Pixel Scroll 4/5/16 If You Pixel Us, Do We Not Recommend? If You Scroll Us, Do We Not Read?

(1) NO MCKELLEN AUTOBIO AFTER ALL. In The Hollywood Reporter, “Ian McKellen Explains Why he Returned $1.4M Memoir Advance”.

“It was a bit painful — I didn’t want to go back into my life and imagine things that I hadn’t understood so far.”

The world isn’t going to get to read Sir Ian McKellen’s autobiography.

Last year it emerged that the celebrated and Oscar-nominated thespian would be penning his own memoir in a deal with publishers Hodder & Stoughton reported to be worth £1 million ($1.4 million). But earlier this month the 76-year-old stage and screen icon revealed that he’d pulled the plug on the contract.

(2) OVERFLOWING WITH VERSE. Poems that Make Grown Women Cry edited by Anthony and Ben Holden gets a plug at Book View Café . One of the contributors, Ursula K. Le Guin, explains her choice of a poem in the collection:

I chose Robinson Jeffers’ “Hurt Hawks” because it always makes me cry. I’ve never yet got through the last lines without choking up. Jeffers is an uneven poet, and this is an uneven pair of poems, intemperate and unreasonable. Jeffers casts off humanity too easily. But he was himself a kind of maimed, hurt hawk, and his identification with the birds is true compassion. He builds pain unendurably so that we can know release.

(3) KUZNIA MOVES UP. ”Job Moves” at Publishers Weekly reports “Yanni Kuznia, previously director of production, is being promoted to managing editor and COO at Subterranean Press.” SF Signal did an interview with Kuznia last year when she was still Director of Production.

AJ:  Subterranean Press has a pretty small staff, so everyone wears multiple hats. Can you tell us a little about what you do at Subterranean? What is a typical work week like for you?

YK: As Director of Production, it’s my job to keep titles moving through the production machine. I need to make sure every book is proofed, art is commissioned, signature sheets are designed and signed, ARCs are ordered and sent out, authors receive and return page proofs, and that everything is reviewed one last time before we go to press. Of course, I have help doing all of this. I have two wonderful people, Geralyn Lance and Kyle Brandon, who work under me in Production, overseeing the day-to-day of several titles each. We talk continuously throughout the process to make sure every milestone is hit on time.

(4) FAITH. Deborah J. Ross at Book View Café finds three ways out for writers forced to deal with their “Original Vision vs. Compromising With the Market”. Number two is – go indie.

If you believe in your work, how can you be sure but this is not infatuation with your own words but that your work truly is of high quality? Every writer I know goes through spasms of self-doubt. Writing requires a bizarre combination of megalomania and crushing self-doubt. We need the confidence to follow our flights of fancy, and at the same time, we need to regard our creations with a critical eye. Trusted readers, including workshops like Clarion and Clarion West, critique groups, fearless peers, and freelance editors can give us invaluable feedback on whether our work really is as good as we think it might be. Of course, they can be wrong. It may be that what we are trying to do falls so far outside conventional parameters that only we can judge its value. It may also be that we see on the page not what is actually there but what we imagined and hoped.

Assuming that we are writing from our hearts and that the product of our creative labors is indeed extraordinary, what are we to do when faced with closed doors and regretful rejection letters? As discouraging as this situation seems, we do have choices. We writers are no longer solely dependent upon traditional publishers. We live in an era where writers can become publishers, and can produce excellent quality books, both in digital form and Print On Demand.

However, not all of us are cut out to format, publish, and market our work. All of these activities require time in which to acquire skills and time to actually perform them. That’s time we have lost for writing. While becoming your own publisher is a valid choice, it is not right for everyone. Some of us would much rather write in the next book.

(5) YURI’S NIGHT WORLD SPACE PARTY IN SAN DIEGO. Down in San Diego on April 9, Yuri’s Night celebrations will include a movie will include an sf movie showing. They’ll show Contact free at 7:00 p.m. in Studio 106 (San Diego Reader Building, 2323 Broadway, 92102).

Astronomer Dr. Ellie Arroway has long been interested in contact to faraway lands, a love fostered in her childhood by her father, Ted Arroway, who passed away when she was nine years old leaving her then orphaned. Her current work in monitoring for extraterrestrial life is based on that love and is in part an homage to her father. Ever since funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF) was pulled on her work, which is referred to some, including her NSF superior David Drumlin, as more science fiction than science, Ellie, with a few of her rogue scientist colleagues, have looked for funding from where ever they could get it to continue their work. When Ellie and her colleagues hear chatter originating from the vicinity of the star Vega, Ellie feels vindicated. But that vindication is short lived when others, including politicians, the military, religious leaders and other scientists such as Drumlin, try to take over her work.

Although it is free, please RSVP as seating is limited.

(6) GUESS WHO? The website for Innominate (“The Con with no name!”) is up.

Innominate is the 2017 Eastercon, the British National Science Fiction Convention. Eastercon’s have been held over the Easter weekend every year since 1955 and is a regular gathering place for science fiction fans from around the UK and elsewhere to celebrate the genre in all of its formats.

Eastercons stand in a long tradition which we intend to celebrate, while aiming to bring in new elements too. The convention will cover books, film, television, art and costume and the programme will include talks, discussions, exhibits, workshops and other entertainment.

(7) FIREFLY LESSONS. Tom Knighton points out what businesses can learn from his favorite TV series in “Loyalty, Firefly, and Captain Mal”.

From a management perspective, Mal may be an ideal leader to emulate.  Oh sure, there are others out there.  Real life examples exist.  I’ve been blessed to work with someone like that myself, but not everyone is exposed to that.  However, anyone can pop in a DVD and watch Mal and learn.

So why is Mal so ideal?

