beer is a fattening drink. I have a couple of beers every day.”

Traditional New York food? He doesn’t like bagels! And deli? “I haven’t had a hot dog in at least 15 years. I’ve had a corned beef sandwich once every 25 years.”

His one vice?

“Chocolate malteds—I make them so brilliantly. It’ll kill you, though. You have to put in quite a bit of malt. More than you think. More is more than the traditional amount. If I make it for you, you will die. I make it with half and half, a certain amount of ice cream—vanilla ice cream—chocolate syrup—but you know, they kill you. I used to have two, three a day with impunity.” And his one health issue? “I had glaucoma in my right eye,” he says. What was it like, I asked this very funny man, a man whose work, whose life, has shaped New York sensibilities for more than four decades, to have had your cataracts fixed recently. “It’s like you moved out of Sweden.”

Roger Friedman has covered the entertainment industry for over 25 years and is the founder of Showbiz411.com.

Read more at http://observer.com/2014/07/woody-allen-american-master/#ixzz3Mp7vFZ88
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I have learned several things about atheists in the last 20 years while I have been corresponding with them. First, they know in their hearts that God exists and they can’t live as if God doesn’t exist, but they will still search in some way in their life for a greater meaning. Second, many atheists will take time out of their busy lives to examine the evidence that I present to them. Third, there is hope that they will change their views.

At the bottom of this post I have listed every post from March and April 2014 that is about Antony Flew, who was arguably the most famous atheist philosopher of the 20th century and his conversion from atheism to theism.

Let’s go over again a few points I made at the first of this post.  My first point is backed up by  Romans 1:18-19 (Amplified Bible) ” For God’s wrath and indignation are revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who in their wickedness REPRESS and HINDER the truth and make it inoperative. For that which is KNOWN about God is EVIDENT to them and MADE PLAIN IN THEIR INNER CONSCIOUSNESS, because God  has SHOWN IT TO THEM,”(emphasis mine). I have discussed this many times on my blog and even have interacted with many atheists from CSICOP in the past.

My second point is that many atheists will take the time to consider the evidence that I have presented to them and will respond. The late Adrian Rogers was my pastor at Bellevue Baptist when I grew up and I sent his sermon on evolution and another on the accuracy of the Bible to many atheists to listen to and many of them did. I also sent many of the arguments from Francis Schaeffer also.

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Adrian Rogers and his wife Joyce pictured above with former President George Bush at Union University in Tennessee.
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Many of these scholars have taken the time to respond back to me in the last 20 years and some of the names  included are  Ernest Mayr (1904-2005), George Wald (1906-1997), Carl Sagan (1934-1996),  Robert Shapiro (1935-2011), Nicolaas Bloembergen (1920-),  Brian Charlesworth (1945-),  Francisco J. Ayala (1934-) Elliott Sober (1948-), Kevin Padian (1951-), Matt Cartmill (1943-) , Milton Fingerman (1928-), John J. Shea (1969-), , Michael A. Crawford (1938-), (Paul Kurtz (1925-2012), Sol Gordon (1923-2008), Albert Ellis (1913-2007), Barbara Marie Tabler (1915-1996), Renate Vambery (1916-2005), Archie J. Bahm (1907-1996), Aron S “Gil” Martin ( 1910-1997), Matthew I. Spetter (1921-2012), H. J. Eysenck (1916-1997), Robert L. Erdmann (1929-2006), Mary Morain (1911-1999), Lloyd Morain (1917-2010),  Warren Allen Smith (1921-), Bette Chambers (1930-),  Gordon Stein (1941-1996) , Milton Friedman (1912-2006), John Hospers (1918-2011), and Michael Martin (1932-).
Third, there is hope that an atheist will reconsider his or her position after examining more evidence. Twenty years I had the opportunity to correspond with two individuals that were regarded as two of the most famous atheists of the 20th Century, Antony Flew and Carl Sagan.  I had read the books and seen the films of the Christian philosopher Francis Schaeffer and he had discussed the works of both of these men. I sent both of these gentlemen philosophical arguments from Schaeffer in these letters and in the first letter I sent a cassette tape of my pastor’s sermon IS THE BIBLE TRUE? You may have noticed in the news a few years that Antony Flew actually became a theist in 2004 and remained one until his death in 2010. Carl Sagan remained a skeptic until his dying day in 1996.Antony Flew wrote me back several times and in the  June 1, 1994 letter he  commented, “Thank you for sending me the IS THE BIBLE TRUE? tape to which I have just listened with great interest and, I trust, profit.” I later sent him Adrian Rogers’ sermon on evolution too. 
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John Paul Sarte –

“I need God…I reached out for religion, I longed for it, it was the remedy. Had it been denied me, I would have invented it myself.” (words, 102, 97).

