The Wall: A Sunday morning story

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Once upon a time, some people on a road were stopped by a wall.

We didn’t mind. It was a good place to stop for a while, and as more people coming down the road stopped at the wall, a community grew at its foot. Most people enjoyed gathering together, so the wall seemed like a fortuitous event, a good reason to rest and celebrate and work together for a while.

The wall wasn’t impassable, of course. Some could still clamber over the pile and continue on their journey, but the wall was a little daunting, and the happy community was so tempting, and few bothered.

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Peter Cushing criticizes the Mummy’s religion

Abject fan of the old Hammer Horror movies that I am, I was thrilled to see this bit from the 1959 version of The Mummy. Our hero, John Banning (played by the always wonderful Peter Cushing), has gone to the home of the suspected villain, Mehemet Bey (George Pastell), to see if this recent arrival from Egypt is the person who dispatched the Mummy (Christopher Lee) to kill his father and uncle, and attempt to kill him. The way he chooses to probe for clues is to talk to Bey about … religion. And by golly, he sounds just like me. Bey gives the usual theistic excuses: but people are devoted to him! You just can’t comprehend the god! You don’t know anything about him! And then come the threats. It’s very familiar.

Obviously, the apologist for religion turns out to be the murderous master of the Mummy. The rest of the movie involves a beautiful young woman who is the spittin’ image of the dead Egyptian priestess the Mummy loved, slow motion chases through a swamp (they at least set it up early that the hero is partially lame, so it almost makes sense that the lumbering Lee and limping Cushing are in a fair race), and big guns.

While Cushing’s sneering dismissal of foolish religion does remind me of me, I’m pleased to say that none of my critics have yet managed to reanimate a dead guy and send his plodding corpse my way. They’re welcome to try, and mummies are especially welcome—they never seem to be particularly effective, you know.

Jesus won’t bring you any presents!

I don’t know whether this is staged or not, but it’s bizarrely amusing: someone video taped his mother’s reaction to learning he is an atheist. Mom throws a hissy fit. After a bit of denial, she brings the big guns to bear on the poor guy: if he’s an atheist, he’s not going to get any presents for Christmas, because it’s all about Jesus.

After crushing him with that overwhelming threat, what’s she going to do to punish him when she finds out he posted her tirade on Youtube? It’s good parenting skills to know you don’t launch the thermonuclear missiles with the first offense, because you won’t have any credible escalation options left when you discover the really awful thing the kid has done.

The video has been pulled from youtube, but you can still find it here.

What if the right role for science is to shatter the frame?

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Matthew Nisbet and Chris Mooney have a short policy paper in Science that criticizes scientists for how they communicate to the public. Mooney says that “many scientists don’t really know what they’re up against when suddenly thrust into the media spotlight and interactions with politicians” — I agree completely. We are not trained to be glib and glossy, and we simply do not come across as well as we could. We’re also not really that interested, generally speaking, in the kind of presentation that plays well in 3 minutes on a news broadcast. It’s more than a cosmetological failure, though; as Nisbet says, “scientists, without misrepresenting scientific information, must learn to shape or ‘frame’ contentious issues in a way that make them personally relevant to diverse segments of the public, while taking advantage of the media platforms that reach these audiences.” I can go along with that, too.

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Reasons to believe, according to Collins

If I see Francis Collins’ pious, simpering facade one more time, I’m going to get really pissed off. Can someone please give that man a Templeton Prize and let him retire to the Cascades, where he can stare at waterfalls to his heart’s content? CNN has an article on “Why this scientist believes in God”, and it’s just more vapid crap distilled from his vapid book.

But OK, let’s take him at his word. He claims to be presenting reasons to believe … what are they? Do they meet any kind of scientific standard?

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If Donald Trump were a rabbi…

Steve Stanton, the city manager of Largo, Florida, is getting a sex change operation. That news is grounds for firing him. Injust as that is (but so damned typical), I was amused by this remark:

“If Jesus was here tonight, I can guarantee you he’d want him terminated,” said Pastor Ron Saunders of Largo’s Lighthouse Baptist Church. “Make no mistake about it.”

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Today’s excessive religious hysteria

A gay rights group called Soulforce had a sit-in (it warms my heart to hear the traditions of the 1960s have not completely died) in the offices of Al Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and typical homophobe. One of our local bible scholars, Reuben David, an assistant professor of Communication Arts at North Central University, took it upon himself to criticize these militant gay rights activists; I’m really impressed with his perspective:

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Steve Cooper of Tooting, Professional Goddess

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“There’s something enchanting under his sari!”

What is this, silly religion day? I just got sent a link to this marvelous story of a young unemployed British fellow who became a goddess in India — he is now the incarnation of Bahucharaji, the patron of Indian eunuchs, and he goes around blessing people and curing their infertility. Apparently, Bahucharaji was an Indian princess who castrated her husband because he wasn’t interested in sex, and for that she was deified. Thank Lakshmi and Urvasi my wife is an unbeliever!

They call him Prema, for short. It means “Divine Love.” Hey, what a coincidence, that’s what “PZ” means, too!

Hindu pilgrims have no doubts about his powers. When we asked Bhanu Barot why she was so keen to receive Prema’s blessing, she said, simply: “Because she is a goddess.”

Another woman, Rekha, said she had travelled for days to be blessed by Steve. She added: “My sister-in-law came here and she got pregnant immediately. I am hoping the same will happen for me after receiving the blessing of the goddess.”

It must be <cough> magic.

Life isn’t all curry and rice beer, or exotic Indian beauties asking for assistance in getting pregnant. There’s also the professional jealousy.

A eunuch called Sudha said: “He is a fake. I checked and he still has a penis.

He is a male so can’t be a goddess. He shouldn’t give blessings.”

Ooooh, the little bitch.