First, he is a hands-on leader.  In the pilot episode, Mal and Jayne are moving crates of their ill-gotten gains, stashing them where prying eyes won’t see.  He doesn’t relegate the task to anyone else, but instead works just as hard as his crew does.  When they don’t eat, he doesn’t eat.  When they work, he works.

This firmly establishes his belief that he’s not better than anyone, despite being captain.  Yes, he issues orders, but because he’s shown that he’ll do anything he asks others to do, his orders are followed.

Second, his top-down loyalty.  Mal doesn’t have to like a member of his crew to be loyal.  He doesn’t care for Simon, not in the least.  It’s obvious to everyone, especially Simon. However, he refused to leave a member of his crew behind, regardless of his personal feelings about the man.

(8) OTTO BINDER BIO. Bill Schelly’s Otto Binder, The Life and Work of a Comic Book and Science Fiction Visionary is coming back into print June 7 from North Atlantic Books (paperback, 320 pages, $19.95.) It has 28 new images, of which 14 are new photographs.

Otto Binder: The Life and Work of a Comic Book and Science Fiction Visionary chronicles the career of Otto Binder, from pulp magazine author to writer of Supergirl, Captain Marvel, and Superman comics. As the originator of the first sentient robot in literature (“I, Robot,” published in Amazing Stories in 1939 and predating Isaac Asimov’s collection of the same name), Binder’s effect on science fiction was profound. Within the world of comic books, he created or co-created much of the Superman universe, including Smallville; Krypto, Superboy’s dog; Supergirl; and the villain Braniac. Binder is also credited with writing many of the first “Bizarro” storylines for DC Comics, as well as for being the main writer for the Captain Marvel comics. In later years, Binder expanded from comic books into pure science writing, publishing dozens of books and articles on the subject of satellites and space travel as well as UFOs and extraterrestrial life. Comic book historian Bill Schelly tells the tale of Otto Binder through comic panels, personal letters, and interviews with Binder’s own family and friends. Schelly weaves together Binder’s professional successes and personal tragedies, including the death of Binder’s only daughter and his wife’s struggle with mental illness. A touching and human story, Otto Binder: The Life and Work of a Comic Book and Science Fiction Visionary is a biography that is both meticulously researched and beautifully told, keeping alive Binder’s spirit of scientific curiosity and whimsy.

(9) PENNED BY C. S. LEWIS. There are a couple dozen entries on Brenton Dickieson’s list of “Photographic Plates of C.S. Lewis’ Manuscripts and Letters”, and several illustrate the post.

A reader suggested I add to my collection of previously unpublished C.S. Lewis manuscripts (“The Lost-But-Found Works of C.S. Lewis“) by providing a list of manuscripts that show up in photographic plates in books and journals. I know that most of these are published by now, but this list is valuable for people who want to get to know C.S. Lewis’ handwriting.

(10) RACHEL SWIRSKY INTERVIEWS FRAN WILDE. Rachel Swirsky conducts a “Silly Interview with Fran Wilde, expert on man-made wings”.

3. Have you ever done skydiving or hang gliding or anything similar?

I haven’t! I’m a sailor. I have relatives who hang-glide, and I spent a lot of my childhood watching storms roll in on the cliffs of the Chesapeake Bay (it gets really windy), but in order to do the research for UPDRAFT, I wanted to feel the physics of being in a wind tunnel, and I wanted to make sure I was writing a flying book, not a sailing book turned sideways. So I went indoor skydiving, which was a hoot. And very spinny.

The wings in the book aren’t hang-gliding wings, they’re more like a cross between furlable wings and wing-suit wings, so I also watched a lot of wingsuit fliers on long-flights and also doing particularly dangerous things like flying through canyons. I researched about 2,000 years of man-made wings in history, and talked a lot with engineers who understand the physics of foils – aka: wings.

(11) YA REVIEWS YA. My favorite YA reader, Sierra Glyer, added a review of Throne of Glass by Sarah J. Maas to her blog.

…It is about a 18 year old assassin named Celaena Sardothien. She is the most feared assassin on the continent but one day she gets caught. After she gets caught she is sent to a slave camp and this is where the book starts….

(12) WEIST ESTATE AUCTION. The catalog for this year’s Jerry Weist estate auction (to be held at the Windy City Pulp and Paper Convention April 22-24, 2016) is now available. Over 4,000 pulps, dime novels, men’s adventure magazines and other magazines. Here’s a link to the catalog  (19 pages).

(13) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY GIRL

  • Born April 5, 1908 – Bette Davis

Bette David fountain

(14) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY BOYS

  • Born April 5, 1916 — Gregory Peck. Among his many roles: Ahab in John Huston’s Moby Dick, scripted by Ray Bradbury.

Gregory Peck Moby Dick

  • Born April 5, 1933 — Frank Gorshin, who played The Riddler on Batman and the bigoted half-whiteface, half-blackface alien Bele on an episode of Star Trek.

(15) THREE-BODY. Ethan Mills tackles the “Wobbly Relations of Past, Present, and Future: The Three-Body problem by Liu Cixin (Translated by Ken Liu) at Examined Worlds.

The Philosophy Report: Is Nature Uniform?  What to Expect from ETs?

Philosophy is mentioned several times, including the Chinese philosopher, Mozi, and the German philosopher, Leibniz, who are both characters in the game.  Aside from such small connections, two major issues are the uniformity of nature and the reaction to extraterrestrial intelligence.

In philosophy of science (and regular life for that matter) we all rely on what some philosophers have called the principle of the uniformity of nature.  This is usually discussed in (constant) conjunction with David Hume’s problem of induction.  Could we live as successfully in the world as we do, could we do science, if the laws of nature were not in some sense uniform across time and space?  If the laws of nature varied over time or between countries or planets, could we really get around?  Could we do science?  Or — closer to Hume’s point — whether this principle is really true or not, should we believe it?  Could we stop believing it even if it turned out to be unjustified?