“Atheism is a cruel, long-term business: I believe that I have gone through it to the end.” – Jean-Paul Sartre.

Before Sartre’s death he is recorded as saying,

“I do not feel that I am the product of chance, a speck of dust in the universe, but someone who was expected, prepared, prefigured. In short, a being whom only a Creator could put here” (National Review, 11 June, 1982, p. 677).
Sigmund Freud speaking of God admitted that

“It would be very nice indeed if there was a God.” There is “a sense of man’s insignificance or impotence in the face of the universe.”

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Friedrich Nietzsche –

“God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we, the murderers, of all murderers, comfort ourselves?”

“I hold up before myself the images of Dante and Spinoza (believers), who were better at accepting the lot of solitude….My life now consists in the wish that it might be otherwise…And that somebody might make my ‘truths’ appear incredible to me…”

Thus Spake Zarathustra:

“Unknown one! Speak. What wilt thou, unknown-god?… Do come back With all thy tortures! To the last of all that are lonely, Oh, come back!…
“And the last flame of my heart Up it gloweth unto thee! Oh, come back, Mine unknown God, my pain! My last happiness!…”

David Hume—

“Most fortunately it happens, that since reason is incapable of dispelling these colds, nature herself suffices to that purpose, and cures me of this philosophical melancholy and delirium. I din, I play a game of backgammon, I converse, and am merry with my friends; and when after three or four hour’s amusement, I would return to these speculations, they appear so cold and strained and ridiculous, that I cannot find in my heart to enter into them any farther.”

Walter Kauffman, German American Philosopher,

“Religion is rooted in man’s aspirations to transcend himself…Whether he worships idols or strives to perfect himself, man is the god-intoxicated ape.”

Will Durant, an American writer, historian and philosopher was interviewed by the Chicago Sun-Times.

I survive morally because I was taught the moral code along with religion, while I have discarded the religion, which was Roman Catholicism. You and I are living on a shadow…because we are operating on the Christian ethical code which was given us, unfused with Christian faith…but what will happen with our children…? We are not giving them an ethics warmed up with Christian faith. They are living on the shadow of a shadow.”

Alber Camus

For anyone who is alone, without God and without a master, the weight of days is dreadful” (The Fall, 133).

“… Despite the fact that there is no God, at least the Church must be built” (The Rebel, 147).

Bertrand Russell

“Even when one feels nearest to other people, something in one seems obstinately to belong to God…–at least that is how I should express it if I thought there was a God. It is odd, isn’t it? I care passionately for this world and many things and people in it, and yet…what is it all?” There must be something more important one feels, though I don’t believe there is”

The British Humanist Magazine charged that Humanism is almost “clinically detached from life.” It recommends they develop a humanist Bible, a humanist hymnal, Ten Commandments for humanists, and even confessional practices! In addition,

“the use of hypnotic techniques–music and other psychological devices–during humanist services would give the audience that deep spiritual experience and they would emerge refreshed and inspired with their humanist faith…” (1964).

Jesus felt the sadness too:

“O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing.” (Matthew 23:37)

Thanks to Norman Geisler:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_LVM3GQ41vk

thanks to:

Ken Probst

http://blogs.nazarene.org/kpprobst/tag/john-paul-sarte/

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Links to articles on Antony Flew’s conversion from Atheism to Theism from March and April 2014 on http://www.thedailyhatch.org !!!!

Former atheist Antony Flew: “Although I was once sharply critical of the argument to design, I have since come to see that, when correctly formulated, this argument constitutes a persuasive case for the existence of God!”

Discussion (1 of 3): Antony Flew, N.T. Wright, and Gary Habermas Uploaded on Sep 22, 2010 A discussion with Antony Flew, N.T. Wright, and Gary Habermas. This was held at Westminster Chapel March, 2008 Debate – William Lane Craig vs Christopher Hitchens – Does God Exist? Uploaded on Jan 27, 2011 April 4, 2009 – Craig vs. […]

Former atheist Antony Flew said, “I was particularly impressed with Gerry Schroeder’s point-by-point refutation of what I call the MONKEY THEOREM!”

____________ Discussion (1 of 3): Antony Flew, N.T. Wright, and Gary Habermas Uploaded on Sep 22, 2010 A discussion with Antony Flew, N.T. Wright, and Gary Habermas. This was held at Westminster Chapel March, 2008 Is Goodness Without God is Good Enough? William Lane Craig vs. Paul Kurtz Published on Jul 29, 2013 Date: October 24, 2001 […]

The argument from design led former atheist Antony Flew to assert: “I must say again that the journey to my discovery of the Divine has thus far been a pilgrimage of reason, and it has led me to accept the existence of a self-existent, immutable, immaterial, omnipotent, and omniscient Being!”

