I started the blog for a variety of reasons. At the time, I was struggling with work and fighting debilitating migraines that made it hard to sit and do the one thing I really wanted to do: to write. The website gave me a chance to do a little writing in small chunks despite the discomfort and pain it brought me to sit and do it. The migraines have improved to some degree over the years, but jobs and money haven’t improved by a whole lot. I can’t justify spending all that money on a hobby when there are more important things that need the money first.

I may transfer the site to another (cheaper) host some day. But for right now, it looks like this is the end for the foreseeable future.

Thanks for reading.

Isaac J. Harris, the Atheist Geek

I’ve been enjoying PineCreek, Doug’s YouTube channel, for a while now. Doug’s channel offers up interesting conversations without a lot of mockery or arguing, which allows his most of his guests to give honest answers instead of being on the defensive. Doug finds people – sometimes well known people like Richard Carrier, Paul from Paulogia, Greg Locke and James White (whose comments were prerecorded in answer to questions from Doug) – and has satisfying conversations about their beliefs. Sometimes it’s about religion, sometimes it’s about the shape of the Earth. Doug challenges his guests in ways that allow them to give different responses than you would usually hear. And he answers comments. So do some of his guests (you’ve been warned). If you catch his videos live, you can even participate in live chats with him and his guests. He’s started a podcast which you can find here.

Doug is a former Mennonite turned atheist and married to someone who still believes in God (just as I am). He was born in Canada, but lives in Arizona now. Note what it says on his Twitter account:

I believe doubt is a virtue that can lead to humility and certainty can lead to arrogance.

I tend to agree.

Doug’s videos can run more than two hours. So I often take them in pieces, not always listening to them in full at one sitting. It’s totally worth it. They can also be half-an-hour or less. He goes through some of his longer videos and breaks them down into chapters, which you can advance through by using links in the description below his videos. This makes it easy to go back and listen to parts of them again if you need to.

Here are some favorites of mine.

A christian who accepts evolution and one that doesn’t.

This is the video pictured at the top of the page. Doug has had both guests on before (links below). Both are Christians. One is a scientist who believes evolution is true (he promotes this web site in one of his other interviews with Doug). The other is a pastor (with his own YouTube channel) who doesn’t buy it. A lot of good stuff in this one.

Faith and Science; Dr. Mary Schweitzer and Dr. Randy Isaac

Randy Isaac is the scientist interviewed in the first link above. Both he and Mary are scientists who also happen to be Christians. Doug respectfully talks to them about their beliefs and about how they reconcile their faith with the knowledge of science.

Pastor Mike Winger and I talk about Objective Morality

This is another one with Mike Winger, the Pastor from the first video. Mike’s points were good enough that I had to start thinking about and weigh the specific merits of skepticism. It isn’t that often when a believer presents ideas that I haven’t heard before. This is also the basis of his first podcast.

Mike Brown, MDiv, MA: Belief, Evidence, and Dragons.

I won’t lie to you. This one was tough. So much so that I finally started commenting myself. Mike Brown is a PhD candidate with a B.S. in history. When Doug asks him some challenging questions about his views on the historicity of Jesus and his views on the Bible as an authoritative source, Mike refuses to answer one or more of Doug’s questions. This got a lot of us riled up, as you’ll see in the comments, where I accused him of being evasive and disingenuous with his answers and his refusal to answer. Mike responds to many of our criticisms in the comments. Doug interviews Mike again here, and Mike talks a bit about his refusal to answer one of Doug’s question. One word: Dragons.

Despite the challenging nature of these videos, both are still worth a watch. Especially if you’re a Mythicist.

True or False Interview with Dr. Richard Carrier

Many of you know who Richard Carrier is. Doug and a friend get to ask him a lot of questions about the Bible and the historicity of Jesus.

Talking with several flat-earthers in chat

Finally, we have a video where Doug talks with several flat-earthers. Their views are unconventional, as you might expect, and they don’t always agree with one another.

Interviewing Ocean on his belief of the god Odin (and other beliefs)

Doug interviews a believer in Odin. Contrary to popular belief, belief in gods like Odin and Zeus is still a thing.

I hope some of you will check out Doug’s page, especially if – like me – you’re bored with debates and arguing on atheist channels.

There are good things and bad things about the show worth talking about. Brace yourself for spoilers, kids.

The Bad

No Danny! You can’t go to the bathroom there! Bad!