But what if we had lived on a planet where as far as we could tell the laws of nature do sometimes change, where things are never the same over time, could we have evolved as we did and could we have developed science?  Those are some of the intriguing questions raised in The Three-Body Problem.

(16) HEARING MCCARTHY. TC McCarthy is not alone in his opinion:

(17) GETTING THE CAMEL’S NOSE UNDER THE TENT. A list of “11 sci-fi and fantasy books for people who don’t like sci-fi and fantasy” at Minnesota Public Radio News.

Sci-fi picks for people who don’t like sci-fi

So, you think you don’t like sci-fi. What turned you off?

Long descriptions of space ships and their alternative fuels? Too many alien names to keep straight? Just not into “nerd” stuff? Send your stereotypes packing to Planet Zurlong for a minute, and try one of these books that may offer you a new perspective on the genre.

For the record, most of these fall into the category of “soft” science fiction. “Hard” science fiction revels in technical details, whereas soft is not as focused on the specificity of its futuristic elements. Consider this a “soft landing” on your genre dive.

(But yes, sometimes descriptions of space ships can be fascinating.)

1) “The Wool Omnibus” by Hugh Howey

When Howey’s work first caught critics’ eyes in 2012, it was dubbed the “sci-fi version of ‘Fifty Shades of Grey.'” That comparison is purely about how the book was published, not about the quantity of whips or handcuffs in it. Like “Shades,” it took off as a self-published Internet phenomenon.

Howey posted the first 60 pages of “The Wool Omnibus” online as a standalone short story in 2011, but within a year, that turned into a 500-plus page project that topped bestseller lists. The books take place in the Silo, a post-apocalyptic city built more than a hundred stories underground.

(18) DANIEL RADCLIFFE RETURNS. Swiss Army Man will be in theaters June 17.

There are 7 billion people on the planet. You might be lucky enough to bump into the one person you want to spend the rest of your life with. CAST: Daniel Radcliffe, Paul Dano and Mary Elizabeth Winstead

 

(19) BFG OFFICIAL UK TRAILER 2.

From Director Steven Spielberg, “The BFG” is the exciting tale of a young London girl and the mysterious Giant who introduces her to the wonders and perils of Giant Country. Based on the beloved novel by Roald Dahl, “The BFG” (Big Friendly Giant) was published in 1982 and has been enchanting readers of all ages ever since.

 

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Andrew Porter, Will R., and Michael J. Walsh for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor ULTRAGOTHA.]

154 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 4/5/16 If You Pixel Us, Do We Not Recommend? If You Scroll Us, Do We Not Read?

  1. @Greg Hullender: “I’d say the key problem was that he is someone who strongly needs to believe that the Bible doesn’t contain any errors. (I don’t think that applies to all Christians, but it probably applies to most of them.)”

    (doffs hat)
    “Hiya, Mr. Hullender. I’m Bob, with Acme Paintbrush, Inc. May I interest you in our new line of narrow brushes? They’re good for all kinds of fine detail work, when your subject matter demands a little more nuance than the competition’s broad brushes.”
    (opens sample case)
    “Here, have one as a free sample!”

    Translation: Biblical literalism is far from dominant in modern Christianity. Yes, some particularly noisy sects do put it at the core of their beliefs, but most – and most of their followers! – are much more reasonable on the topic.

  2. “I’d say the key problem was that he is someone who strongly needs to believe that the Bible doesn’t contain any errors. (I don’t think that applies to all Christians, but it probably applies to most of them.)”

    My guess is exactly the opposite, that this is a specific US thing.

  3. Regarding teen assassins, I used to live in Colombia for a few years, and as far as I could tell from the news, young sicarios could amass quite an impressive head count between the ages of 15 and 18. It’s not necessary to start at age 9 in a very high crime-rate society to get plenty of chances to polish your skill, over and over.

    However, it seems to me ‘good assassin’ and ‘famous continent-wide’ is kind of oxymoronic…a truly good assassin should assiduously AVOID fame.

  4. Hampus it’s a US-specific thing, and it’s a minority view even among American Christians.

    Biblical literalism has never been the position of the Roman Catholic Church. Or of the Episcopal Church. Or most mainline Protestant churches in America. It isn’t even the position of the Mormons.

    It’s isn’t even the position of all evangelicals.

    It’s the position of American fundamentalist Christians, who are loud, organized, politically focused, and quite certain they are the only real Christians. You’ll excuse me for not feeling any connection to or responsibility for the beliefs of people who believe I’m not even a real Christian.

  5. Brother Guy Consolmagno is about as religious as it is possible to be; he’s a Jesuit Brother. And the Director of the Vatican Observatory. And he has absolutely no problem with science at all. His belief is that science tells us how God works.

    (He also enjoys science fiction and is a regular guest at various SF conventions.)

    He certainly wouldn’t have been turned down for a professorship because of his religious beliefs. (Well, maybe at Liberty University, because he’s such a strong proponent of science. I doubt they’d hire anyone who was a proponent of evolutionary theory…)

    I’ve had several conversations with him at various SF conventions, and I don’t believe I’m misrepresenting his beliefs, here. (He also has a great sense of humor, incidentally.)

  6. Ah, I see Cassy B. beat me to citing Brother Guy, who is a heck of a nice guy. (I loved his “Ask Me About My Vow Of Silence!” shirt.) And he enjoys substantial professional respect.

    Another good example is Pamela Gay, whose science-popularization work demonstrates nicely ways that skepticism and Christianity are good for each other.

  7. In my experience, most Jesuits are pretty cool dudes. Get two of them in a room and they’ll have three opinions. I think it’s the multiple languages they study the bible in, it makes them open to the idea of nuance, multiple meanings and the drift of meaning over time.