  ____________ Jesus’ Resurrection: Atheist, Antony Flew, and Theist, Gary Habermas, Dialogue Published on Apr 7, 2012 http://www.veritas.org/talks – Did Jesus die, was he buried, and what happened afterward? Join legendary atheist Antony Flew and Christian historian and apologist Gary Habermas in a discussion about the facts surrounding the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Join […]

Former atheist Antony Flew pointed out that natural selection can’t explain the origin of first life and in every other case, information necessarily points to an intelligent source!

______________ Does God Exist? Thomas Warren vs. Antony Flew Published on Jan 2, 2014 Date: September 20-23, 1976 Location: North Texas State University Christian debater: Thomas B. Warren Atheist debater: Antony G.N. Flew For Thomas Warren: http://www.warrenapologeticscenter.org/ ______________________ Antony Flew and his conversion to theism Uploaded on Aug 12, 2011 Antony Flew, a well known spokesperson […]

Former Atheist Antony Flew noted that Evolutionists failed to show “Where did a living, self-reproducing organism come from in the first place?”

____   Does God Exist? Thomas Warren vs. Antony Flew Published on Jan 2, 2014 Date: September 20-23, 1976 Location: North Texas State University Christian debater: Thomas B. Warren Atheist debater: Antony G.N. Flew For Thomas Warren: http://www.warrenapologeticscenter.org/ ______________________ Antony Flew and his conversion to theism Uploaded on Aug 12, 2011 Antony Flew, a well known […]

(BP)–Antony Flew, a legendary British philosopher and atheist, has changed his mind about the existence of God in light of recent scientific evidence.Flew –

_____________ Famed atheist sees evidence for God, cites recent discoveries Antony Flew NASHVILLE, Tenn. (BP)–Antony Flew, a legendary British philosopher and atheist, has changed his mind about the existence of God in light of recent scientific evidence.Flew — a prolific author who has argued against the existence of God and the claims of Christianity for […]

Antony Flew in his book THERE IS A GOD talks about his “notoriety” as an atheist! ( also 7 News : Web Extra: Ricky Gervais on God)

  7News : Web Extra: Ricky Gervais on God Published on Mar 23, 2014 He’s not shy about sharing his opinion with 5 million social media followers so Ricky Gervais was happy to clear a few things up for us too. __________________________________ Discussion (2 of 3): Antony Flew, N.T. Wright, and Gary Habermas Atheist Lawrence Krauss loses debate […]

Was Antony Flew the most prominent atheist of the 20th century?

_________ Antony Flew on God and Atheism Published on Feb 11, 2013 Lee Strobel interviews philosopher and scholar Antony Flew on his conversion from atheism to deism. Much of it has to do with intelligent design. Flew was considered one of the most influential and important thinker for atheism during his time before his death […]

Why the world’s most famous atheist (Antony Flew) now believes in God by James A. Beverley

____________ Antony Flew on God and Atheism Published on Feb 11, 2013 Lee Strobel interviews philosopher and scholar Antony Flew on his conversion from atheism to deism. Much of it has to do with intelligent design. Flew was considered one of the most influential and important thinker for atheism during his time before his death […]

The Death of a (Former) Atheist — Antony Flew, 1923-2010 Antony Flew’s rejection of atheism is an encouragement, but his rejection of Christianity is a warning. Rejecting atheism is simply not enough, by Al Mohler

Discussion (1 of 3): Antony Flew, N.T. Wright, and Gary Habermas Uploaded on Sep 22, 2010 A discussion with Antony Flew, N.T. Wright, and Gary Habermas. This was held at Westminster Chapel March, 2008 ______________________ Making Sense of Faith and Science Uploaded on May 16, 2008 Dr. H. Fritz Schaefer confronts the assertion that one cannot believe […]

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 40 Timothy Leary (Featured artist is Margaret Keane)

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A Christian Manifesto Francis Schaeffer

Published on Dec 18, 2012

A video important to today. The man was very wise in the ways of God. And of government. Hope you enjoy a good solis teaching from the past. The truth never gets old.

The Roots of the Emergent Church by Francis Schaeffer

How Should We then Live Episode 7 small (Age of Nonreason)

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Francis Schaeffer has written extensively on art and culture spanning the last 2000years and here are some posts I have done on this subject before : Francis Schaeffer’s “How should we then live?” Video and outline of episode 10 “Final Choices” episode 9 “The Age of Personal Peace and Affluence”episode 8 “The Age of Fragmentation”episode 7 “The Age of Non-Reason” episode 6 “The Scientific Age” , episode 5 “The Revolutionary Age” episode 4 “The Reformation” episode 3 “The Renaissance”episode 2 “The Middle Ages,”, and  episode 1 “The Roman Age,” . My favorite episodes are number 7 and 8 since they deal with modern art and culture primarily.(Joe Carter rightly noted,Schaefferwho always claimed to be an evangelist and not aphilosopher—was often criticized for the way his work oversimplifiedintellectual history and philosophy.” To those critics I say take a chill pillbecause Schaeffer was introducing millions into the fields of art andculture!!!! !!! More people need to read his works and blog about thembecause they show how people’s worldviews affect their lives!

