God as Chewing Gum

manga-bible.jpgHere’s a NYT story: The Bible as Graphic Novel, With a Samurai Stranger Called Christ — about the Bible presented as a Japanese-style graphic novel.

It seems obvious to me that the enlistment of new media for spreading holy stories de-mythologizes the message. Yes, you get wider exposure, but it becomes progressively more shallow. Eventually, religion becomes just another product, just another fad. God as chewing gum, or sports shoes. 

Once you throw religion onto the same market as other entertainments, you open it up to even greater competitive pressure. On any particular Sunday, if SuperJesus has to compete with TV, YouTube, iPod, Sprint, Wii and Digg, the market share of religion has to take a serious whack.

Interesting too to think that the Internet, with readily available sermons and religious readings, might be killing churches. Just as a lot of “bricks” businesses are being out-sold by their “clicks” competitors, the profit of physical churches has to be suffering due to all the online availability of churchy stuff. Watching churches consolidate and close in my local area, I have to believe it’s something like this.

Finally, the story of Anonymous vs. Scientology went viral and had what I believe to be a worldwide impact. I’d be surprised if 50 million people didn’t hear the story, and I think Scientology will take a substantial hit in membership and income, as more and more people find out just how nutty they are.

I see this as the seed of a greater recognition that ALL religion suffers from irrational and cultish elements. First L. Ron Hubbard, tomorrow Pope Palpatine!

Fractal Wrongness

fractals.jpgDang, I wish I could take credit for this idea. It’s something I just came across last week, and I finally got around to posting on it.

Fractal Wrongness:

The state of being wrong at every conceivable scale of resolution. That is, from a distance, a fractally wrong person’s worldview is incorrect; and furthermore, if you zoom in on any small part of that person’s worldview, that part is just as wrong as the whole worldview.

Debating with a person who is fractally wrong leads to infinite regress, as every refutation you make of that person’s opinions will lead to a rejoinder, full of half-truths, leaps of logic, and outright lies, that requires just as much refutation to debunk as the first one. It is as impossible to convince a fractally wrong person of anything as it is to walk around the edge of the Mandelbrot set in finite time.

If you ever get embroiled in a discussion with a fractally wrong person on the Internet–in mailing lists, newsgroups, or website forums–your best bet is to say your piece once and ignore any replies, thus saving yourself time.

The Brassican Heresy

broccoli.jpgWarning: The following post is long, and may contains insults to French people. And Christians. And probably frogs.

(Also, it underwent a slight editing, with some additional material, on Feb. 11.)

______________________________

I’d like to propose to you a daring hypothesis.

You may be surprised by it. You may be stunned. You might even be shocked. Because this is such a daring idea, some of you reading this right now may actually be horrified. There’s even the possibility – distant, but real, so I have to warn you – that one or more people about to read the following hypothesis will suffer deep psychological damage and end up under permanent psychiatric care, or possibly even comatose.

I don’t really want to just spring it on you suddenly. This is something so new, so different, so deeply significant, that I feel very strongly that it should have its own screen. It’s just not something I feel okay with plopping down in a sea of insignificant words, as if it were one common grain of sand on a vast beach.

This is something so special it demands treatment you’d immediately consider … unusual.

So. If you think you’re ready for it, brace yourself and look below the break. Here it comes:

Continue reading “The Brassican Heresy”

Non-issues, and Other Dangers

crusades2.jpgThis is a bit of a discussion I’m having with another blog commenter over at Unscrewing the Inscrutable, a nice Christian who seems sometimes open-minded, sometimes not, but always quite a bit not, if you get my meaning. I’m posting it here because the discussion that my reply evolves into is something I want to have heard in more than that one place.

He says:

The whole thing of Darwinian evolution, to me now it is a non-issue. The development of the physical world, whether through the eons of cosmology or a magical “Poof!” make no difference.

And I answer:

And there’s yet another way in which we differ.

Rich, in this and some of your other comments, I’ve noticed that you have that typical religious “doorstop” in your head. You’re willing to have the door swing so far – say in accepting “microevolution” – but no farther.

Yet I begin to wonder if the underlying real reason you’re here is that you, too, realize it, and you’re searching for some reason to let it go, and accept that some of the stuff in your head is useless and counterproductive … and FALSE.

Continue reading “Non-issues, and Other Dangers”

Atheist Questions

no-god.jpg

I belong to a little atheist Meetup group, and we got an email from a lady in the South not long back, asking for … well, moral support, mostly. Most recently,  she asked us some philosophical questions related to our personal experience of atheism. Here are my answers.

Would you say that you were an ideal model for society? 

Continue reading “Atheist Questions”

The Wisdom of the Beavers

beaver.jpgSaw this little magazine in the foyer of a local coffee shop a few days back. The main title, “Wisdom,” was stated in large letters, then below, smaller, was a subtitle “of the beavers, earth, body, mind & soul.”