    Also, if they weren’t Jesuits, most of them would be considered heretics.

  8. @Rev. Bob et al

    Biblical literalism is far from dominant in modern Christianity.

    I didn’t say anything about literalism. Most Christians have trouble with the idea that the Bible is simply wrong about some things. They almost invariably try to make it an issue of how the Bible is interpreted.

    @Lis Carey

    Biblical literalism has never been the position of the Roman Catholic Church.

    Again, we’re not talking about literalism. You most certainly will not find any part of the Bible that the RCC has deemed to be in error.

    A Fundamentalist insists that the only way to interpret the Bible is literally. That’s how you end up with a 6,000-year-old Earth. But most Christians don’t get around it by saying “Oh there are just some errors in Genesis.” Instead they’ll say “oh but a ‘day’ means ‘a period of time’ not a literal 24-hour day.”

  9. Thanks to all who jumped in to disagree with Greg H on the Biblical inerrancy thing. It is a loud view, but not as mainstream as it appears. I don’t think anyone at my church believes it, for instance. It really angers me to know that that group has so successfully written the narrative that I have to explain myself when I say I’m a Christian because of the assumptions so many will make. Social justice and Christianity are a natural fit. How anyone can read the words of Jesus any other way is a complete puzzle to me.

    Also, Greg H, I don’t think an email from one member of the search committee, who clearly anticipated being outvoted, is as persuasive as you think. The disagreement seems to be whether it was fair to take the candidate’s attitudes in other scientific areas into account in judging his appropriateness as a science faculty member. I don’t know the answer, but that one email isn’t enough.

  10. Okay. Greg. No. What I, one Christian among many, say, is that much of the Bible was told as story, not history. The stories were written in order to convey lessons and encourage proper behavior. They were not meant to be taken as a well-researched history. Genesis contains multiple creation stories – Judeo-Christian creation myths. They were not meant to be history, or they wouldn’t both have made it in the book. There are many examples of multiple contradictory versions of the same story appearing in the Hebrew scriptures, and many in the Christian scriptures.

    The older the story, the further from history it might be, but even the more recent stories were likely embellished to present a certain conclusion. So the stories of the birth of Jesus contain many signs and portents which (I believe) were largely or entirely added later in order to support the conclusion that Jesus was either the King or the Son of God, or both. That’s the way people wrote then.

    As another example, you will find that New Testament narratives got less liberal as the years went on. The later epistles written in Paul’s name by a follower were much more supportive of the status quo than the early ones more likely to have been written by the historic personage, and which tended toward a more radical outlook. Further, the books contained in the New Testament were determined hundreds of years later by a church already co-opted by the Roman Empire, and some of the more radical stuff got thrown out.

    So no, it’s not just a matter of literality.

  11. @Simon Bisson:

    Also he isn’t the blogfather. That accolade justly goes to Dave Wiener. After all, he invented blogging with the original Scripting News.

    Glenn Reynolds sometimes gets called “the Blogfather” by less popular bloggers sucking up for links.

    Since we are already on the line of inside baseball, my takedown of a takedown of Reynolds for not being enough of a takedown, from a few years ago. It has a couple of possibly decent lines in it. The happy ending: Conor Friedersdorf eventually married a friend of mine. One night we all went out for karaoke. He has a hell of a voice.

  12. @Lis Carey:

    It’s isn’t even the position of all evangelicals.

    It’s the position of American fundamentalist Christians, who are loud, organized, politically focused, and quite certain they are the only real Christians.

    Well, it’s their declared position, sure. In practice they aren’t literalists at all, going by the number who have not “[sold] all [have], and give[n] the proceeds to the poor.” These are also the folks who read the Revelation of Saint John and declare that when John names the “Seven Churches of Asia Minor” in his salutation that he really means seven Dispensations of the Ages of Man. And on and on.

  13. It’s a paradox. When you research fanhistory, you quickly learn that the sources produced closest in time to the events are the most accurate.

  14. @Simon

    I think the term blogfather refers to something more than inventing blogging. I believe it is a sarcastic reference to the mafia. A link from Instapundit can generally take an otherwise unknown blog and bury it in traffic. Like the briefest kiss on the cheek from the Don, a link from Glenn can cause significant results.

    @Kip

    LOL. The TLDR was a reference to my comment. Not to Tom’s post.

    @Greg

    Looking through more of the material, I’d say the key problem was that he is someone who strongly needs to believe that the Bible doesn’t contain any errors.

    I’d have to dig deeper to be sure, but based on what I read in the past, the lecture outline that he has/had out there was developed for the purpose of talking people into stepping away from believing in an inerrant Bible. It’s helpful to speak in terms the audience understands and as a result, his lecture outline may reflect that level of engagement. (I.e. “Days” actually means “billions of years”, etc.)

    My understanding is that he generally holds the creation myth of Genesis to be more of an allegory than a documentary.

    @ Rev Bob

    I have little use for Ms. Maddox or Mr. Matthews. I do agree that his mode of interview is more than a little rude. There are NPR shows that can do a decent interview though….

    @ Jim Henley

    I liked Conor’s piece a great deal. He almost understands/understood. Those of us that demur from the standard leftist ideology end up on the short end of identical rhetorical treatment when the correct position is assumed and demurral results in a predictable pattern of accusations, reductio ad absurdism, and lesser abuses. Sarcasm is used with reservation akin to a young teenaged couple that just figured out what goes where. Glenn’s patented “heh” is the rhetorical mirror of that behavior.


    Regards,
    Dann

  15. Greg Hullender: there are plenty of orthodox Christians whose view of the Pentateuch, for example, is that it was largely composed / pulled together / in some part simply made up by members of the “Deuteronomistic” school during the period of the exile, and who would hold that the early chapters of Genesis are to be read in the mode they were written in, that is, as myth. You are really badly overgeneralizing. (I speak as someone whose brother teaches theology in Rome and is an RC priest.)