J.I.PACKER WROTE OF SCHAEFFER, “His communicative style was not that of acautious academic who labors for exhaustive coverage and dispassionate objectivity. It was rather that of an impassioned thinker who paints his vision of eternal truth in bold strokes and stark contrasts.Yet it is a fact that MANY YOUNG THINKERS AND ARTISTS…HAVE FOUND SCHAEFFER’S ANALYSES A LIFELINE TO SANITY WITHOUT WHICH THEY COULD NOT HAVE GONE ON LIVING.”

Francis Schaeffer’s works  are the basis for a large portion of my blog posts andthey have stood the test of time. In fact, many people would say that many of the things he wrote in the 1960’s  were right on  in the sense he saw where ourwestern society was heading and he knew that abortion, infanticide and youthenthansia were  moral boundaries we would be crossing  in the coming decadesbecause of humanism and these are the discussions we are having now!)

There is evidence that points to the fact that the Bible is historically true asSchaeffer pointed out in episode 5 of WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE HUMAN RACE? There is a basis then for faith in Christ alone for our eternal hope. This linkshows how to do that.

Francis Schaeffer in Art and the Bible noted, “Many modern artists, it seems to me, have forgotten the value that art has in itself. Much modern art is far too intellectual to be great art. Many modern artists seem not to see the distinction between man and non-man, and it is a part of the lostness of modern man that they no longer see value in the work of art as a work of art.” 

Many modern artists are left in this point of desperation that Schaeffer points out and it reminds me of the despair that Solomon speaks of in Ecclesiastes.  Christian scholar Ravi Zacharias has noted, “The key to understanding the Book of Ecclesiastes is the term ‘under the sun.’ What that literally means is you lock God out of a closed system, and you are left with only this world of time plus chanceplus matter.” THIS IS EXACT POINT SCHAEFFER SAYS SECULAR ARTISTSARE PAINTING FROM TODAY BECAUSE THEY BELIEVED ARE A RESULTOF MINDLESS CHANCE.

