"Enough" by Will Samson

Will Samson’s “Enough,” ironically, left me longing for more.

There were a variety of different things happening in this book which, if each idea had been catalogued in a single book, could have been much more developed, poignant and persuasive; however, as Samson himself noted in a number of spots in the book, he is somewhat tangential which I feel muffled some of his more potent ideas. I know that he was trying to make this book palatable to his probable audience (those who are concerned with the effects of consumption who, stereotypically, reside on a specific arc of the political spectrum) but his subtle commentary with sarcastic references to political ideologies also kept me from fully engaging in the book and seemed to detract from the gravity of American and Christian consumption. And I think that the most difficult component of this is that he recognizes the significance of Christian consumption and, yet, neglected to really spell out the potentially cataclysmic effects.

So, that being said, here is my response to the book.

To begin, (again, as he notes) the structure of the book is “a bit more wonky” (27). This is me being nit-picky but had he structured his book the way he detailed it on the previous page (26) it would have presented a much more cogent argument with a more fluid transition from idea to idea.

There could have been much more time spent on chapter 2. At the core, the issue of Christian consumption is derived from a misinterpretation or misunderstanding of certain biblical narratives, it has become exacerbated by the American civil religion which has wed American ideologies (in all of its facets: war, good and evil, consumption, morality, etc.) with Christianity. Rightly stated, he notes that it often leads American Christians to “see what God is doing in the world and what America is doing in the world as the same thing” (44). While this is disturbing and depressing that American Christians sometimes feel that way, the most important effect of this is that “the actions of our churches interpret for the world the message of the gospel” (37). This is enormous and, in my view, should have been the primary message of the book and should serve as the primary impetus for American Christians when they consume.

One message that the American Church (and, of course, I don’t mean all. I’m speaking in generalizations) is sending out to the world is that, “yes, we are aware that there is hunger, disease, strife, and death, all of which is in our financial purvey to alleviate; however, our homes and cars, our churches and stuff, come first. Charity is a secondary byproduct of our conversion/conviction. Not first.” Recent studies has noted that the American Church (both Protestants and Catholics) make over $3 trillion dollars a year. With global organizations noting that it would take mere tens of billions of dollars to eradicate extreme hunger, poverty, and preventable diseases, what message is the world hearing is the “message of the gospel?”

Samson makes references to some of these ideas but, as stated earlier, doesn’t spend enough time and doesn’t include enough statistics to make the issue powerful.

I appreciate his discussion of prophetic voices and visions and the reactions of the American church in Chapters 3 and 5. People both in and outside of the church are voicing their concerns about our consumption and we don’t appear to be listening. When eschatology is brought into the conversation, Samson, again, does an ok job of tying the two together but not “enough.” As the “prophecies” of modern apocalyptic visionaries converge with political ideologies regarding consumption, the voraciousness of Christian appetites becomes seemingly insatiable. The ideas of “America’s robustness is a result of faithfulness to God” and “the world will end soon” lead to words like Ann Coulter: “‘Earth is yours. Take it. Rape it. It’s yours. That’s our job: drilling, mining and stripping. Sweaters are the anti-Biblical view. Big gas-guzzling cars with phones and CD players and wet bars — that’s the Biblical view” (Ann Coulter, “If Democrats had brains, they’d be Republicans”).

I really felt like the latter half of the book, starting with Chapter 6, had a good deal of great ideas that were spelled out well (but still left me wishing for more). The correlation to the mind-body-spirit crises was great. In a world that is hungry and sick, it is not only irresponsible of Christians to consume the way that we do, it is indicative of a mental dichotomy between a God who is sufficient, who calls us to consume well (not a lot but responsibly and good), who calls us to care for and nurture both the world and the people in it and a religion that appears to selectively ignore those passages of the Bible. Christian consumption on a physical and spiritual level is far more of an issue and a reflection of a cancerous ideology than some of the other seemingly insignificant issue of homosexuality, for example. There are 12 passages that make some sort of reference to homosexuality in the Bible each of which, when contextualized, could yield very different ideas than the interpretation people outside of the church assume we all think. Yet there are thousands of verses about caring the poor and I believe the life of Jesus reflects that as well.

So, in this review, I’m not trying to berate Samson’s work. I enjoyed it. I really did. I do recommend this book. Read it. It’s relatable. It’s palatable. He does a fine job getting the conversation started. Start with him and then move towards books like “The Ethics of Consumption” or “Hot, Flat and Crowded” and read them as a concerned Christian.

I would give this book a three and a half. I just felt like I wanted more. Christian consumption (especially those of American Christians) affects our spiritual disposition, the global environment and the souls that God yearns to heal and draw close. If we as a church don’t recognize the gravity of the issue and realign our priorities to be like that of Christ, we will continue to tell the world that our God is not enough.

Monster by Walter Dean Meyers

A.S. 6th Grade

This month I read a book called Monster by Walter Dean Myers. This book has won three awards. Monster is about a sixteen years old boy named Steve Harmon. Steve is on trial for being involved in the robbing of a store and the murdering of its owner, Alguinaldo Nesbitt. At the same time another boy, James King, is also on trial with Steve for being involved in the same crime. This book is completely written in the form of a movie script because Steve is always thinking about how he could turn all of this into a movie because he likes to film movies. During the days when Steve is on trial he has to live in jail and while he is there, the guards give him a notebook in which he writes what jail really is like.

Steve’s part in the crime was said to be that he was supposed to be the lookout but, there is no way to prove that. With every question from the prosecutor, Sandra Petrocelli, and every answer from the witnesses only further more proves that someone is guilty, and that person is James King. After Steve’s lawyer, Kathy O’ Brian, asks him questions it shows even more that Steve is innocent, just because he knew King as a child, doesn’t mean he participated in this crime with him. Flashbacks from Steve’s normal childhood make you think that he isn’t really a bad person. The jury reaches a verdict of guilty for James King but a verdict of not guilty for Steve.

Would you tweak your past?

Guest Editor, Amanda Cole Author of I Hate Cinderella

If only you knew then what you know now.  For Charlotte Merryweather, there’s no need to imagine. She’s about to find out for real. With surprising consequences in Alexandra Potter’s new book, Who’s That Girl?

Ever wanted to go back and give your 21 year old self all the advice you wish you knew now? Yes please!!! Well through a series of random events our beloved PR agent Charlotte finds her 31 year old self confronted by seeing her 21 year old self driving around London in her old Beetle (that was sent to the scrap heap years ago!).  

Charlotte is currently a stress ball, with much on her plate, running her own successful company, putting up with sleazy offensive clients, dating a “beige safe guy” and ignoring her instincts. So when she has a chance encounter with her younger self known as “Lotte” back then, she gets to see all the differences, some subtle (no wrinkles, no sun damage, no eczema) and others larger than life (happy and relaxed, enjoying the small pleasures out of life – on a budget!).  Charlotte thinks she needs to change Lotte, warn her about life ahead and how to avoid some pot holes but as the story unfolds its not really the case.

Lotte has no need for a noise machine or humidifier when nodding off to sleep, rather she has many fun nights out, tonnes of dancing, followed by pot noodles and passing out! No allergies, no demanding schedule and no imminent stress related ulcer. And Lotte is happy bargaining in a flea market, perving on all the hot guys and not self diagnosing all that she feels, maybe she is the one to teach Charlotte how to get back to basics.

What follows is a magnetic and magical tale by Alexandra Potter who weaves a clever story throughout 1997 and current day as Charlotte runs into a man (who she met 10 yeas ago but blanked) who seems to know her better than she knows herself.

The book cris-crosses time, back and forth and the pace picks up as it threads throughout important girlie lessons such as:

• Wear sunscreen!
• Back away from those PVC trousers!
• DON’T give that idiot your phone number!
• Lemon juice won’t bleach your hair – it just attracts wasps.

With the lessons being beautifully laid out for us, we see Charlotte and Lotte helping each other (yes I am aware of the irony here!) to become a more rounded version and to embrace herself and her new direction. This is a great book to read on the way to and from work and seemed almost magical to me as my train raced through the tunnels taking me to my destination. Alexandra has created a great piece of escapism although she could have explored the intricacies of stepping back in time a little bit deeper, it’s definitely one for the Must Read list.

Previous books:  Me and Mr Darcy and Be Careful What you Wish For.

