Eddie Izzard is a gifted, but he’s burying his talent. How can I claim this, and why should I be bothering about the speck in his life before the log in mine? As to the first, I shall attempt to demonstrate it shortly, and as to the latter, I will say that this critique of another man’s speck is a part of my attempt to understand, and remove, my own log. Comedy is one of my chief interests and I am currently deliberating as to how much of my time and energy to invest in it. You could say I am using him as a foil. The following critique is distant speculation, as I’ve never conversed with the man but I assure you that if I do I will run this thought by him and hear his defense first-person.

Now, I say his is burying his talent. Here is the proof:
1. He is a highly energetic, fecund thinker;
2. Highly energetic, fecund thinkers may employ their energy to any number of ends, from the best to the worst.
3. If he employed the larger portions of his mental energy to some societal or personal good, this would be morally praiseworthy, as a full investment of his God-given talents into the kingdom of man and the kingdom of heaven.
4. If he employed the larger portions of his mental energy to some less good, societal or personal, this would be morally blameworthy, at least insofar as the choice was willing, because it is a half-hearted investment of his God-given talents, the other half of which he buried.
5. Izzard employs entire sections of his mental energy to the end of producing laughs in people.
6. There are producing laughs in itself is not a societal or personal good, (though it may be used as such), or, if it is, it is a lesser good.
7. Therefore, he is burying his talent.

1. Is easy to agree with for anyone who has seen his stand-up. The man’s energy is almost boundless.
2. This is easy; it’s basically saying “potential can be actualized various ways.”
3. If God created us, then he designed us. If he designed us, then he either designed us with , or without some purpose in mind. God does nothing without purpose, for this would be irrational, and God is perfectly rational. So, if he designed us, designed us with some purpose in mind. This purpose to which he designed us are “good works, prepared before us”, works for which we will recieve reward if completed, blame if left incomplete.
4. But is it possible to do wrong, if God is in control of us, as the doctrine of Providence states? It does seems that it is possible for us to do the assignment given to us wrongly, if we take the most apparent meaning of the parable of the talents. The “wicked servant” took the money given him and buried it, “for fear of the master.” The master punishes the servant for his misuse (or lack of use) of the talent. This indicates that the master did not give specific instructions on how to use the talent, but left some responsibility on the servant.
5. Watching his videos, you see Eddie Izzard not only telling pre-prepared jokes, but improvising. Improvisation, interacting with the audience and such, demands that the skills of humour be honed and developed, ready for use, before the performer ever steps foot on stage.
This being true, I infer the following: Eddie Izzard habitually practices his comedic skills while off the stage. If he is so excellent and “warmed up” while on the stage, he must be keeping warm, by exercising, while off the stage. If this is so, then Eddie Izzard could truthfully describe his life this way: “Large percentages of my time are committed to identifying what is funny, organizing, and executing jokes to make people laugh.”
6. That laughing is not a societal good, or not as good as, say, feeding the poor, fighting against idealogical strongholds in Academia, preaching the good news, is, I think, not controversial.

Therefore, point seven follows, that Eddie Izzard is burying his talent.

I welcome a challange or refutation to any one of my premises, or my conclusion, from one who has it. My reasoning is yet… amateur.

After meeting with Matt in Seattle and being mildly reprimanded for not having contributed anything to Mere Orthodoxy but only revelling in the enjoyment of reading the opinions of others, I have decided to try my hand at blogging. (It also helps that my computer at work no longer blocks this website–although it does block me from being able to read any comments that are posted…thanks Uncle Sam).

I’m concerned to find more and more attempts by mainstream Muslims in America to distance themselves from their radical brethren by promoting a positive image of themselves in popular culture. From animated films, to comedy tours, to a completely Muslim TV network, they are doing everything they can to make their ideas and religion more palatable to the West. Interestingly, by distancing themselves from radical Islam, they often end up getting rid of many of their theological and philosophical distinctives and tend to look like increasingly like secular Westerners with an exotic Eastern veneer (complete with the current Western secular ideals and virtues of pacifism, tolerance, diversity, etc.). For example, while studying in Egypt I had the opportunity to meet with revisionist feminist Muslim scholars who placidly reinterpret the Qur’an, arguing that it is actually a handbook for women’s rights, regardless of the more common interpretations of the past 1500 years.