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The New Mysticism
What about the spread of Eastern religions and techniques within the West – things like TM, Yoga, the cults? We have moved beyond the counterculture of the sixties, but where to? These elements from the East no longer influence just the beat generation and the dropouts. Now they are fashionable for the middle classes as well. They are everywhere.
What has become important is not whether there is anything that causes an experience, but just the experience as such. What about modern theology in the churches? It is the same thing. Maybe the terminology is “Christian,” but the ideas are on the other side – experience is the important thing, not propositions about reality, about God, about salvation and all the rest. It does not matter if anything exists that has caused or conforms to the experience.
What about the sudden growth of interest in UFOs and UFOlogy? Even though not a scrap of evidence exists to support Erich von Däniken’s “scientific” theories about spacemen who visited earth in the distant past, millions of people have been taken with these assumptions. He has given his ideas an aura of scientific plausibility, plenty of technical jargon, photographs, and so forth, and because this is a “scientific age,” people are impressed. But the real evidence is unconvincing. Is there conscious life in other parts of the cosmos? We do not know. If there is, it would pose no problem for Christianity. Still, at this time there is no proof at all that this is the case. Why then do people accept it? We suggest it is part of the swing to the irrational.
People are hungry for something which will give them hope in life. They are tired of the empty platitudes that politicians and many theologians have made: endless exhortations to be good, to be good, to be good! They are also afraid. Things really do seem hopeless, even on the level of everyday life with its threats of a lower standard of living, of a growing authoritarianism, of famine and ecological disaster, of devastating war. And they are looking for any answer. So the UFOs are messengers of a friendly race from another planet. “Do not fear – the Force is with you!” – to borrow from a current science-fiction film. And so people believe it irrationally. If they used their minds, they would see no evidence for friendly people from outside. But the feeling of experience as they read about this or see it on a screen is enough. It does not matter whether there is any reality to it.
What about the growth of occultism, witchcraft, astrology? Is it simply economics that has put the signs of the zodiac in shops from one end of our society to the other? In part it is economics, but, once again, the real reason is deeper. People are looking for answers – answers they can experience.
What about those who take drugs as a means of “expanding their consciousness”? This, too, is in the same direction. Your mind is a hindrance to you: “Blow it”! As Timothy Leary put it in The Politics of Ecstasy (1968): “Our favorite concepts are standing in the way of a flood tide two billion years building up. The verbal dam is collapsing. Head for the hills or prepare your intellectual craft to flow with the current.” So we see again the rejection of the mind. The verbal dam, the concepts, the intellectual craft? These must be bypassed by the “new man.”
Wherever we look, this is what confronts us: irrational experience. We must be careful not to be bewildered by the surface differences between these movements. We are not saying they are all the same. Of course there are differences. The secular existentialists, for example, disagree with one another. Then, too, secular existentialists differ with religious existentialists; the former tend to be pessimistic, the latter optimistic. Some of the movements are serious and command our respect. Some are just bizarre. There are differences. Yet, all of them represent the new mysticism!
The problem with mysticism of this sort is, interestingly enough, the same problem we considered earlier in relation to all humanistic systems. Who is going to say what is right?
As soon as one removes the checking mechanism of the mind by which to measure things, everything can then be “right” and everything can also be “wrong.” Eventually, anything and everything can be allowed! Take a simple example from life: If you are asking for directions in a city, you first listen to the directions your guide is giving and then you set off. Let us say the directions are: “Take the first turn on the right, called Twenty-fourth Street; then the next turn of the left, called Kennedy Drive; and then keep going till you come to the park where you will see the concert hall just past a big lake on your right.” Armed with there directions, you go along – checking up on what you have been told: “Yes, there is Twenty-fourth Street. Yes, there is Kennedy Drive,” and so on.
In other words, you are not just told words; you are able to see if these words relate to the outside world, the world you have to operate in if you are going to get from A to B. This is where your mind is essential. You can check to see if the information you have been given is true or false.
Imagine, on the other hand, that someone said, in answer to your request for directions, “I don’t know where or what B is. It is impossible to talk about a `concert hall.’ What is a `concert hall’ anyway? We can only say of it that it is the `Unknowable.'” How completely ridiculous for you to be told, “Go any way – because this is the way”!
The trick in all these positions is to argue first of all that the End – Final Reality – cannot be spoken of (because it cannot be known by the mind) and yet to give the directions to find it. We should notice, however, that in this setting we can never ask questions ahead of time about the directions we receive. They are directions only for blindfolded experience, the blind “leap of faith.”
We cannot ask, “How will I know that it is truth or that it is the divine I am experiencing?” The answer is always, “There is no way you can be told, for it is an answer beyond language, beyond categories, but take this path [or that one, or another one] anyway.”
Thus, modern man is bombarded from all sides by devotees of this or that experience. The media only compound the problem. So does the commercialism of our highly technological societies. The danger of manipulation from these alone is overwhelming. In the absence of a clear standard, they are a force for the control of people’s minds and behavior that is beyond anything in history. In fact, there are no clear standards in Western society now; and where there is an appearance of standards, very often there is insufficient motivation to lean against the enormous pressures. And why? In part, at least, because there is an inadequate basis for knowledge and for morality.
When we add to this that modern man has become a “mystic,” we soon realize the seriousness of the situation. For in all these mystical solutions no one can finally say anything about right and wrong. The East has had this problem for thousands of years. In a pantheistic system, whatever pious statements may be made along the way, ultimately good and evil are equal in God, the impersonal God. So we hear Yun-Men, a Zen master, saying, “If you want to get the plain truth, be not concerned with right and wrong. Conflict between right and wrong is the sickness of the mind.”
Society can have no stability on this Eastern world-view or its present Western counterpart. It just does not work. And so one finds a gravitation toward some form of authoritarian government, an individual tyrant or group of tyrants who takes the reins of power and rule. And the freedoms, the sorts of freedoms we have enjoyed in the West, are lost.
We are, then, brought back to our starting point. The inhumanities and the growing loss of freedoms in the West are the result of a world-view which as no place for “people.” Modern humanistic materialism is an impersonal system. The East is no different. Both begin and end with impersonality.
We have looked at reasons for concluding not merely that these world-views are uncomfortable because they lead to inhumanity, but because they are false. They do not fit into what we know best about ourselves and our environment. Ours is a universe which contains real personality. Neither the universe nor this personality is illusory. We will turn now to the Bible’s claim to be the reliable source of information about the universe and mankind. But first, there are two very important introductory comments.

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Leary, John Lennon, Yoko Ono, and others recording “Give Peace A Chance“.

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TIMOTHY LEARY – FOTOGALERIE

Tyto fotky by vám měly přiblížit nejen to jak Dr. Leary vypadal, ale také něco z jeho povahy. Jsou ale zatím jedinné, které jsem na internetu našel což je taky důvod jejich nekvality.

Timothy Leary Biography

Psychologist (1920–1996)
Timothy Leary was a noted Harvard lecturer and researcher who became an advocate for LSD and later an entertainment figure.

