The true religion

If you're religious the following should paint a grin on your face.

They desire to extinguish God’s Light with their mouths. But God refuses to do other than perfect His Light, even though the unbelievers detest it. It is He Who sent His Messenger with guidance and the True Religion to exalt it over every other religion, even though the idolaters detest it.

Did that give you an adrenalin rush and renewed optimism?

Well, if you're Christian, the competition just had the last laugh You see the above comes from the Quran (9:32-33) and is talking about the ultimate triumph of Islam.

Guess we now know who will inherit the earth. My advice to Xians: better start learning Arabic and observing Ramadan asap. You are scared shit of hell, right?

For the birds!

Why people who claim to have had a "personal experience" of the supernatural (and paranormal, we might add) should take their anecdotes with a chunk of salt.

One of the cleverer and more mature of my undergraduate contemporaries, who was deeply religious, went camping in the Scottish Isles. In the middle of the night he and his girlfriend were woken in their tent by the voice of the devil--Satan himself; there could be no possible doubt: the voice was in every sense diabolical. My friend would never forget this horrifying experience, and it was one of the factors that later drove him to be ordained. My youthful self was impressed by this story, and I recounted it to a gathering of zoologists relaxing in the Rose and Crown Inn, Oxford. Two of them happened to be experienced ornithologists, and they roared with laughter. "Manx Shearwater!" they shouted in delighted chorus. One of them added that the diabolical shrieks and cackles of this species have earned it, in various parts of the world and various languages, the local nickname "Devil Bird." (Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, London: Bantam, 2006, p.87)

To realize that he invested his entire life partly because he mistook a bird for some demonic entity--my, that should really gnaw at him for the rest of his life. (And to think that that bird was the Good Guy's creation. A pretty mischievous trickster, don't you think?)

Remember the lady who heard the voice of God tell her, "Go throw your children into the San Francisco Bay," and faithfully obeyed? She's now on trial for murder. Do Xians believe her, that God had spoken to her? But why not? Why don't they believe those who hear God in their heads and obey by taking a knife and binding their children, when the father of the three great monotheisms claimed and did the very same thing? Why excuse Abraham, call him a man of God, and say he in fact is someone to whom an actual supernatural entity spoke, but then brand as crazy and criminal everyone else who claims to hear God tell them they should slit the throats of their children? Why are the LaShuan Harrises of the world described as delusional and their acts criminal, while Abraham and Co. and their deeds are not, and on the contrary are held up as (gasp!) role models?

Xian brains are so compartmentalized they have apparently lost the ability to think clearly. They are so biased and dualistic, and subscribe to double standards that their capacity for ethical thinking has been compromised. Theism screws brains big time.

Hate: verb, to dislike intensely or passionately

As you may know, the Jesus Seminar was a late 20th century quest for the historical Jesus. Among other things, the biblical scholars who participated in the Seminar sifted through the canonical and extracanonical gospels (e.g., Gospel of Thomas), discussed, and then voted on which passages are and are not attributable to the historical Jesus. The results of that were published in The Five Gospels: The Search for the Authentic Words of Jesus (Harper San Francisco, 1993), a work that documents all the words that the gospel writers attributed to Jesus (including those in the Gospel of Thomas--from the Nag Hammadi find) and rated according to how the Fellows voted on them.

The Fellows voted by dropping colored beads into a ballot box. A vote of red meant the Fellow concluded that "Jesus undoubtedly said this or something very like it." Pink corresponded to "Jesus probably said something like it." Gray signified "Jesus did not say this but the ideas contained in it are close to his own." And black meant that in the Fellow's judgment "Jesus did not say this; it represents the perspective or content of a later or different tradition." Each color also had a corresponding numerical value: red = 3, pink = 2, gray = 1, black = 0. After voting on a particular Jesus saying, the points were added up and the weighted average computed. The result was then reconverted to a color code. This then was the final* color rating a particular saying received. (The Five Gospels, p. 36)

The Seminar also produced an entirely new translation of the gospels known as the Scholar's Version. One of the goals of the team of translators was to produce a translation that would come as close as possible to late 20th century English, but of course remaining true to the spirit of the original. While definitely sounding contemporary, this translation is reliable because it is based on ancient languages (Greek, Coptic, etc.), i.e., the SV uses ancient sources--extant texts as historically close to the originals as possible--as its basis.

With that background take a look at Luke 14:26, the following translation taken from the Scholar's Version.

If any come to me and do not hate their own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters--yes, even their own life--they cannot be my disciples (ibid., 353).

This saying garnered a pink from the Seminar. This means that it probably is quite close to what the historical Jesus had uttered.

That's point number one. The more important thing I'd like to underscore is Jesus' use of the word hate, a word which also appears in other translations of this particular passage (e.g. the Net Bible). Here's the Seminar's commentary for this verse:

Hating one's family. This saying, which must have been offensive to Jesus' audience when he first enunciated it, has suffered the fate of other harsh sayings in the tradition. Matthew softens it by making the love of family subordinate to the love of Jesus. But Luke and Thomas retain the rigorous form: hatred of family is a condition of discipleship.