If (as?) the Muslim image becomes sanctified in the Western mind it will be increasingly difficult to create the necessary opposition to the evil and tyrannical ideas propounded by more radical Muslims (usually) holding to more literal interpretations of the Qur’an and Islamic fundamentals. If Islam can be made to look like a tame house cat, then Americans will be wholly unprepared to deal with the tiger it can become (reference the French and Canadian struggles with deep and fundamental differences between their tolerance and the divide between secular and Islamic law). Certainly there is no need to hate or fear Muslims indiscriminately, as if they all were terrorists or tyrants, and undoubtedly many Americans would benefit from realizing this; however, if we are to be good stewards of the liberties granted us by nature and Nature’s God and protected in our Constitution, we would do well to discriminate between secular ideals wrapped in Muslim packaging and the much more (imminently) dangerous ideas promoted by Muslims who are opposed to the West, and respond to each accordingly.

I am gone.

Blogging this Christmas break has been about as slow as the internet connection I’ve had access to and that connection is about to disintegrate completely. I’m off to Kansas City to see the girlfriend’s extended family–there will be no blogging during this time as I will not have access to the internet. Normal blogging will resume the first week of January. Stay tuned…

My brother points out that today we celebrate the “Christian appropriation of paganism.” He labels it syncretism, but that’s a tad misleading. Christianity did not just adapt the pagan practices, but baptized them. The celebrations we now understand as Christmas gained new meanings with the introduction of the Christian tradition, a tradition so powerful (true?) that pagan elements of the traditions seem to have been broadly forgotten, only to be revived in our post-Christian age. Even the Christmas icon, Santa Claus, cannot be separated from the Christian Saint Nicholas. Call it syncretism, if you will, but don’t expect to make Christians ashamed or fearful that the celebration is somehow less meaningful or less Christian as a result. Rather, it simply points to the overwhelming power of the Christian story…

Emmanuel.

God with Us.

Prince of Peace.

Counselor.

Mighty God.

The King of Kings.

The Christ.

Merry Christmas.

Eddie Izzard is a gifted, but he’s burying his talent. How can I claim this, and why should I be bothering about the speck in his life before the log in mine? As to the first, I shall attempt to demonstrate it shortly, and as to the latter, I will say that this critique of another man’s speck is a part of my attempt to understand, and remove, my own log. Comedy is one of my chief interests and I am currently deliberating as to how much of my time and energy to invest in it. You could say I am using him as a foil. The following critique is distant speculation, as I’ve never conversed with the man but I assure you that if I do I will run this thought by him and hear his defense first-person.

Now, I say his is burying his talent. Here is the proof:
1. He is a highly energetic, fecund thinker;
2. Highly energetic, fecund thinkers may employ their energy to any number of ends, from the best to the worst.
3. If he employed the larger portions of his mental energy to some societal or personal good, this would be morally praiseworthy, as a full investment of his God-given talents into the kingdom of man and the kingdom of heaven.
4. If he employed the larger portions of his mental energy to some less good, societal or personal, this would be morally blameworthy, at least insofar as the choice was willing, because it is a half-hearted investment of his God-given talents, the other half of which he buried.
5. Izzard employs entire sections of his mental energy to the end of producing laughs in people.
6. There are producing laughs in itself is not a societal or personal good, (though it may be used as such), or, if it is, it is a lesser good.
7. Therefore, he is burying his talent.

1. Is easy to agree with for anyone who has seen his stand-up. The man’s energy is almost boundless.
2. This is easy; it’s basically saying “potential can be actualized various ways.”
3. If God created us, then he designed us. If he designed us, he designed us to some end, with some purpose in mind, or without reference to some end, without purpose. God does nothing without purpose, for this would be irrational, and God is perfectly rational. So he designed us to some end. This end to which he designed us are “good works, prepared before us”, works for which we will recieve reward if completed, blame if left incomplete.
4. It does seems that it is possible for us to do wrong the assignment given to us, if we take the most apparent meaning of the parable of the talents. The “wicked servant” took the money given him and buried it, “for fear of the master.” The master punishes the servant for his misuse (or lack of use) of the talent. This indicates that the master did not give specific instructions on how to use the talent, but left some responsibility on the servant.
5. Watching his videos, you see Eddie Izzard not only telling pre-prepared jokes, but improvising. Improvisation, interacting with the audience and such, demands that the skills of humour be honed and developed, ready for use, before the performer ever steps foot on stage.
This being true, I infer the following: Eddie Izzard habitually practices his comedic skills while off the stage. If he is so excellent and “warmed up” while on the stage, he must be keeping warm, by exercising, while off the stage. If this is so, then Eddie Izzard could truthfully describe his life this way: “Large percentages of my time are committed to identifying what is funny, organizing, and executing jokes to make people laugh.”
6. That laughing is not a societal good, or not as good as, say, feeding the poor, fighting against idealogical strongholds in Academia, preaching the good news, is, I think, not controversial.