Synopsis

Born on October 22, 1920, in Springfield, Massachusetts, Timothy Leary forged a career as a noted psychology professor and researcher before becoming a major, highly controversial advocate of psychedelic drugs during the 1960s. He was imprisoned on marijuana charges, yet escaped only to be caught. He later worked in entertainment and cybernetics and published many books. He died on May 31, 1996.

Background and Early Career

Timothy Leary was born on October 22, 1920, in Springfield, Massachusetts, into an Irish-Catholic household. He went on to attend several schools before graduating from the University of Alabama in 1943 and earning a psychology doctorate in 1950 from the University of California at Berkeley.

Working there as an assistant professor until 1955, Leary also developed a groundbreaking monograph, published in 1957, which explored interpersonal relationships via a complex model system. Yet Leary and his two children suffered great personal loss during this time period, when his first wife committed suicide. He subsequently worked as the director of the Kaiser Foundation and then accepted a lecturing position at Harvard University in 1959.

Experiments With Drugs

After taking mushrooms while in Cuernavaca, Mexico, Leary conducted behavioral experiments with psilocybin, an active ingredient of the fungi that was allowed for use in research. He worked with colleagues Richard Alpert and Ralph Metzner, and Leary’s team and affiliated researchers used the drug in studies with seminary students, inmates and colleagues.

Leary started to use LSD in the early 1960s. After a scandal when the university discovered students were also using his supply, Leary was discharged in 1963. Becoming an advocate for the use of psychedelic drugs, Leary established the International Foundation for Internal Freedom along with Alpert. Leary later converted to Hinduism after the two established IFIF organizational headquarters in Millbrook, New York, with a rich funder’s support.

Criticized Media Figure

Leary, known for college lecturing, became a media icon with his much-quoted line, “Turn on, tune in, drop out.” He published his writings, abandoned controlled research methods, and hung out with a number of countercultural and entertainment figures.

Yet he faced criticism from various avenues for his role in exhorting youth to take LSD. Richard Nixon dubbed him “the most dangerous man in America,” and both other media personalities and medical professionals decried the palpable damage his message inflicted.

Arrest and Escape

After declaring his candidacy for governor of California in 1970, Leary was arrested on marijuana possession charges and received a decade-long jail sentence. He broke free from prison with outside help several months later and traveled abroad before being recaptured in Afghanistan in 1973. He was re-imprisoned and was ultimately released by state governmental decree in 1976.

Film, TV, Tech

Leary resumed lecturing and, during the ’80s, worked in a number of arts and entertainment jobs, including TV and film roles and stand-up comedy. He turned to tech-oriented pursuits as well, becoming a proponent of virtual-reality programs and helming the software companies Futique, Inc. and Telelctronics.

Leary learned in early 1995 that he had terminal cancer, and decided to document his progression toward death via his website, http://www.leary.com. He died on May 31, 1996, in Beverly Hills, California.

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MATT LEWIS

Rediscovering Francis Schaeffer and intellectual Evangelicalism

Photo of Matt K. Lewis

MATT K. LEWIS
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    MATT K. LEWIS

    Matt K. Lewis is a senior contributor to The Daily Caller, and a contributing editor for The Week. He is a respected commentator on politics and cultural issues, and has been cited by major publications such as The Washington Post and The New York Times. Matt is from Myersville, MD and currently resides in Alexandria, VA. Follow Matt K. Lewis on Twitter <a>@mattklewis</a>.

Edith Schaeffer, writer and wife of famed Evangelical leader and theologian Francis Schaeffer, died the other week. If you haven’t read her New York Times obituary, it’s an interesting read that also serves to remind us of Francis. This is not to diminish from her many accomplishments. But in many ways, the two were partners. And to read of Edith is to remember Francis.

It was an amazing shared life, and one that conservative Christians might be shocked to (re)discover. For example, speaking of the “Swiss commune considered the theological birthplace of the American religious right” — which Edith essentially ran like a five-star hotel — theTimes notes:

“In the ’60s, when L’Abri’s guests included backpackers, hippies and even celebrities like Timothy Leary and Eric Clapton, Mrs. Schaeffer was known for maintaining a seamless five-star-hotel level of comfort for guests occupying L’Abri’s simple rooms, while Mr. Schaeffer delivered many of the lectures that became the basis of his most influential books, including “Escape From Reason” (1968) and “How Should We Then Live?” (1976).”

Francis died in 1984, and though he is still highly regarded, his fame pales in comparison to the Billy Grahams of the world. This makes some sense. While Graham was holding crusades and Oral Roberts was holding tent revivals or healing services, Schaeffer was holed up in a Swiss commune, giving lectures to hippie elites, writing books.

