Thumbing my nose at Stephen Jay Gould

(Note: This blog entry has prerequisite reading, a short essay to be found here.)

My grandmother used to have a peculiar habit of collecting rocks. Collecting rocks in itself is not weird, most people have done it at one time or another, but most people do it because the rocks they collect have either a certain physical beauty or perhaps they came from a place that has sentimental value to them. My grandmother collected rocks because she wanted to be an archaeologist.

The place where I grew up was considered by many archaeologists to be a veritable treasure trove of artifacts, having been populated for centuries by numerous cultures. An interesting history there, actually; the Pomo tribe was in many ways like the financial center of the ancient California economy. They had a technology that as far as I know is still a secret to this day that enabled them to make stone drill bits they used in the manufacture of beads from seashells. These beads were used as a local currency because there was a limited supply of them made under strict secrecy and control of the Pomo. When Europeans finally made it to the West Coast, they brought with them the technology to make drill bits out of metal, and the economic system collapsed virtually overnight as everyone freely made counterfeit beads.

My grandmother's interest as an amateur archaeologist was, unfortunately, lacking in any sort of scientific rigor. Her back porch was often littered with various stones she had collected on her walks along a nearby creek, and when asked why she had chosen the stones she had, there were two stock answers.

1. "I think these are man-made because I see so many rocks just like them all over the place."
2. "I think this rock was man-made because I've never seen another rock like it anywhere."

I think anyone could see the problem with this logic. Aside from the obvious contradiction, the fact is that real artifacts will probably fall somewhere in between on the commonality spectrum, but in the end, the real issue is that relative rarity of an object is not something that's truly a factor in how likely it is to be man-made. (Those stone drill bits I mentioned are undoubtedly man-made, but are extremely rare, while old rusty nails, which are also undoubtedly man-made, are very easy to find when digging around in the dirt in that area.)

For those of you that read the essay I linked to, you might be wondering what all of this has to do with evolution, or maybe you see it as a transparent attempt to switch the topic to Intelligent Design. Well, ID is definitely going to come up in some form in this post, but I have a message for people on both sides of the evolutionary debate. In his essay, Stephen Jay Gould mentions

"I had always learned that a dexterous, opposable thumb stood among the hallmarks of human success."

I myself had never been taught this, but perhaps I was biased growing up with a cat that had opposable thumbs. I think what Gould is hinting at here is that anti-evolutionists are looking at the thumb of humans and saying essentially, "The thumb as we know it in humans is extremely rare in other animals, therefore surely we must have been designed." Uniqueness is indeed often touted as a basis for assuming intelligent design, usually, of course, as a list of things that are unique to humans in particular. Something that I have been noticing lately after reading a great deal about the platypus is that uniqueness is a surprisingly common thing. Every animal has something that sets it apart from other animals, or it would be the same animal, wouldn't it? And while the platypus is indeed very odd, odd animals exist everywhere. (I think on this continent, our "odd animal" is the hummingbird, but I'm sure there are other freaks of nature.) Anyway, the oddly unique qualities that are possessed by homo sapiens are really a non-issue to evolutionary biologists, and from a purely scientific standpoint, they shouldn't be, really.

The thing that I really find fascinating about this essay is that Gould (a man who, if Darwinism were a religion as some of my fellow fundamentalists seem to think, would have been one of its archbishops if not the Pope) seems to agree with some of the views that creationists and ID proponents espouse today. While most skeptics insist that the idea of a creator who designed life is preposterous and need not even be addressed as a possibility, Gould gives a nod to the concept:

"[I]deal design is a lousy argument for evolution, for it mimics the postulated action of an omnipotent creator."

Certainly Gould never admits the idea of a creator as a likely possibility, and in fact the whole point of the essay is to argue fiercely against the concept, but he does address the concept in order to make a reasoned argument against it, something few evolutionists even bother to do, it seems to me.