Therefore, point seven follows, that Eddie Izzard is burying his talent.

I welcome a challange or refutation to any one of my premises, or my conclusion, from one who has it. My reasoning is yet… amateur.

Dave Barry’s latest piece is a must read. He’s aiming low these days: “I thought that, in today’s column, I would heal the nation.” Barry is serious this time–he is out to unify Red and Blue state America. Just as the early Christians were united in the face of various opponents, so we as Americans can be united around our opponent: the federal government.

Barry’s piece is entertaining and disarming, as all effective satire is. In fact, I was going to write something serious about it, but I realized it certainly wouldn’t be entertaining and nearly as certainly ineffective.

Read the whole thing. Courtesy normally high-brow Arts and Letters Daily.

I am someone who grew up inculcated with the belief that mankind, as a whole, is always progressing forward. I was never preached Darwinian evolution but I somehow came out of Junior High with other forms of evolutionary or progressive opinions, such as the opinion that mankind was getting more and more sinful since the dawn of time, that mankind was getting less and less “religious”, that mankind was becoming more and more technologically advanced.

The first two of those beliefs have, in the last four years of instruction and personal re-evaluation, been dispelled from my mind as false. I now think more that the sinfulness of man does fluctuate over the course of history, but the pattern is circular rather than unilateral. After all, in the second generation of humans there was a murderer… and similarly about the “religiousity” (though I think the meaning of this word dangerously ambiguous; I use it here for the sake of expediency). The last belief, however, remained –I had no direct reason to deny it — though not without a bit of discomfort on my part. After the fate of the other progressive sentiments, I’ve been suspicious…

Despite suspicicion, I am still convinced that the collective creative output of humankind, that is, culture, has in fact been getting better, getting more complex and interesting in important ways, since the dawn of time.

Suspicion makes me curious, and curiosity lead me to an article which I would like to share. It is about a certain piece of ancient technology, and, along with stonehenge, another piece of evidence to the contrary of my current belief.

It’s called the Antikythera Mechanism. It is an astronomical calculating device about 32×16x10 centimeters. It is composed of 32 gears, the collective working of which is a miniature model of the movement of the sun and moon with reference to the fixed stars. It accounts for the phases of the moon. It’s very complex, and very useful if you are an astronomer-type person. In 1900 a ship found pieces of one off the coast of Antikythera, which is in Greek waters. It has been dated, supposedly with surety, to 80 B.C. The second most recent versions of this device we have are from 1000 A.D.

The information above I got from a SUNY Math department website, who themselves reference a scholar named Derek de Solla Price.

Look for yourself at the photo. Could this have been made by a civilization fresh out of the Bronze Age? Ehh, something doesn’t jive. In order to resolve the discord, I am reading up on this device and re-evaluating what is perhaps just another form of “chronological snobbery.” We will see.

He’ll be wearing a different shade this season. The Mariners just spent a lot of money–more money on one player than ever before in club history. Cure-all? Who knows.

And now for something completely different:

Wish Beethoven a happy birthday and listen to his 9th symphony while reading this immensely helpful site. It provided me with 70 minutes of sheer joy during an otherwise tedious commute today.

I’ll be travelling the next two days. I am driving to Phoenix in an hour (yes, I am STILL making time to blog, even though I have not yet packed) and then tomorrow morning it’s off to Seattle. Of course, all of this after a late night reading. Normal blogging will return on Saturday.

If you are visiting from Hewitt’s site, then you have by now read the Newsweek piece on the veracity of the Incarnation. I won’t bother repeating the systematic destruction of Dr. Mark Roberts. If you haven’t read it yet, read it now. Roberts is rightfully ruthless (points for alliteration, Hugh?) in his criticisms of the Newsweek piece. I am looking forward to reading the rest of his thoughts.