Let’s be real here. Danny Rand (played by Finn Jones) is kind of a dip-shit. That’s not entirely bad! He was just some rich kid who found himself in K’un Lun one day. He also spent fifteen years in a monastery where life was brutal, but simple. Given his backstory, a naive Danny Rand seems pretty believable to me. And I think the idea of a dude who’s supposed to be a super bad ass fighting machine also viewing the world with a childlike simplicity can actually be pretty interesting. It can also be a bit annoying. Not always, but sometimes. Especially during the early episodes where Danny Rand…who keeps assuring us that he is, indeed, the Iron Fist…ends up in a crazy-room where he can’t focus his chi enough to escape or some such thing.¹

In addition, his childhood “friends” are pretty uneven throughout the show. Sometimes the sister (Joy) is the good one, supporting Danny one moment while drugging him unconscious the next. Ward, likewise, can’t seem to make up his mind. Is he a psychopath like his father, or just misunderstood? Some of this can be explained by the complex relationships these characters have with each other. Especially Ward, who has secretly been under the abusive grip of his father for many years.

The biggest problem, which everyone will have figured out if they saw the show, is that Danny Rand – The Iron Fucking Fist – should be a bad ass with few serious rivals. There should be scenes where he’s twirling horizontally in midair, kicking ten dudes in the face while snapping someone’s arm off with his left hand and catching a softball with the other because I’m imagining this scene at a baseball game for some reason. He should be catching at least three bullets between his teeth and a katana sword between his ass cheeks too and squeezing it into a half-moon shape. Why? BECAUSE HE’S THE IRON FIST! THAT’S WHY! Feel free to draw this image and send me a copy, BTW. It’ll get posted. Oh yeah.

Is Danny really good at martial arts or just a really bad mime?

Instead, he sort of feels like a guy who took Tae Bo classes at the Y for like six months and just up and decided that he’s a bad ass. That ain’t good enough, Marvel! I want to believe that if Daredevil had to fight Rand in the upcoming Defenders series, Daredevil would be in some serious shit. I want to believe that Danny could punch Luke Cage through a concrete wall or knock out Jessica Jones with a single finger to the shoulder. As it is, I’m afraid he’d end up crying about his broken chi or something. Danny, there’s no whining in superheroing! NONE! Well, maybe a little. Did you see the Sam Rami Spiderman movies yet? Get it together, man! Even if you aren’t at 100%, you should be at least as bad ass as Daredevil at the start of this show. And you aren’t. In fact, Danny can only focus the Iron Fist into one hand. You sadden me, Iron Fist.

I’m happy for there to be new places our hero can go in the series, but I don’t want Danny to be a complete novice at the start of the show either.

The Good

Despite some issues with characterization and story, I still felt like I wanted to watch this show to the end. Colleen Wing was great in the show, though she should probably be dating someone cooler. Like me. There were homages peppered through Iron Fist to other (better) martial art battles, which was a nice touch for fans of martial art movies. Rand even had to fight a drunken master at one point. It also seems that the show understands some of the differences between Chinese and Japanese martial arts. In one of Colleen’s fights, she goes up against a woman who is wielding a Chinese sword, while Colleen wields a katana, a Japanese weapon. My knowledge of forms and katas is limited, but the moves we saw during some of their practice exercises seemed (reasonably) accurate to me too.

One thing that few reviewers have mentioned – something ex-cultists like myself should be interested in – is the examination of how people use their positions of authority to manipulate and use others. The show has numerous examples of this, from the Meachams to Kun L’un to the Hand. In many ways, these are examples of how cults operate and how abusive relationships within families work. This is the “deep” part of this story, just as Luke Cage addressed crime in areas overrun with poverty and racism, Jessica Jones tackled gas-lighting, and Daredevil explored the slippery slope of vigilante justice.

I’ve been TASERed for way less. How does he do it???

It’s clear that the father of the Meachams is a sociopath, and later, maybe even a psychopath. His treatment of Ward and the way Ward behaved when he and Danny were growing up tells us a few things about how abusive parents can twist their own children. The idea of such a father who is nearly (big spoiler!) immortal is a pretty awful one to think about. Unfortunately, this gets mishandled as Ward seems to be almost as bad as his father near the start. I think they were going for some sort of character growth for Ward, but instead, it just feels out of character when he suddenly wants to be a nice guy to Danny. There is an arc for Ward, which is good. But for me, the arc stretches the character to the breaking point, which is bad.

