I’ve been feeling depressed lately and I thought about having to notice the good things in life.

Good

Here Peter T. Chattaway, film critic, interview Philip Pullman on “His Dark materials” books and the new “The Golden Compass“ movie, based on it. The interview statements seems to be a bit more toned down than Pullman’s earlier admission: “My books are about killing God” - Philip Pullman

I know that reviewers find the ‘Golden Compass’ movie not even entertaining. And readers say the first book of the ‘His Dark Materials’ trilogy is well-written, the second less well-written, and the third book (the most anti-religious of the three, in which “God” is killed) is very disconnected, failing to satisfactorily conclude the lofty themes promised in the first book.. Jeffrey Overstreet suggest some questions that you can ask in a discussion with children who read the book. (They are in the “Okay, so we shouldn’t start boycotts and complain.But what should Christians do?” section under “equip yourself and your kids ….. section of this link.)

Some of Pullman’s anti-religious remarks in the interview have led me to comment on the interview’s site.

Pullman: “If there is an exclusively religious sin (not exclusively Christian, but certainly clearly visible among some Christians) it is the claim that all virtue belongs to their sect, all vice to others.”

Me: If that is true, why does the “His Dark Materials” series put all virtue in the actions of unbelieving characters, and almost all vice in the believing characters? It would seem that this sin is not so exclusive to religious people, but appears in Pullman’s mind as well.

Pullman: “It [the claim that all virtue belongs to their sect, all vice to others] is so clearly wrong, so clearly stupid, so clearly counter-productive, that it leads the unbiased observer to assume that you’re not allowed in the religious club unless you leave your intelligence at the door. “

Me: Yeah, that’s the same thing that puts me off about Dawkins, Hitchens and the like – this “so clearly wrong, so clearly stupid, so clearly counter-productive,” view that all belief in God, and believers in God, are evil and/or stupid, and atheism the clever, moral thing. It “leads the unbiased observer to assume that you’re not allowed in the anti-religious club unless you leave your intelligence at the door. “

Why is it that some people are very critical of flaws they themselves share, but they only notice those flaws in others? There is no reason to think that prejudice is exclusive to believers- not if you have read anything by today’s most prominent atheistic writers, that is.

I have spoken to some people on the ‘net that left me totally exasperated. (And I don’t want to link to their forums either.) They make statements about their world view. (For example the statement “No New Testament writer knew Jesus” to defend a non-Christian world view.)

I then research and cross-reference to sources to show them their statement is untrue. (In case of the example, by any standard used for accepting historical writing, you have to accept that several New Testament books was written by eyewitnesses.)

When I do that, they claim things like: “Who is to say that what is true for you is true for me?” Now, that kind of argument is perfect for things like “Are Crocs ugly or not?” If I think Crocs are ugly shoes, and you do not, your opinion is as worthy as mine. But if one of us think that Leonardo da Vinci never existed, and one of us insist he did, one of us is right and the other wrong. If one of us thinks Jesus rose from the death and one of us do not, we are not both equally right. (Lionel Luckhoo- possibly the greatest lawyer ever - he got “innocent convictions in 245 murder cases in a row – said that the evidence for Jesus’s resurrection is overwhelming and leave no room for doubt.)

One of the things that inspired “Not everything is true in Mella-Milloo” was the view that truth is not relative. Everybody is not equally right. (If you want the non-relativity of truth discussed more deeply, this page explains how 15 things need to be true before anyone would utter the statement “There is no truth.”)

The other inspiration was Aaron from “The Wardrobe Door” asserting that we need to express our world views more creatively.

More creatively? That made me think of Dr. Seuss’s great story “The Lorax.” (“The Lorax”, and Dalene Matthee’s “Kringe in ‘n Bos”,which translate as “Circles in a Forest” are the best works I ever read on the tragedy of destroying the environment.)

It also made me think of all the other funny, rhyming stories I read as a little kid: Lots by Dr. Seuss. One Afrikaans book named “Die Appeltwis” about a crazy argument between two kings: An apple tree standing on the edge of one kingdom was shedding apples into the other… And one named “To think what I saw on Mulberry street.” (How a plain horse and a wagon on Mulberry Street/ changed into a story that no-one could beat.)

So here is my attempt at a kid’s story. I envisioned it with Dr. Seuss-like pictures, but I can’t draw them.

By Retha Faurie 

Here in my town of Mella-Milloo

I go off to school, just like any of you.

But something is strange at the Mella-school.

Some kids say things that just are not cool.

Some kids here think everything is equally true.

They say: “I am right, and so are you.”

When I say the sum has the answer three,

they say five is what it turns out to be.