  16. Is there no room for inerrant myth? For stories that aren’t literally true, but always impart correct deeper meanings?

  17. Dann, I don’t know what you think I said, but the words are still there if you care to read them again.

  18. Coming late to the discussion, as usual, but re: Firefly—I think maybe the better comparison is with Jayne. No one on the ship really likes him, not even Mal, but they all basically trust him to do his job as long as it’s in his interest.

    BUT THEN—In the episode “Ariel,” Jayne sells Simon and River out, except then he gets sold out out, and . . . anyway, at the end, Mal is about to kill him for selling out a member of his crew. I think his line is, “Whatever you do to one of my crew, you do to me!” And watching it the first time, I really wanted Mal to open the airlock and send Jayne tumbling to his death. Because, you know, he’s an asshole.

    But then Jayne asks Mal not to tell them what he did. And Mal can’t do it. Because for the first time (maybe the second, see “Jaynestown”) Jayne actually seems to care what other people think of him. And that makes a difference.

    Good leaders (and I write a lot about leadership and management in my day job) look at potential in the people on their team. And maybe Mal saw that, and that’s why he backed off.

    Of course, at Windycon one year, a panelist argued that someone talked Joss Whedon out of killing Jayne. I don’t know. Like I said, I as rooting for Jayne to die.

    (I also like to think that Animal Mother was the grandfather of John Casey, and Casey is Jayne’s great-great-great grandfather.)

  19. Minor note as an academic who has served on search committees: one of the things HR emphasizes the MOST is the ABSOLUTE need to treat every candidate the same. (I heard after I was hired that the search committee took that so seriously that they took the on-campus candidates to the same restaurants for meals and ordered the same menu at the dinners on campus which, given the quality of campus food services make me feel very sorry for my senior colleagues who had to go through that).

    This paragraph leaped out at me when I read the Insider Higher Education article

    But the search committee then consulted with members of the Kentucky biology faculty about Gaskell’s writings — a stage of vetting to which other candidates were not exposed and that had no apparent relevance to his qualifications for the directorship, Gaskell says. According to court documents, the biologists expressed some misgivings about hiring a candidate who professes what some might interpret to be creationist sympathies, insofar as his outreach duties as director of Kentucky’s observatory would make him an ambassador of the university’s science departments.

    The search committee (or some part of it) gave about the Gaskell to people in the biology department to review, AND there were exchanges between the search committee and biology: that was not done for ANY other candidate. (And of course FOIA covers university email.)

    From my personal opinion from actually listening to HR lectures (unlike SOME), I would speculate that behavior by some of the search committee MIGHT have put the university on shaky grounds (and would have done without any regard to his religious beliefs) and MIGHT have been one reason they settled. Although I gather from scuttlebutt around my university that we like other institutions tend to settle.

    I’m just sitting here headdesking over the stupidity of the committee and faculty members who should have known not to pull this sort of stunt no matter what.

  20. @David Shallcross

    Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t that just “myth”? Ie, that they always impart (or at least are intended to convey) a deeper meaning?

  21. @James et al

    Greg Hullender: there are plenty of orthodox Christians whose view of the Pentateuch, for example, is that it was largely composed / pulled together / in some part simply made up by members of the “Deuteronomistic” school during the period of the exile, and who would hold that the early chapters of Genesis are to be read in the mode they were written in, that is, as myth. You are really badly overgeneralizing. (I speak as someone whose brother teaches theology in Rome and is an RC priest.)

    Sorry, not buying it. Look at the RCC’s attitude toward gay people. It’s 100% wrong and at least partially based on the Bible. They simply aren’t willing to admit that any part of the Bible could be wrong. Misinterpreted, maybe, but not flat-out wrong.

    It’s amusing how many people seem to be trying to argue around this fact. Most Christians insist that the Bible doesn’t contain errors. They may argue for a different interpretation. They may point to imaginary translation errors. In a few cases they’ll argue that something was a parable and not meant to be taken as history (e.g. the book of Jonah). Or they may just put their fingers in their ears and close their eyes. But what they do not do is admit that there are simply errors in the Bible. Instead, they twist their view of the universe (including the Bible) around until the errors disappear.

    Sure, there are people who are exceptions to this, but they’re a minority.

    To refute this, you (or someone else) must post a link to where a reputable authority of a mainstream denomination (so the Space Raptor Baptist Church is right out) identifies a particular set of verses as being wrong. Not being wrongly interpreted. Simply wrong.

  22. @dann665

    I’d have to dig deeper to be sure, but based on what I read in the past, the lecture outline that he has/had out there was developed for the purpose of talking people into stepping away from believing in an inerrant Bible. It’s helpful to speak in terms the audience understands and as a result, his lecture outline may reflect that level of engagement. (I.e. “Days” actually means “billions of years”, etc.)

    Not quite. He was trying to come up with ways for people to square the Bible with science. For the bits that contradicted astronomy, he had novel interpretations of what the Bible “really” meant. (And apparently got some flack for that.) But for things like evolution, he happily told them that it wasn’t really settled science. There’s nothing I saw that even hinted that he identified some parts of the Bible as “wrong.” Remember that if it isn’t inerrant, that means it does have errors.

  23. Greg Hullender: Remember that if it isn’t inerrant, that means it does have errors.

    So why is it that the Holy Wikipedia entry on inerrancy doesn’t agree with that?

  24. @snowcrash — While I don’t necessarily agree with Greg Hullender, I was trying to say that people believing that the Bible is at least partially non-literally-true myth is not inconsistent with these people believing that the Bible is without error, as long as they believe that all of the deeper meanings are correct.