So I picked it up. How can you go wrong with a magazine titled “Wisdom of the beavers”? The wisdom of Earth’s natural architects, able to build dams and cozy lodges out of trees? Especially if the beavers were finally weighing in on “earth, body, mind & soul.” Whoa, count me in!

Oh, man, can’t tell you how disappointed I was. I finally looked at the cover again and realized that in the scripty font they were using, the word that looked like “beavers” was actually “heavens.”

So it was really “Wisdom of the heavens, earth, body, mind & soul.” It was all this new-agey stuff. Nothing at all about beavers.

beavers.jpg

For instance, here’s an ad from the inner pages:

[Picture of woman with big hair and giant earrings] Hello, My name is Layla. I am a very experienced channeling psychic. I have several abilities and talents that range from one spectrum to another. For example, I am clairvoyant, clairaudient, clairsentient, a channeler, a mind reader, past, present, future time frames, an astrologist, a member of the American Tarot Association and a certified professional tarot reader. I can also do seances, automatic writing, prophetic revelations, psychometry, dream interpretation and handwriting analysis. I would love to have the opportunity to speak with you. Give me a call, thanks.

See? No mention of beavers. I mean, sure, the woman’s practically a Swiss Army Knife of psychic abilities, but could she gather materials for a dam using only her teeth?

And then: [Mystical mandala thingie superimposed over largish woman with sunglasses] “Cheri Evans – Spiritual Counselor, Master Teacher, Intuitive Healer – Doing Spiritual Readings for over 25 years.”

“Through many transitions and initiations, Cheri has come to find her path. As her journey has now come full circle her truths become available to those who search for answers. – Spiritual and Life Readings – Past Life Readings – Conscious Channeling – Cheri’s work is to bring forth information that sheds light on your path and connects you with your life’s purpose.”

Well, that all sounds noble enough. But what use will it all be when the floodwaters rocket down the canyon towards your house? 

I guess I don’t get this New Age stuff.

Day 18 – Too Much Hank

Another great workout today, weight lifting with all the proper gruntings, whooshes of breath and showing of teeth.  And by the end of it, I was casting admiring glances at myself in the wall mirror, getting all faint at how big my shoulders looked. Whew!

The best news is, when I stepped on the scale BEFORE my workout, I broke 180! I’m down to 179.3 on the digital scale, including gym clothes and shoes. I’ve actually lost 10 pounds since I started this.

Upsetting the Elephant

elephant.jpgSo. All the blues and reds went out to vote today.

From numbers harvested off ABCNews.com, at 9:30 p.m., the total number of nominating convention delegates won by the various candidates makes McCain look like he’s well ahead of Clinton and Obama, but if you look at the raw numbers of votes each candidate got, a different story entirely emerges.

Looking at the vote tallies for the frontrunners of each state for which there were comparable figures at the time I wrote this, the Democratic frontrunner is outvoting the Republican frontrunner like so:

  • AL – 1.6 times as many votes
  • AR – 1.9 times as many votes
  • CT – 2.1 times as many votes
  • DE – 2.0 times as many votes
  • GA – 1.8 times as many votes
  • MA – 2.8 times as many votes
  • MO – 2.8 times as many votes
  • NJ – 2.0 times as many votes
  • NY – 2.9 times as many votes
  • TN – 3.7 times as many votes
  • UT – 3.4 times as many votes

I realize all the numbers aren’t in yet. In a couple of the states, the numbers showed a 10-time lead in raw votes for Democrats, and I figured something was squinky with the tallies for those states, so I threw them out.

Still, if these early results show a lead in numbers of voters in each state ranging from 1.6 to 3.7 – roughly 2 to 4 times as many voters picking a Democratic candidate – we might have a really good November.

Subvocalizing to self: don’tgetcockytoosoontocelebrate

But damn! Wouldn’t that be nice??

Hwd Video Sux — but that’s just my subjective opinion.

I was in one of those video stores tonight to return a movie. I rented “Cars” a few days back. I was in the mood for an animated story, and Cars fit the mood.

Took it home to play it, got about 20 minutes or so into the movie and the scene froze. Nothing I could do would make it work. It did have a scratch on the shiny side, but it didn’t look that bad. But apparently that one scratch was enough to bollix up the laser thingie. I went “eh” and figured I’d return it and get a refund.

Turns out Hwd Video, according to the well-trained corporate-ette in the store, will give you only this very special “refund” — they’ll give you a credit which is good ONLY for that specific movie. In other words, they’d give me another copy of Cars.

She explained it to me: “Because otherwise, you could get to watch another movie for free.” Left me gaping. Huh?

Continue reading “Hwd Video Sux — but that’s just my subjective opinion.”