When I say our teacher is wearing green,

they say her purple dress is the ugliest ever seen.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Yesterday Susan came by on her bike.

(She always says funny things that I like.)

She stopped, and said “hi.”

We played, and then we said “Bye.”

At school I tell the other kids out to play

that Susan was riding her bike yesterday.

“No,” Mike said, “it wasn’t a bike.

She had a flying saucer, and an alien was following

on a four-winged trike.”

“But,” argued I, “a flying saucer she did not drive.

And I saw no alien, nor on a tricycle or doing the jive.”

“Hold your tongue,” say Mike to me now.

“It doesn’t matter if it was a saucer, a bike or a cow.

Just about everything is equally true.

I am right, and so are you.”

I said to Mike: “Only some things are true.

God gave me a brain, and a pair of eyes too

so I can see and know what is true.

So I can understand, and know what to do.

Some things are true and some are not.

I saw what she rode. A bike she got.

God gave me a brain to understand.

And to look for truth, is what He command.

Not everything is equally true.

What is true indeed, should be true for you.”

“And,” added Joe, “I saw her too.

She was riding an elephant from the Mella-town zoo.”

“But Mella-town don’t have a zoo,”

I said, “and Susan fear big animals too.”

Joe say: “It depends how you feel

I feel she rode one, I believe that it’s true.

If you don’t believe it, I am just as right as you.”

I said to Joe: “Only some things are true

God gave me a brain, and a pair of eyes too

so I can see and know what is true.

So I can understand, and know what to do.

Some things are true and some are not.

I saw what she rode. A bike she got.

God gave me a brain to understand.

And to look for truth, is what He command.

Not everything is equally true.

What is true indeed, should be true for you.”

- - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Last week Martin was away from class.

This week he told us where he was.

He and his mother flew over the sea

to visit the country of Medda-Callee.

Martin showed his photos to us

of him and his mum, touring on a big red bus.

Mike say Martin was in a hospital ward

with a toe that was swollen large and hard.

A tarantula bit him, and his toe swelled large as a TV screen.

Martin’s toe was the largest that Mike ever seen.

“No,’ say I, “his toe is okay.

Nothing is wrong with that toe today.”

Shhht, say Mike: “Just about everything is equally true.

I am right, and so are you.”

I say to Mike: “Only some things are true

God gave me a brain, and a pair of eyes too

so I can see and know what is true.

So I can understand, and know what to do.

His toe is all right, no tarantula was there.

He went overseas and has the photos to share.

God gave me a brain to understand.

And to look for truth, is what He command.

Not everything is equally true.

What is true indeed, should be true for you.”

Then Joe chipped in with another tale:

“Martin had a ship that set for sail.

He found an island - what a pleasure

‘cause on the island he found a chest full of treasure.

Pirates came, and then he guessed

that fighting them off would be the best.”

“But,” say I, “how can one little boy

fight off pirates, with his sword a plastic toy?”

Joe say: “It depends how you feel.

I feel he did it, I believe that it’s true.

If you don’t believe it, I am just as right as you.”

I say to Joe: “Only some things are true

God gave me a brain, and a pair of eyes too

so I can see and know what is true.

So I can understand, and know what to do.

I saw the photos and the tickets for the plane.

If you think he fought pirates, why, that is insane!

God gave me a brain to understand.

And to look for truth, is what He command.

Not everything is equally true.

What is true indeed, should be true for you.”

- - - - - - - - - - - - - -

My mother say that Jesus died.

Came alive again, he never lied.

He said he would die and then rise again.

He did that 2000 years ago, that’s when.

Now some people say “It depends how you feel.

If you feel he did, then believe that it’s true.

I don’t believe it, and I am just as right as you.”

But either Jesus died and then he rose.

Or else it’s a story, no truer than Joe’s.

It just cannot both be equally true.

It cannot be true just for me or for you.

I can say to them: “Only some things are true.

God gave us brains, and pairs of eyes too

so we can see and know what is true.

So we can understand, and know what to do.

The people saw him die, then saw him alive again.

They wrote what they saw, and kept saying it then.

God gave me a brain to understand.

And to look for truth, is what He command.

Not everything is equally true.

What is true indeed, should be true for you.”

(This memorable Reader’s Digest article was published before my birth. When I was in my early twenties, I almost memorized these words. You may ask:: “Why would anybody re-publish a 1968 magazine article?” Read it to understand.)

“The World’s Slow Stain”

By CHANNING POLLOCK

You have known people who started out in youth with a soul like a sword- keen, bright and uncompromising. Then came what Shelley called “the contagion of the world’s - slow stain.” That comes to most of us. We begin aiming for the best, and gradually find that honour and truth and steadfastness don’t mean so much as we thought.

