When's the last time you were this happy?

Behold, a girl who picked up the sticks at two, and has played the drums like a rock star from the age of eight.  And that's not just me, that's Robert Plant, watching her play Led Zeppelin's "Good Times, Bad Times."  (Her full video is here.)  

And she's gotten even better.  check this out from 3:10 to 3:20:


But this is where she just radiates such exultant joy that I go back to see her do it again, and again, and again:


Seriously, when was the last time you were doing something that made you this happy?  I was never this happy singing, or writing, or playing trumpet, and I loved Purcell's trumpet concertos.  She just loves percussion, and I hope and pray that nobody ruins it for her, so she can continue to love it like this for the rest of her life.  

Blogrollin' 112

If, for some bizarre reason, you prefer my writing to that of David Warren, what's wrong with you?

His latest essay, Breeding Instructions, describes with empathy and beauty the joy found in a large family united in their struggle against poverty. I cannot recommend it highly enough.

It also describes (and refutes) a few of the lies population planners tell themselves about large families in desperately poor times and places. These lies are embedded deep within their worldview, and implicit in their expectation that poor people must join the rich in not having children. Why do they tell (and believe) these lies? Do they hate the poor? Or perhaps they suffer from acedia (on which both Max Lindeman and Darwin have recently written)? Or perhaps I fret too much; surely their hatred and self-deception arise from the mystery of evil.

Science! versus God

Science, history, and logic (of which math is a subset — logic applied to numbers) are all tools for discovering truth. They complement each other. The scientific method depends on logic and often also on math, both of which precede it, and neither of which it can prove. Using the scientific method to prove logic or math is is to pretend that a structure supports its foundation, rather than the other way around.

There is not one scientific (or historical) theory which cannot be disproven with sufficient contradictory evidence. In fact, disprovability is one of the prerequisites of a scientific theory or hypothesis. Contradictory evidence has proven huge heaps of scientific theories wrong. I fully expect many more to be proven wrong in the future. Current scientific theory is always only our best understanding of the natural universe, based on the logical examination of the evidence we’ve collected. The same cannot be said of logic or math.

Science cannot prove history. It can only support historical evidence, by demonstrating that it has the properties of an artifact of a given time, or impeach it, by demonstrating that it does not. The primary forms of historical evidence are and will always be documents and testimony. The methods used to measure the reliability of conflicting testimonies and documents are not, strictly speaking, scientific.

I have no problem with the idea that science can’t explain &/or prove everything. In fact, I have no problem with science depending on unproven axioms, e.g., the law of non-contradiction. The scientific method is meant to discern the laws governing the physical, natural universe. It was originally an outgrowth of theology. The thinking was, “We have a reasonable and logical god. The universe is the work of his mind, and so it, too, should be reasonable and logical. By exploring how it functions, we can hope to better understand the mind which created it.”

Then Roger Bacon came along and declared that if science couldn’t make us immortal, it was worthless. He is the one who changed science from a field of pure inquiry into one where you looked for things you could engineer into wealth and power.

I don’t believe in a god of the gaps. I believe in one God who is three persons, one of which became an entirely human man and entered the world he’d created as such while retaining his full divinity, and then submitted to death at our hands, to pay for our crimes against him which separated us from him, so that we could experience, share, and return his love for eternity. I believe in a God that is Love and Truth and Beauty, whose essence, powers, abilities, methods, and means are beyond the ability of limited human minds to ever fully imagine, let alone understand.

Scientific inquiry will never affect the doctrines or dogmas of the Catholic Church. The scientific method is as useful in theological inquiries as a freight scale is in measuring distance. If you want logical evidence for the existence of God, I refer you to St. Thomas Aquinas and his Summa Theologica. If you're looking for historical proof, I refer you to C. S. Lewis's Mere Christianity. If you want personal, experiential proof, do as atheist John C. Wright did. But don't ask for scientific proof. Science is as useful in exploring the existence of God as a Harley Davidson is in exploring the Marianas Trench.

Science is only a tool, created by men and like all our creations, prone to failure. It is not a god. Do not let it become one for you.