Unfortunately, in recent years, Schaeffer’s name popped up in Ryan Lizza’s controversial profile of Rep. Michele Bachmann. In the process of hitting Bachmann, Lizza captured a less-flattering snapshot of the latter part of Schaeffer’s life.

In fact, Schaeffer’s oeuvre consisted largely of a rejection of what we might consider to the the worst stereotypes of Evangelicalism. But that’s not the impression readers of Lizza’s New Yorker profile were left with. ”He went from being a sort of apolitical critic of culture,” explains Schaeffer author and Baylor University Professor Barry Hankins, “to being a sort of political culture warrior — before that term was even used.”

But most of Schaeffer’s career and life were about much more than that. Long before the era Lizza described, Schaeffer served to provide an intellectual heft to Protestant Christianity that was all too often lacking during latter part of the 20th century. “Fundamentalism certainly has a strong strain of anti-intellectualism, says Hankins, “but there’s also an intellectual wing of early 20th century fundamentalism. And Schaeffer was really a product of that particular wing.”

Schaeffer rejected the fundamentalist notion that Christians must separate from the world, instead, insisting that they be in this world, but not of this world. “Essentially he was arriving at a position that said fundamentalism…needs to be more concerned about taking a Gospel message into the culture,” Hankins said. In many ways, that was his legacy.

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#02 How Should We Then Live? (Promo Clip) Dr. Francis Schaeffer

10 Worldview and Truth

Two Minute Warning: How Then Should We Live?: Francis Schaeffer at 100

Francis Schaeffer “BASIS FOR HUMAN DIGNITY” Whatever…HTTHR

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Featured artist today is Margaret Keane:

Big Eyes Official Trailer #1 (2014) – Tim Burton, Amy Adams Movie HD

Kaitlin Goodey wrote the following:

Friday Feature – Margaret Keane

Margaret Keane

Today I thought I would share an artist that has a direct effect on my art work!  This wonderful painter has been an inspiration to me far before I actually new who she was!  From a young age I’ve loved thrift stores, garage sales, and antique stores.  You can find many prints or similar style paintings like Margaret Keane’s in those locations.  So I was exposed young to the beauty of big eyes.  Those big eyes have always pulled me in and tugged on my heart strings.  It’s as if the eyes speak to me.  Honestly I feel like a nut saying that, but the eye connection is so strong in some paintings its as close to a conversation as a painting can get for me! Margaret Keane Painting

So when I started sculpting my art dolls and my process started leading me in this big eye, unrealistic style, I decided to just go with it.  I really did try to sculpt realistic faces a few times but it usually just made them look even more alien like!  So I stopped fighting what I thought I had to make and embraced what was naturally happening!  That’s when I started researching other artists who use big eyes and really learnt about Keane’s history.

Margaret Keane Painting

I found it very interesting to know that her husband actually tried claiming he did the paintings!  I mean seriously what a poop!  So of course when they were getting a divorce in the best way ever she proved the paintings were really hers!  She painted out in the open right infront of the judge and everyone to show the work was really hers.  So when the husband was asked to do the same “I can’t I have a sore shoulder”.  Needless to say, she won the case and has continued to do HER work!

Margaret Keane Painting

As all artist progress and change through their life and career, Keane’s work has experienced shifts of change.  In her early career her characters or style were known as “Big Eyes”, “Sad eyes”, “Waifs” or simply known as “Keane”.  Many times a tear graced the characters cheek.  However, after the divorce Keane moved to Hawaii and while stylistically the same her paintings became brighter and a bit happier.  Then again later in life after joining a church her paintings became even a bit happier.  So when a tear graced a face, at that point it was of joy not sadness.

Margaret Keane Painting

Her work was highly criticised in the art world and yet they were some of the best selling art in the Western world in the early 60’s!  You may or may not like them yourselves, but there is no denying Keane’s influence on American pop culture!  A funny fact for me is that Tim Burton is a long time fan and collector of Keane’s work.  Going so far as to commission an art piece, and now working on a movie about her career and court battle with her ex-husband!  Although that movie has been talked about for a while, I’m still waiting patiently for something to actually happen with that!  I find it funny because I get so many people coming into the gallery saying “this is very Tim Burton like” or referencing him somehow.  Which I really don’t mind because I love his work, but in reality I didn’t even consiously think about his work when making mine!  I looked at a lot of Keane, Mark Ryden, and Katie Olivias for stylistic inspiration and a myriad of other art doll makers for technical know how.  So now seeing that our inspirations crossed paths is a funny little tidbit for me.

Margaret Keane Painting

Keane is now located in San Francisco where you can visit Keane Eyes Gallery and see her work first hand.  It is by appointment though so don’t be a dummy like me and think you can walk there and go right in.  Or you’ll end up peering through the windows like me!  Have you seen her work or similar work before?  Or have you seen how it has influenced pop culture at all?