For those anti-evolutionists who may be reading this, I would say to you that if you actually read Gould's essay and it didn't give you pause, I think you're either being intellectually dishonest or you didn't understand his point. I think a big part of what makes his argument so strong is that he does take time to consider the possibilities presented by the hypothesized existence of an intelligent creator of the panda. In seeing both sides, at least in some limited degree, he's creating a case that is much more well-rounded than most I've heard. Creationists could and should take a tip from Gould. While I've been railing a bit in my last paragraph about evolutionists failing to address the opposition, I don't want to give the impression that I think creationists are any better on average in that respect. No ground is going to be gained for the cause of promoting creationism or ID by ignoring the other side. Evolution has a lot of evidence and many solid arguments behind it, and while, yes, it does seem highly unlikely that somehow billions of years of random chance caused inert matter to somehow coalesce and eventually morph into modern humans, simply saying that it's dubious is hardly an argument in itself.

Gould's argument is pretty straightforward, but needs an essay several pages long to explain the backdrop of the real meat of the argument; delving into the general morphology of the order carnivora, comparing pandas to bears and other relatives, explaining the mechanism of the human thumb vs. the panda thumb all lead up to a basis for putting it all together into a simple premise.

"The radial thumb is...a contraption, not a lovely contrivance."

Gould is assuming that an omnipotent creator would either give the panda the same thumb he gave other animals (especially since all the parts are there to do so), or he would build an entirely new type of thumb from entirely new body parts that simply do not exist in other species. There's logic in this, no doubt. The panda's thumb is essentially a thumb that is designed the hard way, so to speak, when at least one more elegant solution to the construction problem exists, and one might suppose other elegant solutions could be made. (If you were a mechanical engineer, you probably could think of one or two easily, I imagine.)

One of the things about this argument that I find interesting is that, aside from acknowledging the possibility of a creator, it also runs counter to what I've heard from other atheists. Often those who promote the idea of evolution over creationism will point to the similarities between creatures and say that those similarities indicate common ancestry. Gould seems to be implicitly confirming what many creationists will say in response to such an argument: that common design implies a common designer. After all, why should God re-create the thumb for humans when a perfectly good thumb already exists in other primates? It's that very argument that creationists love to use (and the average evolutionist pooh-poohs) that is the very basis for Gould's argument here. Why shouldn't God use a pre-existing design, or, if there was a good reason not to, why wouldn't God make something new rather than cobble together a thumb from second-hand parts, so to speak.

When I was a kid, I got some Legos in a McDonald's Happy Meal. The small collection of Legos was designed to make something specific, like a little racecar. Now, I could make that racecar, sure, but the real fun was in making something new and unexpected out of those parts. Could I position the wheels closer together so that they functioned like gears? Could I make a car that bore little or no resemblance to the intended car design? If I really wanted to get creative, I could have asked my parents to buy me more Legos, but tinkering was fun and stimulating. Is it a sure thing that God would not also think so? As I could think of my attempts to combine the same set of Legos in different ways a way of showing my creativity, could not God also wish to show His creative side by combining the same set of bones, muscles and tendons in varying and surprising ways? Is nature's variety God's way of showing us that there's more than one way to skin a cat?

While I do think that Gould's argument is very strong (and has resulted in my wanting to read some of Darwin's books, particularly the one on orchids, which must be a blast), what's really missing in the story here to truly address the concerns of a theist is more info on the theological side. While Gould takes time to unpack all the baggage of ursine bone structure, when it comes to dealing with the question of creationism, he simply assumes the proper action of an omnipotent creator.

"If God had designed a beautiful machine to reflect his wisdom and power, surely he would not have used a collection of parts generally fashioned for other purposes."

So many arguments against the existence of God boil down to this sentence with different phrases inserted in the underlined spaces. "If God was really good, surely he would have spared my mother Alzheimer's." "If God didn't want me to have sex with whomever I want whenever I want, surely he would not make it feel so darn good." "If God wanted me to believe in him, surely he would give me a million dollars." In short, assume you know what God would do or how he would think, and base your beliefs around that assumption.

The fact is, maybe Gould is right. I mean, it sounds reasonable. However, there are a lot of things that sound reasonable, but aren't necessarily so. "Humans are designed in a manner so high above the other animals in dexterity, intelligence and other factors that surely we are the apex of creation." That's something that sounds quite reasonable to most people, but evolutionary biology shows that this is not the case at all, or at least it doesn't follow in direct logical progression.

