Jeff Ling

Coming in December!? Alright! Oh… 2012. Sigh.

What was meant to be a debate ended up being a lecture by Dr. Craig due to the no-show by Richard Dawkins. It’s a great talk and worth a listen.

When I set out to read The Christian Delusion: Why Faith Fails , I knew I wasn’t in for a particularly pleasant experience. My anticipation was that the author, John Loftus, had surely gone out of his way to paint believers in the worst possible light and he did not disappoint. After a few weeks of being mocked, ridiculed, taunted and despised, I finished the book that one reviewer stated “destroyed Christianity.”

I don’t think so.

Loftus will simply dismiss people like myself as delusional and uneducated. It’s a fact that John does have more degrees than I do and the man has worked hard at what he does. Even so, I wont concede to the status of a pea brain who has given no serious thought to his beliefs. I stand in good company. Countless numbers of brilliant people in all fields ascribe to the same faith as I and do so with confidence.

I read The Christian Delusion in order to better understand the arguments put forth by atheists. The book, which is a compilation of articles with Loftus as editor and a contributor, presents it’s material in a well written fashion with copious footnotes. All the usual subjects of attack are here: the authority of the Bible, the resurrection of Jesus, faith as a social construct, the goodness of God and, surprisingly interesting chapters on cruelty to animals and Nazism as an extension of Christian prejudice and hatred.

What is obvious from the outset is that Loftus and company are interested in only one side of the proverbial coin. For the most part, their sources are those who are already atheists or skeptics. When they quote those who are sympathetic to Christianity, the quotes tend to come from those who hold extremely low views of scripture. This provides a very skewed presentation in regards to Biblical authority. When John Shelby Spong is one of your go to guys for a theologian… well now you just look foolish. There is another side to the coin. There are scholars who date the gospels and letters much earlier than those Loftus and company consult, and who refute with expertise the idea that nothing can be really known of the historical Jesus. There are those who wrestle with the hard questions of faith without succumbing to atheistic views. There are believers who study the neuroscience of belief without dismissing the mystery of spirituality. The saying “it’s not where you start, it’s where you finish,” does not apply here. It does natter where you start. Loftus and company are starting from a closed system which holds no option for a God who could have possibly inspired the Biblical authors. So case closed. But, it begs the question as to whether or not the atheists here are being intellectually honest. Persuasive? maybe. Sarcastic? Undoubtedly. Honest? Hardly.

There are those who have written a comprehensive response to the book.  The Infidel Delusion by Patrick Chan, Jason Engwer, Steve Hays & Paul Manata is a chapter by chapter refutation of The Christian Delusion and well worth pursuing. For those interested, you can watch a debate between John Loftus and one of his favorite targets, Dinesh D’Souza, here.

Do I recommend the book? By no means. Those who need to do research on an academic level may want to read it but the effort can only render results that are mildly but usually mis-informative, slightly entertaining and hopelessly biased.

I still believe.

Back before the costumes, the glasses and the notoriety, Reginald Kenneth Dwight (aka Elton John) released one the best recordings of a brilliant live performance ever, 11-17-70.  I will confess quickly that Elton lost me somewhere between Goodbye Yellow Brick Road and Caribou. It was obvious that he had turned his talents in different directions and the culture that was “Elton John” was taking over. Still, his early works remain some of my favorites and 11-17-70 stands front and center.

In 1970, Elton had released two albums in the US; the self-titled debut with the hit “Your Song” and Tumbleweed Connection which included the outstanding “Burn Down the Mission.”  The film score for the movie “Friends” was also floating around though it’s official release wouldn’t be until ’71. On November 17th of 1970, Elton with bassist  Dee Murray and drummer Nigel Olsson entered the recording studio of A&R in New York, for a live radio broadcast. There was a small, but very enthusiastic audience on hand for the 13 song performance.  It was never intended to be released as a LP but the circulation of poor quality bootlegs prompted an official release. Unfortunately, the entire concert didn’t make it onto vinyl. Of the 13 songs, only 6 would be released with a seventh, Amoreena, added to a ’96 reissue.
 

Elton himself has said that this is his best recorded live performance. I agree. It’s also the best opportunity to hear the amazing talents of  Murray and Olsson who just shine. This is also the only live recorded performance of the band as a three piece. A year later Davey Johnstone would join the band as a guitarist.