Playwrights George Kaufman -Moss Hart once wrote a curiously effective drama, Merrily we Roll Along. They told their story in reverse, introducing Robinson, a dissolute playwright, and working backwards through his life, showing how he got like that. As the piece ended he was delivering an address on his last day at school and declaiming, “‘This above all: to thine own self be true.” Merrily We Roll Along was not a notable success- partly, perhaps, because it brought us face to with the contrast between what are and what we wanted to be.

Once you get started, it isn’t hard to make a fine mental collection of Robinsons. Youth is naturally idealistic. I think even our modern pragmatic youngsters begin with a will to develop what Immanuel Kant called “that divine man within us.” And then, slowly, comes a subtle undermining, brick by brick.

Older and-we are sure- wiser people smile at our faiths. Secretly, and a little shamefacedly, we believe in love, marriage, loyalty, courage and incorruptibility. We find that love and marriage are really good jokes, treated lightly and scornfully by every comedian; we discover that loyalty- to one’s life partner, anyway-is merely stupid and dull.

Somebody once told me that you couldn’t drive a nail, no matter how small, into a beam, no matter how great, without weakening the timber. Certainly the foundations of our high resolves begin crumbling with these tiny punctures. Disloyalty to your wife isn’t serious; well, then, how serious is a little disloyalty to your friend? And, after all, isn’t this leaning backwards to be honest rather silly? So-and-so, for instance, is crooked, and everyone knows it, but he’s re-elected regularly; and, of course, all politicians are crooked, so what of it? What price glory and honour and incorruptibility when everybody else-well, nearly everybody-has thrown the cargo overboard and won the blue riband thereby? Weren’t those early ideals of ours rather foolish, juvenile and impractical?

Utopian Dream. I suppose so, but they were fine, too. A world in which everyone believed in the purity of women and the nobility of men, and acted accordingly, would be a very different world, but a grand place to live in. And, contemplating the adolescence through which we scorned the wrong, some of us must wish, with the Cardinal in Robert Marshall’s comedy A Royal Family, that “we could be born old, and grow younger and cleaner and ever simpler and more innocent, until at last, with the white souls of little children, we lay us down to eternal sleep.”

Our Achilles’ heel, of course, is what Phillips Russell, in :lis biography of Ralph Waldo Emerson, calls “grubby thing-worship.” Men who do not want much cannot be much tempted. Emerson felt no urge to compromise; no difficulty in preserving, “with perfect sweetness, in the midst of the crowd, the independence of solitude.”

In 12 years Emerson’s first book, Nature, sold 500 copies. Yet he was undisturbed by this lack of appreciation. Knowing himself, he could be true to himself. Aware of his strength, he did not have to seek power through money or praise.

When his address to the Divinity School at Cambridge filled the air round his head with critical brickbats, he wrote, “I shall go on just as before, seeing whatever I can, and telling what I see.” This is the serene indomitability of greatness- of all men who have served the world by refusing to be turned away from their vision- and it is a steadfastness difficult, if not impossible, for people avid for possessions.

This well-nigh universal hunger, ever increasing and ever artfully stimulated, supplies a continual suc­cession of detour signs along the straight and narrow path. We must keep up with the Joneses. For many of us, that is the sole measure of progress. Emerson said Jesus was the one man who “was true to what is in you and me,” but Jesus did not live in an age in which every newspaper and magazine apprised people of needs they had never felt before, nor among men who regarded poverty as certain proof of inadequacy. I’m not suggesting blasphemously that this would have changed Jesus, but I do suggest that to remain unchanged by it requires something of divinity ..

Luckily, that “something of divinity” is not yet extinct. There are still a good many colours nailed to the mast. Our legislative halls may not be crowded with men who would rather be right than be Prime Minis­ter, but there are thousands in our schools, pulpits and laboratories. These are the people who love the job for the job’s sake, and have no material interests of equal strength. There are a few of them in the arts and professions, a few more in business and, I suppose, one or two- somewhere- in politics. And the remarkable thing is how often these folk win the day.

My deepest conviction is that “if the single man plant himself indomitably on his. instincts, and there abide, the huge world will come round to him.” It takes a big man to do that, and the big man nearly always wins. And I don’t mean only spiritually, either. The first newspaper publisher who threw out lying advertisements must have been advised pretty generally that he was headed for the rocks. I believe the first man who says, “This is my faith, and I don’t give a damn how many votes it costs me I” might be agreeably surprised at the result. The man most needed today is the man who is not afraid.

The world’s slow stain comes of many things- of self-distrust, self-satisfaction, indolence, weariness, cynicism, false values, or lack of cultural interest or of individual standards. But its chief acid is fear. Fear of “failure,” of poverty, of being condemned.

