That answers nothing

Here’s an interesting exercise for you: summarize the Bible in one sentence. A bunch of theologians and pastors took a stab at it, and failed to escape their preconceptions and say anything that made any sense.

The statements all vary in their length and their floweriness, but I picked this one example because it’s fairly clear and representative. This is a one-sentence summary of the Bible by a Christian pastor:

A holy God sends his righteous Son to die for unrighteous sinners so we can be holy and live happily with God forever.

That is an empty statement, one that explains nothing and simply sits there looking absurd. I don’t understand how anyone can commit themselves to a life spent promoting that kind of nonsense; these people really should try taking their summaries and looking at them carefully to try and see the peculiarity of their claims.

I’m not cherry-picking, either. Here are a couple more examples just so you can see the general thrust of the arguments.

God was so covenantally committed to the world that he gave his one and only Son that whoever believes in him may have eternal life!

God is redeeming his creation by bringing it under the lordship of Jesus Christ.

The message of the Bible is the transforming grace of God displayed preeminently in Jesus Christ.

The good news is that they all mostly agree with one another. The Bible is about a god who is trying to get people into his heaven by asking them to believe a story about his son being killed and rising from the dead.

The bad news is that the story makes no sense. I’ll give them the existence of their god as a premise, just as I’d grant Herman Melville the existence of Ahab as the start of his story. But what follows doesn’t work. This god has a son — there’s a whole story there that is glossed over. It rather anchors the deity into the prosaic, doesn’t it? He’s a discrete being with an anthropomorphic capacity for procreation. OK, let’s just give them that as a premise, too, although my experience with theologians is that they’ll sit there endlessly arguing with you over that detail.

But then it gets sillier. He sends this son to us to die. He dies? So he’s not an immortal god? Oh, wait, he doesn’t really die, he bounces back a day and a half later, and again, Christian theologians will weeble at you incessantly about how Jesus really is their god, their one true god, who is part of a trinity.

And then that bit about his death “redeeming” us? No way. That makes no sense. If I commit a crime, having someone else suffer 2000 years ago for some other crime that is completely unrelated to what I did does not have any logical connection at all to absolving me of guilt. It’s simply crazy talk, theological noise.

I have my own one-sentence summary of the Christian bible. It actually fits well with human behavior, unlike the prattling nonsense of theologians.

Here is a long tome containing fractured history and arbitrary and patently ridiculous rules that, if you say you believe them, will represent a costly signal to indicate that you are a committed member of our tribe.

Or if that’s too long for you, “Be stupid and belong.” Theology then fills the same role as frat-house hazing or blood-brother rituals, and all the contributors to that list of summaries can be proud brothers together in blissful inanity. It’s clubhouse psychology.

I can even sympathize a bit with that purpose. Lots of organizations have similar trials to secure their membership. Even science does this: we’ve all been through that long gauntlet of calculus and chemistry and basic physics. The difference is that scientists are expected to master something difficult and useful, not bullshit.

The new John Benneth policy

That loopy homeopath, John Benneth, is bragging now that he is the most widely read homeopath in the world, and that his blog has broken all previous viewership records. He’s quite proud of this “accomplishment”.

One of the last John Benneth Journal entries for 2010, IN ONE YEAR, has broken all previous viewership records and sparked more commentary and outrage amongst the pharmaceutical company stooges than any previous Journal entry, enlisting the usual fury and nasty responses.

He seems to be aware of how it happened: I linked to that one article. What he doesn’t seem to appreciate, though, is that what I giveth, I can take away, and that it doesn’t say much for homeopathy that one link from one blog can make such a dramatic difference in his traffic.

So, because he thinks it’s meaningful, I’ve added a little filter to this site: using “johnbenneth.wordpress.com” in a comment will get it held for moderation…and it won’t be approved. Bye bye, Mr Benneth.

You’ll have to look him up indirectly, as in this mention on FSTDT. Otherwise, ignore the loon.

The universe conspires to make me humble

Earlier I had claimed that cable networks had bottomed out by conspiring with the Catholic church to make an exorcism show.

I was wrong.

TLC is making a reality show with Ted Haggard.

I will refrain from saying that now they’ve hit bottom, because if I do, some cable executive somewhere will step forward to plumb depths I can’t even imagine.

I think I understand why religion is so successful

It’s because it is the absolute bottom floor of any descent into crepitude. That’s all I can conclude from looking at the fate of various cable television channels: they all seem to start out well with commendable goals, and pretty soon they’re all selling out to the cheapest, sleaziest advertisers and producing the worst shows they can imagine, all to pander to the lowest common denominator. Look at The Learning Channel (you won’t learn anything watching it anymore), the History Channel (yeah, if your idea of history always has Nazis in it), and the SciFi channel, which now isn’t even trying and has renamed itself the SyFy (what?) channel and hosts what I once thought was the lowest of the low, Ghosthunters.

But the Discovery Channel has out-bottomed even the SyFy channel: they have made a deal with Satan the Catholic Church and will be producing a show on exorcisms.

This is why NetFlix will conquer the home entertainment universe: all the broadcast and cable channels have become the domain of the dumb.