You know what I think? I think there are (at least) two things in the universe that are simply beyond our ability to fully comprehend. One of them is the full story of the origin of life as we currently know it, and the other is the mind of God. Maybe instead of fighting over who has come closer to arriving at unattainable knowledge, we could just enjoy the journey? Probably not likely, but that's my personal plan.

Mating Habits of Highly Defective People

For those still keeping count (which is probably just me), we are now at 246 out of 292 hits on this blog being people looking for pictures of sexy penguins. (The unlikely phrase "bashemath's husband" has now been used twice to find this blog.) That's about 84% of my traffic.

But that's not the reason for this post. The reason for this post is that I was jokingly looking up info on the mating habits of penguins on Wikipedia, thinking that I'd do a post about it. I found some disturbing stuff.

Not about penguins. Their mating habits are fairly bland, even the homosexual ones. They mate, the female lays an egg and passes it to the male, who sits on it for about two months. The egg hatches, and the female returns and raises the chick. Penguins do not mate for life, but will stay with a single mate for each season, sometimes choosing the same mate several years in a row. No, the shocking stuff had to do with ducks. I quote here:

"While he was sitting in his office at the Natuurmuseum Rotterdam, [Dutch researcher Kees] Moeliker heard the distinctive thud of a bird hitting the glass facade of the building. Upon inspection, he discovered a drake mallard lying dead about two meters from the building. Next to the downed bird there was a second drake mallard standing close by. As he observed the odd couple, the living drake picked at the corpse of the dead one for a few minutes and then, without provocation, it mounted the corpse and began copulating with it. The act of necrophilia lasted for about 75 minutes, in which time, according to Moeliker, the living drake took two short breaks before resuming with copulating behavior."

As I said in a comment I left on this blog elsewhere yesterday, I don't care if that's natural or not, that's just sick. And that's the issue I want to address here. All of those people who, regardless of what socio-political position they are taking, try to make a point for something being the "correct", "natural" or even just "acceptable" way of doing things by pointing to a parallel in the animal kingdom need to consider what sort of things they may be flinging the door wide open to.

I made this rant years ago in a discussion forum in the middle of an argument on whether or not homosexuality is natural. Both sides were trying to argue from the behavior of animals for their side, and I had to butt in and point out some of the things I will point out here.

Let's talk about animal sexual behavior, shall we? One very common strategy among animals is to reproduce with as many different partners as possible. While typically most people think of this as a male strategy, many studies have shown that females also choose this behavior. Some birds have been shown to pick a primary mate and then, when her primary mate is out fetching food, she invites in other males behind his back so to speak to fertilize an egg or two. So, cheating on your spouse that you've pledged monogamy to? Totally natural!

Of course, how are you going to get away with this sort of "cheating"? I recently saw a documentary on cuttlefish, who turn out to be very intelligent and adaptive creatures. During mating season, some species of cuttlefish, who have the ability to change the color of their skin, will change their behavior over from using their chameleon-like abilities to hide from predators to putting on shows of bright, flashy skin to show off to females. Often the dominant male will put himself between the local female that everyone is vying for and all the other males, blocking them off from access. Smaller males, who have no chance of fighting off the alpha male (or whatever cuttlefish biologists would call him) will use their ability to change their appearance to instead pretend to be a female, and thus gain access to the guarded female. Let's call that cross-dressing to get undetected access to the girls' locker room, eh? Let's also call it natural and acceptable.

Among many species (including humans to some extent), it's common for the females to be unable and/or unwilling to mate while still raising children. Suppose you're a lion who sees an attractive female who would otherwise be available if not for the fact that she's got a couple cubs with her. What are you going to do about it? Correct! You kill the cubs and then invite her back to your place for a lovely evening of candlelight, wine and fresh gazelle carcass. Killing your mate's children by a previous partner? Must be the right thing to do, as it occurs in nature. (Not to mention several species in which males will attack pregnant females in order to induce them to miscarry.)

But why stop at killing your mate's offspring? How many times have you found yourself in the mood for a little snack after some hanky-panky? You might wish that your mate would go and fetch you a snack, but then... Well, some spiders (although apparently not as many as is commonly believed) and other insects, particularly the mantises have an interesting solution to this dilemma: let your mate be your snack! Really, after you've got what you want from them for the purposes of pleasure/reproduction, aren't they just a meal waiting to happen? I mean, in nature, every living thing is eventually eaten, so why not be eaten by your own kind? What's more natural than that?

