Mark P. Shea's Blog, page 1241

Study sez:

People with 'mild' forms of autism are more likely to be atheists

This is not a huge surprise. Vox Day has made this connection for years.

So do other atheists who recognize that much of the atheist subculture seems to have serious trouble with normal affective and social cues. Such atheist get a lot of flack from the rather large segment of the atheist community on line which can see absolutely no problems at all with itself and wonders why the world does not recognize their obvious and flawless superiority to the untermenschen.

Not surprisingly, Rajib Khan, writing on Discover Magazine's 'Gene Expression' blog said of the study resultes, "I doubt this is going to surprise too many people." Nope. Not at all. He's right that you can't generalize to the whole population, of course. But the fact remains that, particularly on line, the bulk of the voices (and many of the leaders such as Dawkins, Myers, and Coyne) do come across like people who seem singularly incapable of normal social and emotional interactions. They themselves attribute it to their massively superior intellects. I attribute it something like an autism spectrum disorder.

Let me hasten to add: There's no shame in autism spectrum disorders just as there's no shame in any other of the afflictions to which flesh is heir. God can make a saint out of every human being he creates if only the will to cooperate with grace is there and I expect there will be any number of saints who bore the cross of autism spectrum disorders as they have borne many other afflictions.

But there is shame in pride and the culture of Evangelical Atheism is absolutely sodden with it. Such pride blinds weak people to the fact that they are weak and turns their characteristic flaws (whatever they are) into "virtues" that help make them the abrasive jerks that guys like Myers, Coyne and their acolytes perpetually show themselves to be. Sin, as well as grace, "builds" on nature.[image error]

Whew! That was close!

Our Judicial system, the envy of the world, successfully manages to kill Troy Davis before too much evidence of his possible innocence accrues and public demand to revisit the case creates a big paperwork headache for everybody.  The important thing is that we got somebody killed, not whether or not they, you know, deserved it.  Moloch requires sacrifice and isn't that picky about who he eats.

Update: My pal Secret Agent Man tells me (in the combox) to cool my jets on the "innocence" thing and I think he's got a point (though I also think the case still looks pretty dodgy too). I'm not going to go to the mat for his innocence particularly, but what bugs me is that there seems to have been little interest in "the process" for the fact that a good chunk of the testimony against him looks pretty shady. I'm opposed to the DP even if he were guilty, but part of what bugs me about it as well as that a sort of bureaucratic inertia decrees that a prisoner, once found guilty, must be executed even when there are real doubts about his guilty. Rick Perry swaggering conscience-free approach to questions of executing possibly innocent men is the paradigm here and that's what I was (over) reacting to in this case.

I will have some more to say about the DP tomorrow. But right now I'm off to a Boy Scout Court of Honor.[image error]

In Celebration of Luke the Nordic Giant's Graduation...

I give you, his Demo Reel!



If you are looking for a very good animator, CGI artist, and skilled dude in the graphic arts, Luke Shea is your guy! Anybody who knows how to use ZBrush to model a CGI image of Stephen Tobolowsky is somebody so exceedingly cool that no decent animation shop can live without him. Hire him today at a large salary and help him starting slaying those school loans and feeding this adorable Cuteness:

[image error][image error]

Prayers for the Poor and Weak

...as the economy suffers more punishing blows and the accumulation of our sins and folly continues to unspool. In a democratic capitalist system, we sooner or later get exactly the economy we want and exactly the government we deserve. In a pagan and rapidly de-Christianizing world like ours, the strong increasingly do what they can and the weak increasingly suffer what they must. At the end of the day, the only ones who will care about the poor and weak (and that's going to be a lot more of us soon) will be Jesus and his saints. The rich and powerful will be too busy saving themselves and enslaving the rest.