Well, won’t that cheer us all up

The CBC has one of those awful year-end countdown shows, and this one is rather appalling. It’s a countdown of the top 10 miracles of 2010. Hey, there, Canada, I thought we were supposed to be the crazy country, while you were supposed to be the polite, serious brother! What happened?

It gets worse. As Canadian Cynic points out, they’re devaluing the word “miracle”. Among the tripe they’re promoting is a statue of the Madonna that weeps oil (fake!), and the usual business of people going in for treatment of serious medical ailments, and ta-daaaa, the doctors fix them. But the #1 top “miracle” of the year was a plane crash—a plane that carried 104 people, 103 of whom died instantly, bloodily, with shattered bodies and splintered bones. Isn’t it wonderful that one person survived?

I don’t know whether the people who toss around that artless, useless word “miracle” are freakin’ ghouls or simply stupid. It’s Christmas, and I’m feeling charitable, so I guess I’ll go with stupid.

The War on Christmas, xenophobic edition

You know who really hates Christmas?

MUSLIMS!

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I bet you didn’t know that if you converted to Islam you’d get immunity to STDs, your debt would disappear, rapes, teen pregnancy, and abortions would never occur, the rave would be canceled, you’d stop making that silly claim that god had a son, there’d be no exploitation or promiscuity or crime, the night clubs would shut down, nobody would have sex with 9 year old girls (oh, wait a minute…), you wouldn’t be a pagan anymore (duh), you’d get a house, but you wouldn’t drink alcohol or do drugs in it. Amazing stuff. The Muslim world must be a quiet little paradise, kind of like Wally and Beaver’s neighborhood.

Actually, this seems to be the work of a deranged lunatic, kind of like a browner, Englisher, Islamicer Fred Phelps. That doesn’t stop the Daily Mail from having vapors over the Islamic threat and MPs demanding that the signs all be ripped down. Alas, this is one of the prices we pay for free speech: people get to say stupid things.

The War on…Asgard?

The Council of Conservative Citizens is very angry, and is calling for a boycott of an upcoming movie that offends their values. The CofCC is a paleoconservative organization which has as its first principle the myth that the United States is a Christian country, so you might think that the reason it objects to the Marvel superhero movie Thor is that it promotes a pagan religion. You’d be wrong. They’re upset because Marvel Studios has declared war on Norse mythology, which you’d think they’d consider a good thing, except that it violates another of their principles, that America is supposed to be a white country.

You see, Marvel cast Idris Elba, a black man, to play the god Heimdall.

We may yet witness angrily protesting against the giving of offense to non-existent followers of a non-existent god whose religion is based on a practically non-existent connection between an ancient pagan faith and a comic book. I kind of expect the story to dribble away as everyone realizes how ridiculous they look, but then, I’ve been deeply wrong about how rational people are before. Oh, and I know about Asatru: it’s a wanna-be religion that mainly appeals to the stupidly macho; the Marvel comic book has nothing to do with any real religion, except that it stole its cast of characters from mythology.

And if you think the C of CC is cranky, you should see Stormfront! (Warning! That is a link to a rabidly racist site that I despise so much that references to it are on the comment filter list: you’ll have to refer to it by euphemisms — be creative — in the comments). They’re very indignant. Heimdall is supposed to be white, dammit. And you know what else is wrong with the casting?

Not only that, Natalie Portman (Jane Foster) is a Jew.

Man, those people must be completely incapable of watching a single movie ever made. They just sit in their living room fuming at all the blacks and Jews and Asians and Italians and Inuit and Lakota wandering about in their yards.

I think they’re getting more and more easily offended

This is getting ridiculous. Now people are getting irate at the use of a common word.

The teacher…was explaining to the class how the cold climate in Trevélez, Granada province, aided in the curing of the village’s most famous local product, jamón serrano. The boy told his teacher that hearing the word ‘ham’ in class was offensive to him because of his religion and asked his geography teacher to stop referring to the product which caused him offence.

El Mundo newspaper reports that the boy’s parents then reported the teacher to both the National Police and to the courts. It’s understood that an internal investigation is also underway by the education authority in Cádiz province.

Personally, I only have temper tantrums over “ham” when it’s preceded by “ken”.

New rules: there are some things you are not allowed not to say anymore

Sorry, fellow atheists, but if you thought you could just get away with sitting quietly and not making a noise, you’re doomed. The situation is worse than simply some silly believers flying into a snit because horribly militant, aggressive, obnoxious atheists put up signs that say something offensive and vile, like “you can be good without god” — you thought if you just avoided confronting people with such criminal sentiments, you’d escape their notice and condemnation.

But soon, they’ll be coming for you if you are insufficiently fervent in cheerleading for god. Look at this: a group of atheists attended a city council meeting to protest (politely, of course) prayer before meetings and ten commandments signs, and they were threatened with expulsion for the terrifying t-shirts they were wearing. They bore a slogan that other attendees complained about as “offensive”. That slogan was simply One nation, indivisible.

Did you catch that horror? They left out the words “under god” that are supposed to be there, dividing “nation” from “indivisible”! I don’t know how Cape Coral City will cope with all these people going around not saying things.