I really liked the part when Danny realizes the extent of the Hand’s reach and tells his friends that it all sounds like a cult. He sort of went through the same thing himself at Kun L’un after all. Unfortunately, the show doesn’t really commit to this idea even though what little we are told of his past at Kun L’un seems to support the idea that he may have been brainwashed himself. If they wanted to maintain Danny’s sense of obligation to that city, they should have given us information that showed us how Kun L’un is different from a cult and the Hand. But they failed to do that. It also failed to have Danny recognize that he had been brainwashed, which would have been interesting to see. So this angle just sort of fizzles out when Danny tries to return to the city later. Like so many other aspects of this show, it could have been handled a bit better and smarter. Of course, we still have season 2…

The Verdict

Ultimately, I would rate Iron Fist as being watchable but not very rewatchable. The first three or four episodes are mostly filler, but even those were enough to keep me coming back for more. The show was good enough to carry me to the end of the season, but the team that made this show really needs to learn from its mistakes or move aside for a better team in season 2. If they’re the ones making The Defenders series…I’m afraid The Defenders could be in trouble. That’s supposed to be The Avengers, only for TV.

You better not suck, Defenders! Nerd-lives are at TV-stake here.

Oh, you know I’m going to watch you no matter what Defenders. You ornery dickens. I’m sorry I yelled.

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The new live action movie basically keeps the same world and characters from all the other versions of Ghost in the Shell, more or less. It take’s place in a near future world where cybernetic implants are commonplace and people can surf the web with their minds. The main characters are the crew of Section 9, which I think of as a team of semi-military cops. OK, so maybe just cops. They can also be likened to the FBI and other federal agencies that stop crimes. In most versions of Ghost in the Shell, “the Major” – usually named Motoko Kusanagi – is the central protagonist, although the Scarjo version calls her Mira Killian. Each version of the story pits the Major and the rest of Section 9 against opponents with advanced computer hacking abilities that allow them to infect cybernetic human beings with viruses, new memories, and all that scary stuff.

So now for the big question: Did the live 2017 Ghost in the Shell Scarjo version of the movie suck?

This is as close to a boner moment as you’ll get in this entire movie.

In my view…yeah, it kinda sucked. I have to agree with (most of) the critics on this one. I’m not saying it’s Man of Steel bad (shudder!), but it’s not very good.

Before anime fans flip out and start setting fires to things, drawing us into an ever widening apocalypse of epic proportions way before Donald Trump¹ gets his chance, let me explain my reasons.

Remember when I said the 1995 anime of Ghost in the Shell was a bit dry? Yeah. Well, the Scarjo version is the fucking desert. I was bored within a couple of minutes and pretty much stayed that way throughout most of the movie. There were some decent action scenes and, as many have noted, it looks nice. But only in certain places. Even the visuals only work part of the time. There are several shots of the Major that look really fake. Like, bad CGI fake. There are also shots where we see big, holographic advertisements throughout the city that look cheesy. Maybe it was on purpose? For me, the cities in Blade Runner, a movie from the 1980s, looked a lot better than the cities in this movie. I seem to differ from a lot of critics on this one as even the haters seemed to think the movie looked great. I would say the visuals were pretty mixed. In ten years, this movie will probably look pretty bad all around thanks to the power of overused CGI.

A far bigger complaint comes from the way the characters are portrayed. Scarjo…your loveliness…how could you! The Major just sort of stomps around, her neck bent like she has scoliosis or something, and talks in a monotone. To be fair, I suspect Scarlett was told to portray the Major in this way to convey the same idea as the 1995 anime where she does not see her body as really being a part of who she is. That’s a clunky way of approaching it, but that’s the best I got. Like so many other things the movie tries to incorporate from the animes, it’s taken too far and just sort of ruins the experience of the live action film by hitting us over the head with something that should be subtle. The other characters are better. At least they’re allowed to express emotions. But we barely get to see any of them. Even Batou is only a very tiny part of this film.

There are a number of story elements that didn’t work or didn’t make sense. These are, of course, really spoilery. See some of them below if you dare!

