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Paul -- My sentiments EXACTLY about U2's greatest hits album! Well said.
Two comments on important topics:
1) You're absolutely right about Veggietales. Get the Silly Song Countdown if you don't already have it. (And then go buy They Might Be Giant's "NO!")
2) You're absolutely wrong about U2. I mean, I'm not going to tell you what to listen to or what to like, but Zooropa, Pop, AND All...Behind are mediocre at best compared to the albums that came before them. I know that drawing such a line in the historical sand is the hallmark of the spurned fan, but I promise it's not just nostalgia that keeps the older albums listenable. I'm sure plenty of people felt betrayed by the change of sound with Achtung. I embraced it. Me, I felt betrayed by the carelessness and pointlessness of Zooropa even though it effectively continued the Achtung sound. Daddy's gonna pay for your crashed car?!? Compare any song on that album to "One" or "Love Rescue Me" or "Wire" or whatever and I just don't think they stand up. De gustibus..., I guess.
2.5) Fun post. Do it again soon.
Chris:
I'll concede that Zooropa is pretty weak as an album, despite several quality songs ("Stay" and the title track, for example.) But I will defend Pop to my dying breath. "Wake Up Dead Man," "Please," are "Gone" all outstanding. "If God Will Send His Angels" and "Staring At the Sun" are excellent, too.
It wouldn't argue that it is better than Joshua Tree, but "mediocre at best"? Huh-uh.
Paul: I have mixed feelings about Zooropa. The title track, Lemon, and the Johnny Cash song whose name escapes me in a rush of embarassment, are all enjoyable. Some Days Are Better Than Others is at least listenable. Having listened to that album something like 150 times, I'm still prepared to argue that it bites compared to Joshua Tree and Achtung, Baby. I discovered U2 when I was 17 (I was raised by troglodytes), just when Zooropa was released, so it's not a line-in-the-sand thing with me. I just think that Zooropa was more a show of technical mastery than an artistic whole -- and insofar as it was the latter, it was a failure. As for Pop, I bought it the night it became available. I was hurt. Dead Man walks the edge (no pun, given the singer) of blasphemy; Miami bites, and there are all of two songs on that album that I actually enjoy listening to (Angels and Velvet Dress are admittedly breathtaking). It was a commercial failure not because of critics -- let's not accord that subphylum of insects too much power -- but because the music is largely unbearable. I mean, I almost sobbed with joy over All That You Can't Leave Behind, and let's be honest, compared to their 80s/early 90s work, that album is subpar.
I also commend to you Rugrats in Paris. My 1.25 year old son loves it; and it's arguably one of the most conservative children's films I've ever seen.
Finally, excellent point on the Courts. But one sort of has to play the hand one is dealt, you know? Short of a revolution, there is no short-run way to reduce the Court's power.
Let me contribute to the U2 conversation: I wouldn't know one of their songs if it came up and slapped me on the ass. This is probably a generational thing.
Veggie Tales? Are they edible?
Preferring Sam Adams to Heineken is a matter of taste. What is not a matter of taste is that Bass Ale is superior to both.
Bill:
If you listen to FM radio, you've heard U2 songs.
Chris:
(1) I could care less about the critics. (2) I don't think it's The Edge singing on "Wake Up Dead Man."
Paul: (1) Neither do I, hence the "but for." (2) I don't have the liner notes on me. I'll take your word for it. I thought he sang both Numb and Dead Man; however, I'm more given to error than most, so I'm willing to concede this.
I wandered into your blog via Tacitus. I notice you mention Chesterton a lot. Some excellent poetry and excellent FB stories ("Blue Cross") true, but you must be aware of his seriously loony medievalism (candlelight to electricity, horse transport to motor transport, creationism etc).
Manish:
Thanks for stopping by. I hope you hang around.
I'll take Chesterton's medievalism over modern insanity any day. He attacked evolutionism, it is true; but he was only a creationist in the sense that he belived in the Creator.
"I'll take Chesterton's medievalism over modern insanity any day."
Well that's up to you. I notice most people would rather have a decent health, a chance for a good education, and living in a relatively comfortable world neither of which was available then to the majority. Yes, medievalism is fine if you have the advantage of being fairly well off - as he was. It seems to me that he was a sort of mirror image of some people today who are happy to live in the West and yet criticise its values.
"He attacked evolutionism, it is true; but he was only a creationist in the sense that he believed in the Creator."
Well its hard to believe in creationism in any other way, I would have thought. But its not really the creationism that I object to - incidentally, I enjoy quite a lot of Chesterton as I mentioned before, as long as he didn't stray into matters that he couldn't really handle. I respect his Chrisitan apologia because he writes with passion and sincerity.
Evidence for evolution was hardly firm in his day, and I wouldn't have minded if he wrote a scientific critique of it, rather than railing against it because it offended his sense of undermining a medieval world-view. I object to the fact that he wilfully turned his face against science, its applications and progress and development of human knowledge. For him, life should have gone into stasis in the period of the Crusades with jongleurs twirling their rods and Aquinas' philosophy.
My demurral on the question of creationism derives from the fact that the word usually denotes a kind of biblical literatist, which Chesterton emphatically was not.
Now, Chesterton was not a scientist, but his critiques of evolutionism were philosophical in nature -- a discipline which Science seems to imagine it can do away with. Here is a sample:
"But for those who really think, there is always something really unthinkable about the whole evolutionary cosmos, as they conceive it; because it is something coming out of nothing; an ever-increasing flood of water pouring out of an empty jug. Those who can simply accept that, without even seeing the difficulty, are not likely to go so deep as Aquinas and see the solution of his difficulty. In a word, the world does not explain itself, and cannot do so merely by continuing to expand itself. But anyhow it is absurd for the Evolutionist to complain that it is unthinkable for an admittedly unthinkable God to make everything out of nothing and then pretend that it is more thinkable that nothing should turn itself into everything."