However, here are a few of my own. Meachem’s bias is obvious, but here are some manifestations that haven’t been pointed out. He writes:

Summoning the weapons of history, apparently pinpointing time, place and circumstance with epic eloquence, Luke writes: “And it came to pass in those days that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed…”

Notice the interesting commendation of Luke’s rhetorical ability. Not surprisingly, Meachem repeats this sort of language later on:

There is, of course, no way to know whether Luke’s story of the heavenly host announcing Jesus’ arrival to the shepherds really happened; one has to believe in angels, and explain away the fact that the Gospels fail to note any ensuing communal or individual recollection of this spectacular birth, one witnessed by the rustics (in Luke) and the Magi (in Matthew), in the years of Jesus’ public life. Yet the language never fails to captivate.

If you’d rather have John, then try this:

The latest and most philosophical, John’s (circa 90), links Jesus with God at the very birth of the universe (”In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and Word was God”) with a grandeur and force that renders the details of Jesus’ earthly arrival irrelevant. *

These quotes are indicative of perhaps the most basic problem of Meachem’s piece (and liberal theology), namely, that faith has nothing to do with facts. Not surprisingly Meachem writes, “If we assume, for the sake of argument, that the virginal conception is not a fact but an article of faith, there are other explanations for Matthew’s and Luke’s Nativity accounts.” Pray tell, what is an “article of faith” if not a proposition that the believer takes to be a fact? I am not sure what I believe about the “virginal conception” if I don’t believe that it is what it says–namely, a conception by a virgin. Meachem has effectively sundered faith from facthood. The rhetorical excellence of the Gospels remains, but without factual basis, they may as well be placebo’s for those more gullible then the enlightened liberal theologians.

Yes, I know I didn’t exactly answer the question. Can I still play?

*No one is going to deny that John’s language is grandiose. It is hard to find a more beautiful or compelling passage than the prologue to his gospel. However, to suggest that the “details” are irrelevant ignores that John also wrote (alas!) that the very same Word became flesh and dwelt among us. Whose curiousity about how that happened would not be piqued? Certainly, if John thinks it happened, then the details are not in any way irrelevant!

Leithart has posted some interesting thoughts on feminist theology. My classes have been reading through That Hideous Strength, of which a substantial element of the plot is the relationship between the masculine and feminine. My favorite reflection:

3) Speaking of economy and ontology: Feminist theology can only work in a radically and thoroughly apophatic framework. In an analogical universe, the revelation of God bears some resemblance to God in Himself (distant though the analogy may be; even though the dissimilarity may infinitely transcend the similarity). For feminist theology, not even “Father” and “Son” can name something basically true about God. These are only human social roles projected onto a featureless something that we call God, a God which our human language cannot even remotely describe.

The excommunication of Tyrone Willingham from the “Football Papacy” came as a surprise to many in the sports world. Notre Dame’s decision further tarnished a rapidly fading image. Now Willingham comes to Washington, hopefully to restore respect and integrity to a once illustrious and competitive football program. Washington’s reputation has soured in recent years, and Willingham will have his work cut out for him. It is a huge pickup for the Huskies though.

The net is already abuzz with the news of Antony Flew’s switch. I first read about it from Jonathansink. Also, the interview in Philosophia Christi is fascinating. Habermas pushes Flew about his position on the possibility of the after-life. Flew consistently returns to Butler’s statement that “Memory may reveal but cannot constitute personal identity.” Flew also has kind words for Lewis (an “eminently reasonable man”) and the Wesley brothers, while issuing (surprisingly) strong condemnations of Islam.

“Conversions” (in a non-religious sense) by major philosophical figures are an encouraging reminder that some philosophers (at least) do not have philosophical axes to grind, but are genuinely seeking the Truth. One thinks of Laurence BonJour’s move from coherentism to foundationalism as another such “earthshaking” reversal. Flew may still be wrong, but he is consistent and, what’s more, gentlemanly in his pursuit. The latter virtue seems lost on many of those for whom Flew has been an icon for. One needn’t spend long over at Infidels.org to discover the venemous and vitriolic condecension toward all things theistic (or Deistic!) shared by many participants.

Oh, and kudos to Philosophia Christi for the write-up and the subsequent publicity. Subscribe today–there is no better or more relevant journal for the philosophy of religion.