Available now:  H&S Fiction Paperback $32.95

Love,

Sassi

Your Pop Culture Gossip Girl

TFTNW: Io, Robot

Tides from the New Worlds: Io, Robot by Tobias Buckell

Installment 3

An obvious nod to Isaac Asimov (even says so in his introduction) with its references to the three laws of robotics, Io, Robot also strikes me in its similarities to WALL-E, which is funny considering this story precedes that movie. Sam (Semi Autonomous Machine) is a data collection unit on one of the moons of Jupiter, specifically Io. It has been stranded there for twenty years, compiling information and cannibalizing its fellow robots for spare parts.

When it encounters humans again for the first time since it came to Io, interesting questions start to arise. What makes someone human? Will our dependence and integration with technology one day make us more machine than man or woman? What will the machines under our control think of us (if they think) when we begin to look more like them and less like ourselves?

I admit, this story was actually a very creepy read for me. Sam is not WALL-E, whatever superficial similarities there are between them. This is not a cute and cuddly robot that has been anthropomorphized. This is very much a cold machine, with very calculating thoughts. The ending is surprising and chilling, and makes you think about all those hours you spend attached to your electronics. Would you make good spare parts for them?

Io, Robot is really where this anthology starts to take off.

********************************

You can check out Tobias Buckell on his website, or follow him on Twitter @tobiasbuckell

The master post can be found here, Tides from the New Worlds

Book Review: The Leadership Lessons of Jesus

“Who is the greatest leader in history? Of all the names that might be given in response to that question, one name stands above all the rest:  Jesus Christ.”

- from the introduction of “The Leadership Lessons of Jesus:  A Timeless Model for Today’s Leaders” by Bob Briner and Ray Pritchard.

From the Publisher:

This newly redesigned edition of The Leadership Lessons of Jesus is expanding to include more than seventy unique easy-length readings that explore and adapt the individual techniques that made Christ’s leadership so powerful.

Timeless, relevant, and practical applications of  the ministry of Jesus Christ taken from Gospel of Mark presented in 75 short but insightful chapters focusing on key areas all leaders should aquaint themselves.

A sampling of the lessons include instruction to leaders on:  The Call, Followers, Authority, Discipline, Teams, Plans, Attacks, Unity, Faithfulness, Vision, the Unexpected, Rebukes, Strategies, Loyalty, Gratitude, Public Relations, Flattery, Commitment and Management.  All areas are addressed with frankness and practicality.

This is a handbook for all those in leadership positions.

Bob Briner

A leading figure in professional sports management, an Emmy Award-winning television producer, and president of ProServ Television before his death in 1999,  Briner was the first Western sports executive to enter China after the Cultural Revolution and introduced National Basketball Association games to Chinese television . Briner was also a prolific writer, regularly contributing to the New York Times and Sports Illustrated. His books include Roaring Lambs, Lambs Among Wolves, and The Management Methods of Jesus. Briner finished his final book, The Final Roar, shortly before dying of abdominal cancer in 1999. Briner was a devout evangelical Christian and in 2003 was posthumously inducted into the Indiana Wesleyan University Society of World Changers as its first member.

Ray Pritchard

Dr. Ray Pritchard is the president of Keep Believing Ministries. He has ministered extensively overseas and is a frequent conference speaker and guest on Christian radio and television talk shows. He is the author of 27 books, including Credo, The Healing Power of Forgiveness, An Anchor for the Soul and Why Did This Happen to Me? Ray and Marlene, his wife of 31 years, have three sons-Josh, Mark and Nick.

Hardcover: 240 pages

Publisher: B&H Books (May 1, 2008)

Language: English

ISBN-10: 080544520X

ISBN-13: 978-0805445206

Mara reviews Harley Jane Kozak's "Dating Dead Men"

I first encountered Harley Jane Kozak at a recent book event where we were both featured authors. As former Soap-actresses-turned-novelists we decided we must have been separated at birth. Further, we both had a thing for Mary Shelley. But while I wrote a historical play on ”Frankenstein’s” author, Harley created a modern-day heroine named Wolstonecraft Shelley. How could I resist? I had to read at least one of her books!

Los Angeles is always problematic for writers. So sprawling and multi-themed as to appear if not amorphous, at least Protean: one minute a collection of exquisitely manicured gardens providing lush embraces to Spanish mansions, the next a depressing array of billboards dwarfing cracker box housse baked to a crisp in relentless sunshine.

Harley tackles this conundrum by creating a world-within-a-world outlandish enough to be unique and grounded enough to be recognizable. “Wollie” Shelley is trying to run a greeting-card business, taking part in a reality-TV-show about dating,  keeping a weather-eye on an institutionalized brother, all while thrashing her way through sleuthing, investigating a dead body and avoiding the Mob.

With her gangly, kind-hearted “Wollie” she’s pressing toward mastery of a whole new genre of her own creating: literary heroine-turned-gumshoe.  I read book one for the sake of camaraderie and curiosity. But now I’m in it for the duration. I’ve put book two in the queue.

The New Shape of World Christianity - Part 1

I will be blogging through my reading of Mark Noll’s new book. This is part 1.

Mark A. Noll, The New Shape of World Christianity: How American Experience Reflects Global Faith (IVP Academic, 2009).

This book surveys American evangelicalism using the analytical mirror of global Christianity, or in the words of the subtitle, it looks at how the American experience of Christianity reflects global faith. Noll asks the question how we should understand the role of American Christianity and American history in shaping global Christianity. The central argument is that American Christianity is incredibly important for the world, not necessarily though, because of its direct influence on the multiplicity of indigenous Christian forms throughout the world, but because the development of American evangelical Christianity in the eighteenth century is the model for Christianity’s development throughout the majority world; in Noll’s own words, “American form rather than American influence has been the most important American contribution to the recent history of Christianity” (p. 15).

Noll begins in chapter 1 by laying out the magnitude of changes in global Christianity since 1900. His examples are no less than incredible: this past Sunday more Christian believers worshiped in China than all of “Christian Europe”, this past Sunday there were more Presbyterians at church in Ghana than in Scotland, etc. These changes have been documented in length also by Phillip Jenkins in his global Christianity trilogy. Noll also explains briefly how the multiplicity of new Christian expressions – most of them direct products of the singular task of Bible translation (!) – have tremendous implications for economics, policy formation, nation building, and international relations. New Christian expressions (”new” in their incredible predominance since 1900) have also revealed 3 main theological questions for Christianity: How close is the world of spirits to the everyday world? What is the unit of salvation? And how should believers read the Bible?

I fear that books on global Christianity are undervalued in Western evangelicalism – probably because of their academic style as well as their unfortunate classification as “missions” literature, rather than “theology” or “ecclesiology” literature. But books like this challenge the fundamental conscious and unconscious assumptions of every day Christians about their mundane religious thinking and practices.

It is good for us to evaluate our own American Christian expressions by the standard of Chinese ecclesiology, or by Ghanaian worship forms, or by Nigerian missiology, or by Indian theology. Indeed, this is one of the great, unique, aspects of the Kingdom of God – our diversity reflects the God who is, as Jonathan Edwards once described, the “admirable conjunction of diverse excellencies”. The multiplicity of Christian expressions arising out of the teaching of a single Book keeps us humble and constantly investigative in our own forms of the Christian life. In this way, global Christianity, in its diversity, is a tremendously sanctifying gift of grace to the local church.

Marvel

One of my AP geniuses gave me the first two of five parts of a new Marvel series bringing Pride and Prejudice to the comic book world. Tastefully drawn, the story uses original Austen text (though it occasionally attributes lines to characters who didn’t say them in the original) and retells the story rapidly and entertainingly. A real treat for any Austen fan, and, I dare hope, for any neophyte willing to try.

Posted in May 20, 2009

341.  The Near East Dilemma: The Background (Part 1, May 16, 2009)

 

342.  The Near East Dilemma: Discussions (Part 2, May 17, 2009)

 

343.  Bi-Weekly Report (#22) on the Middle East and Lebanon (May 18, 2009)

 

344.  Hundreds of Prophets later:  Hate Crimes and Humiliation March on (May 19, 2009)

 

345. Cannes, the French Riviera (May 18, 2009)

 

346.  Did you Day Dream a Utopian Project? (May 19, 2009)

 

347.  The One to Come (May 20, 2009)

 

348.  And in the Mud Glittered Nuggets of Gold (May 20, 2009)

Your Mouth is Lovely by Nancy Richler

“Your Mouth is Lovely” is set in Russia in the years leading up to the Revolution and centers on the life of a poor Jewish, motherless child, Miriam, who grows up on the outskirts both of her village, and of its sense of community. After some years of being fostered out, she is returned to her father’s home when he remarries. Her stepmother, Tsila, raises her with a rough, irritated, kindness, making sure she knows how to read, among the other things she believes it necessary for a girl to know. In later years, Tsila’s sister Batya gets involved in political protest, and has disappeared somewhere in Kiev. Miriam convinces her parents that she should be the one to go find her. How she ends up in a prison camp in Siberia writing to the daughter she will never see is as fascinating as the rest of her story.