The thing is, you could find an example of just about any behavior (sexual or otherwise) somewhere in nature. A female ("queen") bee will typically mate with about a dozen males during a single day when it comes time for her to mate, and in the process, she castrates each of them, causing their death. Some species of wasps lay their eggs in live spiders, which then hatch out and eat the spiders. I was not aware of it until I researched some of this on Wikipedia, but apparently some dolphins participate in behaviors that among humans would be called "gang rape".

My point in all of this? Simple. We are human beings, and not any other type of animal, so there is simply no sense in comparing ourselves to any other type of animal. In nature, anything that can happen does, and there's no point in calling it justification for anything.

Microsoft magic!

I don't believe I mentioned it here, but I recently got a new job doing IT support in an office. This week, the main IT guy is on vacation, so I'm on my own for the first time, and today I got my first support call.

"Hey, can you come figure out why such-and-such program isn't launching for me?" co-worker says to me, so I go to her desk. I fiddle about for a minute, checking out whether her connection is working. Finding nothing useful, suddenly the lightbulb comes on over my head. Aha! The old classic!

"Why don't you turn off your computer and reboot, and see if that solves the problem?"

It worked.

Tolerance, but only for the tolerant, of course

So in the ongoing saga of the sexy penguins, I decided to check out Google today (I would have done it earlier, but I was having technical difficulties) and found out that sure enough, a Google image search for "sexy penguin" pulls up a link to this blog as the #2 match. For those who might care about the numbers other than myself, I'm trying to keep a running total, and I've presently got 126 out of 157 hits, or roughly 80% of my visitors being people looking for a picture of a sexy penguin.

However, I'm not here to rant about sexy penguins and the people who love them...this time. I am going back to retouch on the original topic in order to use it as a launching point into another topic that's always bugged me.

Quick recap for those who can't be bothered to read the original post: A pro-same-sex marriage organization launched a campaign in Colorado based on the idea that a person who was sexually attracted to members of the same gender is just as normal as a dog that goes "moo". An anti-same-sex marriage organization, rather than pointing out the ridiculousness of this argument as I would have done, launched a counter-campaign to inform the public that dogs in fact do not go "moo". This high level of debate truly shows how serious this issue is.

Well, in tracking down the Google image search result for "sexy penguin", I noticed that under the picture, there was a snippet of text from my blog reading "...mooing dogs and sexy penguins." Curious, I tried a new image search for "mooing dogs", which my blog came up as the #1 hit! (Note that this is only on an image search; a regular web search did not give a link to my blog in the first 150 hits. The first blog hit was for this site, which rants about thwarting the "Heterosexual agenda" because "Dogs are really hard to milk." Good writing.)

As usual, I'm taking far to long to come to my point. Not too far down in the list of hits, I came across this article. Apparently a family in Colorado Springs has had their lawn repeatedly vandalized for having the audacity to put signs on it that feature a picture of a dog saying "Woof." The unknown people who vandalized the lawn and the signs by either stealing them or defacing them actually left notes for the family telling them that "YOU ARE NO BETTER THAN A TERRORIST BECAUSE YOU DISPLAYED THAT SIGN!" They even went so far as to specifically compare them to the September 11th WTC attackers.

I've got to say that this perplexes me on many levels. While I see no evidence in the article that the vandals ever used the specific word "tolerance", the concept was there, as they had written "STOP THE HATE" on the street near the house. I realize that this story was published by a news outlet that is affiliated in some manner (I'm not sure how closely) with the publishers of the "No-Moo-Lies.com" web site, and as such, it is doing its darnedest to paint this conservative family in a positive light, but still, the only "hate" I'm seeing here is on the part of the vandals.

While the family with the signs is indeed sending out a message (albeit fairly subtly) that many may find offensive, all they are doing in the end is expressing an opinion. The vandals are trespassing, damaging private and public property, and probably could easily be construed as threatening the physical safety of others. Why would they prefer to do that rather than pursue a number of perfectly legal and reasonable countermeasures? They could put up signs in their own yards. They could write letters to the family telling them intelligently why they disagree with their position and why they feel it is offensive. They could write letters to local newspapers. They could peaceably conduct a protest in the street in front of the lawn with the signs. And of course, they could vote, and I hope they did. One of the neat things about each of those is that they don't require sneaking around in the middle of the night.