Such a critique cannot be answered with science, and that is why such a critique is not answered. Chesterton still has the upper hand here.
Paul,
Come on. That is a justification for junk philosophy. You know very well that Chesterton couldn't be bothered to read up on the philosophical theory of his contemporaries, even - as you know, he wrote such an enormous amount of journalism, he simply didn't have the time. Now, I have nothing to say against that, it is difficult enough for me to keep up with my own field, far less to consider other ones. But in that case it is better not to enter the debate.
"Such a critique cannot be answered with science, and that is why such a critique is not answered. Chesterton still has the upper hand here."
I accept that unreservedly. But how does that give him the upper hand? Creation ex nihilo offers no solution or explanation to philosophical problems of creation as such. It is a matter of faith. And faith is a matter of subjectivity.
I have a tremendous regard for Aquinas. But to suggest that he was the end of the road in philosophical speculation is simply silly - and I'm sure Aquinas would have regarded it as such himself.
As to your criticism that modern science has dispensed with philosophy, I would rather argue the reverse. It is philosophy that has to make sense of the discoveries of modern science - of quantum theory, unimaginable concepts of the universe, of particle physics, of genetics. Not the least by coming up with moral theory that offers us all a guide about how to lead our lives. But before these things are explained they have to be understood.
I think the reason Chesterton is neglected today as a savant, rightly, is because he simply turned away from these problems - pretended that they didn't exist - or even more probably didn't even know of their existence.
His philosophy of "common sense" doesn't wash. Common sense tells me the sun goes around the earth and the earth is flat - as people believed, in my opinion rightly, until 500 years ago. Common sense tells me that when people are struck on one cheek they don't turn the other, aand when they are asked to give all they have and take up a cross, they find an excuse not to. Both modern science and religious morality are counterintuitive, and difficult subjects, and they are attempts to make sense of difficult realities.
You make a solid point about the inadequacies of modern philosophy in assimilating modern science. I rather think Chesterton would agree with you on that. I contend that science has its own responsibilities.
I'm not sure I understand you: Do you reject Chesterton's critique of evolutionism as junk philosophy, or my deployment of it as justifying junk philosophy? Or both?
Either way, I have not seen it refuted. Science must begin after the act of creation.
Well I prefer to to accuse Chesterton because otherwise you might ban me from your blog 
Chesterton was lazy because he did not address the real criticisms od the creationist position. Aquinas bases his arguments on the Aristotelian First Mover argument as a solution to the "who created the creator question". That itself is derived from a mathematical idea of the impossiblity of an infinite regress. But an infinite regress is not mathematically impossible - for example the series ending with the term -1 has no first term.
He makes no reference to Kant's critique of Aquinas' positions. Now, it is possible that a case for the ontological argument can be made, for example as Plantinga has done recently, using modal logic. But Chesterton's position is not based on refuting legitimate criticism - the Catholic Church has deemed it to be so, and that is good enough for him. If one is going to engage in philosophy, one must study one's position, frame arguments for and against and defend them in the courts of one's peers.
The other thing is that he makes no reference to the problems that are inherent in a consistent creationist philosophy. What are the mechanisms? At what level is creation controlled - subatomic/particle level or just in large events? How can that be reconciled with the Uncertainty Principle? Is the creator involved in each creation mechanism separately, or is it controlled via a system - e.g. in the case of a bacterium acquiring resistance to an antibiotic - the creator involved in this process in each bacterium? Did the cretor simply start things off and now and then readjusts and tinkers to sort out problems (Newton's position?) Or is Leibniz's accusation accurate - that Newton's philospohy denigrates the majesty of a Creator who wasn't even able to develop a self-perpetuating machine? Are these issues ever resoluble - is it possible to develop a mechanism to answer them?
My point is that these questions were real questions in Chesterton's time, being discussed by the savants of the day. If he wished to engage with them serously, he would have gained much more of a permanent following. Unfortunately his philosophy, like those of his friend Belloc and equally like his rivals HG Wells and George Bernard Shaw never climbed out of the basement.
I am more likely to ban you for belitting Chesterton .
I don't think most believers deny that their philosophy is problematic: hence the acknowledgement of the need for revelation. Reason is inadequate, easily led astray, etc.
We could argue this for a long time. But I'll have to conclude by saying I don't really belittle Chesterton (or Belloc for that matter) since I have almost all of their books at home (and my kids love Belloc's poems). I'd say as an entertainer and apologist excellent - as a philosopher, less reliable. Good blog btw, slowly scrolling through the archives.
I'll consent to "less reliable." -grin-
Manish: Not to walk into waters deeper than those in which I can swim, but I should point out that the Uncertainty Principle is merely a limit on human determination. An infinitely powerful, omniscient Deity can be aware of conjugate properties and their quantities without difficulty; indeed, from a fairly banal Christian standpoint, such a being is by definition aware of the conjugate properties of every particle at once, because he is not in the system, the system is in him. Sort of. I fail to see how Heisenberg's work has any more to do with whether or not God created the universe than Planck's Constant does. (Want a real philosophical bender? Adjust Planck's upward by a factor of ten, and you'd diffract trying to go through a doorway. What is the likelihood of a universe so well-ordered to life?) Trying to limit God to what humans can know is inevitably a short road to silliness.
Oh, and Paul: I forgot: I also like Please.
But that's waaaaay back in the thread.
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