  25. Most moderate and liberal Christians will have no problem declaring that when Paul says, “The husband is the head of the family as Christ is the head of the Church,” he is wrong. At least in the sense of not correct normatively or positively today.

  26. The Episcopal Church allows women to be priests, and performs gay marriage. And all of the above, combined. Now, they probably don’t have a spot on their website saying exactly what verses are wrong, but they certainly are actively ignoring a whole lot of them. And Protestant Bibles omit entire books that are in Catholic ones, so they quite literally say those are wrong — no Judith, no Tobit, no Maccabees. Catholic Bibles leave out ones that Eastern Orthodox include.

    For that matter, anyone who’s not an Orthodox Jew is ignoring a lot of the verses. A bacon cheeseburger is NOT ALLOWED by Leviticus, and yet I’ve had one with clergyfolk.

  27. @Greg: But for things like evolution, he happily told them that it wasn’t really settled science. . Yup. That’s what made PZ Myers (a biologist!) grumpy–I first read about the case on his blog.

  28. @lurkertype

    The Episcopal Church allows women to be priests, and performs gay marriage. And all of the above, combined. Now, they probably don’t have a spot on their website saying exactly what verses are wrong, but they certainly are actively ignoring a whole lot of them.

    They don’t teach that the Bible has errors. Find a link to contradict that. We’ll wait.

    And Protestant Bibles omit entire books that are in Catholic ones, so they quite literally say those are wrong — no Judith, no Tobit, no Maccabees. Catholic Bibles leave out ones that Eastern Orthodox include.

    Protestants don’t teach that those books are “wrong”. They teach that they’re not part of the Bible at all.

    For that matter, anyone who’s not an Orthodox Jew is ignoring a lot of the verses. A bacon cheeseburger is NOT ALLOWED by Leviticus, and yet I’ve had one with clergyfolk.

    Jews are not Christians.

  29. Greg Hullender: Find a link to contradict that. We’ll wait.

    If that’s going to be your attitude, while you’re waiting you can answer my question.

  30. @Mike Glyer

    So why is it that the Holy Wikipedia entry on inerrancy doesn’t agree with that?

    Hmmm. Actually, for the most part, I’d say it does agree with the claim that to be inerrant there must be no errors. This bit from the Catholics is interesting though:

    The “doctrine of the inerrancy of scripture”[8] held by the Catholic Church, as expressed by the Second Vatican Council, is that “the books of Scripture must be acknowledged as teaching solidly, faithfully and without error that truth which God wanted put into sacred writings for the sake of salvation.”[9]

    That would allow for an error (in theory) in any part of the Bible that wasn’t important to salvation. However, the church itself argues that the entire text is important to salvation. So, yes, they really do mean it has no errors.

    Out of 2.2 billion Christians in the world, 1.2 billion are Roman Catholics. Hence, even without counting the other denominations, most Christians belong to a church that affirms Biblical inerrancy.

  31. Okay, I am out of this stupid game of Greg’s, not least because I don’t even remember what the point was supposed to be.

  32. @Jim Henley

    Most moderate and liberal Christians will have no problem declaring that when Paul says, “The husband is the head of the family as Christ is the head of the Church,” he is wrong. At least in the sense of not correct normatively or positively today.

    They’ll usually argue that things like that were relevant to the culture of his time but not meant to apply to our culture. And they’ll use that same argument for the rules about how women are supposed to dress.

    I have never heard a liberal Christian use that argument for the verses that preach against homosexuality. The most you get is rather weak arguments that those verses don’t really mean what they say. Never, ever, do you get even a liberal Christian to say that “those verses are just ignorant people expressing the prejudices of their time.”

  33. Greg Hullender: Since you picked the cite, please don’t slough off its concluding paragraph:

    Although inerrancy isn’t limited to religious truths which pertain to salvation but may include non-religious assertions by the biblical authors, this doesn’t mean Scripture is an inspired textbook of science or history. Inerrancy extends to what the biblical writers intend to teach, not necessarily to what they assume or presuppose or what isn’t integral to what they assert. In order to distinguish these things, scholars must examine the kind of writing or literary genre the biblical writers employ.

  34. @Jim Henley

    Okay, I am out of this stupid game of Greg’s, not least because I don’t even remember what the point was supposed to be.

    And after I went to all that trouble to answer your post too. 🙂

    Actually I’m ready for a new game too. The new scroll is up anyway.

  35. @Mike Glyer on April 6, 2016 at 8:34 pm said:

    Greg Hullender: Since you picked the cite, please don’t slough off its concluding paragraph:

    Although inerrancy isn’t limited to religious truths which pertain to salvation but may include non-religious assertions by the biblical authors, this doesn’t mean Scripture is an inspired textbook of science or history. Inerrancy extends to what the biblical writers intend to teach, not necessarily to what they assume or presuppose or what isn’t integral to what they assert. In order to distinguish these things, scholars must examine the kind of writing or literary genre the biblical writers employ.

    To be honest, I view that as weasel wording. The moment anyone picks any specific verse and says “this is objectively false,” they immediately produce an argument for why it really isn’t. You can’t find a list of “bible verses that contain errors according to the RCC.” However, I’ll agree it does leave the door open just a crack. Certainly more than Fundamentalists do (and probably more than the astronomer in the story would have).

    I’d be happy to be proven wrong. As I said above, all it would take would be a link to such a list. But I don’t think such a link exists for any of the large denominations.

  36. [James T. Kirk]
    “Might be…”, “Viewed in context…”, “Many say that…”
    These are. OUR. Weasel words, too!
    [/James T. Kirk]

  37. @David Shallcross

    @snowcrash — While I don’t necessarily agree with Greg Hullender, I was trying to say that people believing that the Bible is at least partially non-literally-true myth is not inconsistent with these people believing that the Bible is without error, as long as they believe that all of the deeper meanings are correct.