Legality and even morality aside, though, there is a social phenomenon that I've found rather odd lately. I think most people tend to think of the freedoms outlined in the First Amendment in terms of a protection for the liberal free thinkers of our society. If I want to say that George W. Bush is an idiot, I can do so freely. If I want to have my children go to school and not have to practice some sort of state religion, then I'm all set for that, too. Lately it seems like a reversal of that sort of thinking has happened, though. In our society at large, you aren't allowed to like the President because we should all agree that he's evil. You aren't allowed to make any public expression of your religious beliefs lest it offend, because we should all value multiculturalism over all other values. You aren't allowed to think that morality as defined by your personal beliefs has any basis or right to be addressed because we should all with uniform assent that morality is relative.

That's what it really boils down to, and don't you see that there is an inherent hypocrisy and/or lapse of logic in that position? The only absolute value is relativism. All viewpoints should be allowed except for those that question whether all viewpoints should be allowed. Society should have no tolerance for those that practice intolerance. Argh... It makes my brain hurt sometimes.

Look, it's an opinion. Some people in Colorado think same-sex marriage should be allowed; others think it should be disallowed. These are just opinions, same as the opinion that people shouldn't judge others for their sexual orientation. Who is to decide which opinions should be allowed and which should be silenced? It's not simply a matter of being offended, because I assure you that on 99.9% of all issues, there will be somebody offended by either position.

There are a lot of people (and while I tend to feel "homophobia" is an overused term, it seems appropriate here) that are absolutely appalled at the thought of a gay pride parade, but is that single fact good enough reason to disallow such a display? I really feel that the First Amendment allows for people to hold a parade for any reason (so long as they avoid undue disruption of, well, traffic, I guess) be it the local high school's homecoming, abortion rights, a war protest, or even if your local chapter of the KKK wants to put on a show. Excepting probably the first of those examples, there's going to be a lot of people upset by such parades, but my advice is if you don't like it, then stay away, or go and organize a peaceful counter-demonstration. If you show up at an event and hassle or even attack the people there, you just let them believe they are some sort of martyrs for a great cause.

Did you read the article about the family with the vandalized signs? In the end, who wins that moral struggle? Isn't it the poor victimized folks with the peaceful signs on their yard? Completely disregarding what their signs say, and the ideas they are intended to convey to passers-by, aren't they the ones with the moral high ground because the opposition took the position of oppressor? Whoever it was that took those signs, they ought to know that they may have set their cause back more than No-Moo-Lies.com ever could.

Enough with the damn penguins already!

Okay, it's not funny anymore. Or maybe it is, but I'm getting sort of tired of it.

In the last week, this blog has had 36 hits, and 33 of them were from people doing a Google search for pictures of sexy penguins. That's about 92%, for those of you who are into percentages. (Great, in the midst of a post essentially complaining about Rule #34, I'm contributing...) I've got sexy penguin seekers from Portugal, Netherlands, Italy, Denmark, Mexico, Australia, United Kingdom, Canada, and of course plenty right here in the USA.

Seriously, what's the deal? Has the recent spate of Penguin movies suddenly got everyone hot and bothered for a little penguin action? Is there nothing in the modern world that is beyond fetishizing? What's next, sexy trilobites?

Look, I don't know, alright? Maybe if you stumbled upon my blog looking for a sexy penguin, it was just some sort of joke. I know there are people who use odd search strings just for comedy value, but it's likely that there are folks out there typing the word "penguin" with one hand, know what I mean?

Seriously, dudes.... Get some help.

If you're going to sin, you might as well be original

There's been a lot of buzz around the Internet about a piece of stolen artwork, and it's growing. Not just the buzz, but the scope of the theft.

