James Cameron goes Green

I went to see James Cameron's Science Fiction epic Avatar today. The movie has very impressive special effects, spine tingling action and good acting.

However, the movie's overall message makes it worse than J.J. Abrams' Star Trek and ties with Gene Roddenberry's franchise reboot as the worst movie of the year.

Avatar takes place in the future on Pandora, a moon of a gas giant named Polyphemus, that is located over 4 light years from Earth. Pandora is being explored for certain resources that Earth needs since Earth's economy is bad.

Pandora is a lush, tropical planet filled with unique wildlife and is inhabited by a race of primitive humanoid beings called the Na'vi.

One Na'vi tribe occupies an area that is plentiful in unobtainium that a private corporation wants to extract since the mineral would be of some use on Earth and is extremely valuable.

The U.S. military is also present to give logistical support and protection to the company's efforts. A Marine named Jake Sully travels to Pandora to take his dead brother Tony's place in which Jake assumes control of his brother's avatar in order to make contact with the Na'vi.

Jake Sully is paralyzed from the waist down as the result of an injury he sustained while participating in a combat mission on Earth. He is the only person who can successfully use his twin brother's avatar since Jake's genetic material is the same as Tony's.

After assuming the use of the avatar Jake begins the task to win the Na'vi's trust in hopes of convincing them to allow the unobtainium to be mined. Sully does this so he can get an expensive operation done to recieve a new set of legs that is promised to him by the Pandora Earth colony's Marine commander.

Upon interacting with the local Na'vi tribe Jake Sully begins to appreciate their way of life and goes so far as to befriend a Na'vi woman who is also the tribal chief's daughter.

Later Jake becomes torn between his duty as a Marine and the existence of the Na'vi that he has learned to know and love.

Where the movie goes bad isn't so much Jake's conflict as much as it is the movie's underlying plot.

In Avatar the primitive and simplistic lifestyle of the Na'vi and their quasi-Gaia worship of Pandoara's ecology is held to be a moral virtue while the company representative and most of the military members are portrayed in the film in a negative light which demonstrates where Cameron's loyalties lie.

We see also see Cameron's political sympathies in one other film he made which was the highest grossing film of all time: Titanic.

Titanic not only generated lots of ticket sales, it is the apple of almost every Marxist's cinematic eye.

The overall message in Titanic, simply put, is egalitarianism. No one is better than anyone else, we are all equal, wealth is bad, being poor is good and, while you are at it, don't think for yourself.

Now Cameron has weighed in (yet again) with another morally repulsive movie that, like Titanic, is portrays self sacrifice as one's the highest moral end.

This time it is a nod to the evil philosophy of environmentalism that calls for the destruction of human life by indirectly calling for people to sacrifice their lives and livelihoods to the needs of nature.

This message is embodied not only by Jake Sully's actions during most of the movie but also the Earth scientist's hypothesis that the ecosystem of Pandora is interconnected and should not be touched while at the same time ridiculing criticism of this idea and condemning economic development in the form of utilizing a planet's resources.

While one could appreciate Avatar from an aesthetic perspective, however, the artistic elements of the film are secondary to its awful philosophical message.

The movie itself is said to be one of the most expensive movies ever made. At a price tag of up to $300 to $400 million Avatar opened this weekend with opening day ticket sales of $27 million.

Not a great start but time will tell how audiences are receptive to it. It is my hope that audiences will take their dollars to see films other than Avatar and reject James Cameron's platform to propagandize for his subtle anti-human plot.

Rot in Peace, Oral Roberts

Televangelist Oral Roberts died due to pneumonia complications at the age of 91 Tuesday.

When it comes to people like Roberts, I am reminded of one remark made by an Episcopal priest during a sermon that gave a short summary of the history of Christianity.

When Christianity started off in the middle east, he said, it was a belief; when it came to Europe it was a culture; when it came to the United States it became an enterprise.

If there was any religionist who best encompassed the latter part of this remark it certainly was Oral Roberts.

As a boy suffering from tuberculosis and growing up in poverty, Roberts claimed that he had a direct communication from God ordering him to become a minister.

