If This Was an Oops Week, Would My Extension Last Until Next Sunday?

Week:  10
Mission:  Prove to Mr. Strusz that I read over break.
Books:  The Case for a Creator, Dog on It, The Centurion's Wife, Into the Wild
Authors:  Lee Strobel, Spencer Quinn, Davis Bunn & Janette Oke, Jon Krakauer

     I believe that we have spent more than enough time discussing The Case For a Creator.  Let us move on with our lives.  Suffering from a non-fiction overdose, I decided to go in the opposite direction with a book that had no real moral or literary value, Dog on It.  Two detectives, Chet and Bernie, find themselves investigating the disappearance of a teenager named Madison Chambliss.  Encounters with bikers, Russian gangsters, and a drug dealer are narrated by Chet as he follows wherever Bernie, his nose, or his stomach leads.  This book is perfect for anyone with an appreciation for dry humor and a love for canines--did I mention that Chet is a dog?
     The Centurion's Wife is historical fiction, set in and around Jerusalem in 33 AD.  Alban, a Gaul, has been commanded by Pontius Pilate and Herod Antipas to investigate the disappearance of the body of the prophet who had been crucified to preserve the powder keg known as Jerusalem.  In return, Alban is promised the hand of Pilate's niece, a strategic marriage in line with the centurion's ambitions.  Leah, faithful servant of Pilate's wife, has been ordered by Procula to infiltrate the band of disciples following the prophet  that invades her mistress's dreams.  Leah abandons all hope of an endurable life when she is informed that she will be marrying an unknown centurian.  She fears that, like her sisters, she will be chained to a man who does not care about her and views her as a pawn to be manipulated for the sake of success.  Will Alban find acceptance and love?  Will Leah be able to trust a man?  Will they find the truth about this prophet, and if they discover the unthinkable, will they allow this message to control their lives?  Well, duh.  Why else would this book be written?  Nice how the title didn't give that away.

The bus where Chris McCandless lived in Alaska .

     Into the Wild is non-fiction about Chris McCandless, a college graduate who traveled western North America with only a backpack, living off the land and occasionally joining civilization for a few months before feeling the need to move on.  His last great adventure was attempting to survive in the Alaskan wilderness.  He lasted over 100 days, but made two fatal mistakes.  He knew that wild potato plant roots were safe to eat, but did not know that the seed pods of the same plant were toxic.  His second mistake was not having a map.  If he did, he would have known that there was an abandoned zipline downstream that he could have used to cross the river to safety and civilization.

Books read:  14
Time this week:  24 hrs
Total time:  83 hrs

Great Expectations

Week:  9

Mission:  Evaluate Expectations vs. Reality

Book:  The Case for a Creator

Author:  Lee Strobel

     I expected this book to be like The Case for Christ; in fact, that's why I decided to read it.  It's not.  This book is science, science, science.  I breezed through The Case for Christ.  This book, especially the physics chapter, is occasionally slow reading, and that's the opinion of someone enrolled in chemistry, physics, anatomy, and GTA II.  I thought about dropping it, but stubbornness and interest won.  I'll likely finish it by my next post, but no promises.
     I expected Lee Strobel to be a fundamentalist, so I was surprised that, in this book, the Big Bang and idea that the Earth is millions of years old are often taken for granted as facts compatible with Genesis.

The components of a bacterium's motor.

     In some ways, this book has exceeded my expectations.  I never expected it to be so beautifully educational.  I read some sections and think, "That's so cool.  My mind has been blown."  Did you ever wonder why the Earth tilts on its axis?  Well, without the moon, the tilt would vary from 0 to 85 degrees.  That's not good.  Did you ever wonder why Earth doesn't get blasted by numerous comets?  Fortunately, we have a cosmic shield, a sphere with a mass over 300 times greater than that of Earth--Jupiter.  Mars and the moon also contribute defensive surface area.  What's the most amazing motor in existence, capable of 10,000 rpm?  It happens to be microscopic and power the flagella of bacteria.

Time this week:  2 hrs
Total time:  59 hrs
Books read:  10

Theory vs. Science

Week: 8
Book:  The Case for a Creator
Author:  Lee Strobel
Mission:  Identify antagonists
Antagonists:  Myths and Lies
     At the beginning of the book, Lee Strobel takes on four principal evolutionary arguments: 

The Tree of Life, Cambrian Explosion not included.