There are three covers on the LP, a full version of  Honky Tonk Women by the Stones and a nod to Get Back (Lennon-McCartney) and My Baby Left Me (Arthur Crudup) which appear as a medley in the extended (18:20) Burn Down the Mission.  The rest of the tracks are Elton and collaborator Bernie Taupin’s works: Take Me To the Pilot, Sixty Years On, Can I Put You On, Bad Side of the Moon and Burn Down the Mission.

Throughout the show the songs are performed with an energy and an urgency that highlights a band hitting its stride and full of promise. As the story goes, according to announcer Dave Herman who opens and closes the LP, Elton cut his hand at some point in his vigorous playing and by the concert’s end the keyboard was covered with blood. Appropriate. I can’t think of another live recording where the band so completely put all their cards on the table. No overdubs, no strings, no horns, nothing but a grand piano, bass and drums played with more gripping intensity than I have ever heard.

The really great news here is that these services even exist. We all knew that, given the polifieration of smart phones, high speed internet and massive storage operations, that the cloud was going to be a reality and now it is in a big way. On the storage side of things you’ve had services like Carbonite but one of the major drawbacks of services like that is that they refuse to store anything on their servers that is not on your computer’s internal hard drive.  For those with significant collections of music this is entirely unrealistic. As for streaming, forget it.

Enter Google and Amazon. I’ve been using both and I’m excited about the possibilities these services offer. The jury is still out on who has the best service primarily because Google is still in beta stage. Uploads are currently limited although I’m sure that will change and a pricing package similar to Amazon’s will be offered. Both services do an adequate job of delivering your content to your desktop and have standard playlist and shuffle options. What sets them apart from each other? Here is my analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of the these cloud storage and streaming sites:

 Google Music (Beta)

Pro:

• The Android app: I have found it to load faster than Amazon’s cloud storage which will be important for impatient listeners.
• Free for now – although that will change soon.
• Ability to edit album and song info after uploading. This is huge! Amazon does not offer this at the moment and it’s a serious omission. If things aren’t tagged correctly then you can edit the info on the spot rather than having to delete, retag and upload. Amazon does a particularly poor job of matching artwork with uploads so, unless you’ve got the right artwork already embedded you can get some really bizarre match-ups. With Google Music you can simply change the graphic inside the system. This feature is the single biggest thing Google Music has going for it. I’ve had to repair and replace too much on Amazon so if you’re going to use their service, get a good tagger program and do the prep work beforehand. Even then you’ll occasionally miss something and then will need to repair and reload.

Con:

• Limited storage- but that will change. If the pricing plans are equivalent to Amazon then that’s a big mark in Google Music’s favor.
• The interface – not as nice looking as Amazons and a tad awkward. Hopefully that’s being re-tooled.
• Upload time- Your mileage may differ but I have found Amazon’s upload times to be much faster than Google’s. Not a real big deal long as you’re willing to start large uploads and walk away for awhile.
• No social media sharing – Really? Surely they are going to fix that. How can I narcissistically inform the world of what I’m listening to?

Amazon Cloud Player

Pro:

• Upload time – Amazon is really fast on the upload/download side. You can upload a ton of music in a relatively short time.
• Pricing and Storage- Amazon is bundling unlimited free music storage with a fee for storing files like pictures and documents. Kinda odd but who can complain about 20 bucks a year for 20 gigs of file storage and unlimited gigs for music storage? You can buy more file storage (up to 1000 gigs) if you need it but again – there is no limit on music regardless. If Google doesn’t match this or do better, then it’s no contest.
• The interface – looks good and easy to get around.
• Social Media Sharing – tell Facebook and Twitter what you’re listening to complete with a preview.

Con:

• The Android app – my experience has been that it’s slow loading and gets hung up easily.
•  No editing after uploading – like I said above, this is HUGE!  You’re limited to only moving files and renaming them. You can’t fix artist, genre, album name, etc.. and you can’t change the artwork. Why is this bad? Because Amazon has a blind monkey somewhere matching up album names with the correct artwork. So, if you don’t have it tagged right before uploading, you’re going to end up with some weird stuff.

For now I’m leaning heavily toward Google Music  because of the editing option. If Google gets the pricing right then its a done deal and hopefully they will get the social media links up and running. On the other hand – if Amazon will just add the editing feature then I think they leap into the lead even if Google matches the pricing. Good look, social media, fast uploads and editing – I’m there. Just fix that Android app.