Night of the living…plants?

The Washington Post reports that a team of Russian scientists has successfully reanimated a flowering plant from some old seeds. Really old seeds.

The Russian research team recovered the fruit after investigating dozens of fossil burrows hidden in ice deposits on the right bank of the lower Kolyma River in northeastern Siberia, the sediments dating back 30,000-32,000 years.

What makes this so remarkable is that according to top scholars at ChristianAnswers.net, this is three times longer than the entire earth has been in existence, making it clear that the Russians have not only resurrected an extremely ancient species, but have found a way to recover plant materials from some other dimension, like maybe heaven. Or something. It’s probably quantum.

Yeah, that’s the ticket. Quantum.

Divertissement

I don’t feel like taking on anything super-heavy today, so let’s see if I can start some kind of meme. Name three fiction books you’ve read more than three times, and why.

The book I’ve read the most is the Bible, due to my Christian past. I lost count of how many times I read it through cover to cover, but it was at least 8, and of course that’s only the times I was counting how many times I read the whole thing. It’s pretty poor fiction, though, so maybe we shouldn’t count this one.

I also read The Chronicles of Narnia any number of times, even as an adult. As a Christian, I enjoyed Narnia a lot more than the Bible even, because Aslan in Narnia seemed so much more like the kind of loving God Jesus should have been. I didn’t really realize it until after I stopped believing the Bible, but in a way the Bible created the kind of hunger a childish fantasy could best satisfy, by promising so much on behalf of a God Who could deliver so little. I can’t read it any more, though, because now it just reminds me of how badly my faith let me down. Fortunately, I’ve also got some secular favorites as well.

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The Omega Bowl

Well, I missed the Super Bowl (though honestly I didn’t miss it much). I don’t really care much which side of what line some little leather ball is on, but I don’t want to rule out the possibility of interesting Bowl games altogether. What I’m thinking of is—the Omega Bowl. Is that name taken? We could call it the Alpha and Omega Bowl if we need to be more specific. But it’s not a contest between two football teams. It’s a battle of the gods. Literally.

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I’m my own grandpa

This week at Evangelical Realism, we take a look at one big factor that William Lane Craig leaves out when trying to decide what Jesus must have meant by “the Son of God.” According to the Gospels, Jesus’ mom was impregnated by God Himself, making Jesus God’s (bastard) son—a relationship of mere biology rather than shared divinity. In the process of typing out “the son of God” versus “God the Son,” though, it struck me that the story of the Virgin Birth really wreaks havoc with Trinitarian theology. If Jesus is the son of God, then whom, exactly, is he the son of?

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Low-cost space exploration

Recent budget cuts at NASA make it clear that the glory days are over, as far as funding is concerned. A report at the Discovery Channel website suggests the possibility of a lower-cost alternative to all those big, expensive rockets and stuff.

Over the past 50 years, billions of dollars have been spent visiting our nearest neighbor in space, the moon. It’s the only extraterrestrial body humans have ever walked on. Besides the United States and Russia, Japan, China, India and the European Space Agency have all sent robotic spacecraft moonward…

But why bother? says a group of parapsychology sleuths who accuse NASA of hiding evidence of aliens on the lunar surface.

Yep, a group of psychics has used “remote viewing” to discover that the Apollo 16 astronauts actually discovered wreckage of an alien spacecraft that crashed on the moon. The wreckage can even be seen in published photos—cleverly disguised as ordinary rocks and dirt. Damn those government censors for covering this all up!
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News from Iowa

Just stopped by the local groceries for some sandwich fixings, and the headline on the local paper reads:

Santorum, Romney On Top



Santorum, and Romney on top. It’s going to take me all damn day to get that mental picture out of my head.

 

Wabbit season

I remember the first time I saw it: Elmer Fudd stands by, gun loaded, as Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck rip signs off a tree, exposing a new sign underneath: “Rabbit Season!” “Duck Season!” “Rabbit Season!” “Duck Season!” “Rabb—ELMER Season!??” And Elmer has to run for his life from his former prey. Gotta love the classics.

Speaking of silly cartoons, here’s a columnist from the World Net Daily arguing—I kid you not—that Barack Obama, as President of the United States, officially declared an open season on Christians worldwide.

Here’s the relevant quote from the May 2009 press conference in Turkey:

“One of the great strengths of the United States is … we do not consider ourselves a Christian nation or a Jewish nation, or a Muslim nation. We consider ourselves a nation of citizens who are bound by ideals and a set of values.”

It is bedrock American tradition, as stated in the first amendment to the Constitution, that there is no government-established religion, that freedom of religion for each individual is guaranteed. The United States has no state religion, no government church. In that sense, the United States is, of course, not a “Christian nation”…

To the Muslim ear, Obama was saying that the United States would not protect Christian communities in predominantly Muslim countries because the U.S. was neutral on the issue of religion. An unfolding Christian bloodbath is the result.

So he admits that our Constitution specifies “no religious preference” for our government, and yet somehow that translates into “it’s ok to shoot Christians” when mentioned by Obama? If I made a cartoon that gave conservatives lines like this, they’d complain about being ridiculed. Or they might cheer. Who knows?

Ben Stein on Christmas trees

According to the UK’s Catholic Herald, it seems the War on By Christmas has enlisted a new recruit: Ben Stein.

There’s a story somewhere about Barack Obama referring to a Christmas tree as a “holiday tree,” which is apparently a worse form of persecution than denying Christians the right to marry one another, or something. In a vigorous and principled rebuttal on CBS Sunday Morning (which all good Christians will have missed because they’re in church where they belong), Stein says:

I am a Jew and every single one of my ancestors was Jewish. And it doesn’t bother me even a little bit when people call those beautiful, lit up, bejewelled trees, Christmas trees. I don’t feel threatened. I don’t feel discriminated against… It doesn’t bother me a bit when people say ‘Merry Christmas’ to me… In fact I kind of like it. It shows that we are all brothers and sisters celebrating this happy time of year.

Oh my God, Ben, which side are you on? How dare you refer to it as “this happy time of year” instead of calling it Christmas? Are you trying to take Christ out of Christmas? You do remember, don’t you, that this whole “war on Christmas” meme was originally concocted as an anti-Semitic propaganda campaign? That Jews were originally accused of writing secular holiday songs (like Jingle Bells) as an attack on Christmas as a holy day reminding us of the miracle of the incarnation of the Son of God?

Well, maybe he does, and he’s just kissing up. Or maybe he’s just being paid to shill for the conservative Christian majority. Wouldn’t be the first time, eh?

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Jesus vs Santa

The other day I mentioned the fact that, if you’re just looking for something to believe in, one belief works just as well as any other. And if you are looking for something to believe in, why not believe in something nice, like Santa? With that in mind, here is my list of the Top Ten Reasons Santa Is Better Than Jesus.

10. Santa does not endorse any political candidates or parties.

9. If you’re bad, Santa gives you a lump of coal, he doesn’t try to turn you into one.

8. Santa comes to town riding a sleigh pulled by flying reindeer; Jesus comes to town riding someone else’s ass (which seems to have become a tradition among some of his followers, by the way).

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