• The Stanley Miller Experiment--In 1953 Stanley Miller reproduced the earth's early atmosphere, shot "lightning" through it, and produced amino acids, the building block of life. 
• Darwin's "Tree of Life"--This summarizes Darwin's idea that life developed from one ancestor, the root, and resulted in many branches of species.  This change took place gradually over long periods of time. 
• Ernst Haeckel's embryo drawings:  Ernst Haeckel drew embryos of various vertebrates at three stages in their development to show the similarities in embryonic structure.

• 

  Archaeopteryx

  Archaeopteryx:  This half-bird and half-reptile fossil is the "missing link" between reptiles and birds.  

Antagonists exposed:

• The Stanley Miller Experiment:  The environment used was a hydrogen-rich mixture of methane, ammonia, and water vapor, which was scientifically correct at the time.  That was 1953.  Today, scientists believe that the environment contained very little hydrogen, which would have escaped into space.  Instead, it consisted of carbon dioxide, water vapor, and nitrogen.  If the experiment had used the correct gases, the result would not have been amino acids.  According to Jonathan Wells, Phd, Phd, who studied at both Berkeley and Yale, some textbooks misleadingly report that the result would be organic molecules, not mentioning that these molecules are formaldehyde and cyanide--embalming fluid.
• Darwin's "Tree of Life":  The key to this theory is slow development over time.  The fossil record has shown that this theory cannot be true, most noticeably in the case of the Cambrian explosion.  Before this geological time period, the fossils are "jellyfish, sponges, and worms" (p. 44)  At the beginning of the Cambrian, arthropods and chordates quickly appear, directly contradicting the tree.
• The Embryo Drawings: Haeckel deliberately chose embryos that appear similar.  For example, he represents amphibians with a salamander instead of a frog (frogs embryos appear much less similar), and his most circulated diagram depicts four placental mammals.  The most important dishonesty is the fact that what is labeled the "early" stage  of embryonic development is actually the midpoint.  At early stages of development, these embryos are actually less similar, which essentially takes away any support that they offer the theory of evolution.
• Archaeopteryx:   This fossil is a bird with modern feathers, not a half-bird, half-reptile creature.  In addition, Dr. Wells says, "Birds are different from reptiles in many important ways--their breeding system, their bone structure, their lungs, their distribution of weight and muscles.  It's a bird, that's clear."  More importantly, in an area of study known as cladistics, it is taught that birds evolved from reptiles.  In the fossil record, reptiles with bird-like bodies are found "millions of years after archaeopteryx...the missing link is still missing!"  Furthermore, the archaeopteryx isn't even an ancestor of modern birds--it's a member of an extinct species.  

Books Read:  10
Hours Read:  3
Total Time:  57

    

Two Sides to Every Story

Week:  7
Mission:  Find a plot twist that would have made your book more interesting.
Books:  The Great Divorce by C. S. Lewis, Tuesdays With Morrie by Mitch Albom.
Brief Synopses:
           ~The Great Divorce:  C.S. Lewis dreams that hell is an endless space waiting for something sinister to happen.  Before that day, the people in hell can take a bus to heaven.  He hops on the bus finds himself in the land in front of heaven.  He and the rest of the visitors from hell have lost their bodies and appear only as ghosts.  People from heaven have traveled to this plain to try to convince the ghosts to stay in heaven, but C.S. Lewis sees ghost after ghost reject the help offered.  Moral of the story:  When people go to hell, it is their own fault.
              ~Tuesdays With Morrie:  Mitch discovers that his old professor, Morrie, is dying of Lou Gehrig's disease and begins to visit him every Tuesday to learn from him.
Possible Plot Twists:
     ~The Great Divorce:  C.S. Lewis begins trying to convince the ghosts to stay in heaven and needs to flee further into heaven after they violently oppose him.
      ~Tuesdays With Morrie:  Mitch visits Morrie every year after he graduates from college.  One year, they take a trip to Los Angeles.  A producer for Dancing with the Stars sees Morrie dancing and invites him to make an unprecedented appearance on the show.  Morrie declines because he does not care about fame.

Time This Week:  6
Total time:  54 hrs
Books Read:  10  (I am maturely dropping the .5)

Strategical Documents Unclassified!

 A formerly classified correspondence has just been unveiled to the public.  The letters, which date back to WWII, were written by a demon, Screwtape to his nephew, Wormwood.  They contain professional advice concerning the temptation of an unnamed English man.  