The severity of this saying can only be understood in the context of the primacy of filial relationships. Individuals had no real existence apart from their ties to blood relatives, especially parents. If one did not belong to a family, one had no real social existence. Jesus is therefore confronting the social structures that governed his society at their core. For Jesus, family ties faded into insignificance in relation to God's imperial rule, which he regarded as the fundamental claim on human loyalty. (ibid., 353)

Keep in mind that a majority of the Fellows are versed in Greek and the ancient languages in which the books of the bible were originally written in. When they concur that "hate" is an appropriate (if the not the best) translation then we need not bother entertaining such rationalizations as "hate" is merely figurative or that hating one's family simply means that we should love Jesus/God more. As the Seminar's commentary above already tells us, Matthew had resorted to such blunting of what Jesus actually had meant in order not to scandalize his readers.

So in this saying Jesus instructs those who wish to follow him to hate their parents, spouse, children, even one's own self. Hate them all. Let that sink in for a while.

Julia Sweeney in Letting Go of God aptly points out, "Isn't that what cults do? Get you to reject your family in order to inculcate you?" Jesus doesn't just say, "leave your family and follow me." Even that would already be asking a lot in itself. He goes one step further and orders his followers to hate their immediate family, to dislike them intensely. It is a call for complete dissolution of emotional, psychological, sociological ties to one's roots, loved ones, including progeny. The reason? That the person may devote her entire self, all his energy to the founder of the cult, his ideology and agenda. And to those who may argue that Jesus wasn't directing his followers to himself but rather to God, it escapes them that what/who "God" is is according to what Jesus says it is. Jesus is promoting and selling his own brand of religion, else why be his disciple?

And this call for hatred of course is corroborated by Jesus' own behavior toward his mother. Time and again he snubs her. At one point he instructs his disciples to send Mary home, for he no longer considers her family. This guy openly shows contempt for his own mother and explicitly orders his disciples to hate their loved ones. Try drumming that into your teenage kids. Let's see how they turn out. "Mom, get away from me! Jesus says I should leave and hate you!"


The sea of faiths is populated by schools and schools of loonies. And Jesus? Just another fish in that ocean of deluded denizens, albeit a star nutcase.


---

Notes:

* "Final" here means nothing more than that it is the rating that was published at that time. Should another round of voting be conducted it is not improbable that the weighted average of some sayings may change due to various factors including the composition of the Seminar Fellows.

Euphemisms for ignorance

Hey, I thought nearly half of America believes the earth (or is it the universe) is less than 10,000 years old. Now another survey says a little less than half aren't sold on theism.

Nearly half of Americans are not sure God exists, according to a poll that also found divisions among the public on whether God is male or female or whether God has a human form and has control over events.

The survey conducted by Harris Poll found that 42 percent of US adults are not "absolutely certain" there is a God compared to 34 percent who felt that way when asked the same question three years ago.

Among the various religious groups, 76 percent of Protestants, 64 percent of Catholics and 30 percent of Jews said they are "absolutely certain" there is a God while 93 percent of Christians who describe themselves as "Born Again" feel certain God exists.

When questioned on whether God is male or female, 36 percent of respondents said they think God is male, 37 percent said neither male nor female and 10 percent said "both male and female."

Only one percent think of God as a female, according to the poll.

Asked whether God has a human form, 41 percent said they think of God as "a spirit or power than can take on human form but is not inherently human."

As to whether God controls events on Earth, 29 percent believe that to be the case while 44 percent said God "observes but does not control what happens on Earth".

The survey was conducted online between October 4 and 10 among 2,010 US adults.

P.Z. Meyers of Pharyngula has already nailed part of the problem with regards the gender of their deity.

How do they know he's male? Does he he have a penis? How big is it? What does he use it for?

Tsk, tsk. You really aren't up to speed, are you, Dr. Meyers? That supernatural entity's mission in life is to screw virgins. Ring a bell? For that you need a piece. Of course, how his superpenis could bore its way in, give Mary the big O, squirt a million tiny Jeebuses, and leave her still a virgin, well, that's a mystery.... Or maybe not. One mundane and more parsimonious explanation is that he has a supermicropenis, approximately a protein molecule in diameter. Never doubt god's omnipotence (or a theologian's creativity in writing fiction).

Getting back to the survey, let's also ask those who say their god's a "spirit" to tell us what the fuck "spirit" is. Please, tell us. I for one am all ears. Will it come as a surprise that they can't define/describe what it is, let alone provide a way of detecting and testing the presence/existence of this gobbledygook they tack the label "spirit" to?

Not content with "god" they pass the buck to "spirit." What next? "The Force"? Oh I know: "Mystery" aka, "Beats me; I have no idea." If ultimately they can't tell us what the hell g o d and s p i r i t are and what they refer to then what in tarnations are they really talking about in the first place? Why is it that faith-heads can't first get a handle on what it is they're so gaga over? (And if ever they do, ask them for evidence. That always sends them over the edge).

The emperor's clothes--and they're hardly new

I think it was Richard Dawkins who first jogged my brain and made me realize how vacuous the enterprise of theology really is. Indeed, what in fact is theology? What is it that theologians are experts in? Mental acrobatics perhaps? Imaginary Superfriends and Superfoes? Charons and River Styxes?