The Summoning Stone

The Summoning Stone

Book Two of the Dragonfire Series

by Jana G. Oliver

ISBN: 097044902X (Trade Paperback)

436pages

Pub. Date: September 2002

Publisher: Magespell, LLC

The Southern Isle clansmen must come to grips with their murderous enemy from the north, Lord Phelan. This twisted ruler is bent on nothing less than the total extermination of the clansmen and he will stop at nothing until he has their leader, Caewlin, in his hands. Albeit as in any true high fantasy, fate delivers to Phelan a power weapon he intends to use in his brutal war against the Southern Isle clansmen. All the characters from the first book play pivotal roles that move this high fantasy to it’s ultimate conclusion. A very impressive sequel to The Circle of the Swan, Jana Oliver again spins a well crafted story whose characters feelings and expressions move beyond the page to capture the reader’s heart and soul. The characterization in this sequel seems a lot richer than in the tale before as Ms. Oliver has fine tuned her craft. Though this book has more violence and sex than the previous book, it is rendered in such a way not to be blatantly offensive and adds the depth needed to develop the characters. Any fan of fantasy will be rewarded well when they read this book. It is a stand alone novel, but is best appreciated when read after the first book.—Steven Fivecats, Editor

When Kathleen met Richard #4

Kathleen Jones

The problem with misrepresentation is you can’t just tell it, you have to show it.

Fourth in a series responding to Kathleen Jones’s Challenging Richard Dawkins: Why Richard Dawkins is wrong about God1

See also When Kathleen met Richard #1; #2; & #3

‘Coming out’ as an atheist

We are still in Chapter 1 of Challenging Richard Dawkins, but now in a section called ‘Coming out’ as an atheist:

[Dawkins] maintains that he is ‘a deeply religious non-believer’. By this he apparently means that he thinks deeply about religious issues, and has considered his position carefully.

Well possibly, except I don’t think he does describe himself as ‘a deeply religious non-believer’. Yes Chapter 1 of The God Delusion is called ‘A deeply religious non-believer’, but Dawkins is quoting Albert Einstein:

I am a deeply religious non-believer. This is a somewhat new kind of religion.2

Richard Dawkins: The God Delusion

This is because the first half of the chapter is largely about Einstein’s approach to religion. I cannot see any sign that Dawkins is applying the description to himself.

Jones then summarises how Dawkins categorises himself:

He spends some pages… explaining that he is not a theist (someone who believes in God, as members of the major world religions do), not a deist (someone who believes in some sort of God, not very clearly defined)… [Emphasis added]

Time to turn to the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary:

deist

Orig., a person who believes in God or gods (opp. atheist). Now, a person who believes in one God who created but does not intervene in the universe.3

So what does Dawkins say?

A theist believes in a supernatural intelligence who, in addition to his main work of creating the universe in the first place, is still around to oversee and influence the subsequent fate of his initial creation. In many theistic belief systems, the deity is intimately involved in human affairs… A deist, too, believes in a supernatural intelligence, but one whose activities were confined to setting up the laws that govern the universe in the first place. The deist God never intervenes thereafter, and certainly has no specific interest in human affairs.4

The crucial difference between theism and deism is the issue of intervention in the world post-Creation. Dawkins states that distinction explicitly. Jones says nothing about it.

Jones also describes Dawkins as ‘a 100 per cent campaigning atheist’. This is fine as long as we don’t make unwarranted assumptions about what ‘atheist’ means here. Once again we need to go back to what Dawkins actually says. He presents a spectrum of probabilities as to the existence of God with seven ‘milestones’. For present purposes we only need to replicate milestones 1, 6 and 7:

1 Strong theist. 100 percent probability of God. In the words of C. G. Jung, ‘I do not believe, I know.’

…

6 Very low probability, but short of zero. De facto atheist. ‘I cannot know for certain but I think God is very improbable, and I live my life on the assumption that he is not there.’

7 Strong atheist. ‘I know there is no God, with the same conviction as Jung “knows” there is one.’5

There is just a risk that Jones’s unqualified attribution (complete with percentage) might have misled her readers into thinking Dawkins would describe himself as 7. But he says:

I count myself in category 6, but leaning towards 7 – I am agnostic only to the extent that I am agnostic about fairies at the bottom of the garden.6

Darwin and natural selection

This next section is where Jones really seems to lose the plot:

The link between human beings and apes has never been scientifically demonstrated.

Silverback gorilla

What can she mean by this? She gives no explanation. Hardly anything in science is conclusively proven in the sense that it would be unthinkable for it to be falsified. No one has seen a non-human ape evolve into a human – but again the animals we know now as apes did not evolve into the animals we know now as humans. The evolutionary claim is that other primates like gibbons, gorillas and chimpanzees shared relatively recent ancestors with humans. In the case of humans and chimpanzees the most recent ancestor is believed to have lived only six million years ago: see When Kathleen met Richard #2. Why do we believe this? Because of the accumulation of different categories of evidence which all support the same hypothesis: fossils, comparative morphology, DNA comparison and so on. Most importantly, there is no conflicting evidence. It is not that Jones’s statement is crazy, but it is either trivially true – true only in the most purist sense that the relatively recent common descent of (say) chimpanzees and humans is theoretically falsifiable – or it is the opening statement of some alternative hypothesis, which she does not offer.

The next statement of hers I would like to analyse seems to show an incomplete understanding of the central thesis of natural selection. She has just referred to Dawkins’ use of the ‘sieve’ image in The Blind Watchmaker7 to explain the fundamentally non-random nature of cumulative selection. She concludes as follows:

In Darwinian terms, if we ask what sort of human beings are ‘the fittest’ who survive and do not fall through the holes in the sieve, the answer is clear: not those with the highest moral standards. Not the most useful members of society. Not the most intelligent. The survivors will be the toughest, the most ruthless, the most determined to survive.

Richard Dawkins: The Blind Watchmaker

Well possibly, but possibly not. In evolutionary terms ‘fittest’ just means ‘most likely to generate surviving and successfully reproducing progeny’. Survivors do not survive because they are fit. Fitness just is the measure of survival capacity. Survival depends on the environment, among other factors. Some environments will be such as to favour the toughest and most ruthless individuals. But other environments could favour other features. This is one of the reasons species become extinct, because an environmental change has occurred to turn evolved adaptations which previously conferred genetic fitness into liabilities. In human evolution the social context has been a significant component of the environment. It would be quite possible for social development to take place to make, for example, intelligence more critical to genetic fitness than ruthlessness or aggression. And the theory behind the evolution of reciprocal altruism, in humans and other animal species, provides an explanation as to why, in certain circumstances, more ‘moral’ (as in more socially cooperative) behaviour might also confer reproductive advantage.

Jones’s grasp of Dawkins’ previous works seems about as pick’n’mix as her understanding of evolutionary theory:

Anthropologists and archaeologists have long sought for the ‘missing link’ between the apes (chimpanzees are the closest to human beings in biological terms) and human beings. Richard Dawkins is convinced that the link exists, but is apparently resigned to the fact that the skeletons of the ape-people will probably never be discovered.

At this point she refers to two sections of Dawkins’ A Devil’s Chaplain. Although the pagination of the edition listed in her bibliography8 is not the same as in the copy I have9, I have managed to identify them via a couple of her other end notes. The two sections in A Devil’s Chaplain are the essays ‘Gaps in the Mind’ and ‘Darwin Triumphant’.

Richard Dawkins: A Devil's Chaplain

But locating these was a whole lot easier than trying to fathom what the two sentences quoted above are referring to. ‘Missing link’ is a misleading term, largely based on a misunderstanding of how evolution operates. As mentioned above, the most recent ancestor of both modern humans and modern chimpanzees is believed to have lived about 6 million years ago. Note the singular. It is not that the most recent ancestors of both modern humans and modern chimpanzees are currently believed to have lived about 6 million years ago. There was not an entire population of ‘humanzees’ half of whom gave rise to humans and half of whom gave rise to chimps. There was – by definition – only one most recent ancestor. That individual was admittedly a member of a population, members of whom could have died in circumstances favourable to the preservation of fossilised remains. But not necessarily. And also that population may have been small, which would have also decreased the chances of finding transitional fossils.