Thanks to broadcast television, Roberts' ministry went from traveling tent services in the 1950's to one of the largest religious enterprises in the world.

Roberts' religious enterprise included a university that still bears his name, world-wide faith healing crusades, preaching on prime-time national television and a publishing arm to churn out dozens of books and magazines.

Roberts was a proponent of the posterity gospel. According to this contradictory doctrine, if Christians donated to him and pray sufficiently they will be rewarded by health, wealth and happiness.

However, Roberts' wealth and theology would be severly tested.

His university would end up falling into debt, questions were raised about the credibility of his theology and fundraising techniques and Oral Roberts' son, Richard, would resign as university head due to accusations of using university funds for personal benefit.

In 2007, 3 former professors of Oral Roberts University sued the institution for wrongful termination due to their raising objections to Richard Roberts wanting ORU to become directly involved in a Tulsa, Oklahoma mayoral race.

In the late 1980's I remember one news story that showed a chink in Roberts' armor. At one point Roberts made a personal appearance claiming he needed to raise $8 million for a his University's or else God was going to call him home.

After $8 million was raised he announced the fundraising goal had been met and his life spared yet his credibility was not.

I also recall statements made by him on television that, in addition to making contributions, if one placed their hands on the television and prayed with him that whatever problems one had God would fix them.

As it turns out, according to The New York Times, in the 1950's a group of ministers in Arizona offered to pay someone a $1000 if they could provide medical proof of Roberts curing them after recieving his faith healing.

No one came forward.

At one point Roberts made bizzare claims that he was able to raise the dead. Like his faith healing, no verification of this has ever been uncovered.

In his book The Faith Healers, James Randi telegraphed Roberts asking him for proof of his resurrections. Not surprisingly, Roberts did not respond to Randi's inquiry.

Like other televangelists and religionists of his ilk, Oral Roberts was nothing more than a charlatan.

Roberts lived his life convincing people believe he could heal them, raise people from the dead and help his followers to become prosperous if they sent him donations and bought his products while praying to God.

Yet now he is dead and you notice that, despite his alleged healing and resurrection powers, Roberts didn't heal himself nor is he resurrected from the grave.

The world will be a better place without him.

ClimateGate: The Movies Everyone Should See

Next time you’re in a discussion with someone who is convinced that global warming is: a) man made and b) unprecedented, show them this brief video, this blog post and this news article.



In this video, a boy and his dad to do an analysis of urban biases on surface temperature records that NASA, the EPA, the CRU, and the IPCC won't perform.

The Matriarch of Mexico Myth

December 12th Mexicans will commemorate the 478th anniversary of the legend of the Virgin of Guadalupe in which an apparition resembling the Virgin Mary is allegeded to have revealed herself to an Aztec peasant named Juan Diego.

The story goes that Diego was told by the Virgin to go to the Bishop of Mexico and tell him she wanted a church built on the ground he encountered her.

However, Juan Diego claimed he had a vision of her but no one else, including the Roman Catholic Church, saw the vision or was able to verify what Diego saw or the event that occured itself.

Despite the unverifiability of Diego's story, the Roman Catholic Church erected a shrine on the site of the alleged occurence in which the Virgin of Guadalupe Basilica is second only to the Vatican in terms of the millions of visitors who come each year.

It is obvious that the tale of Mexico's matriarchial saint is based on another apparition tale with similar themes.

For example, in the Cáceres Province of the Extremadura region of Castile, Spain a shrine to the Lady of Guadalupe still exists. At the beginning of the 14th Century, a Spanish shepherd claimed that the Virgin Mary had appeared to him and ordered him to tell priests to dig at the site of his discovery.

Clergy who excavated the site claimed discovering a hidden statue and built a small shrine around it which later evolved into a monastery.

The image of the Mexican virgin painted on a shroud and statue of the Spanish virgin both alleged to have not been made with human hands are definitely indications of myth manufacture.

According to Joe Nickell in his book Looking for a Miracle, the story of the Mexican Virgin was dated in 1531. Yet the shroud the Virgin appears on is dated as early as 1556.