How can these faith-heads possibly talk about the nature, the deeds, the will, the mind of a deity--with doctrinaire certainty--when they haven't and can't even verify whether any of these are in fact true? Is there any theological "truth" that has been proved? Let's take the very fundamental "fact" of theology, for instance, a fact upon which all other theological claims stand. Is there a god? Since theologians claim there is, what and where is the evidence for the existence of this entity? What tests are there to evince its reality?

This entity is said to have stealth capabilities that the US military would commit genocide for. It cannot be seen nor detected in any way by anyone. Well, if that is so then by what means have theologians discovered its reality? Visions perhaps? Is this omnipotent deity of theirs so timid that it can't be distinguished from the oceanic feelings and ramblings of those who snort coke and acid, from chemical and electrical goings-on in the brain? Is there really no objective evidence for it, only subjective interpretations and hearsay?

Can we do experiments to the test its reality? Here's one right now. Up yours, Yahweh, up yours! May Satan broil you in his oven til you turn into charcoal, then use you to barbeque St. Gabriel, St. Michael, and the entire boys choir of heaven!

Well, I'm still alive. No lightning bolt, no heart attack, no stroke, no bullet to the head. Now if payback is supposed to be after I'm dead, what are theologians' evidence for that claim? ... Caramba! You mean there isn't any? That it's just an empty threat?

You see, faith-heads are wont to make claims and rationalizations that cannot be proven, that can't be falsified, those for which disproof is all too difficult or impossible. Why? Because that is the only way delusions can be kept intact. Disillusionment isn't a forgone conclusion when what is believed in can't be proven false.

But the claim that the Indian deity Ganesh (depicted as an elephant) exists isn't disprovable either. Nor is the claim that superadvanced invisible, undetectable aliens are at this very moment orbiting the earth and controlling our minds. In fact there are an infinity of things that are not disprovable. Any of them can be the object of delusion.

So theology isn't a subject at all. There is zero evidence for its basic premise, let alone for everything that follows from it However you look at it, it's all speculation. Theology is nothing but a house of cards.

So instead of churning out theses, treatises, doctrines, encyclicals, and tracts, theologians ought to switch employers to make full use of their creative talents. Hollywood, Disney Productions and Anime are the proper venues to express themselves.

The one and only true living dead

It's Hallooweeeen! Better bolt your doors and board up your windows cuz Zombie Jesus might just come knocking and feasting on your body and blood just as you've been dining on his for decades. Eye for an eye, liver for a liver, you see.

Roof of All Evil? --the complete collection

Part 1, The God Delusion





Part 2, The Virus of Faith

Root of All Evil? YouTube videos

Some videoclips from Richard Dawkins' two-part TV series Root of All Evil?


1. Religion and science as deeply opposed to one another. Science is about testing hypotheses; religion is about dogma. An example of the latter is the Catholic doctrine of the Assumption of Mary. (link)




2. Interview with Pastor Ted Haggard of New Life Church. (link)




3. The Old Testament deity as the most unpleasant character in all fiction; quotes from the OT on stoning unbelieving family members and handing over one's daughter to be raped. (link)




4. Morality, Darwinian explanation for morality, interview with Oliver Curry (London School of Economics) and Ian McEwan (atheist), atheism as life affirming. (link)




5. Hell houses and interview with Pastor Keenan Roberts. (link)

Top ten

I shared this Top Ten List via email in July 2005. Can't believe I didn't have a blog entry on this. Randi has it today on his Swift newsletter (his is taken from a different site). It's so hilarious (and spot on) I wish I could photocopy a ream and tack it to every post in town.

Top Ten Signs You're a Fundamentalist Christian

10 - You vigorously deny the existence of thousands of gods claimed by other religions, but feel outraged when someone denies the existence of yours.

9 - You feel insulted and "dehumanized" when scientists say that people evolved from other life forms, but you have no problem with the Biblical claim that we were created from dirt.

8 - You laugh at polytheists, but you have no problem believing in a Triune God.

7 - Your face turns purple when you hear of the "atrocities" attributed to Allah, but you don't even flinch when hearing about how God/Jehovah slaughtered all the babies of Egypt in "Exodus" and ordered the elimination of entire ethnic groups in "Joshua" including women, children, and trees!

6 - You laugh at Hindu beliefs that deify humans, and Greek claims about gods sleeping with women, but you have no problem believing that the Holy Spirit impregnated Mary, who then gave birth to a man-god who got killed, came back to life and then ascended into the sky.

5 - You are willing to spend your life looking for little loopholes in the scientifically established age of Earth (few billion years), but you find nothing wrong with believing dates recorded by Bronze Age tribesmen sitting in their tents and guessing that Earth is a few generations old.

4 - You believe that the entire population of this planet with the exception of those who share your beliefs -- though excluding those in all rival sects - will spend Eternity in an infinite Hell of Suffering. And yet consider your religion the most "tolerant" and "loving."

3 - While modern science, history, geology, biology, and physics have failed to convince you otherwise, some idiot rolling around on the floor speaking in "tongues" may be all the evidence you need to "prove" Christianity.

2 - You define 0.01% as a "high success rate" when it comes to answered prayers. You consider that to be evidence that prayer works. And you think that the remaining 99.99% FAILURE was simply the will of God.