(With some lineages we are lucky. For example we have an almost complete picture of the evolution of the horse, largely because of the nature of North American sedimentary deposits from the Eocene onwards.)

So yes in theory we could be lucky and find a fossilised specimen from the population from which that most recent ancestor belonged. But at most this could be described as a (previously) ‘missing link’ between chimpanzees and humans. There is no ‘missing link’ between ‘apes’ and humans, because ‘ape’ refers to a group of primates to which humans already belong. In fact, as shown by the diagram below (derived from a similar diagram in ‘Gaps in the Mind’10), humans, gorillas and chimpanzees all belong to a smaller subgroup of African apes.

Ape evolution

But I struggle to find any reference to Dawkins’ resignation to the ‘fact that the skeletons of the ape-people will probably never be discovered.’

Herring Gull (L) and Lesser Black-backed Gull (R)

In ‘Gaps in the Mind’ he talks about what he calls the ‘discontinuous mind’ which insists on classifying organisms as either ‘same species’ (who breed with each other) or ‘different species’ (who do not breed with each other). The snag with this ‘discontinuous’ picture is that it cannot accommodate so-called ‘ring species’ like the Herring Gull and the Lesser Black-backed Gull:

In Britain these are clearly distinct species, quite different in colour… But if you follow the population of Herring Gulls westward round the North Pole to North America, then via Alaska across Siberia and back to Europe again… [t]he ‘Herring Gulls’ gradually become less like Herring Gulls and more and more like Lesser Black-backed Gulls until it turns out that our European Lesser Black-backed Gulls actually are the other end of a ring that started out as Herring Gulls. At every stage around the ring, the birds are sufficiently similar to their neighbours to interbreed with them. Until, that is, the ends of the continuum are reached, in Europe. At this point the Herring Gull and the Lesser Black-backed Gull never interbreed, although they are linked by a continuous series of interbreeding colleagues all the way round the world. The only thing that is special about ring species like these gulls is that the intermediates are still alive. All pairs of related species are potentially ring species. The intermediates must have lived once. It is just that in most cases they are now dead.11

He then relates this to the case of humans and chimpanzees:

What if a clutch of intermediate types had survived, enough to link us to modern chimpanzees by a chain… of interbreeders?…

…It is sheer luck that this handful of intermediates no longer exists…12

Is this what Jones is referring to by ‘resigned to the fact that the skeletons of the ape-people will probably never be discovered?’

Or perhaps it is from something he says in his other essay, ‘Darwin Triumphant’? Here Dawkins is conducting a thought experiment about

a gigantic mathematical space of all possible organisms… [which includes a] tiny minority of organisms that is adapted to survive and reproduce in available environments…

…It is convenient to imagine the set of all possible [organisms] as arrayed in a multidimensional genetic landscape. Distance in this landscape means genetic distance, the number of genetic changes that would have to be made in order to transform one [organism] into another…

… [T]o find viable life forms in the space of all possible forms is like searching for a modest number of needles in an extremely large haystack. The chance of happening to land on one of the needles if we take a large random mutational leap to another place in our multidimensional haystack is very small indeed…13

Is this what Jones is referring to by ‘resigned to the fact that the skeletons of the ape-people will probably never be discovered?’

She continues:

In most of his writing, he assumes that genetic mutation occurs very slowly over long periods of time, and if this were the case, we might expect that the bones of the ‘missing link’ would have been unearthed in many places by now;…

As explained above, ‘missing link’ in this context can only really refer to the most recent common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees. ‘Many places’ can only mean ‘many places in Africa’. And the probability of discovering appropriate specimens would depend on factors like the size of the population to which that most recent common ancestor belonged and, crucially, whether significant numbers died in conditions where their remains would have both preserved. (Remember the fossil evidence is only one strand. There is also evidence from comparative morphology, DNA etc.)

…but he contradicts his own argument about gradualism by proposing ‘a leap in genetic space’. That suggests that human beings and apes are not that close at all.

The misreading is now getting quite bizarre. Yes Dawkins argues (rather than assumes) that

evolution is guided in adaptively nonrandom directions by the nonrandom survival of small random hereditary changes… Small implies that adaptive evolution is gradualistic…

…Evolution consists of step-by-step trajectories through the genetic space, not large leaps. Evolution, in other words, is gradualistic…14

The argument is this:

[T]o find viable life forms in the space of all possible forms is like searching for a modest number of needles in an extremely large haystack. The chance of happening to land on one of the needles if we take a large random mutational leap to another place in our multidimensional haystack is very small indeed. But one thing we can say is that the starting point of any mutational leap has to be a viable organism… Finding a viable body-form by random mutation may be like finding a needle in a haystack, but given that you have already found one viable body-form, …you can hugely increase your chances of finding another viable one if you search in the immediate neighbourhood…

…[Conversely, t]he larger the leap through genetic space, the lower is the probability that the resulting change will be viable, let alone an improvement.15

But he then asks:

[A]re there any special occasions when macromutations [ie large leaps through genetic space] are incorporated into evolution? …I find it plausible, for instance that the invention of segmentation occurred in a single macromutational leap… [Emphasis added] 16

A change of such magnitude would normally be a catastrophe, a ‘freak’, a ‘monster’, destined to die. But it could have happened that

the leap in genetic space… coincided with a leap in geographical space. The segmented monster finds itself in a virgin part of the world where the living is easy and competition is light… [and] it survives by the skin of its teeth.17

Gradualism and big leaps are not mutually exclusive. There is no contradiction. However, in this speculation about segmentation, the mutated form would have

survived not because natural selection favoured it but because natural selection found compensatory ways of survival in spite of it. The fact that advantages in the segmented body plan emerged is an irrelevant bonus. The segmented body plan was incorporated into evolution, but it may never have been favoured by natural selection.18

So to get back finally to Jones’s misreading, Dawkins has said nothing about any speculative ‘leap in genetic space’ in the context of the genetic distance between ‘human beings and apes’. Yes, all vertebrates, and therefore all apes – including humans – have inherited an essentially segmented body plan, which may have originated by a non-gradualist leap, but this was long before the most recent common ancestors of any two ape species, including humans.

To close off this section Jones quotes Dawkins’ ‘gleeful speculation’ as to what would happen if humans and chimpanzees could mate:

[T]he news would be earth-shattering. Bishops would bleat, lawyers would gloat in anticipation, conservative politicians would thunder, socialists wouldn’t know where to put their barricades. The scientist that achieved the feat would be drummed out of common rooms; denounced in pulpit and gutter press; condemned, perhaps, by an Ayatollah’s fatwah…19

Once again balance is restored by restoring context. Jones may not agree with either Dawkins’ arguments or his sentiments, but the subject of ‘Gaps in the Mind’ is actually ethics. The quoted passage of ‘gleeful speculation’ is preceded by:

…[T]he melancholy fact is that, at present, society’s moral attitudes rest almost entirely on the discontinuous, speciesist imperative.20

The essay concludes:

I have argued that the discontinuous gap between humans and ‘apes’ that we erect in our minds is regrettable. I have also argued that, in any case, the present position of the hallowed gap is arbitrary, the result of evolutionary accident. If the contingencies of survival and extinction had been different, the gap would be in a different place. Ethical principles that are based upon accidental caprice should not be respected as if cast in stone.21

Kathleen Jones is under no obligation to understand evolutionary theory. If she finds fault with Dawkins’ position on religion or anything else she is completely free to fight her corner. But whether it results from ignorance or design, the cumulative misrepresentation in her book so far – and we are still at Chapter 1 – is remarkable even compared against other books of this genre.

References

1 Kathleen Jones, Challenging Richard Dawkins: Why Richard Dawkins is wrong about God, Canterbury Press Norwich, London, 2007.

2 Albert Einstein, quoted in: Richard Dawkins, The God delusion, Bantam Press, 2006, p 15.

3 Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, Fifth edition, OUP, 2002.

4 Richard Dawkins, The God delusion, Bantam Press, 2006, p 18.

5 Richard Dawkins, 2006 (see 4 above), p 50-51.

6 Richard Dawkins, 2006 (see 4 above), p 51.

7 Richard Dawkins, The blind watchmaker, Penguin, 1986.

8 Richard Dawkins, A devil’s chaplain, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2003.

9 Richard Dawkins, A devil’s chaplain, Phoenix, 2004.

10 Richard Dawkins, ‘Gaps in the Mind’, in: A devil’s chaplain, Phoenix, 2004.

11 Richard Dawkins, 2004a: 10 above.

12 Richard Dawkins, 2004a: 10 above.

13 Richard Dawkins, ‘Darwin Triumphant’, in: A devil’s chaplain, Phoenix, 2004.

14 Richard Dawkins, 2004b: 13 above.

15 Richard Dawkins, 2004b: 13 above.

16 Richard Dawkins, 2004b: 13 above.

17 Richard Dawkins, 2004b: 13 above.

18 Richard Dawkins, 2004b: 13 above.

19 Richard Dawkins, 2004a: 10 above.

20 Richard Dawkins, 2004a: 10 above.

21 Richard Dawkins, 2004a: 10 above.

© Chris Lawrence 2009.