Nickell goes on to state that during an independent review of the shroud containing the Virgin's image, sketch lines as well as cracking and flaking all along the vertical seam of the image were observed that pass along the original of mantle, neck and robe.

He also points out during a Church investigation of the shroud, a priest named Juan de Maseques admitted that the Guadalupe Virgin image was painted on the original shroud by Aztec painter Marcos Cipac.

In his book Nickell cites author Jody Brandt Smith in which she points out the original shrine to the Virgin of Guadalupe is located on the hill of Tepeyac directly in front of the temple of Aztec Virgin goddess of Corn and the Earth Tonantzin.

The Mexican Virgin tale was obviously borrowed from the Spanish Guadalupe story and grafting or syncretizing the Aztec goddess was done in order to win over Aztec Indians during the Spanish conquest of Mexico which gave the perception of ecclasiastical legitimacy to the Spaniards and the Catholic Church.

Men create gods after their own image, not only with regard to their form but with regard to their mode of life. - Aristotle

Christma$ is about Prosperity, Not Piety

Many of the things done during this time of year (such as festivities, gift giving and yule logs) have their roots in pagan traditions used by ancient peoples in order to celebrate the winter solstice.

Gift and charitable giving was an early Roman practice during the festival of Sol Invictus held from mid to late December.

Various foods and the usage of trees for decorations were used by Germanic peoples during their celebrations which started with feasts that began on December 25th.

The Nordic peoples of Sweden and Denmark commemorated the winter solstice with their Yule holiday that involved the usage of yule logs, feasting on cooked goats and boars, and even singing in which Nordic holiday festivities started in late December and lasted until early January.

During Christianity's origins, Christians originally did not commemorate their messiah's birthday since they believed his Second Coming would come soon.

Had it not been the Renaissances of the 12th and 14th centuries which ushered in new eras of scientific and economic progress, the era known as The Dark Ages would have kept mankind enslaved to faith and irrationality for much longer.

As a result of the influence of the two Renaissances and Christians realizing their savior might not return as soon as they thought, the result was implementing a holiday on December 25th modeled after the Sol Invictus and Yule pagan festivals in order to commemorate their messiah's birth.

In 17th century Massachsetts commemorations of Jesus's birthday were originally denounced by Puritans and Protestant radicals as being worldy and were subsequently outlawed. Despite the ban's demise in 1681, celebrating Christmas didn't become socially acceptiable in the state until the mid-1800's.

Ultimately, the holiday is not about pagan or Christian myths, celebrating an altruistic or mystic belief, nor is it about participating in charitable events, such as serving food to the homeless and poor or plopping coins into a charity bucket.

What Christmas is and should be about commemorating the very thing that enables us to celebrate it. The holiday is and should be used to celebrate the two things responsible for our happiness and prosperity: profit and commercialism.

It is the modern-day Ebeneezer Scrooges who say Bah Humbug to commericalism of any kind by condemning economic progress that makes holidays, like Christmas, and the overall abundance we enjoy possble.

They condemn profit and capitalism, yet, in one way or another, are the beneficiaries of the very economic system that allowed them to be where they are now.

Progress itself is not inevitable. And what happens tomorrow is usually the result of ideas espoused today. Because religion (especially Christianity) holds sacrifice and suffering as it's highest values, imagine what would happen if we followed these ethics to their irrational and illogical conclusions.

People would no longer recieve Christmas bonuses, no more trees and decorations, no more Christmas and after-holiday sales. No more exchange of gifts, yule-tide cheer, holiday parties with egg nog and good food, extended shopping hours, or special television shows and movies and advertising.

Taking suffering and sacrifice, as demonstrated and preached by Jesus, even further we would also be denied alot of the meal dishes, clothes, medical breakthroughs, electronic communications, books and newspapers as well as many of the means of transportation we enjoy. Even the poor would wallow in even more misery equal to that seen in many third world countries due to the lack of conveniences they would have.