The Story…with Spoilers, Obviously

The movie begins with a familiar scene of the Major under construction. Note that cyborg women in the future will have no nipples so nudes of them on social media will be fine. Thank you PG-13! Then we get a scene between the CEO of Hanka, the *cough*evil*cough* corporation that makes cyborgs like the Major, and her doctor. It’s a really clumsy, boring way of setting up some of the ideas for the movie. Is the Major property, or a person? Neither, says the evil corporate dude. She’s a weapon. Note that she wasn’t a volunteer or anything like that. They just shoved a brain into Scarjo’s body and hoped for the best. Yeah, that’s how I’d do it too because I also has the dumb. She has no memory of her life before the transfer, but I’m sure no one will figure out the entire movie during this scene even though almost everyone did.

Fast forward to a year later…and the point where the movie really should have started…and we see that 5 minute clip of the movie everybody saw a week or two before its release. The Major takes off her coat and nose dives through the air, nude but nippleless, in a ham fisted recreation of that scene that every anime of Ghost in the Shell is legally obligated to have. She beats up and shoots a bunch of people while those creepy Geisha bots grab everybody and start scaling the walls. The Geishas are easily the best part of this movie, BTW. One of them looks at the Major and says, “Help me! Please! Don’t let me die!” Then it says, “Collaborate with Hanka Robotics and be destroyed!” Which is a bit of a contradiction, but OK. This is the best part of the whole damn movie. Alas, it only goes down hill from there. So, just as in every other version of the story, we have a super hacker that’s using robots – and later people – to do his evil bidding. I’m totally sure he really is evil too and won’t turn out to be a good guy later on even though he totally does.

Later, the not-bad guy “hacks” a pair of garbage truck drivers who happen to have augmentations that make them resistant to gunfire and at least one of which has active camouflage. Wow. Garbage is a tough business in the future. The Major chases this guy into a scene, reminiscent of the anime, where he’s standing in water. She unleashes some super kicks on his ass, knocking him down. Pity we can’t see her moves because she’s invisible, but I digress. Then we get a scene where the Major is telling him that his memories are false, just like the anime. Finally, he hangs himself simply by jumping up and letting himself fall, which most of you will see coming because Section 9 has fixed a cable to his neck. It seems that vertebra in the future will be made from Waterford crystal because you really need a lot more pressure than that to break a normal human neck. They don’t make’em like they used to, kids.

Next time, try a crowbar.

Much later, we get a scene of her with the spider tank, the big finish from the 1995 anime. It’s clearly designed to look the same as the one in the animated movie and the Major’s fight with it serves as the big set piece for the film. The Major, predictably, gets on top of it and tries to rip the door off, breaking her arm and body in the process. My wife, never having seen the 1995 anime, was a little surprised by this. But no one who has seen the anime will be surprised by much in this movie, sadly.

The big mystery? You’ll never guess. Go ahead. Try.

You do remember that you were warned about spoilers twice already, right? OK. Doesn’t matter because you already saw this coming within 1 minute of the movie’s opening scene.

It turns out that the Major really is Motoko Kusanagi! GASP! They wiped her memories and tricked her into taking a drug that suppresses them. You’d think they would install a little pump inside her that does that without even telling her, but no, you’d be wrong. The Major figures all of this out and her team tries to help her while she’s on the run. Hanka, being evil, tries to have her and all of Section 9 killed. But they failed because movie! Ha ha!

I am not someone who is stressed about the issue of white washing, but people are talking about it, so it’s a thing. I just wanted you to think about this for a moment. We have a movie where people are up in arms about white washing, and in that movie, we learn that our hero – the very character who was white washed – is, in fact, Japanese. But on the inside. Yeah. Think about that. Take your time. Then forget all about it so you don’t leave me any comments about white washing. Thanks for that.

In the epilogue, we see that Motoko is back to work. Hurray! She’s atop another building. She says something about doing the job she was built for, then pulls off her jacket and plummets toward the ground nude. I take this to mean she was born to strip. I’m also guessing that the rest of Section 9’s function is to recover her jacket from all the buildings she leaves it on to avoid budget overruns. That’s taxpayer money paying for those jackets lady! Why does she even wear a jacket if she can’t get cold and has no modesty oh just never mind.

Someone replaces Batou’s eyes with Oreos! You bastards!

My verdict? Rent this movie so you can say you saw it. Ultra-hardcore anime fans seem to be the only ones who like it for the most part. If seeing things that are familiar to you in a movie is enough to hold your attention and start you clapping, you might like it too. But I wouldn’t inconvenience myself to watch it. Sad to say.

I wanted to like Ghost in the Shell, Scarjo version, but alas, insert monologue about identity and the nature of consciousness, be sure to include the words “ghost” and “shell” as much as possible, right here. The end.

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