I started this blog about a year ago, thought it took a few months to find my focus on science and faith. These are the top posts for the year, according to Google Analytics, comments I received, and my own highly biased opinion. Thank you to all my readers for making this blog a pleasure to write for!

Catholic faith and philosophy

Why we practice penance (February 6)
Arguments to avoid (June 16)
Top three questions about the Eucharist you never asked (July 24)

Science and health

Depression and anxiety myths (May 7)
The science behind renewable petroleum (June 26)
Bad formula: Problems with infant food (September 25)
Gardasil, poison, and vaccine reactions (November 12)

Ethics and the intersection of science and faith

Feminism pro life (February 15)
ADD/ADHD religion: Prayer for the distractible (May 25)
Scientific American interviews Diana Degette (August 6)
Science and the question of when life begins (August 28)

A lighter note

Online psychics! Fabulous or fraud? (May 16)
Awards for World Youth Day protesters (August 1)
Top five conspiracies... of SCIENCE! (August 4)
A parade of bad nativities (December 23)

The 2008 Parade of Bad Nativities concludes with culture wars and political statements. Yes, didn't you know Jesus took on human flesh in order to become a political pawn?

This nativity scene from Kenya almost made it to the Scary Nativities category, especially since Baby Jesus appears to be dead.


Bethlehem was in New Mexico, didn't you know? And Jesus was placed in a kiva, not a manger!


The wall in this nativity scene is supposed to represent the division in the Holy Land.


The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals may nix a publicly sponsored nativity scene, but I don't think it can do anything about "the Nativity", you know, the birth of Our Lord.


This nativity scene from Italy was supposed to make a statement about gay marriage. Note that there are two Josephs and no Marys. I think the magi might be wearing the heads of local politicians.

A Parade of Bad Nativities

Page 1: The Ugly
Page 2: The Scary and the Unintended Effects
Page 3: The Just Plain Wrong
Page 4: Culture Wars and Politics

The Parade of Bad Nativities 2008 continues with nativity scenes that are just plain wrong. They range from the incomprehensible to the borderline sacrilegious.

I'm not sure what Playmobile Toys, but there's a manger scene at the center of this collection of them.


Why yes, it is made of recycled cans!


Yeah. That's right. Someone painted light bulbs to make a nativity scene. The cotton balls are a nice touch, but I'm not sure what the olive green one is supposed to be. An alligator? A dinosaur?


I suppose placing a nativity scene in an urban setting is a valid cultural interpretation, but what's with all the dead people? Surely there were no drive-by shootings in Bethlehem!


The Holy Family were humans, not woodpeckers, so I'm not sure what they're doing in a tree trunk. It's also a candle. Of course it is.


"Away in a one horse open sleigh, no crib for a bed...."


No additional words are necessary.


No words are possible.

A Parade of Bad Nativities

Page 1: The Ugly
Page 2: The Scary and the Unintended Effects
Page 3: The Just Plain Wrong
Page 4: Culture Wars and Politics

The 2008 Parade of Bad Nativities continues with scary nativities!

When I saw this in thumbnail, I thought it looked creepy. Full size, it's downright terrifying. Jesus and Mary are sitting on the Christ Child's shoulders like an angel and a devil whispering in his ear, and he has a baby-shaped brooch in the middle of his chest! Yikes!


This Santa looks like he's going to eat me! And look, he already ate the Holy Family!


Even the ancients were not immune to producing scary nativity scenes. A star is boring into the head of Baby Jesus, and both he and Mary are turning into caterpillars! Understandably, Joseph looks alarmed.


Next up are nativities with unintended effects. One wishes the artists had stepped back and looked at their creations before unleashing them on the world.

This nativity scene gives new meaning to the phrase "Lamb of God." A green Lamb of God, in this case.


"And behold, a giant cleaver didst split the barn in two."


"It's not 'Door to Heaven,' it's... 'STARGATE.'"


The Bible records that Baby Jesus was born in rude surroundings, but it specified a manger, not a urinal.