If we all did what we were told by religious and intellectual elites the stagnation that results from their sacrificial messages would make life miserable. Under this scenario I have no doubt the anti-capitalist Grinches would condemn businesses for not producing or doing enough.

Despite the economic hardships seen this past year, movie theaters, shopping centers and restaurants are still attracting crowds and, better still, those of us who are still employed are able to celebrate this time of year. Our doing so helps create wealth so everytone, including the unemployed or poor, can benefit.

To villify commercialism is to spit in our faces and condemn us to a life of despair. Since commerce is a natural outgrowth of reason and science and not the result of the invisible hand of a god or mystical creation, it is clear that we have earned the abundance we enjoy this and even other times of the year.

The special meaning of this holiday is not religious or self-sacrificial. It is recognizing the reality that, underneath it all, our lives require us to use our reason and rational self-interest (i.e. ego) in order to live and prosper.

The goods and services that support you and your loved ones are created ultimately by selfish capitalists using science and they profit, as well as you, from their production. A process magnified for Christmas.

Merry Christmas!

Swiss Vote to Outlaw Minarets

Swiss voters approved a constitutional amendment banning the construction of any more minarets that surround Islamic temples of worship (a.k.a. mosques) over the weekend.

Consequently, the ban has brought widespread criticism from other western countries while Islamic country leaders are cautious in commenting about the vote result.

The ban does not outlaw the building of mosques (which are temples of worship for muslims) themselves, it does prohibit the building of the tower-like structures that surround Muslim temples that criers use to call out to Muslims announcing prayer time is at hand.

While the ban on minaret construction is wrong, it is important to understand the reasons for the Swiss electorate's vote. Europe has seen large amounts of Muslims migrate to the continent since around 1998 in which not only are the Muslim immigrants establishing residency there, many are choosing not to assimilate into their new homes.

This is not only by choice but also by design. In many European countries, Muslims can qualify for generous government-financed aid. Muslims who subscribe to radical forms of Islam can, in turn, not only preserve their archaic way of life due to the aid they recieve but also use the money to fund mullahs who espouse radical Islamic views.

Journalist Bruce Bawer discussed this in his book While Europe Slept. According to Bawer, unlike Europeans, radical Muslims will take as much of the benefits they get in which radical mullahs tell their followers they have a right, if not duty, to take advantage of the infidel's welfare system.

In Denmark, for example, Bawer points out Muslims make up a tiny percentage of the population but recieve almost half of Danish outlays.

In Norway (who is comparible with Denmark in this regard) a welfare recipient can recieve an exemption of the $2k fee to obtain a driver's license. This on top of a $3k a month disability check they can recieve if they qualify.

Some European countries, like Switzerland, have special taxes used to pay for the building and upkeep of Christian churches. I would not be surprised if countries that have church taxes also use the money generated from them to help build mosques.

In an act of appeasement, after demands by British Muslims and with the blessing of the Church of England, Great Britain has even gone so far as to allow sharia courts to preside over Muslim-specific cases.

The people of the radical Muslim's new home are helping to fund the very ideas and people whom want to undermine the European's existence and declared war on their way of life.

While this Jihad mentality is fostered by many years of western involvement in the Middle East, at the same time, it is also indicative of the radical, violent nature of the religion of Islam itself. It is abundantly clear that Islam is not a religion of peace anymore than Christianity or even Judaism.

In terms of the Swiss vote to ban Minarets, aside from many Swiss citizens objecting to the aesthetic awkwardness of having them built, the violence committed in European countries by radical Muslims is clearly the reason for the ban's approval and is a demonstration of the fear the average European feels about the presence of Muslims in their country.

I am sure the tragic death of film maker Theo van Gogh (who was the great, great grandson of Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh) at the hands of a radical Muslim named Mohammed Bouyeri is still remembered by many Europeans and the retaliation associated with that along with protests by Muslims of cartoons of Mohammed published in 2006 and the recent backlash due to their publication.

It is the radical Muslims, not the Swiss politicians, who should take notice of this and should give them pause that, while Europeans tend to be tolerant, they have their limits and are obviously reacting negatively to the increasing Islamization of the European continent.