    Actually I think that’s consistent with the quote from the Roman Catholic Church (above) that Mike is trying to force me to admit leaves room for them to teach that the Bible does contain some (unimportant) errors. 🙂 “The lesson the writer is trying to teach is X; he assumes Y, which today we know is false, but that’s not important for the lesson” would seem to also admit “he states Y, which is likely just a story, not something that really happened.”

    Unfortunately, if you try to apply that (for example) to the verses that condemn homosexuality, it will get you nowhere. “The author is trying to make the argument that people have to be cleansed of their sins before they enter Heaven. He gives a list of what he thinks are the worst ones. Today we know that homosexuality is a condition, not a sin, but that doesn’t affect the message.” Nope. Not gonna get many takers on that one. Not today, anyway, but I’ll admit that the wording of the definition of inerrancy does leave room for someone to do it someday.

  38. @Jim Henley – “… I don’t even remember what the point was supposed to be.”

    Jumping hoops while threading the needle?

  39. Greg, first of all, the various churches don’t have much interest in meeting the random demands of Internet atheists who will just have another argument for calling them wrong.

    Secondly, oddly, no, you don’t get to tell me what I “really” believe.

    What I was really taught about the Bible in CCD, Catholic parochial school, and a Catholic women’s college:

    The Bible is not a science textbook; trying to use it as one is a misuse. It’s intended to guide us in our moral lives, and our relationship with God.

    The Bible is Divinely inspired, not Divinely dictated. The words used are those of the individual writers, and on matters not essential to the faith, will reflect their time, knowledge, and culture. The account of the order of creation is the best understanding of the day, and reflects a view that, once you concede the relevance of the fact that these were Bronze Age pastoralists, with no access to the tools of modern science, reflects a pretty reasonable understanding of the physical world: Plant life before animal life, sea life before land life, simpler forms before more complex forms. Not Their fault they had no way to know about microscopic life, or that it’s not apparent to someone without the tools of modern biology, that grasses are later, more complex forms than trees.

    The Bible is less a book than a library; it contains many different types of works. Poetry, allegory, history, to hit the obvious ones. The history sections are probably as accurate as they knew how to make them, but ancient cultures had a different understanding of what “good historical account” meant than we do. And even for the history sections, the real point is our relationship with God, not the details of who was Pharaoh, or Emperor, when.

    Poetry and allegory are pretty much never intended to be read literally; that’s kind of the point.

    When we get to the New Testament, the writers are even more consciously trying to select the stories and events that best advanced the teaching purpose. So no, no one is really concerned that different writers didn’t record all the same stories in the same order with all the same details. Again, that level of detail wasn’t the point. Paul’s letters, the Acts of the Apostles, again they weren’t writing definitive modern biographies or professional treatises on church management.

    Because of all this, if you’re looking at it as anything other than what it is, you are going to find errors. The first life forms were single-cell organisms that don’t fit the plant/animal dichotomy. Trees came first, then grass. If Jesus presented as evidence the account of his birth in the Gospels, modern officials accustomed to modern documentation might well conclude he was born in Kenya.

    And that’s not the point. Biblical Inerrancy isn’t about factual details being correct. It’s also not about the fact that we don’t live in the Bronze Age, or in Roman times. Or in the Middle East.

    The Biblical literalists have a problem with this. Atheists playing gotcha have a problem with this.

    Most Christians simply don’t mean what you think they have to mean when they say the Bible is Inerrant, and won’t anytime soon be posting “admissions” of things that matter to you and not to them.

  40. The account of the order of creation is the best understanding of the day
    Both accounts. The first one, which is the one everyone knows, and the second one, where the order of creation is different (and Adam names the animals).

    Also there’s more than a little evidence of rewriting for political reasons (like the two versions of Goliath).

  41. I’m not up to doing research tonight but there is debate in Judaism over what exactly is forbidden by the line in Leviticus. But its an act and not how one feels. This doesn’t means Jews treat homosexuals well. Humans gonna human and Jews are human. We also have assimilated into Christian culture even while staying separate and true to our ways (/some sarcasm here) which has over time caused some Jews to confuse thoughts with actions and IMHO misunderstanding what the prohibition was.

    In my experience religious people of all religions pick and choose which things they follow and believe. Unsurprisingly, to me, some keep stuff which lets them judge others and don’t do so well practicing the stuff where they’d have to work on their own behavior and have to focus on themselves. This appears more true among “observant/fundamental” Jews and Christians I’ve met. It seems to be true from what I’ve seen online of Muslims. In person I’ve only gotten to know moderate Muslims. I see the same problem in fundamental Athiest. This problem seems less true among moderates of any stripe.

    @Greg you are looking for the clergy to outright deny things. What they generally do is quietly remove parts. Change who they ordain. Change who they marry. This is their denial.

    Just because a few loud groups of people push for legislation doesn’t mean there is a silent majority in agreement with them. Most of the religious I know, even in a number of the fundamental groups within Christianity and Judaism don’t believe the Torah/bible to be literal history or law.

    Judaism has 2,000+ years of rabbis/scholars/books in discussion with each other over what each word in the Torah means. The various subgroups (askenazi, Sephardi, Yemenite, etc.) practice different because we lost contact at various times and interpretations differed as culture and ways of doing things changed (technology but even earlier than industrial revolution). And we continue to add to it as the world continues to change which brings new questions.

  42. @robinareid: Re. treating candidates the same…but did any other ones claim evolution was not settled science or whatever else? I mean they ran biology science comment by biologists. Perhaps no other candidates made anti-science claims, so there was nothing else to run by non-astronomists? (I wonder. Perhaps unknown, unless this came up in court documents.)