DP/30: Big Eyes, Amy Adams

Margaret Keane, Painter Behind Tim Burton’s ‘Big Eyes’ | KQED Arts

Big Eyes (2014) Q&A with Amy Adams, Margaret Keane & The Writers

Behind the scenes of the real life “Big Eyes”

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Related posts:

Francis Schaeffer’s “How should we then live?” Video and outline of episode 10 “Final Choices” (Schaeffer Sundays)

E P I S O D E 1 0   Dr. Francis Schaeffer – Episode X – Final Choices 27 min FINAL CHOICES I. Authoritarianism the Only Humanistic Social Option One man or an elite giving authoritative arbitrary absolutes. A. Society is sole absolute in absence of other absolutes. B. But society has to be […]

Francis Schaeffer’s “How should we then live?” Video and outline of episode 9 “The Age of Personal Peace and Affluence” (Schaeffer Sundays)

E P I S O D E 9 Dr. Francis Schaeffer – Episode IX – The Age of Personal Peace and Affluence 27 min T h e Age of Personal Peace and Afflunce I. By the Early 1960s People Were Bombarded From Every Side by Modern Man’s Humanistic Thought II. Modern Form of Humanistic Thought Leads […]

Francis Schaeffer’s “How should we then live?” Video and outline of episode 8 “The Age of Fragmentation” (Schaeffer Sundays)

E P I S O D E 8 Dr. Francis Schaeffer – Episode VIII – The Age of Fragmentation 27 min I saw this film series in 1979 and it had a major impact on me. T h e Age of FRAGMENTATION I. Art As a Vehicle Of Modern Thought A. Impressionism (Monet, Renoir, Pissarro, Sisley, […]

Francis Schaeffer’s “How should we then live?” Video and outline of episode 7 “The Age of Non-Reason” (Schaeffer Sundays)

E P I S O D E 7 Dr. Francis Schaeffer – Episode VII – The Age of Non Reason I am thrilled to get this film series with you. I saw it first in 1979 and it had such a big impact on me. Today’s episode is where we see modern humanist man act […]

Francis Schaeffer’s “How should we then live?” Video and outline of episode 6 “The Scientific Age” (Schaeffer Sundays)

E P I S O D E 6 How Should We Then Live 6#1 Uploaded by NoMirrorHDDHrorriMoN on Oct 3, 2011 How Should We Then Live? Episode 6 of 12 ________ I am sharing with you a film series that I saw in 1979. In this film Francis Schaeffer asserted that was a shift in […]

Francis Schaeffer’s “How should we then live?” Video and outline of episode 5 “The Revolutionary Age” (Schaeffer Sundays)

E P I S O D E 5 How Should We Then Live? Episode 5: The Revolutionary Age I was impacted by this film series by Francis Schaeffer back in the 1970′s and I wanted to share it with you. Francis Schaeffer noted, “Reformation Did Not Bring Perfection. But gradually on basis of biblical teaching there […]

Francis Schaeffer’s “How should we then live?” Video and outline of episode 4 “The Reformation” (Schaeffer Sundays)

Dr. Francis Schaeffer – Episode IV – The Reformation 27 min I was impacted by this film series by Francis Schaeffer back in the 1970′s and I wanted to share it with you. Schaeffer makes three key points concerning the Reformation: “1. Erasmian Christian humanism rejected by Farel. 2. Bible gives needed answers not only as to […]

“Schaeffer Sundays” Francis Schaeffer’s “How should we then live?” Video and outline of episode 3 “The Renaissance”

Francis Schaeffer’s “How should we then live?” Video and outline of episode 3 “The Renaissance” Francis Schaeffer: “How Should We Then Live?” (Episode 3) THE RENAISSANCE I was impacted by this film series by Francis Schaeffer back in the 1970′s and I wanted to share it with you. Schaeffer really shows why we have so […]

Francis Schaeffer’s “How should we then live?” Video and outline of episode 2 “The Middle Ages” (Schaeffer Sundays)

  Francis Schaeffer: “How Should We Then Live?” (Episode 2) THE MIDDLE AGES I was impacted by this film series by Francis Schaeffer back in the 1970′s and I wanted to share it with you. Schaeffer points out that during this time period unfortunately we have the “Church’s deviation from early church’s teaching in regard […]

Francis Schaeffer’s “How should we then live?” Video and outline of episode 1 “The Roman Age” (Schaeffer Sundays)

Francis Schaeffer: “How Should We Then Live?” (Episode 1) THE ROMAN AGE   Today I am starting a series that really had a big impact on my life back in the 1970′s when I first saw it. There are ten parts and today is the first. Francis Schaeffer takes a look at Rome and why […]

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