The Near East Dilemma: The Background

The Near East Dilemma: The Background (Part 1, May 16, 2009)

 

Note:  This essay is of two parts.  The first part lay down the background story and issues; the second part will explain in details the positions of the various Syrian political parties and intelligencia of the period during and after the First World War.  At the time, Syrian was the name of the populations comprising the current Syrian State, Lebanon, Palestine and current Jordan.

     

The year 1919 was critical for the Near East and the entire Arab World. After almost a century we are still reaping the consequences of the resolutions of the League of Nations that met in Paris for many months to divide the spoils of the First World War.

      Jean Dayeh is an author and a veteran journalist investigative reporter; he published recently “Jubran Tueny Sr. and the Century of Renaissance” in the Near East.  The manuscript contains two great chapters on the case of the Syrian dilemma and the Palestinian/Zionism problems.  From old published articles and replies by different daily journalists, thinkers, and politicians Dayeh explained the premises for the confusion and disunity in the Syrian societies of Lebanon, Palestine, Jordan, and the current Syrian State; the ideological and political divergences prevented an alternative resolution for populations that were just getting out of the hegemony of the Ottoman Empire that lasted over 5 centuries.

      During the war, the British encouraged the Shereef of Mecca Hussein al Hashemy to join the allies for fighting against the Ottoman Empire.  The British promised Hussein of Mecca mandate over Syria and Iraq.  In the same time, Britain and France had a more real politics plan for the Near East.  The diplomats of the two nations Sykes and Pico agreed in 1916 to divide the region so that France would have mandate over Syria and Lebanon and Britain mandate over Iraq, Palestine and Jordan.  Britain Foreign Affairs Balfour had promised the Zionist movement a State in Palestine.

      The sons of Hussein were appointed Kings; Fayssal on Syria and Abdullah King on the newly created State of Jordan by Britain.  “King” Fayssal entered Damascus as the Turkish army withdrew.  A nucleus of a new Syrian army was formed; the soldiers had to swear allegiance to the King of Mecca and agree to fight in the Arabic Peninsula if duty called.  The flag of Mecca was raised in Damascus and postal stamps and coins left no doubt as to the plans of the King of Mecca to joining Syria in an Arab Nation.  The worst part is that Fayssal had promised the Zionist movement during the meetings of the League of Nations in Paris that if the Jews become majority in Palestine then they could form a confederate State with the Arab Nation.

      It is to be noted that the concept of waging war, then and now, that only those parties or nations that effectively participated in the war were eligible to divide the spoil.  The Syrian population did not have an army to fight and they were suffering famine and calamities due to locust invasion and the perpetual requisitions of the Turkish army in foodstuff and coerced soldiers.

      The President Woodrow Wilson of the USA was suffering of critical health problems during the Paris Convention and died shortly after; thus France and England decided on the Middle East spoil.  Nevertheless, the USA sent a fact finding commission King-Crane to comprehend the wishes and desires of the Syrian populations.  England and France declined to join the commission because they had already decided on the spoil and their armies were on the ground in the Near East and pressured the populations to be biased.  With all the political pressures of France and England, a few Christians in Mount Lebanon preferred a French mandate, a few Palestinians opted for a British mandate, many were in favor of a USA mandate but the vast majority of Moslems and Christians wanted an independent State with Fayssal as King in Damascus.

      The Christian Maronite Patriarch Howiiyek hurried to Paris for the convention and harassed Clemenceau to decide on a Greater Lebanon by adjoining many parts to Mount Lebanon in return for a French mandate. Clemenceau dispatched an army in 1920 and defeated the small Syrian army in Mayssaloun.  King Faissal was sent packing to reign as King in Iraq.

      By 1920, the Zionist movement managed to lure a few Jews to establish agricultural colonies.  Tel Aviv was the main coastal colony.  The Jewish Diaspora had felt the impossibility of establishing a Jewish state and money was trickling.  The Jews in Tel Aviv went on a rampage and confiscate the Zionist money in order to buy food; and the Rothschild delegate in Palestine was ordered to stop payment on land purchased for new colonies.  Nevertheless, the Zionist movement refused hopeless Jews visa exit out of Palestine.  The Palestinian government, under British mandate, had permited to add Hebrew names to the English and Arabic administrative institutions. Things have changed since then.

book review, Anxious About Empire, a 13-part retrospective

Anxious About Empire is a collection of 13 essays written by various Christian academics and theologians ranging from Robert Bellah to Wendel Berry.  I honestly picked it up because I saw Wendell Berry’s name and knew Amos was a fan.  In the book, the primary topic is The Bush Doctrine, specifically centered around the document, “The National Security Strategy of the United States of America.”

Empire is a term that I fear may be losing its potency from overuse.  It is a popular term with those who currently critique America’s actions abroad and especially among those who critique American Evangelical Christianity.  However, it is an appropriate term when considering America’s worldwide troop placement.  Empire will aways be sought after even if it is called by another name and if America is truly a ‘Christian’ nation, should this be the course pursued by such a nation? 

I tend to hold off on some current event books because not all of the details have usually been uncovered and therefore can be made obsolete quite rapidly.  If anything, their purpose is to have a hand in policy and public opinion shaping.  Not that trying to sway opinion is a bad thing, we all do it.  But some books have an alarmist tendancy that, when coupled with the immediacy of the event being covered, causes the reader to lose sight of the bigger picture.

I plan on spending the next 13 posts looking back on each essay retrospectively to see if and why their predictions and comments were accurate or not.

-mike

Read This: Cat Up a Tree

Cat Up a Tree by John Hassett

Nana Quimby sees a cat up a tree and wants to help. She tries many sources and they all give her ridiculous excuses and options. My favorite is when she calls City Hall and they tell her they won’t get the cats out of the tree, but that she should call back if she needs a sign that says, “Danger! Watch out for falling cats.” We think this book is hilarious at my house and our son giggles when we ask, “Would a cat have an overdue book?” as the library suggests. This is a playful read for determining the difference between fantasy and reality, practicing counting, or for kids who really like cats. Big laughs and big fun.

Book Review: <em>Brilliant Orange</em> by David Winner

Brilliant Orange: The Neurotic Genius of Dutch Football (2001) is an historic and poetic investigation into the culture and sport of the Netherlands by English journalist David Winner.   At the heart of the book is the story of the Amsterdam club AFC Ajax which rose out of the Dutch version of 60’s counterculture with a new style of play, Total Football.   The club dominates Dutch football and becomes the first team from the Netherlands to make an impression in Europe as well winning three consecutive European Champion’s Club cups from 1971-73.

Just as quickly as it rose the club falls apart amid intrasquad rivalries and star players moving on to richer fields in other countries.  But many of the same players are reunited in 1974, this time representing the national team of the Netherlands in the FIFA World Cup.  The Dutch side makes it to the finals only to lose to their rivals from West Germany.  According to Winner, this loss takes on a national hubris and the lasting effect of the loss on Dutch culture takes up a whole chapter on its own.

There are many stars of Dutch football – in fact the key to Total Football is that all the players are highly skilled and versatile enough to move from positions to position – but there is one central figure that dominates this book, Johan Cruyff.  Winner even contends that Cruyff is the most famous living Dutchman, and who am I to argue since I can’t think of anyone other contenders for the title.

These are the central themes of Brilliant Orange, a book that also mixes in:

• the effect of the Dutch landscape on Dutch architecture
• the Dutch hatred of Germany and the reasons they give for it
• how appreciation for football as the “beautiful game” tends to overcome the desire to win
• the Netherlands “anticlimactic” return to the World Cup final in 1978, again versus the host nation Argentina
• the oddity of Ajax’s fan base identification with Judaism
• interviews with Dutch football stars past and present

Author :Winner, David, 1956-

Title : Brilliant orange : the neurotic genius of Dutch football / David Winner.

Edition : Paperback. ed.

Published : London : Bloomsbury, 2001.