Deo Gratias!

Deo gratias! Habemus Papam Franciscum. Gaude!!

I've looked over Jorge Bergoglio's biography at CNS, and his Wikipedia page, and I have great hope. May God bless him and keep him, and richly bestow upon him the graces of his charism.

Proving God's Existence

To all you atheists out there, demanding proof of God's existence: Ask Him for it, and He will provide it to you.

There are, however, some warnings.

• He will grant you this proof only if knowing the truth about His existence is more important to you than anything else.
• The proof He provides will be specific to you, and in all likelihood it will convince nobody else.

Blogrollin'

Salute to Fr. George David Byers, of Holy Souls Hermitage. I wept, and choked up with emotion. Watch it through to the end.



Additionally: Read John C. Wright's excellent time-travel story. It too delighted and moved me so, so deeply.

In memoriam

Pray for the souls of all our fallen service members, and for all who are in the line of fire. Remember, greater love hath no man than this: that he lay down his life...

Telling the Truth

John C. Wright posts about Christopher Stasheff, the only SF author who had the guts to put the truth about chastity into the mouth of one of his characters. Go and read it, as it is an EXCELLENT explanation of the spiritual dangers of fornication.

On Feminine Beauty

for reasons I don't intend to go into atall, I went back to Waiterrant today. I started from the beginning, clicking through his first few posts until I got to one entitled Leftovers. In it, the Waiter discusses what makes a woman beautiful and desirable, and some of the truly horrific damage some of them do to themselves in pursuit of the Main Stream Media norm of physical perfection, which is utterly divorced from reality. If you doubt it, watch the video.



Deo gratias, my wife is sane. She may not be aware of the Photoshop effect, but she does know how her skeleton is shaped. She eats like a human being, not a famine victim. I love her, she is as beautiful as she could be, and our marriage is a deluge of God's grace into my life.

I'm A Man

Many thanks to the redoubtable Simcha Fisher, whose blog "I Have to Sit Down" (see Blogs I Like in the sidebar) is always a delight, for leading me to this interview she did. It includes some insight into how to deal in a Catholic, Christian manner, with same-sex attraction. Read and enjoy.

And also to What Lies Beneath, a meditation on the true nature of Reality that is so often hidden from us. Read and enjoy that too.

I love the Rev. Know-It-All

Here's a man I admire, because he has taken his stand for a liturgy by the rubrics. More importantly still, he has stood up for the life of the unborn. More important still, he has stood up for valid theology. See it all in Part 19 of A Short History of the Hootenanny Mass. I can recommend the entire series with a whole heart.

You may wish to argue my priorities. I agree with Father Z, good liturgy is good for the world. But lives are more important than good liturgy. And the truth about God is the most important thing in the world.

Halleluja, We're Being Attacked!

Read the American Papist's most excellent story here.

tl, dr? A couple of gay billionaires are spending millions of dollars to undermine the Church's teaching on marriage, family, and sex. They give it to organizations like Dignity, New Ways Ministry, and the like -- basically anyone who'll say, "We're Catholic, and it's time for the Church to deny truths she has guarded under the power of the Holy Spirit for millenia!"

Why is this good news? It means we're actually having an effect.

Make no mistake, though, we oughta be mad as hell that Catholic-haters are trying to remake Holy Mother Church into their own image.

Blogrolling number... 65. I checked.

I find blogs I like all the time. I find blogs I add to my bookmarks and blogroll regularly.

I have found no more than three or four blogs where I feel compelled to go back to the first post and read all of the archives.

BadCatholic is such a blog. Marc Barnes may only be 18, but his writing is full of love of life, orthodoxy, and Christ, His Blessed Mother, His Church, and His saints, not to mention such delightful neologisms as "badassery" and "destupidification," combined with a stark humility, demonstrated by his free and open admission that no Catholic on earth since the Assumption, least of all him, is anywhere close to perfect.

I can't promise that you'll enjoy any of it, let alone all of it. Still, I would do you a disservice if I didn't suggest you go and look.