Only the Christian Church can offer any rational objection to a complete confidence in the rich. For she has maintained from the beginning that the danger was not in man's environment, but in man. Further, she has maintained that if we come to talk of a dangerous environment, the most dangerous environment of all is the commodious environment. I know that the most modern manufacture has been really occupied in trying to produce an abnormally large needle. I know that the most recent biologists have been chiefly anxious to discover a very small camel. But if we diminish the camel to his smallest, or open the eye of the needle to its largest — if, in short, we assume the words of Christ to have meant the very least that they could mean, His words must at the very least mean this — that rich men are not very likely to be morally trustworthy. Christianity even when watered down is hot enough to boil all modern society to rags. The mere minimum of the Church would be a deadly ultimatum to the world. For the whole modern world is absolutely based on the assumption, not that the rich are necessary (which is tenable), but that the rich are trustworthy, which (for a Christian) is not tenable. You will hear everlastingly, in all discussions about newspapers, companies, aristocracies, or party politics, this argument that the rich man cannot be bribed. The fact is, of course, that the rich man is bribed; he has been bribed already. That is why he is a rich man. The whole case for Christianity is that a man who is dependent upon the luxuries of this life is a corrupt man, spiritually corrupt, politically corrupt, financially corrupt. There is one thing that Christ and all the Christian saints have said with a sort of savage monotony. They have said simply that to be rich is to be in peculiar danger of moral wreck. It is not demonstrably un-Christian to kill the rich as violators of definable justice. It is not demonstrably un-Christian to crown the rich as convenient rulers of society. It is not certainly un-Christian to rebel against the rich or to submit to the rich. But it is quite certainly un-Christian to trust the rich, to regard the rich as more morally safe than the poor. - G.K. Chesterton

Believe it or not, I have actually heard him called a "Communist" for saying obviously Christian things like this. Such is the Stockholm Syndrome of our time.[image error]

The People's Democratic National Security State of Heaven...

making sure that somebody can't have a weekly bible study in their home--or the terrorists will already have won!

I remember reading stories like this coming out of the Soviet Union and the PRC. Of course, Caesar hasn't yet reached the point where he invades the home, beats the homeowner and carts him off to re-education camp for the crime of doing what he has every right to do in the privacy of his own castle. He just punishes with fines at present. But Caesar is a jealous god and such ideas will eventually occur to him as our culture continues to de-Christianize.[image error]

Prayer Request

A reader writes:

I want to let you know how much I enjoy reading your blog.
It really encourages me and reminds me that the Lord answers our prayers.

I wanted to write you and ask you to keep someone in yours.
He is my ex-boyfriend and I had to end the relationship because it was a really unhealthy one.
He is a person that God gave many gifts and talents but he is broken and struggles with depression and anxiety and uses alcohol and drugs to deal with it.
He doesn't have any kind of a relationship with God, and though I brought him to mass and encouraged him to pray, it doesn't seem I've changed that at all.
I love him very much and the thought of him spending his life miserable and in denial is very painful to me.
Please lift him up in your prayers. (And me too?) I've been trying to do the right and discern God's will for us and this has been a really difficult situation.
I truly appreciate it.

Father, we ask that you would reveal yourself to this man and lift him up out of the snares of addiction and depression and into the light, joy, and peace of Christ. We ask that you would grace, strength, peace and consolation to your daughter and do all these things to the glory of your Name through Christ our Lord. Mother Mary, pray for them. Amen![image error]

Theologian Restates Obvious and Ancient Teaching of the Church

Postmodern relativists in comboxes labor to ignore that teaching in comboxes.

Amazing how much abortion zealots and prolifers are coming to reason in exactly the same way when it comes to Catholic moral teaching that gets in the way of their ideological commitments. Consequentialism is our favorite heresy. And once you accept it, you have abandoned any possible grounds for opposing abortion, Dr. Faustus.[image error]

Day 4 of the Quarterly Tin Cup Rattle

Greetings and thank you so much for your generosity to us Sheas. I won't take up a bunch of your time but I will just say what I have said before: if you appreciate what you get here, then please help keep an emphatically lower middle class family's nose above water.

Click on the PayPal button to the left and help CAEI stay on the air and our kids stay clothed, housed, transported and fed. You can either make a straight donation or, if you like to get something for your money, you can buy my books and tapes (autographed even!). And if you'd rather not do the PayPal thang, feel free to email me and ask for my snailmail address. I'll happily take a check instead.

Oh! And don't forget! I am ready, willing and able to come speak for your parish, conference or group.[image error]

Gerard Nadal...

...says everything that needs to be said, with great compassion, about Fr. Pavone's predicament and the way to understand his priestly obligations vis a vis his prolife work.  In brief: A priest is married to the Church first.[image error]

Lizzie Scalia Raves...

about Fr. Robert Barron's fantastic new series (and book) on the Faith. I tingle with anticipation to see it. I'm still holding out hope I'll get a nifty review copy. No idea if I will though.[image error]