Book Review: Belonging 2 by Jane Curran, Lyndall Hough & Gillian Lovell

by Jane Curan, Lyndall Hough & Gillian Lovell

Publisher: The Learning Curve

Publication Date: 2008

Belonging 2 (The Guide to the HSC English Area of Study: Belonging) is a thorough guide through the HSC English Paper 1 (for Standard and Advanced English).

It discusses and provides useful exercises to the concept of belonging, brief guides to Section 1 (unseen belonging material) and Section 2 (creative writing).

The bulk of it is guides and activities for half of the Belonging prescribed texts (the other half can be found in Belonging 1 by the same publisher):

• The Joy Luck Club
• The Namesake
• Great Expectations
• Romulus, My Father
• The Crucible
• Rainbow’s End

For Students

• Provides 7 Belonging related materials with exercises/guides that you can consider using for your HSC.
• Has in-depth analysis/discussion of the prescribed Belonging texts – important themes etc to consider and how it relates to Belonging.
• It uses a lot of tables (I find this really helpful for some students!) to help you analyse.
• Doesn’t provide you with all the answers, but gives you examples and questions that are very helpful – they point you in the direction that you should be thinking/analysing.

The benefit of using tables:

As a student, I wrote all my notes in dot points.

Now as a tutor, I encourage my students to use tables. Why? Tables ensure that you’ve covered everything – stated the idea, backed it up with a technique, explained its effect. Tables ensure that your essay (and thinking) flows logically. It’s also easier to look at a table and find the information that you need – rather than reading a lengthy paragraph.

For instance, I will often use this table structure and get my students to fill it in.

Example of “Ancestors” by Peter Skrzynecki For Tutors

• Filled with activities and questions that you can give your student (easier than making them up)
• Includes some example Belonging related material with activities to go with.

This is a very useful book for tutors, because it comes with many activities and questions that you can go through with your student. Often, I find it difficult to come up with my own questions and activities, because I lack the imagination or just can’t think of any. Also, activities I find tend to be more engaging for students (getting them to think and analyse for themselves) than simply telling them the “notes” or the “answers”.

Although I’m not tutoring any of the prescribed texts covered in this book, I will be using the Belonging related materials/activities as practice for Section 1 (unseen Belonging material).

Another great thing is that book is definitely for value – it splits pages up into 2 columns, so it’s packed with content/activities in the approx. 150 pages.

Criticisms

None actually – this book is very good for both tutors and students!

OVERALL: 5/5

Mother's Day Blog Review Winners!

Thanks to Multnomah and Waterbrook, I am pleased to announce the following winners of blog drawings this week!

Mama’s Got a Fake I.D.

The numbers were…

Winners are:

Elena (I’ll get Challice to drop it off for me when she’s done)

and

Carolita  (I’ve got your addy- I’ll mail it asap.)

and…

Enduring Justice…

Those winners are…

Keer   (need your new addy!)

and

Holly  (need yours too!)

I’ll ship ASAP!!!

Stay tuned for my next review… The Night Watchman by Mark Mynheir… it was GREAT!

Mother's Day Books

Things have been kinda busy around these parts and I am sorry to say that once again I am behind on my reading.  I was a bit overzealous when I accepted this blog tour invitation b/c it included three books but I just COULD NOT pass it up b/c they sounded so, so good!  They also were kind enough to send me an extra copy of each book that I am going to give to our Florence MOPS group to use as door prizes!  These are books that a mom like me will really enjoy! So below you will find a description and summary of each book.  I am truly looking forward to summer (just a few weeks away) b/c I have LOTS  of great summer reading to enjoy:) Book: Dear Mom

Author: Melody Carlson

Every mom knows how communicating with a teenage girl can be difficult, even impossible at times. One-word answers. Defensive conversations. Daily arguments. How typical for teens to put up such barriers. All the while, moms truly long to know what their daughters really think.

Best-selling author Melody Carlson, whose books for women, teens, and children have sold more than three million copies, bridges this chasm with trusted insight. She speaks frankly in the voice of the teen daughters she’s written for and she tells it like it is: struggles with identity, guys, friendship, and even parents—it’s all here. The straight-talk to moms covers such things as “I need you, but you can’t make me admit it,” “I’m not as confident as I appear,” and “I have friends. I need a mother.”

Instead of focusing on outward behaviors, Dear Mom looks at a young woman’s heart and reveals to moms:

· how to talk to teens so they hear,

· how to connect despite the differences of perspective or years and experiences,

· and how strengthen the bond every mom and daughter ultimately wants.

The lively chapters in Dear Mom can be dipped into topically or used as a read-through tool by moms and daughters alike to understand what motivates or deflates, troubles or inspires—and just in time for Mother’s Day and all the Mother’s Days ahead.

Author Bio:

Melody Carlson is the award-winning author of more than one hundred books for adults, children, and teens, with sales totaling more than three million copies. Beloved for her Diary of a Teenage Girl and Notes from a Spinning Planet series, she’s also the author of the women’s novels Finding Alice (in production now for a Lifetime-TV movie), Crystal Lies, On This Day, These Boots Weren’t Made for Walking, and A Mile in My Flip-Flops. A mother of two grown sons, Melody lives in central Oregon with her husband and chocolate lab retriever. She’s a full-time writer and an avid gardener, biker, skier, and hiker.

Dear Mom: http://www.randomhouse.com/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9781400074914&ref=externallink_wbm_dearmom_sec_0330%20_01

Book: Mama’s Got A Fake I.D.

Author: Caryn Dahlstrand Rivedeneira

Formula for identity loss:

1. Take one multifaceted, intriguing human being.

2. Bless her with a child.

3. Mix with today’s cultural assumptions.

4. Add the demands of motherhood.

5. Presto! All identity except Mom disappears.

For every woman wondering what happened to the unique combination of gifts and abilities she was known for before kids came along, Caryn Dahlstrand Rivedeneira has good news: in Mama’s Got a Fake I.D., Rivedeneira helps moms reclaim their full identity as creative beings, gifted professionals and volunteers, loving friends, children of God—and mothers.

This inspiring and practical guide shows women how to break free from false guilt, learn a new language to express who they really are, and follow God’s lead in sharing their true self with others. After all, motherhood doesn’t have to mean losing one’s identity. Instead, being a mom makes it possible for a woman to discover a more complete identity as the person God made her to be.

Author Bio:

The former managing editor of Marriage Partnership and Christian Parenting Today, Caryn Dahlstrand Rivedeneira has been a trusted voice writing and speaking to women for more than a decade. Today she is the managing editor of GiftedForLeadership.com, an online community for Christian women in leadership. Rivadeneira works from home in the Chicago suburbs, where she lives with her husband and their three children.

Mama’s Got a Fake I.D.: http://www.randomhouse.com/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9781400074938&ref=externallink_wbm_mamasgotafakeid_sec_0330%20_01

Book: Enduring Justice

Author: Amy Wallace

In Enduring Justice, Hanna Kessler’s childhood secret has remained buried for over two decades. But when the dark shadows of her past threaten to destroy those she loves, Hanna must face the summer that changed her life and the man who still haunts her thoughts.

Crimes Against Children FBI Agent, Michael Parker knows what it means to get knocked down. And when the system fails and a white supremacist is set free, Michael’s drive for retribution eclipses all else.

A racist’s well-planned assault forces Hanna and Michael to decide between executing vengeance and pursuing justice. When the attack turns personal, is healing still possible?

This thought-provoking novel deals with healing from sexual abuse, the balance of justice and mercy, and maintaining mixed-race friendships in the midst of racial tension. Readers who enjoy investigative thrillers by Dee Henderson, Colleen Coble, and Catherine Coulter, and who watch crime dramas like Law & Order: SVU, Criminal Minds, and Without a Trace will love this book—and the entire series.

Author Bio:

Amy Wallace is the author of Ransomed Dreams and Healing Promises, a homeschool mom, and self-confessed chocoholic. She is a graduate of the Gwinnett County Citizens Police Academy and a contributing author of several books including God Answers Moms’ Prayers and Chicken Soup for the Soul Healthy Living Series: Diabetes. She lives with her husband and three children in Georgia.

Enduring Justice: http://www.randomhouse.com/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9781601420145&ref=externallink_mlt_enduringjustice_sec_0330_01

And if you would enjoy being part of a book blog tour, then check out this site:

http://www.randomhouse.com/waterbrook/bloggingforbooks/.

Book Review:ABC's of the Gospel- By Ernest L.Martin (part one)

The ABC’s  of the Gospel was written in 1997, by Ernest L. Martin. He was associated with the World Wide Church of God ( Herbert Armstrong) for a number of years, and then branched off  and with his own ministry. The book is 124 pages in length, with nine chapters.  I will do a brief synopsis of each chapter with areas of agreement and/or disagreement.