    The temptations suggested by Screwtape, a tempter who has earned an office job after years of service in the field, range from worldliness to hypocrisy to lust to despair.  Time after time, he proposes a new mode of attack, although in the end his nephew is defeated by the untimely death of his "patient."

     "Wormwood is an incompetent moron unfit for service," said Screwtape.  "I am clearly not responsible for the failing of his mission.  The unveiling of the letters does not affect me; it is unfortunate only because it compromises the strategies available to the workers of Our Father Below.  We shall severely punish the man who has revealed them."

     Wormwood was unavailable for comment.  An anonymous source revealed that it was advisable not to investigate the matter further.

     Also released with the above documents was a transcript of a speech by Screwtape entitled "Screwtape Proposes a Toast."      

Books Read:  8.5
Time this week:  4 hrs
Total Time: 48 hrs

We Are Thomas

Week: 5
Mission:  5 reasons I would or would not be friends with the author of my book
Book:  The Case for Christ
Author:  Lee Strobel
Credentials:  Master of Studies Law degree from Yale Law School, 13 years with the Chicago Tribune
Scenario:  An atheist is on the prowl with one purpose:  Investigate Christianity, establish the facts, and determine how reliable the Bible is, how trustworthy the New Testament authors were, and exhaustively scrutinize the Crucifixion and Resurrection.
Conclusion:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_OTz-lpDjw&ob=av2e
Result:  An atheist becomes a Christian.
  Reasons we would be friends:
     1.  We love writing, researching, and asking questions.
     2.  Our minds follow a similar pattern of operation.  We sift through data, select and analyze the pertinent facts, and come to a conclusion.  We view situations with a detached, non-emotional clarity and possess a down-to-earth, practical attitude.
     3.  We do not easily trust.  I am not a skeptic, but I do not have an easy time believing something without proof.  We have asked many of the same questions about faith.  We have both wondered, "Who is this Jesus?"  I know what it is like to wrestle with doubt.  We need to see the nail marks.
     4.  We know who we are.  That is, we know exactly how much we need forgiveness.  We have no illusions about our true nature.  We know what we've done, but we also know that Jesus loves us even when we look at ourselves and hate ourselves.
     5.  We are passionate about what we believe.  Faith cannot be something that is lived one hour a week on Sundays.  Faith changes and controls lives.  We cannot have our hearts halfway into our faith--it's 100% or nothing.  We believe what we preach.
Hours this week:  6
Total hours:  44
Books read:  7.5

The Sound of Music

  For all of you that cannot sleep at night because you wonder what a sound track for The Five People You Meet in Heaven would sound like, I have good news:  It has arrived.
     When Eddie arrives in heaven, he discovers that he will visit five people who will explain a part of his life to him.  He meets each of them in a place that is their own personal heaven.  The first man he meets is a former freak show employee at Ruby Pier, where he worked for most of his life.  I chose Basin Street Blues by Louis Armstrong because it is a bit upbeat, like Ruby Park in its prime.  More importantly, the Blue Man has a sad story to tell, but doesn't dwell on the unpleasantness of his story.  His general attitude is that life goes on, and the world keeps spinning.
                http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USHkR5tmxHk&ob=av2n
     The next person he meets is the Captain, from his army days in Vietnam.  I chose this Jewish lullaby from WWII because it has a heavy, military drumbeat.  It isn't the usual upbeat military music because it reflects the Captain's sacrifice.
        http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-B_r4tookc
     The next person he meets is Ruby, who teaches him to forgive.  Her heaven is a serene mountain scene with a brightly lit diner to welcome anyone who was hurt at Ruby Pier.  Her song is "This is Where the Healing Begins" by Tenth Avenue North.
                       http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFUHrXfuNU4&feature=related
     The next person he meets is his wife, Marguerite.  She lives in a world of weddings and happiness.  Her song is "I'm A Believer."
                   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfuBREMXxts
     Eddie's fifth visit is to a little girl that he somewhat accidentally killed while in the Philippines.  Her song is "Heaven is the Face" by Steven Curtis Chapman.  Eddie didn't know that she died, and is horrified to learn the truth about the shadow in the flames.  He loves the girl, and is comforted by the fact she is in this beautiful place.
                     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9JTwJ_1lzE
Hours this week:  10.25
Total hours read:  38
Books read:  6.5  (The Firm, Cosbyology, Gone With the Wind, Torn, Bow's Boy, The Five People You Meet in Heaven)