No weirder than any other religious story

That Jesus guy sure got around. This is a sign in Shingo, Japan, where they claim that Jesus settled down after escaping crucifixion.

Here’s the story:

When Jesus Christ was 21 years old, he came to Japan and pursued knowledge of divinity for 12 years. He went back to Judea at age 33 and engaged in his mission. However, at that time, people in Judea would not accept Christ’s preaching. Instead, they arrested him and tried to crucify him on a cross. His younger brother, Isukiri casually took Christ’s place and ended his life on the cross.

Christ, who escaped the crucifixion, went through the ups and downs of travel, and again came to Japan. He settled right here in what is now called Herai Village, and died at the age of 106.

On this holy ground, there is dedicated a burial mound on the right to deify Christ, and a grave on the left to deify Isukiri.

The above description was given in a testament by Jesus Christ.

I like how Isukiri “casually” let himself be tortured to death.

I also wonder if the people of Shingo intentionally put up the sign to screw with Mormon missionary heads.

Victory!

You may recall I maneuvered a few people into a little bet to help raise money for Camp Quest, in which they had to pay a few little forfeits if they ‘won’. Here’s Greta, JT, and Jen in a state of bewilderment: didn’t they win? So why are they facing this humiliation?

Bwahahahahaha!

A flat-earth challenge!

Here’s a compilation of arguments for a flat earth from 1885. I laughed, but this one demands a response.

Staunch flat-earther Wilbur Glenn Voliva (1870-1942) asked: “Where is the man who believes he can jump into the air, remaining off the earth one second, and come down to earth 193.7 miles from where he jumped up?” Hard to argue with that.

Wait, but I can argue with that! There’s something wrong with his calculations: I estimate that if I were stationary relative to the rotating earth for one second, I’d only travel about a quarter mile to the west. Disappointing.

Also, if the earth were spinning at 193 miles per second, a day would only be 2 minutes long.

There might also be something else wrong with his scenario, but who cares if he can’t even get the basic math right?

I can’t keep up with these teen fads

Christian knees are trembling, sensing imminent doom brought on by juvenile fantasy literature. Which is ironic, considering that they worship a big sloppy book that fits perfectly into the genre. Anyway, first there was the Harry Potter series, which turned all the teenagers into Wiccans (what?); then there was the Twilight series, that has led to an upsurge of teenagers drinking blood (I missed that one, too). What next?

Think carefully: What might happen if a “third wave” of popular entertainment inspires gullible teenagers to seek possession by demonic entities, thinking it’s good for them? To those who believe in a real behind-the-scenes war between good and evil, the prospect is truly terrifying.

There are no people with magic powers or functioning magic wands, and there are no quidditch matches on ESPN; vampires aren’t real, and all that can happen with rare instances of blood drinking is a little nausea and the potential transmission of blood-borne diseases.

Demons aren’t real, and inviting one to possess you is just a waste of time that will make you look very silly. And the people believe it’s a peril deserve a little terror, and should lock themselves up in their churches and not come out any more.

Zombie cephalopod…it’s what’s for dinner

This video may not be to everyone’s taste — it’s pretty awful. This is an octopus dish served in Hakodate, in which the poor raw cephalopod is presumably dead, but when soy sauce is poured over it, it’s triggered to writhe its tentacles.

I do not approve. Either it’s cephalopod torture if it’s still alive, or soy sauce is the secret ingredient for zombie reanimation*. And then…no one eats zombies. That’s just disgusting.

*I am considering adding a new suggestion to my funeral instructions, though.

TheoLogic™ works everywhere!

Perhaps you’ve wondered about the true and factual foundations of fairy tales other than the biblical ones. It turns out that the reasoning of theologians is universally applicable!

It is time to set the record straight, and affirm the historical Truth of the Goldilocks narrative. I intend to show that it is overwhelmingly more likely that the Goldilocks story is literally true than not, and not only does it constitute Warranted True Belief, it is *necessarily* true in a deep ontological and cosmological sense, i.e. if the G3B model was any different, our universe would be deeply inimical to human life, and we would not even be here.

Wow. Since universality is usually considered a good property of a philosophy, this must be a point in favor of TheoLogic™.

I’m in the Bible?

A reader ran my name through one of those bible code programs — you know, those really silly exercises in goofy divination that juggles lines of the bible around to find some arrangement that reveals words and phrases — and it turns out I’m in there. See?

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Gosh, I guess the Bible must be true then.

Then the next step in this program is that it extracts a numerically related verse, somehow, that tells you deep things about the word in question. This is me:

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Respect my biblical authoritah! My very, very tired biblical authoritah…we got home from TAM at 4am, which means my brain is almost misfiring enough to find bible code crap somewhat weakly interesting. Almost.

Another reader sent me a different scan using the same software.

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I like this one better.