1 - You actually know a lot less than many atheists and agnostics do about the Bible, Christianity, and church history - but still call yourself a Christian.

Richard Dawkins also has something similar in The God Delusion (Bantam Press, p. 178-179). Dawkins quotes anthropologist Pascal Boyer's description of the Fang people of Cameroon's strange supernatural beliefs in witches who have "extra animal-like organs" and who fly in the night. He also quotes Boyer's story of how when Boyer shared these strange beliefs in a Cambridge dinner, a theologian remarked, "That is what makes anthropology so fascinating and diffiuclt. You have to explain how people can believe such nonsense." Boyer recounts how he was too dumbfounded to say something about "kettles and pots."

Here's Dawkins' sooty kettle response:

Assuming that the Cambridge theologian was a mainstream Christian, he probably believed some combination of the following:

• In the time of the ancestors, a man was born to a virgin mother with no biological father being involved.
• The same fatherless man called out to a friend called Lazarus, who had been dead long enough to stink, and Lazarus promptly came back to life.
• The fatherless man himself came alive after being dead and buried three days.
• Forty days later, the fatherless man went up to the top of a hill and then disappeared bodily into the sky.
• If you murmur thoughts privately in your head, the fatherless man, and his 'father' (who is also himself) will hear your thoughts and may act upon them. He is simultaneously able to hear the thoughts of everybody else in the world.
• If you do something bad, or something good, the same fatherless man sees all, even if nobody else does. You may be rewarded or punished accordingly, including after your death.
• The fatherless man's virgin mother never died but 'ascended' bodily into heaven.
• Bread and wine, if blessed by a priest (who must have testicles), 'become' the body and blood of the fatherless man.
  

What would an objective anthropologist, coming fresh to this set of beliefs while on fieldwork in Cambridge, make of them?

Dawkins rightly says, "All religious beliefs seem weird to those not brought up in them" (p,177).

I usually give the example of my relatives in China, who have lived there all their life. Not one of them is Christian. Not one of them subscribes to any of the beliefs of the Abrahamic monotheisms. And I would bet they would judge anyone who believed in Dawkins' list above to be weird. On the other hand, practically every single one my relatives here in the Philippines--those born from the mid 20th century on--is affiliated with one or another Christian denomination. The simple reason is that this country is Christian (in the sense that Christianity is the dominant, prevalent, and inescapable worldview with 95% of the populace calling themselves Christians). China isn't; it has its own Buddhist-Taoist tradition. Thus, it all boils down to society and socialization. In this case, familiarity breeds delusions, delusions of possessing the truth.

Dawkins teaches Falwell's students a lesson

From Richard Dawkins' journal:

Last night in Lynchburg, Virginia, home of the infamous Jerry Falwell, was memorable. The large hall at Randolph Macon Woman’s College was packed. I gave a fairly short program of readings from The God Delusion, and then the bulk of the evening was given over to much more than an hour of Q & A. The first questioner announced himself as coming from Liberty (Falwell’s 'University'), and he began by saying he had never been so insulted, yet simultaneously so amused, by any lecture. Many of the questioners announced themselves as either students or faculty from Liberty, rather than from Randolph Macon which was my host institution. One by one they tried to trip me up, and one by one their failure to do so was applauded by the audience. Finally, I said that my advice to all Liberty students was to resign immediately and apply to a proper university instead. That received thunderous applause, so that I almost began to feel slightly sorry for the Liberty people. Only almost and only slightly, however.

The most interesting question was from a young woman not from Liberty but from Randolph Macon itself, and it really startled me. She wanted to know whether people who deconverted from a religious upbringing felt ‘anger’. In my naivety, I went blank. Why should one feel anger? Anger towards what, or whom? I asked the audience whether they understood what she meant, and there was a great chorus of “Yes”. I asked them again, why anger, anger towards whom? Then they started shouting from all around the hall. It was anger towards their parents for bringing them up religious, anger towards teachers and pastors for indoctrinating them as children.

As for me I can't say that I'm that angry at those Jesuits who drummed the belief in a sky daddy. While intelligent, those old men (some of them already deceased) were just adept in compartmentalizing their minds. They were well rooted in reality about certain things. But they were all utterly stupid when it came to religion. Well, adios padres. I left you behind ages ago. And those of you who're still around, geez, are you still talking to your imaginary friend in the clouds?

Imagine; it isn't hard to do

Imagine there's no Heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today

Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace

--John Lennon

The unbearable strangeness of faith-heads

Earlier this month a naive Xian created the thread "Greetings from a theist" on the RDF discussion board. This Xian, whose handle is "thegoodbook," introduced himself as the owner of a North Carolina bookshop which "specializes in religious materials."

Among other things he claimed:

The matter of the fact is that The Bible is the most perfect written work ever assembled and that if we fail to realize this, then we are in trouble.

A forumer challenged this so-called perfection of the bible by citing the inconsistencies between the lineages of Jesus provided by Luke and Matthew. thegoodbook rationalized and explained it away by saying,

although The Bible is not internally consistent does not mean that it is not perfect. Again, we are describing the same thing from different points of view, but I will try not to leave it at that. I believe that The Bible is perfect. I have many reasons for this.