Todd Goldman, an "artist" and online purveyor of pop-art T-shirts was holding an art exhibit of his works and somebody noticed a similarity between the art on one of the canvases and a webcomic drawn by Dave "Shmorky" Kelly in 2001. Fans of Shmorky researched, and the plot thickened. Among several versions of the work in question, one of them appeared, upon being superimposed with the webcomic, to have actually been traced from it! This wasn't merely an homage, but surprisingly blatant plagiarism. That wasn't all; further research of Goldman's (so-called) work turned up case after case of striking similarities to extant works found in various places on the web. It's hard to say where any of this is leading, or how much of this is a misunderstanding, but it seems that virtually nothing that Goldman has created is original. It's a fascinating story, and if you're not familiar, you might want to read about it and see the evidence yourself.

I'm not here to condemn Goldman, nor do I intend to defend him. What I want to consider here is the nature of plagiarism.

When I was in college, I took a lot of courses from a lot of different disciplines. However, not being much of an artist (on the technical side, that is; I like to think I'm creative), I ended up taking only one course from the art department, a course known as "Photomechanical Reproduction". In other words, we were making art with Xerox machines. It's been a heck of long time now since I was in that class, but as hazy as my memory is, I do remember the issues that it brought up on the subject of what art really is, the nature of originality and the legal aspect of fair usage. (Although I tried a number of different techniques throughout the course, my favorite images to work off of were money; for one project I made a stack of very authentic-looking zero-dollar bills using only the money I had in my pocket and the free supplies at the local Kinko's.)

You could scoff at such work being considered "art"--and you could probably come up with some snide remark relating the idea back to Goldman's dubious techniques--but there was really something to it, and over the years since then, I've used the things I learned repeatedly to make what I considered to be works of art, sometimes from somebody else's art as a basis, and sometimes from nothing at all; you can make rather interesting art on a Xerox machine with no source material at all, if you know a few tricks. Maybe I ought to scan and post a few I've done. But as usual, I'm getting off-topic. The question is: is copying another person's art something that can be art itself?

Webcomics artist Scott Kurtz put one of his own characters in a pose just like the original piece, and had him say the same line, but nobody considers that plagiarism, I assume. It's not just because Kurtz didn't trace the artwork like Goldman did; there are a lot of works in Goldman's portfolio that people are calling rip-offs that don't really look much like the thing people are claiming he ripped off. At the same time, something can be a blatantly stolen and still be somehow special and original because it's intended for parody purposes. Think "Weird Al" Yankovic, or better, a little panel I threw together in a couple minutes:

It doesn't matter so much that both the image and the caption are blatant copies; I'm not likely to get sued for this picture because I'm making a point with it, not trying to rip off Shmorky or Jim Davis. In many ways, intent has a great deal to do with whether something is considered plagiarised, doesn't it? If I printed out the original webcomic and put it on the wall of my office, people would see it and laugh, and nobody would have a problem with it, least of all the artist, who might even be flattered. Blow it up on a big canvas, tell people it's my original idea, and put a $5,000 price tag on it, and now we have a problem. An artist ought to have the rewards of his or her art and in the former case, I would be increasing the acclaim of the art, while in the latter, I'm taking money that should be theirs.

But people do take other people's artistic ideas and make money off of them all the time. I'm not just talking about parodies, which have some amount of legal protection, but stealing images in order to make an artistic statement that launches from preconceived notions of existing iconic images and ideas. How many people have made artistic statements launching from Grant Wood's "American Gothic"? (Contrary to popular belief, the image depicts a father and daughter, not a married couple.) There's something to the concept of taking a pre-existing idea and running with it in a new direction, or even taking it as it is and merely presenting it in a new fashion. Some artists, such as famously Marcel Duchamp, take items that are not not art, and present them as art.

Is there really such a thing as an original idea? Many great artists make their art by copying things they see in the world around them, or illustrating a well-known story. Even those that tend towards the more abstract still use concepts that we all understand on some level, whether it be the ordered, clean colored blocks of Piet Mondrian or the chaotic splatterings of Jackson Pollock. One might wonder what a change it would bring to the legal status of Goldman's work if he openly admitted the complete lack of originality, and stated proudly that his artistic genre was plagiarism. Really, why not?