  43. Regarding teen assassins, I used to live in Colombia for a few years, and as far as I could tell from the news, young sicarios could amass quite an impressive head count between the ages of 15 and 18.

    Stuff like this, and seeing news footage of a captured child soldier many years ago, leaves me heavily resistant to the trope of children recruited and trained as soldiers or murderers in some secret war, magical or otherwise. It obviously corresponds to the very common empowerment fantasies of many children, so it’s going to persist, and the better writers who use it at least tend to at least pay lip service to the fact that it’s an appalling thing to happen to anyone. (Just finished the YA Knights Of The Borrowed Dark by Dave Rudden, which handles it quite well, I thought.) Even in my own little light comic MG fantasy I grappled with the idea of an inherited (non-violent, ceremonial but lifelong) role and made my secret magic Celtic warrior elite into a bunch of pacifist vegetarian tree-hugging hippies.

  44. @Nigel

    Stuff like this, and seeing news footage of a captured child soldier many years ago, leaves me heavily resistant to the trope of children recruited and trained as soldiers or murderers in some secret war, magical or otherwise.

    Reminds me of this meme featuring Joseph Kony

  45. Greg, the anti-male-with-male passages in the Bible were probably originally aimed at sex with boy temple prostitutes (of other religions), where the sex amounted to rape. The failure to understand or account for adult equal relationships was an error, if you like – and I might add that the failure is just as present in teachings about heterosexual relationships. Sexism and homophobia walking together, as usual.

  46. @jonesnori/Lenore Jones:

    Greg, the anti-male-with-male passages in the Bible were probably originally aimed at sex with boy temple prostitutes (of other religions), where the sex amounted to rape. The failure to understand or account for adult equal relationships was an error, if you like – and I might add that the failure is just as present in teachings about heterosexual relationships. Sexism and homophobia walking together, as usual.

    I’ve not heard about the line having to do with other religions practice but I’m not a Torah scholar. If that were the case it would be less anti-rape and more don’t follow practices of other religions which is a line a Jew is usually to die before crossing. Since the act is an abomination on the same level as eating pork I’m not generally required to die before doing either unless I’m being forced to do it under specific deny G-d reasons which I’m not overly clear on. If I need to eat pork for health reasons I might be required (not optional required) to do so. I’ve actually thought this is a good point to use within Judaism to argue that, with our better understanding of homosexuality, our take on it should change as withholding touch and sex has been shown to do great damage which can lead to death (not just suicide but has physiological effects). By Judaisms rule of Halacha (Jewish/G-ds) laws are meant to live by I think there is for a strong argument here. But as I’m a woman not a man and I haven’t gone through Torah scholarship I’m not in a position to take a religious stand or to be taken seriously by the male orthodox rabbis in my community on this topic.

    I do think picking one topic within a religion as the end all be all is not overly reasonable although I can understand the hurt and anger. My own chosen religion doesn’t handle child abuse, sexual abuse, rape, or their after affects well at all and its take on women, at times, leaves much to be desired. It infuriates me. But it’s slowly changing. I don’t ever expect to see announcements we were wrong all these years even when moschiach/messiah comes. Humans gonna human and they really aren’t good at saying I’m wrong or sorry even over little things.

  47. Oh, if one wants an example of something admitted to be simply wrong, as opposed to, say, “to be read as myth/legend”, a simple, if trivial one is that the depiction of the Abrahamic period is entirely wrong in showing the use of camels, as they were introduced to the area rather later than the time the stories are situated in, and this is accepted by all mainstream biblical scholars, including active believers.

  48. Viverrine :

    I would also argue he made Serenity a hostile workplace for Inara in a number of ways, using demeaning language towards her and about her to others, creating unnecessary obstacles to prevent her from working, and essentially punishing her for his attraction.

    Inara is not an employee of Mal’s.

    She’s an independent businesswoman renting space and transport from him in a business arrangement hopefully involving synergies for both businesses. If his attitude gets too much she can (and, in between the series and the movie DID), leave.

  49. @Nigel

    Stuff like this, and seeing news footage of a captured child soldier many years ago, leaves me heavily resistant to the trope of children recruited and trained as soldiers or murderers in some secret war, magical or otherwise. It obviously corresponds to the very common empowerment fantasies of many children, so it’s going to persist, and the better writers who use it at least tend to at least pay lip service to the fact that it’s an appalling thing to happen to anyone.

    ITA. It was horrid, it was terrifying, it required no ennobling skill or enthralling narrative beyond young teenagers developing the brute nerve and quickness required to ride two on a motorcycle up to the target, one to shoot and one to drive off; lather, rinse, repeat till the streets ran red. Tragic for the victims, tragic for the former children warped to such purposes, and certainly nothing magical about it.

    That was the element that put me off OSC’s fiction after reading Ender’s Game, long before I knew any other writing of his, or anything else about him. Heroizing the process of turning a child into a cold-blooded killer, and minimizing and excusing the torments required to warp a child to such a purpose (The General had to toughen Ender up to save the world! Peter the sociopathic squirrel-torturer who aspired to fratricide just had to grow out of a boyish phase – he’ll make a fine President of Earth! No matter what his hideous actions, Abusive Daddy Figure Really Meant Everything For the Best! Ugh). That book had a great, propulsive narrative, but the undertaste convinced me something was subtly off with the author’s outlook, even before he took up public homophobia and ringing the death knell for society as hobbies.

    (Just finished the YA Knights Of The Borrowed Dark by Dave Rudden, which handles it quite well, I thought.) Even in my own little light comic MG fantasy I grappled with the idea of an inherited (non-violent, ceremonial but lifelong) role and made my secret magic Celtic warrior elite into a bunch of pacifist vegetarian tree-hugging hippies.

    Sounds like fun! Where can I read it?

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