Chapter One – How Mankind Got Saved

Martin is an expert at taking verses out of context. His major premise in this chapter is that all mankind ” were saved in Christ”, before the foundation of the world.(II Timothy1:9, Acts 15:18, Ephesians 1:3-5). Martin has built a theology and twists the Scriptures to fit his theology. In other words, he practices eisegeis rather than exegesis.http://www.gotquestions.org/exegesis-eisegesis.html   He takes verses that were written to Christians and applies them to everybody. For example – ” The purpose of God in creating mankind (both men and women) is to bring forth his own children who will be part of his divine family- individuals who will be just like he is.” (p.8)  Just like he is ! That is not taught in the Bible, as we are not God,and never will be. There is  an impassable gulf between the Creator and the created. God’s incommunicable attributes (omnipotence, omniscience,etc, are not to be given to humans.

Chpt.2- What is the Family of God?

Martin teaches that Christ is the first- born, in the sense of first created. In this he borrows from the ancient Arian heresy that has been popularized by the Jehovah Witnesses. He quotes Colossians 1:13-17, to back this up. First born comes from the Greek word prototokos. It can mean first -born, and can mean pre-eminent one, superiority of position. The easiest way to refute the teaching that Jesus was a created being, and not co-eternal with the Father, is to go to the following verses:

• John 1:1-5 ” the Word was with God and the Word was God” back before time began.
• Colossians 1:15-17 – ” He is the image of the invisible God…”
• Hebrews 1:1-8- where the Son is ” the radiance of God’s glory, the very expression of God’s essence”…in  vs.8, ” but to the Son, He says, Your throne O God, will last forever and ever…”
• Phillipians 2:5- 11- which ends with ” that in honor of the name given Yeshua,every knee will bow-in heaven, on earth and under the earth- and every tongue will acknowledge that Yeshua the Messiah is ADONAI – to the glory of God the Father.”

Obviously Martin does not believe in the Trinity, the deity of Christ, nor the personality of the Holy Spirit. As a matter of fact, he states that the reason Christ came to die was in order to make “all humanity(every single person),to be like Christ and the Father in composition and character. We are to become like they are.(p.14) It is one thing for Christians to have a glorified body, and to be ” conformed to the image of Christ”, it is quite another to make the leap of asserting godhood for every human being. ( echoes of Satan in the Garden perhaps?)

Chapter 3 – Mankind is destined to be Deity

He actually lays a strong foundation for the Trinity in trying to explain how there can be one God and yet plural useages of the word Elohim, and the singularity and plurality used with the word church. However, he is trying to establish how humans can be gods. ” We are destined to be deity, God will then be all in all… God will finally be all humans and all humans will then be considered as being in the Lord, to be a part of the Godhead itself.”(p.23)

Since Armstong ( and Martin) define God as a family, we have a ” family of gods” and have now moved to a polytheistic worldview. This is a radical departure from biblical Christianity. Some of  the early church fathers used deification language (improperly), but only in the sense ” that  the Holy Spirit dwells within Christian believers and transforms them into the image of God in Christ, eventually endowing them in the resurrection with immortality and God’s perfect moral character.” ( Robert M. Bowman Jr. Christian Research Journal, Winter,Spring 1987,p.18)

Wake by Lisa McMann

Title: Wake

Author: Lisa McMann

Category: Young adult

Worth It? Sure, why not.

The Nitty Gritty: Life hasn’t been easy for Janie Hanagan. She’s dirt poor, her mother is an alcoholic, her father is MIA and—she can’t stop entering other people’s dreams. For Janie the ability is a curse, not a gift. Anyone dreaming while in close proximity will immediately pull Janie into his/her dream. This happens whenever, wherever—in study hall, while driving, at work. She has to learn to control it before it kills her. She can’t do it alone, but if she can trust greasy-stoner-nerd boy turned hottie Cabel, she may find the strength and know how needed. And she also might find, for the first time in her life, love.

The Good: A light and fun story that makes for an easy read. Short, crisp writing style. The strong, spunky and self-sufficient female protagonist and caring and cute love interest are both worth rooting for.

The Bad: There was no real climax. Pacing was poor and the plot often felt pointless. Too many important questions were left unanswered.

The Ugly: The ending is only satisfying if you take into account the sequel(s).  

Other McMann Reads: Check out the soon-to-be reviewed sequel Fade.

Let's get started!

I am pleased to be starting this children’s picture book review blog. It has a scope of covering all different aspects of children’s picture books from self publishing, illustration, other illustrators and their work, book review for parents & teachers, tips & tricks, book production and publication.

You see, there is a wide variety of topics to talk about regarding children’s picture books. I hope to be able to cover it all here. If you are a parent or teacher of young children, you will be able to find reviews of old favorites and new books set to be released. If you are a self publisher, I hope you will be able to find some helpful insights here.

I wanted to introduce myself briefly. My name is Shaundra Schultz and I am a children’s book illustrator. I primarily help self publishers get their book illustrated and then published. I have always loved children’s illustration and now I am pleased to be serving writers who want to see their dream become reality! I have 1 book published as an illustrator and I am eager to start on one of the two manuscripts I currently have on my desk.

Formerly, I had been in the graphic design field designing for small companies here in town. The work started to dry up and I made the decision to “go for the gusto” and do what I know I was called to do – Children’s Picture Book Illustration! So, here we are. Today, I visit elementary schools hoping to inspire kids all over to follow their dreams!

BOOK REVIEW: Her Royal Spyness by Rhys Bowen

Rhys Bowen is an Agatha Award winner for her Molly Murphy historical mysteries and also writes the Evans series, both period mystery series.  With Her Royal Spyness she tackles a different time period, the early 1930’s, and very upper class – impoverished royalty.  The story is told in the first person by Lady Victoria Georgiana Charlotte Eugenie, known as Georgie, is the great-granddaughter of Queen Victoria and 34th in line for the throne, making her a very minor royal, but a royal nonetheless.  The Great Depression has hit Europe as hard as the US and bread lines and soup kitchens are a common sight.  Georgie’s older half-brother, Binky, the current Duke of Glen Garry and Rannoch has even more financial troubles having the estate decimated by the combined effects of gambling losses by his father, the stock market crash and the death duties on his inheritance.

While sitting on the loo, Georgie overhears Binky and his wife, Fig, discussing a request from Her Majesty, Queen Mary, to entertain Prince Sigfried.  They haven’t the money and frankly don’t want the visitors.  It’s still snowing in Scotland and there just isn’t any way to entertain them with the usual activities like hunting.  The real reason for the visit is to try and get Georgie married off to someone of the right social station.  Knowing full well what the goal is, Georgie, who has no funds of her own, decides to do a bunk to London under the pretense of helping a friend with their wedding.

Alone in London without even a maid, she stays at Rannoch House, the huge empty pile without any central heat or hot water turned on – and she doesn’t even know how to lay a fire in her own room!  She’s only in London a short time when HR sends a note ‘requesting’ she present herself for tea at Buckingham Palace.  It’s here where Queen Mary, concerned with her eldest son’s fixation on an ‘unsuitable woman’ explains that she wants Georgie to attend a house party and report back to her.  Georgie’s is reluctant to spy on her cousin David, Prince of Wales (later known as Edward VII), but one does not refuse the queen.  (This is a where the clever title came from, but it really doesn’t play into the basic story.)  Since protocol demands that a guest eat nothing the queen isn’t eating, Georgie has to forego the lovely tarts and cakes and settle for a little brown bread and leaves her tea as hungry as she arrived.

Georgie, in need of some practical advice, goes straight from the queen to see her maternal grandfather, a retired bobby living in a very modest suburb.  Her mother has acquired a decent amount of funds from her career and her marriages and the one thing she’s done is buy her grandfather a little house.  Georgie tells him everything while he makes her the hot meal she obviously needs.  It’s a strange social divide that exists between them, even though they obviously care deeply for each other.

1. The prognosis is not good.

While the gate-crashing was exciting, it was also nerve wracking and Georgie needs to earn some money as she no allowance from Binky.  With Belinda’s fake letter of recommendation she gets a job Harrod’s cosmetic counter.  She barely starts when her mother comes in and makes a scene to see to it she gets fired.  Georgie’s next foray into earning money is a simple housekeeping service, just dusting and make up the beds sort of thing that scandalizes even the very progressive Belinda.  She gets thru her first job without incident – and acquires a new respect for the working class, only to get a message from Fig that Binky is coming down to London and could she see to it that his room was done up, fire started, his favorite parlor opened and get breakfast for him, etc.  Georgie is furious until she realizes that Fig thinks she’s hired a maid by now.  She returns from another visit with her grandfather only to have a pushy and obnoxious Frenchman attempt to force his way inside Rannoch House.  He asks all manner of intensely personal questions about Rannoch Castle and its income while she insists he speak with the Duke.  A shaken Georgie finally makes him leave, but once Binky arrives she demands some answers.