Consistency is not a criterion for judging something perfect. Try to digest that. It means any book is a candidate for being described as perfect. And so would any government notwithstanding the presence of conflicting, contradicting policies and haphazard enforcement of the law. (Well, what do you know? The Philippines still has a chance of being called perfect.) So what are the criteria for perfection?

thegoodbook continues:

If The Bible were to say 2+2=6, then I would believe it because that is where I derive my truth from. But, the Bible is not a math book so I look to mathematics for the sum of two and two. If it is internally inconsistent as to the lineage(s) of Jesus, then there must surely have been a reason for this and only adds to the mystry of the whole idea of The Bible and its perfection. But I don't know, I wasn't there. All I have is faith and evidence (proof) that is coherent in the context of that faith.

Folks, according to the bible π = 3. I'm sure this bloke will have nothing of what his math teachers taught him to the contrary. I can almost see him furiously exorcising his car for having tires that don't conform to god's mathematical constant.

Note that when Xians finally get cornered and are unable to explain an inconsistency, contradiction, or whatnot, they whip out the all-reliable "God is mysterious" flash card (used particularly when the question is about the presence of horrid evils that God permits and how God fails to save people from them). "God's ways are mysterious" is meant to be the mother of all inquiry stoppers. "Mystery" is suppposed to be the Great Wall you can't possibly punch through or climb over--we can't possibly know; it's beyond our puny brains to comprehend. In fact it means two things. 1. It translates to "You got me there. I haven't the foggiest idea." 2. The believer is sending the message that there is nothing in the world that can possibly falsify his belief, that there's absolutely nothing that could change his mind--neither contrary evidence, inconsistencies, contradictions, ... Nothing. For such a believer faith always trumps reason, even in the presence of confuting evidence (e.g. a "perfect" text that contains inconsistencies).

Spurred by thegoodbook's mind-boggling math remark, a member asked, "[And] if the bible said it's ok to rape?" Our diehard theist replied:

Sort of a rediculous question, but IF The Bible said it was OK to rape, then it would be OK to rape. Many atheists like to cite The Bible as stating that it is OK, indeed required, to kill your family if they do not believe. Well, I depart from God on this point which I don't have a problem doing.

My jaw dropped to the floor. I had to read his position on rape twice to make sure my eyes didn't skip over any "not" before "OK." Go read that sentence again. This guy is telling us that if the bible permits heinous crime Y then in thegoodbook's ethical system Y would and should be permitted. Well, I think thegoodbook has a daughter. Sir, I really want to get to know your daughter.* Hand her over. What do you mean you won't allow it? Do I have to recite Genesis 19:8 to you? Now be quick about it.

On the other hand, despite his belief that the bible is perfect and is the source of truth, thegoodbook is his own god when it comes to slitting the throats of unbelieving family members. I take it he won't stone his children to death if they become agnostics/atheists, despite God's crystal clear instructions. By his decision thegoodbook apparently is telling us that he deems himself more perfect than The Good Book when it comes to provisions on treatment of unbelievers. Of course the simple truth is that thegoodbook cherry picks which verses he's going to seriously consider and which he'll simply turn a blind eye to.


Faith makes people irrational. It makes them unable to think clearly. It makes them unbearably queer.


---

* To know = to have sex

They know because they don't

Whenever you hear a faith-head exclaim, "This is incredible! It's a miracle!" what s/he's actually blurting is, "Hallelujah, this is really so incredible! But I'm just too stupid/lazy to hypothesize/understand/explain/know how it could've happened otherwise." Such people don't bother to calm down, take a piece of paper and write down various possible parsimonious explanations, test them, rule them out, before concluding, "I've checked a huge number of plausible naturalistic hypotheses and none of them can explain the phenomenon. Therefore, the supernatural hypothesis remains a candidate. Notwithstanding, since it is fallacious to make an argument from ignorance, the actual cause cannot (by default) be said to be supernatural, since only if we come to ultimately possess omniscience of the totality of the natural world and exhausted all possible naturalistic explanations can we conclude that the event was in fact supernaturally caused and thus indeed a miracle. Since such omniscience is not at all forthcoming, no inexplicable event/phenomenon now or in the future can ever be known or said to be a miracle All we can say is that 'We as yet cannot explain it. We just don't know.'"

Miracle-mongers have such puffed-up egos and warped minds that when they're ignorant of how something came about they conclude they know it must've been supernaturally caused. As others have said "God did it" and "it's supernatural" are mere placeholders for "ignorance."

Down the rabbit hole

When one person suffers from a delusion, it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called Religion.

--Robert M. Pirsig, author of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

When a man advertizes--in all seriousness--that he can turn baguettes and batards into rabbit meat just by chanting some magic words, yet thereafter produces no change in the breads but insists they're now in fact medium rare rabbit steaks, he's dismissed as a lunatic.

When a thousand Vatican geezers seriously believe they can turn baked dough into a dead man's muscle tissue by mumbling their own magic words, that's christened religion. As if that weren't enough, a billion gullibles worldwide join and reinforce the delusion and queue up to have their weekly ration of human meat!*

Do you think they'll snap out of it if governments of the world start booking and prosecuting them for practising cannibalism?



---

* It's actually worse, since Jesus is said to be fully human and fully divine. Therefore, not only are they engaging in cannibalism but also in theophagy.