Here’s another example of this amazing touchiness. Elizabeth Edwards recently died of cancer, and she left a final statement for her family and friends. It’s a nice, brief farewell, and in it she says, “You all know that I have been sustained throughout my life by three saving graces—my family, my friends, and a faith in the power of resilience and hope.”

Did you catch that one, too? I know, you can hardly believe it, and you’re probably shocked to your core by her dreadful omission: she didn’t mention her faith in Jesus! Holy crap, you mean women are going around dying of cancer without words of praise for their lord and savior on their mind?

Wait, you’re thinking, no one could possibly be so insensitive and arrogant that they think they should dictate what a dying person’s final thoughts should be — other than us atheists, that is, who are expected to barge into the deathbed scenes and slap the weak-willed fading sap until they renounce their false beliefs in gods.

Oh, hang on…we don’t do that, either.

OK then, no one could be that arrogant…except a Christian. Get a napkin ready, just in case you feel an urge to throw up a little when you read how one Christian reacted to Edwards’ farewell.

Clearly Elizabeth Edwards wants to put her faith in something, be it hope or strength or anything. But not God. I wonder if it’s just bitterness, that’s she’s been forsaken by more than just her estranged husband — that’s she’s been forsaken by Him. And imagine if she’d have become First Lady. Americans generally expect outward expressions of faith in our presidents, Christian faith especially, and thus in our First Ladies as well. The Democratic base obviously doesn’t care, as we can see in the “wow factor” expressed by the author at the American Prospect. Being anti-religion is cool, so Edwards’ non-theological theology gets props from the neo-communists. Still, at her death bed and giving what most folks are calling a final goodbye, Elizabeth Edwards couldn’t find it somewhere down deep to ask for His blessings as she prepares for the hereafter? I guess that nihilism I’ve been discussing reaches up higher into the hard-left precincts than I thought.

“neo-communists”? “nihilists”? “You all know that I have been sustained throughout my life by three saving graces—my family, my friends, and a faith in the power of resilience and hope” is nihilism now?

Please, people, this is one reason I get rather peeved at all the internal chastising going on within the godless community about who is a dick and who isn’t. There are no atheists who can compare in dickishness to your average, pedestrian conservative Christian.

Also, you might want to start working on your deathbed lines now. If they aren’t all about Jesus, there’s a mob of ghoulish Christian dicks who’ll be gnawing on your corpse afterwards.

Oh, thank you, Oprah!

We’ve all been sitting around wondering what big questions would ever completely stymie science — we’ve been just knocking ’em down right and left, and scientists have been completely baffled about what good question they could possibly ask next. We’ve all had serious concerns that maybe we were all done, and we’d have to go work for a living or something terrible like that.

But we’ve been saved by Oprah. She, or rather the scientifically deep team of scientific and philosophical experts on her staff, have come up with a challenging list of Humongous Questions that we’ll have to address in our next grant proposals. Here they are, Six Questions Science Can’t Answer.

  • Padre Pio’s Stigmata! Old dead Italian priest would poke himself to make himself bleed every day, and people worshipped him like Jesus!

  • Hindu statues drink milk! When offered sips of milk, statues of Ganesha are claimed to have drunk it, and people believed it!

  • Mosque didn’t fall down! Old mosque in city damaged by tsunami failed to collapse; populace dumbfounded and consternated!

Well golly gee. I am sorta puzzled…not by the questions, which are trivial and stupid, but by the fact that the authors, Jennifer Margulis and Meredith Bryan, managed to find gainful employment as writers and that CNN thought this crap was worth publishing. More Mysteries! That Science Can’t Answer!

But wait! I’m sure at this point, Jennifer and Meredith — hang on, I need a cutesy name for this couple…Jennidith! — Jennidith looked at their list of big questions and pondered. They’d hit up a couple of the Big Religions, and they were probably thinking that they could have gone on in this vein for a while. After all, they haven’t said anything about Judaism or Buddhism yet (maybe, “Why is a Catholic girl like Madonna suddenly so Jewish?” or “How will you explain what the Dalai Lama will be reincarnated as in his next life?”), but they were unsatisfied. These questions didn’t sound very sciencey. They weren’t even sciencish.

So they puzzled and they pondered and they contemplated, and they thought of some big science-like questions that had nothing at all to do with the first three questions, but kind of looked like questions a really smart person might ask, and since they didn’t know the answers, they must be the big questions we should shoo the scientists off to find out.

  • How did the universe begin? Like, planetariums are really awesome. Especially during Laser Floyd.

  • Do aliens exist? We’re not crazy to believe in space aliens, and we found a scientist who says there are other planets out there for them!

  • How many species live on earth? So many of those species are really, really small, so they must be hard to count!

I’d say more, but right now I’m just looking at Jennidith, shaking my head sadly, and wondering if maybe there isn’t somewhere else I’d rather be. Somewhere else with beer, maybe. And maybe with grown-ups who can talk intelligently. Because Jennidith, poor Jennidith, is an airhead.

They shouldn’t feel too bad, though. You can’t even imagine what I think of Oprah!