A Parade of Bad Nativities

Page 1: The Ugly
Page 2: The Scary and the Unintended Effects
Page 3: The Just Plain Wrong
Page 4: Culture Wars and Politics

The blog Going Jesus started the Cavalcade of Bad Nativities in 2004, and published the Cavalcade II last year. The Cavalcades consist of pictures of ugly, kitschy, and just plain wrong nativity scenes. Leave the lights on is paying tribute to Going Jesus with the 2008 Parade of Bad Nativities.

It was shockingly easy to find bad nativities. For many of these, I just searched eBay for "unique nativity." Hint to the sellers: There's a reason many of these nativity scenes are unique!

The parade begins with the merely ugly.

We used to have a nativity scene like this when I was growing up. We picked at that ferny stuff every year until eventually the barn was totally denuded. It was an improvement.


The Psychedelic Nativity, a throwback to the 1960s.


These poor people have no mouths! How can they sing praises to the Christ Child?


Don't touch baby Jesus! He's sharp!


If you have to blow up a picture of a nativity scene, try to (a) trim the white space and (b) choose a nativity in which Mary does not have leprosy.

A Parade of Bad Nativities

Page 1: The Ugly
Page 2: The Scary and the Unintended Effects
Page 3: The Just Plain Wrong
Page 4: Culture Wars and Politics

The new Vatican document on reproductive technologies, Dignitas Personae, makes only a brief, passing reference to one particular practice of assisted reproduction: surrogate motherhood. In this practice, a woman is commissioned or hired to gestate a baby whom she agrees to surrender to another family at birth. The genetic parents of the baby may include the gestating mother or one or both members of the couple who commissioned her, or one or both of the genetic parents may be third party egg or sperm donors.

Surrogate motherhood is always ethically and morally wrong. To put it more bluntly, surrogate motherhood is evil. In surrogacy, a child is commissioned (often purchased outright) as if he is a sculpture or a book rather than a human being.

According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, all reproductive technologies that involve outside donors, including practices from artificial insemination to surrogacy, "infringe the child's right to be born of a father and mother known to him and bound to each other by marriage" (CCC 2376). That paragraph bears a closer look, as it asserts a human right that many in the secular world have never even thought of:

All children have a right to be born to parents who are known to him.

This is a right written in the hearts of all babies. An infant knows his mother's voice before he is born. Newborns may not seem very aware of their surroundings — indeed, I have heard some atheists odiously describe them as not even being "sentient" — but they are, in fact, very aware of their surroundings, at least in the aspects that matter to them, and the item of foremost importance to a newborn is who his mother is.

Later in life, all human children are interested in their roots. They want to know who their biological mother and father are. If they are raised by others, this curiosity stays with them, sometimes turning into a burning search for their first parents.

According to another document from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Donum Vitae,

Surrogate motherhood represents an objective failure to meet the obligations of maternal love, of conjugal fidelity and of responsible motherhood; it offends the dignity and the right of the child to be conceived, carried in the womb, brought into the world and brought up by his own parents; it sets up, to the detriment of families, a division between the physical, psychological and moral elements which constitute those families.

Though this statement comes from a Catholic document, it makes no appeal to strictly theological principles. It asserts that the wrongness of surrogacy can be understood according to the principles of natural law.

Surrogate motherhood and adoption share some similarities. In both situations, a child is raised by people other than the mother who bore him. As an adoptive mother myself, I am keenly aware of the inalienable fact that all adoptions begin with a tragedy: the separation of a child from his first mother. In her book of the same title, Nancy Verrier calls this event "the primal wound," a permanent blow to the heart of every child relinquished for adoption, even those adopted as newborns.

In adoption, the primal wound is unavoidable, a cross to bear, a part of what makes this world (to quote the prayer) a "valley of tears." Adoption by loving parents is a step in healing this wound in a child who otherwise would have no parents at all.

In surrogacy, however, the primal wound is not a tragic circumstance, but a premeditated act. The adult parties plan in advance to tear the newborn from the mother he knows, the one who carried him. Even for non-Christians, surrogate motherhood should be viewed as universally wrong and a violation of human rights.