The odd fact is that plagiarism is a very strange concept, one of those ones that is hard to define, but you "know it when you see it". When you were required to write a paper in school, you were probably admonished by your teachers to use the encyclopedia, but not copy your info directly out of it, but rather summarize. When you summarize or paraphrase, you state in your own words and sentence structures the meaning of someone else's writing. Since the words and the sentence structures are yours, you do not use quotation marks, though, of course, you must acknowledge the author of the idea. If you use the original sentence pattern and substitute synonyms for key words or use the original words and change the sentence pattern, you are not paraphrasing but plagiarizing, even if the source is acknowledged because both methods use someone else's expression without quotation marks. I copied most of this paragraph directly from another website about plagiarism in an attempt to be ironic, but is it plagiarism when I acknowlege having done it, despite lack of quotation marks?

Sure, Goldman stole the image, but in a way, the true originality of Goldman's method was the blatant manner in which he stole it. I don't know if anyone would call that art, though.

What's so "Good" about Friday?

Although I think I noted in the past that there's almost something clichéd about a Christmas post, I don't think that it may be so for an Easter post. Perhaps I'm wrong, I don't know. The thing is, though, while I wanted to make a post for the Easter season, I was having a hard time figuring out what it was exactly that I wanted to say about the holiday. Then it hit me: in a way, I'd partially already said it.

In my previous post about Elizabeth Edwards, I noted that while there is sometimes a faith that moves mountains, I think more often there is a faith that says, "You know, that mountain is probably there for a good reason." I wondered if such a message would be accepted by many, and I suspected that there are more than a few Christians who would scoff at the idea of a passive, "let it be" faith. (Of course, since nobody seems to be reading, it's hard to tell what people think. It's okay, I don't write for fame, but merely as a creative outlet.)

Then it occurred to me that the best way to make an argument for the value of something to a Christian is to show it modeled in the life of Christ. So today, we come to Good Friday.

The evening before Jesus was crucified, a couple of things happened in short succession, the Gospel of Luke outlining the events best in Luke 22:39-51. Jesus goes off a short distance from his disciples to pray by himself, and this is what he says in that passage:

"Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done." (Luke 22:42)

Jesus knew that he had less than 24 hours left to live, and he wasn't looking forward to the painful death coming to him, but he didn't want a miraculous escape if it meant that his purpose in coming to earth and dying would be defeated. He knew that this was his fate, not only that night, but for all of his life. Many times he had taught his disciples that it was coming. In Matthew 16:21, Jesus tells his disciples that he is going to be arrested, tortured, and put to death, and later in that same discourse, he gives the famous line about

"If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me." (Matt. 16:24)

He means that in a figurative way for many, but for more than a few with him that day, it was meant literally. The Apostle Peter in particular is known to have been crucified. Jesus knew that difficult times were coming for him and for his followers, but he did not suggest running away, but facing it with bravery instead.

It's the second event that happened that night that illustrates something about Jesus' attitude, faith, and power. Shortly after praying the prayer above, the soldiers came to arrest him. Peter, knowing by that time what was going on, but still not completely accepting of the idea of Jesus going to the cross, jumps up and cuts off the ear of one of the men with a sword. Jesus rebukes him, saying,

"Put your sword away! Shall I not drink the cup the Father has given me? Do you think I cannot call on my Father, and he will at once put at my disposal more than twelve legions of angels?" (John 18:11, Matt. 26:53)

Jesus points out that he is accepting his fate despite the fact that he has at his disposal the supernatural power to avoid it, and with that, he heals the man's ear. That act of healing is the last miracle of Jesus recorded in the Gospels, and he performs it for a man who is coming to take him away to his death!

How could any Christian say that anyone has greater faith than Jesus had himself? Being God in the flesh, he knew more than any other the power and the purpose of God. He knew that in any situation, he had either the power to provide for himself anything he wanted, or to simply ask his Father for provision and it would be given. But throughout the Gospels, even to the moment of his death on the cross, Jesus never performed a miracle for his own personal needs.

Maybe in your hour of need, God will save you. Maybe he will rescue you from your trouble or heal your pain, or make you rich. Maybe. But consider this: Jesus never did any of those things for himself.

Consider the things that you wish you had. Feel free to pray for them; it's not a sin. But think also of the things that God has given you, and realize that any favor you have been shown by God is more generosity than He showed for His Son. Jesus, the Lord and Creator of the universe, gave us everything, and today is the day that we remember that all he took for himself was death, the punishment for our sins. Good Friday wasn't such a good day for Jesus, but he made it a very good day for the rest of us.

Have a blessed Easter.