Gaston de Mauxville has documents that show the old duke lost Rannoch Castle gambling at cards before his death.  Even if the man wants to be bought off, Binky hasn’t got the funds to do it.  The visit to the solicitors indicates the claim looks genuine and would need to be fought in French courts.  She manages to hide the cleaning job from Binky, but almost was caught out by men she knows, Roderick (Wiffy) Featherstonhaugh and Tristram Hautbois.  The start speaking in truly awful French thinking she wouldn’t understand, but it isn’t till much later that she realizes what they actually meant.  She manages to escape detection, gets back to Rannoch House – and finds the body of a fully clothed Gaston de Mauxville in the bathtub.  Binky is nowhere to be found and his things are gone.  His club won’t tell her is he’s there or not so she and Belinda cook up a story, go back to Rannoch House and call the police claiming to have just found the body.  Georgie calls Rannoch Castle and tells the butler to get her brother back to London on the first train or else.

Georgie stays with Belinda while she tries to help Binky, the most obvious suspect.  Just to take a break, she and Belinda go out on a cruise with a friend of Belinda’s and she gets dragged into the river with a rope snagged around her ankle.  Darcy, also a guest, gets her out and she spends a pleasant evening with him – and nearly longer, but good sense prevails.  Then she pushed off an underground platform into an oncoming train – and is saved by a workman who grabs her just in time.  Is the murderer after her too?  She asks her ex-bobby granddad for help in gathering information and together they stage a way to search his rooms at Claridge’s.  Dressed as a maid, Georgie gets into de Mauxville’s room where she finds a small fortune in bills hidden in a jacket lining but nothing else of interest.

1. The thing is, though I guessed the who, they why was hidden till the last moment.

Her Royal Spyness is populated with the kind of n’er-do-well’s of the upper crust that are so popular in the 1930’s movies as well as some real historical figures.  Georgie is a charming guide with wit and a certain self deprecation about herself and her complete lack of education on how to actually make her way in the world where women of her class were ‘finished’, not educated.  And certainly not given any useful job training.  It’s interesting to watch her slow evolution into a more self confident and self reliant young woman aware of the real world, proud of her small achievements at independence, not just reliant insular existence she’s always known.

As a period piece Her Royal Spyness is original, off-beat, charming, witty and entertaining.  As a cozy mystery it’s gets off to a rather slow start but moves along once it’s underway.  The surrounding story of Georgie is entertaining all on its own.  Ms Bowen keeps our heroine on her toes and the action within reasonable bounds for society of that period – including Georgie’s relative naiveté about life outside her class.  Frankly, I found it far more entertaining than the much more highly touted Deanna Raybourn Lady Jane Grey series.  I sincerely hope we’ll be seeing more of Darcy O’Mara who proved a delightful distraction.  Georgie has a wonderful ‘voice’ as our narrator and near victim.  A truly pleasant amateur sleuth British cozy.

My Grade: B (4*)

Who would enjoy this book:  Fans of Jacqueline Windspear, Victoria Thompson and Carola Dunn.  The rating is PG-13.

Review Format, a Matt Musing

I stumbled upon Weekly Geek 16, which, apropos of my post yesterday, pricks my interest. One part of the discussion asks bloggers to explain the review format - if there’s one, or the rating system.This is a perfect opprtunity to explain my review system.

Objectively speaking, there is no such thing as a perfect book. What makes a perfect book is entirely a subjective manner. A casual reader, or a layover passenger would be contented with a supermarket thriller that engages him and helps mitigate boredom. A serious reader would prefer to wrestle a book, usually more lyrical and less accessible in immediate meaning, in order to establish a deeper interpretation. I’m leaning more toward the latter. An unengaging story sinks the ship, but the writing style also factors in the merit. Books that are endowed with an underlying meaning along with figurative prose usually win my favor. Because of the diverse nature of books that satisfy the pleasure of perusal, I find it difficult to accommodate different genres with a rigid rating system.

The all-time favorite titles on the left sidebar will score 5/5 on a 5-star rating system. The inadequacy of the system falls in the fact that future reads might challenge these ratings if the merit has surpassed that of the hall-of-famers. Recently I have adopted the rating system from Time Magazine, which has a little mini-book review feature called “The Skimmer,” to quickly determine for readers whether a new book is something they should either Read, Skim, or Toss. Toss would be self-explanatory. The middle position of Skim is worthy of some elaboration because its implication is two-fold. A book with a Skim rating is either one that is average/mediocre or a good quick read that probably won’t survive time’s indifference. The question of whether a Skim book should be recommended brings to my final point—expectation of a review.

My ideal review would inform readers a little bit about the plot, important themes, the major characters, and any important literary devices. Since a reader’s investment in perusing the text gives objects and motifs meaning, I tend to focus on two or three significant themes, framed by key passages, that readers might have overlooked and thus should reflect upon as they read. A “Skim” book simply would not expend such effort and investment on the readers’ part but is still worthy of a recommendation. The goal is achieve an honest opinion. Often time I succumb to the confusion between merit and recommendation. In rating a book “Read”, I entrust the readers to decide between the literary value and merit of a book versus the appeal of the book to the individual reader.

What are your thoughts on rating system?

YA Fiction: Evolution, Me and other Freaks of Nature

I just finished this book, about a high school girl who is alienated from her evangelical peers because (spoilers, I’m all about them) she writes a letter apologizing to a gay boy who commits suicide after they try to convert him. Post-alienation, she makes friends with a fan of their amazing wonder science teacher, and clashes with her previous pals as that science teacher teaches evolution instead of intelligent design.

I liked it; it made me think. About Mormons, and all our varying views on evolution. And about the way it’s so easy to treat people badly because that somehow proves that you are righteous and they are not. The romance was very well done; nice zing, and it was my very favorite kind of romance in all the world, even better than the Darcy Pride and Prejudice plot done well: it’s the kind where the guy and girl are friends first, real friends, and they are kind, and they don’t lie to each other or play stupid tricks, and then finally they get the courage to tell each other how they feel and they fall in love. What does that romance sound like? Hmmm? Oh, that’s right. Real life! I love it when art imitates life.

Here are my questions about it: 1-Why are parents of teens so often distant from them in YA books? Is it genre convention? Is it the need for an antagonist and parents are just the most likely villain? Is it that teens and parents are notorious for not getting along? Or a combination of all three?

Every time I read about bad teen/parent relationships, it makes me sad. I had some tiffs with my parents as a teenager, but overall they were good to me and I knew it. I guess that makes for no story, though. In the writing I am contemplating right now, the protagonist is estranged from her father. And I realize it’s been done to death, but ah well.

2-I really wish the author, Robin Brande, had done a bit more to make her evangelical villains more well-rounded, more likeable. She did allow one of them, Bethany, to be sincere, with a good heart. But I think more of them had a good heart, or at least good intentions, than she allowed us to see. By portraying all the evangelicals as nutty publicity-hound closed-minded posturing idiots, except for one sincere one, she undermines Mena’s struggle. Wouldn’t it be even harder for Mena to leave her group of friends if we’d been shown even one moment of kindness between them? Wouldn’t it be harder for Mena to accept the fundamental closed-mindedness if she had seen more moments of goodness and kindness among them? And why would Mena’s parents have been duped for so long into believing in this pastor who was such a jerk if he had not had some goodness in him as well, or at least attempts at goodness?

I feel that a more nuanced portrayal of the evangelicals would have strengthened the book a great deal. Yes, they can still be closed-minded, they can still be the villains in the end, but grant them a bit more redeeming value, is what I say. I speak as a devout Mormon, and as someone who hopes that when writers depict our faith and culture, they take the time to paint a layered picture of us, not just a one-note song. I think Robin Brande is talented enough that she could have brought more depth to her villains, had she so chosen.

It’s worth reading, though. Reminded me also of the talk my brother just gave on balancing religion and science at BYU’s Life Sciences commencement. He quoted President Eyring’s father, the scientist Henry Eyring, something to this effect (I paraphrase): “God, who created the heavens and the earth, knows about evolution, and is apparently not disturbed.” I love that.