Why I Don't Fear China

It's hard to make war when everyone is old: China, damage of one-child law points to "risk of collapse"

If there is to be another great, horrendous conflict, it will likely be Humanae Vitae Catholics with Quiverfull evangelicals on one side, and such Islamic societies that reject contraception and abortion on the other.

David Warren

David Warren is quite possibly my favorite journalist alive today. He has been writing, lately, on "What is to be done?"This column is the one where he hits it way, way out of the park. Go and read it.

NOW.

On CE Today

First, The Origins of the Red State/Blue State Divide, which actually explores three paradigms of family over the course of history, and what has historically led to the adoption of each. It's really good stuff, go read it. The implications regarding how government intervention in society winds up affecting overall societal morality, are important for liberty.

Second, an article discussing The Blueprint: Obama’s Plan to Subvert the Constitution and Build an Imperial Presidency. Read the article, read the book.

Just Having Some Fun

I was lucky enough to grow up in Detroit, where I could get CBC-TV Channel 9 out of Windsor in the final years of Wayne and Shuster's career. Enjoy all 20 minutes of "The Brown Pumpernickel," a really fabulous example of their work.

It's a real shame, but comedy like this has become very rare. Wayne and Shuster were literate, measured, decent, and very very funny. Indecency sprawls everywhere in our modern culture of death, of course, which is a crying shame. It will take near universal rejection of pornography and smut to change that, and though I pray for it, I don't really expect it any time soon.

But that isn't the only thing that has changed. Television itself encourages a short attention span (and the internet even more so); see this article on The Art of Manliness. Somebody who finds the opportunity cost of paying attention to something for ten minutes is never going to get all the way through even as fluffy a classic as "The Three Musketeers," let alone "Summa Theologica," or the Vatican II documents. And because he is impatient, he will not become literate.

We hear "the medium is the message" so often it has become cliche, but it is cliche precisely because it is true. And the medium definitely controls the message when it comes to social networking sites: When "Know Thyself" Becomes "Show Thyself".

If I have anything to say about telly, facebooking, and the like, it is this: do not let your interest in such things become idolatry. The means of human communion God has given to us from out of antiquity -- family, church, community -- are, in the vast majority of cases, going to be best. And if you rely exclusively on media which by their nature eliminate the gestures, postures, tones of voice and facial expressions that make up so much of human interaction, you really are missing out on a great deal. You can strengthen your relationships by visiting people, or by getting out some paper and a fine pen and writing a letter. It requires more effort, but aren't those you love worth effort?

FREE Free Healthcare

Read about Remote Area Medical, a group of mobile, volunteer medical professionals who want to give away their services, without ANY money from the government. So of course they almost always have to leave the US in order to do so. In candor, I'm desperately poor and currently without health coverage, so I would really like for these guys to be able to do their work in my state. But they can't.

The right response to our health insurance and care issues is freedom. Thomas DiLorenzo does a good job of explaining how government is the problem in this article.

A Backhanded Admission

I've been going through the archives at Stuff White People Like, with the occasional bit of amusement. Then I come to the post on Difficult Breakups.

Prior to engaging in divorce, most white people train for it by engaging in a series of long term relationships that end very poorly.

There it is, in a nutshell: the admission that "going steady" and "long term relationships" are training for divorce. The more breakups you've had, the more familiar (and thus, in its own sick way, the more comforting) divorce will seem.

Divorce is a scourge. Don't practice for it. Don't set up patterns of thought that will lead you to it. Don't date. Don't go steady. Don't enter long term relationships. Don't swap keys. Don't move in together. Don't give your whole self to somebody else, and then try to get it all back. You can't. Enter courtship and get married.

More on Hatred

It's not enough to note that Carrie Prejean is now better-known than she would have been as Miss America; she also has new opportunities. She can be one of the foremost spokesmen for Defense of Marriage Activists worldwide, probably for as long as she likes, particularly given how charitable she has been in her response to Mr. Hilton. Solid formation on the Church's doctrines regarding same-sex attraction can only help, as they are far more nuanced and compassionate than the Church is ever given credit for being.