I think their god needs a pinch more salt.

How science is the handmaiden of theology

The Catechism of the Catholic Church tells us that:

In the most blessed sacrament of the Eucharist "the body and blood, together with the soul and divinity, of our Lord Jesus Christ and, therefore, the whole Christ is truly, really, and substantially contained." "This presence is called 'real' - by which is not intended to exclude the other types of presence as if they could not be 'real' too, but because it is presence in the fullest sense: that is to say, it is a substantial presence by which Christ, God and man, makes himself wholly and entirely present." [emphasis original]

...

The Council of Trent summarizes the Catholic faith by declaring: "Because Christ our Redeemer said that it was truly his body that he was offering under the species of bread, it has always been the conviction of the Church of God, and this holy Council now declares again, that by the consecration of the bread and wine there takes place a change of the whole substance of the bread into the substance of the body of Christ our Lord and of the whole substance of the wine into the substance of his blood. This change the holy Catholic Church has fittingly and properly called transubstantiation."

Since the laity doesn't usually get to lap up Jesus' red and white blood cells, let's limit our analysis to his muscle, skin, skeletal, and cellulite tissues.

We're told that the "whole Christ is truly, really, and substantially contained" in the consecrated bread, which means that not only his brain, heart, liver, kidneys, entrails (and attendant intestinal flora I suppose), biceps, glutes, and all are in it, but also the incorporeal thingamabob known as "his soul and divinity" (whatever those are).

Here's the problem. If I were to eat my pet dog Bubbles, then obviously after devouring him, he will no longer be around, right? I can ingest him only once. Were I to ask for another round of Bubbles, the best that can be done is to find me a Japanese spitz that resembles him as much as possible in all his aspects, both externally and internally and even "person"ality-wise. But the fact remains there is and will forever be one and only one Bubbles, just as in all history there is and will be one and only one Monica Lewinsky (notwithstanding the fact that Monica can eat Bill's dog--in its entirety, mind you--on more than one occasion).

Here's the second problem. Given that there can be only one Bubbles, were I to say that this cookie I have in my hand is in fact a transubstantiation of Bubbles and is the whole of Bubbles, how can Bubbles also be in that cookie you're about to nibble on? And for that matter how can the whole of Bubbles be in any number of other cookies simultaneously? There would be little problem if the claim had been that my cookie contains only a part of Bubbles--we could, at least in principle, divide the transubstantiation process such that there is at least one atom/molecule of him in each cookie. But since the claim is that all of Bubbles is in this cookie, no part of Bubbles can be in any other cookie or in any other thing.

A most brain-racking problem, isn't it?

Well, it certainly was, until our generation. Today we know the answer to this conundrum. And it's pretty simply really.

Cloning.

Christ is wholly present in your wafer and in my wafer and in the priest's wafer and in trillions of other crackers from centuries ago to millennia hence through the power of cloning. God being perfect and the creator of DNA is the Master Genetic Engineer. Through supernatural abracadabra tens of millions of clones of Jesus are manufactured weekly in heaven and Fedexed (through its premium one microsecond door-to-altar delivery service) to various points around the globe.

The Sacrament of the Eucharist is, therefore, not only an alchemical process of transmuting flour into Homo sapiens flesh (the so-called transubstantiation), but also concurrently a process of instantaneous cloning, with the original template (The Body) preserved (i.e., free from any genetic modification and mutation whatsoever) and kept well secured behind the pearly gates. Christ is ever present and present in his totality in every serving through the remarkable phenomenon of cloning.

Now, this is scientific knowledge in the service of understanding the supernatural. And it constantly amazes how science just keeps moving us toward a better comprehension of what theologians have known since before the Middle Ages.

Given the indubitable truth of cloned Christs, the Vatican's stance on cloning now becomes quite understandable. Though we are allowed to investigate and be privy to the secrets of God's creation and powers, we should not aspire to apply such powers, for imagine the terror that would ensue were scientists able to finally clone Satan! Think about that for a moment. Were this to come to pass, it would mean that the Son would have to (re)incarnate and be crucified an indefinite number of times to defeat all these Satans.* This, needless to say, would be the mother of all horrors, both in heaven and on earth.

Deja vu unlimited cannot be permitted to happen. Thus, while science makes us understand and appreciate the wonders of both the natural and the supernatural worlds, it must not overstep its mandate. Unfortunately, however, there has been no lack of eggheads who've been swayed and even possessed by the Evil One himself, scientists who are even at this very moment doing his bidding in his quest to finally become infinitely cloned as his brother Jesus has been privileged.

Is there a way to stop this madness?

There most certainly is. As a matter of fact there is only one surefire way to foil the machinations of the Evil One: We must sit down, close our eyes, fold our hands, contract every muscle in our body and face, move our bowels, and pray. Pray, my brothers and sisters. Pray as you've never had in your despicable, insignificant lives. Pray the moment you arise from your slumber; pray as you are cruising down or crossing the highway (be not concerned my brethren for God keeps woowoos from harm); pray at work, be not distracted by the world and pray as you're operating heavy machinery or operating on that heart patient; pray as you're watching Sex in the City; pray as you make out. Oh God! pray all day and all night until the world is delivered from this sh*t!