Some European politicians and the press evade or will not acknowledge the honor killings of Muslim women and girls, assaults and killings of locals at the hands of Muslim radicals who also openly cheer at the prospects of a takeover of the region that could very well happen in the near future.

Instead, campaigns like the one used to enact this minaret ban are championed in order to distract attention from politician's awful policies and inept leadership.

The Evils of Socialized Medicine

These are excerpts from the Italian movie We the Living made in the 1940's which was based on Ayn Rand's novel of the same name. The book is largely based on Ms. Rand's life while living in Soviet Russia.

These scenes demonstrate what happens under socialized medicine. Any claims to the contrary or denials of rationing by proponents, like President Obama, are based on lies and misrepresentations.

Real life experiences of people who lived in totalitarian societies need to be told, like Ms. Rand experienced under communism, now more than ever.

This Thanksgiving, Celebrate Reason, not Faith

Thanksgiving is a uniquely American holiday. It is used to celebrate man's ability to produce. It is a day filled with wonderful things to commemorate a person's production throughout the year.

The mouth-watering turkey, aromatic pies, savory trimmings and, in some cases, cosmopolitan decorations are a testament to the creation of wealth. It is these facets of the holiday that should be a source of pride to every self-reliant person.

However, there are those, motivated by hatred for mankind and our comfort and happiness, who would rather make Thanksgiving into a day based on guilt.

Thanksgiving critics, such as environmentalists and religionists, criticize our lifestyles. They say that Americans should be ashamed for consuming so much (especially food). Our material abundance, they say, contributes to a depletion of things like the planet's natural resources.

Critics insist that the construction of homes and buildings, usage of fossil fuels, abundance of food and drink, driving vehicles are cause, not for celebration, but should be condemned. That we should feel guilt for our selfish ways and that Americans have a duty to give reparations to those less fortunate.

They shutter at the possibility of the rest of the world being able to consume the way Americans do.

If the world came to consume the way we do, it will result in a utopia, not a dystopia as many doom-gloomers insist. For the world to embrace economic freedom, even in minimal amounts, means that the production of wealth is multiplied.

Human survival is not automatic. In order for someone to live, their life depends on producing successfully. From the food we eat, the clothes on our backs, the science researched and art forms we enjoy, every act of production requires thought. The greater the thought, the greater the creation.

Yet all production is the result of creation. The wealth created where it didn't exist before and was the result of human effort to reshape places and elements considered of little value into a scheme to benefit mankind. Not the result of mystical creation as told in holy texts such as the Bible or Koran.

In terms of Thanksgiving, less than a year after the founding of the Jamestown settlement in the 1600's, only 46 of the 104 original colonists were left alive, most having perished for lack of food.

This was due, in large part, to the colonists casting off their relgious tenents, since applying them to their way of life was destructive. At first, colonial land and farming was owned and worked on a communal basis along with the care and raising of children.

It wasn't until rejecting their religious beliefs and embracing free trade that the death, famine and misery that resulted from the Jamestown colonists initial communistic policy ended.

The Pilgrims were so pleased with the results from their change of heart that they prospered and didn't starve following their arrival that they saw it as an occasion for a Thanksgiving.

However, the colonist's bold step required thought and action to put their new policies to work. In order to survive, the colonists had to produce. And to produce, they used their logic and reason.

It was Abraham Lincoln who made the first Thanksgiving an official holiday in 1863. Upon making his declaration, Lincoln stated that we have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of heaven.

Yet this statement and the many declarations made by clergy and environmentalists condemning our abundance while calling on us to sacrifice for the greater good or because society or some mystical element - such as God or nature - demands it, is an insult to everything we work for throughout the year.

Thanksgiving is not about faith and charity. It is about thought and production. The proper thanks for one's wealth is not mystical guilt, sacrifice or condemnation but celebration, if one has rightly and morally earned it.

When you sit at the dinner table with family and friends ready to consume your dinner on fine china, ignore those who damn your ability to live by calling for you to sacrifice and relish the day since it is done in commemoration of your hard work and effort.

You have earned it.

Happy Thanksgiving!