Every nation needs the man who isn’t afraid to fail. We need a better understanding of what failure really is. Most of us know pretty well by instinct what is best in ourselves. Insofar as we turn away from that, through hope of reward or dread of penalty, we are smeared with the world’s stain.

Judas, with his 30 pieces of silver, was a failure.

Christ, on the Cross, was the greatest figure of time and eternity.

The Reader’s Digest. May /968

This is “16 days of activism for no violence againt woman and children” , right?Right.

These are the words of “Missing Person” by Michael W. Smith, a song that resonated with my feelings today. I think many people have been there…. I am there now…

I am searching for the girl I used to be, are any of you doing the same? Please drop me a line if you are.

I got a confession to make: I started the calculations below with the assumption: “Genesis should in some places be read figuratively. Now what objective way can I proof that to other Christians? I know! I’ll show them how it is mathematically impossible for the earth to repopulate quickly enough after Noah!” Oops. When I finished the sums, the result did nothing to prove my stated objective. Here are my calculations:

Why these calculations will be inadequate:

a) Many believers hold that the flood in Genesis could be correctly understood as a local, instead of global flood. As such, it may not have been needed to repopulate the world from the few women on the ark.

b) The geneaologies of Genesis mentions very long life spans, and men who apparently still fathered children for a long part of those centuries. It don’t mention women’s ages in those geneaologies. It is very likely to assume, though, that if men in those times literally stayed reproductive for centuries, that women could have done the same. That means that each of them could have concieved many more children than in the calculations below.

c) Some Bible scholars also believe that the Hebrew word for “son” could also mean “grandson,” “great-grandson,” etc. In that case, the earth had even more generations to repopulate before the Tower of Babel or before Abraham encountered other nations.

However, here are calculations using my modern assumptions on how long woman can stay fertile, and assuming the fewest number of generations: These two assumptions are as strict as can be. If I assumed longer fertility times (argument b), or more generations (argument c), I would have made the job of proving the Genesis account a lot easier.

(It may seem strange to assume that a woman can have, on average, 3 or 3,5 daughters in a lifetime - thus 6 or 7 children. But in the times before birth control it was not rare for woman to have much larger families than that. One of my grandmothers married at 28, the other at age 30 - yet they each gave birth 6 times.)

The numbers below only represent the girls and women of the new generation. You could assume that there are still older woman too, and about as many men and boys as woman and girls.

SCENARIO 1: Each woman has, on average, 3 daughters who reach adulthood, and get her girls on average at age 25

From the ark comes 3 woman of child-bearing age =3

25 years later: 3×3 young woman/ girls of next generation.

50 years later: 3×3x3

100 years later: 3 to the power of 5

200 years later: 3 to the power of 9 =19 683

350 years later: 3 to the power of 15 =14 348 907

650 years later: 3 to the power of 27 = 7 625 597 484 987 (About as many young woman and girls as there are people in the world now.)

SCENARIO 2: Each woman has, on average, 3,5 daughters who reach adulthood, and get her girls on average at age 25 (Rounded off to whole numbers.)From the ark comes 3 woman of child-bearing age =325 years later: 3×3,5 young woman/ girls of next generation =10 or 1150 years later: 3×3,5×3,5 = 37100 yr.: 3x(3,5 to the power of 4) =450

200 yr.: 3x(3,5 to the power of 8 ) =67 556

350 yr.: 3x(3,5 to the power of 14) =124 186 354

575 yr.: 3 x(3,5 to the power of 23) =9 787 826 778 918 (More young woman and girls than there are people in the world now.)

The bible first mentions contact with other nations again, after the flood, at a time when Abram was older than 75 years. (Before that, it mentions nations in 2 ways: Mostly in the sense of “So-and-so was the forefather of this nation.” Secondly in the story “the tower of Babel,” an explanation why the one group split up into nations.)

Since the exact ages of Abraham’s forefathers are mentioned when they became fathers, it could be calculated that more than 367 years have expired from the ark until the date Abraham gets into contact with other nations. By either of my scenarios, there could have been more enough people on earth for different nations to exist.

The descendants of Noah could well have splattered into several large nations by the time Abram encounters other nations.

Conclusion: It is possible to believe that the earth could have repopulated from a 3 woman in a few centuries. It may not be necessary to assume that it happened (other options are mentioned in the “Why these calculations will be inadequate” paragraph), but it is possible.

I decorated this My Little Pony cake for my godchild’s birthday recently. Am rather proud of it, since I did it with no instructions on how to make a pony cake. I just had a rectangular cake, and cut and decorated it according to an picture I had of a My Little Pony.