My dear brothers and sisters, have faith! Force yourself to believe till you turn blue and green. Believe like mad that prayer works, visualize Satan defeated once and for all, click your heels three times, think only positive, happy thoughts, rub that magnet over your heart chakra, wear a pyramid on your head, eat Jesus bread made with non-GM, organically grown wheat, and soon, very soon, as long as soon may get, we shall win the war.

Peace be with you.



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* "The death of Christ on the cross is the basis for Satan's final defeat (Hebrews 2:14-15; 1 Peter 3:18,22)," Why did Satan think he could defeat God? Keep in mind that Satan lives! And is the master of this world. Thus, it will soon become possible to not only create a multiplicity of him but also various genetically modified versions--each one a little different from the other--which would necessitate the crucifixion of the Second Person of the Trinity for each and every new strain of Satan. Furthermore, given the power of the scientific enterprise, scientists may one day through artificial selection create a Satan that is completely resistant to the death of Christ. An unthinkable abomination indeed!

Virgin sun maids

By Sam Harris:

We must not overlook the fact that a significant percentage of the world's Muslims believe that the men who brought down the World Trade Center are now seated at the right hand of God, amid "rivers of purest water, and rivers of milk forever fresh; rivers of wine delectable to those that drink it, and rivers of clearest honey" (47:15). These men--who slit the throats of stewardesses and delivered young couples with their children to their deaths at five hundred miles per hour--are at present being "attended by boys graced with eternal youth" in a "kingdom blissful and glorious." They are "arrayed in garments of fine green silk and rich brocade, and adorned with bracelets of silver" (76:15). The list of their prerequisites is long. But what is it that gets a martyr out of bed early on his last day among the living? Did any of the nineteen hijackers make haste to Allah's garden simply to get his hands on his allotment of silk? It seems doubtful. The irony here is almost a miracle in its own right: the most sexually repressive people found in the world today--people who are stirred to a killing rage by reruns of Baywatch--are lured to martyrdom by a conception of paradise that resembles nothing so much as an al fresco bordello.

In the endnote to the above Harris writes:

Christopher Luxenberg (this is a pseudonym), a scholar of ancient Semitic languages, has recently argued that a mistranslation is responsible for furnishing the Muslim paradise with "virgins" (Arabic hur, transliterated as "houris"--literally "white ones"). It seems that the passages describing paradise in the Koran were drawn from earlier Christian texts that make frequent use of the Aramaic word hur, meaning "white raisins." White raisins, it seems, were a great delicacy in the ancient world. Imagine the look a young martyr's face when, finding himself in a paradise teeming with his fellow thugs, his seventy houris arrive as a fistful of raisins.

(Sam Harris, End of Faith: Religion, Terror and the Future of Reason, New York: W.W. Norton, 2005, p. 127, 263)

Want to see my Porsche and Maserati?

There's this devotee--let's call her K--who believes that her tradition's sacred text is the word of God. Mind you she's not a Christian. K has unwavering faith (i.e., belief) that it is her god who's for real and that every word in what she considers the holy text comes from this deity of hers. Asked what she thinks of the gods of other religions, she coughs out a snicker and says simply, "As real as Cthulhu and Voltes V."

My question is, Why is it that not every theist, every human who yearns to be God's toadie has faith in K's deity and holy book? Why is it that bible toters and Vatican geezers don't have faith in this god, the supernatural entity that's purportedly the only real and true being up there? And more importantly, why the heck don't you believe? Sigh. Ye men and women of little faith!

Ask devout Hindus, Parsis, Muslims, Jews, ... whether their deity is the real McCoy and whether their scriptures are the word of their deity/deities. Bring me one who says no.

We can have faith in a billion and one things. And yet believing, believing ardently, believing till our brains explode in ecstasy (no, not the pill) isn't going to make what we believe in true and real if it just ain't so. Dozens if not hundreds predicted the world would end before today. And yet all these forecasts are now history! However much gullibles may have believed in them, they were absolutely wrong. Beliefs are, literally, only in the mind. Thus, "utterly stupid" is what describes the act of going about raving and coaxing others to have faith. That clarion call "Have faith"--to believe fervently despite the lack of evidence or even because there is no evidence--is today's PC phrase for "Please, please delude yourself."

The next time an ecstatic religionist sidles up to you like some MLM (multi level marketing) salesman, keep in mind that that person, at least vis-a-vis the nonexistent product he's persuading you to invest in, is totally bonkers and is psychotic and has bought into a tale he (desperately) wishes to be true.*

When accosted by such a crazy fool subject him to this acid test: Ask him to show you the product. Demand that he produce this deity he's so gaga over. No demo, no go. If he insists he can't and argues that that's why you need to have faith, then tell him all about the honest-to-goodness fire-breathing dragon in your garage which, just by coincidence, you can't make visible either. Which means that he must have faith that this hydrogen-expelling creature is in fact in the driver's seat of your invisible 500-hp Ferrari. And for good measure tell him about how that innocent, beat-up 1.3-liter Toyota parked in there regularly transubstantiates into a Lamborghini whenever it hits the streets. "Faith, my boy. Just have faith all this is true."


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* "Normal" people can have transient psychotic episodes and can compartmentalize their minds, chronically, such that one or two or more beliefs or ways of thinking are totally irrational and incongruous with the rest of what's in his head. Thus, an engineer may be an expert in constructing bridges and a top-notch professor of civil engineering, but can harbor such wacky, ludicrous beliefs as aliens abducting humans just to have sex with them. (See Michael Shermer's Why People Believe Weird Things.)

Seen this guy lately?

I love the following Jeebus photo album. Shows how He cometh in many guises ... and sizes too.


God Zilla rampaging in New York. About to knock down the UN Headquarters.




Jeebus, M.D., Director of Surgery




"Upon this Rocky I will build my church"

Food for the soul?

Question: Who in their right mind would stand up at the dinner table and say, "Hey guys, listen up. You see these morsels I've broken off from the loaves of challah, ciabatta, brioche, and pain de mie (pullman)? Well, these are actually my body. Hey, no snickering over there. I'm not kidding. And no, I'm not saying they represent or symbolize my biological tissue. These are truly, really, literally me. Here, have some. Sure, it tastes like bread, and yeah I sure hell know any and all physical and chemical analyses will reveal it to be gelatinized starch, saccharides, proteins, fats and oils, and yeast, but you gotta take my word that it is me. When you munch on it you in fact are eating me. Yeah, yeah, I know that's cannibalism any way you look at it, but, hey, every time you do this you will be remember me, long after I'm gone. And more than just making sure you don't forget moi, eating me is the way you will without a shadow of a doubt take me into you. This is really 'in - corporating' me (for those who weren't paying attention to the Romans, that's from the Latin corpus, meaning 'body'). So come on guys, take and eat. Bite into me!"

Who in their right mind would believe this looney? And who would actually get duped into performing the cannibalistic ritual?

Well, when it comes to feasting on a (supposed) 2,000-year old corpse that got up, walked about, and was finally beamed up to the mother ship (heaven) to resume his invisible god status (remember though, the Vatican says Jeebus is fully human and fully divine), Catholics win hands down in stupendous nuttiness. I mean, they actually queue up, weekly, to get a serving of their hero! (In fairness, if they start passing Danish butter and baguettes along with those wafers, I'd line up too.)

But let's assume that these gullibles are actually ingesting this man called Jeebus. In that case I have some nutrition, dietary, and medical questions about their cannibal fare: How many calories is Jeebus? Isn't ingesting a whole human weighing some 150 pounds kind of fattening? Getting that much meat surely increases bad cholesterol levels with adverse consequences for cardiovascular health. And what about Jeebus' colon and all its pathogenic bacteria such as E. coli? Shouldn't his entrails be removed first before being devoured? Another important consideration: Is Jeebus served raw or is he cooked? Raw meat of course presents another health hazard. On the other hand, if he's cooked, I'm curious as whether he's deep fried, roasted, baked, steamed, or whatnot. Does he come out medium rare or well done? What seasonings, herbs and spices--if any--are used? (Judging by the taste of those wafers, he could use a little more salt).

Some will sheepishly offer the lame excuse that what is being offered and swallowed is Jeebus' spiritual body and spiritual blood. But what the heck are "spiritual body" and "spiritual blood"? Do they have size, shape, mass, color, taste, smell, electrical charge, refractive index, ...? Has anyone seen, detected, measured spiritual body and blood? If this "body" isn't muscle tissue, lipids, dermal layers, has no DNA and no cytology, and if this "blood" isn't human serum, doesn't have a blood type, no rhesus factor, is not composed of erythrocytes, phagocytes, platelets, plasma, and protein, then what are they? If no one can explain what it is and no one has actually verified its existence, then what meaning is there in talking about these things? And why must these spiritual whatever be literally chewed, swallowed, drank? Since ingestion is part of the ritual then what and why cannibalism of the spirit? This deity and his "spirit" (whatever that is) has to go through the mouth and digestive system? What is it with eating this superhuman/god-man? Duh!

Kooky, wacko, nuts. There's just no other way of describing this ritual of feasting on a god-man--because it is completely anachronistic. We no longer are hunter-gatherers of yore. We study cannibalism in socio-anthropology classes; we don't engage in this behavior. In fact such action is proscribed.

And as if that were not enough, educated men actually believe--with much pride and reverence--that they can perform the magic trick of turning flour into flesh! Think about that. Adult males, a good number of them past middle age, in all seriousness chant what amounts to magic words over wafers and wine, actually believing that by virtue of their official status and the formulistic words they utter they can and will in fact cause flour to become the flesh of their deity. Look at it this way. Were I to seriously and adamantly claim that I can transform ballpens into the hand of my god (and that these pens will in my hand produce revelations from God) merely by raising my arms to the heavens, closing my eyes, and reciting some magic words over the pens, I would be dismissed as being a scammer or being off my rockers. Now how different is the claim by and belief of the men in Rome? A delusion subscribed to for centuries by hundreds of thousands is still a delusion!

Rome has spoken; the matter is closed

It's all but final. According to the Pope's men there is no limbo.

Took them half a millennium to know and conclude that limbo's just a figment of human imagination? Why didn't God's minions just ask their supremo up there? Wouldn't that have licked the problem right away? Oh, pardon me. I forgot. Their unseen, ethereal Commander in Chief lost his tongue right after the myths in the bible were written.