Allegories Gone Wild: A War On Tugs, Or A Tug Of War?

^{Cross posted @ the Atheist Oasis}

8

Then Judah said to Onan, “Sleep with your brother’s wife and fulfill your duty to her as a brother-in-law to raise up offspring for your brother.” ⁹ But Onan knew that the child would not be his; so whenever he slept with his brother’s wife, he spilled his semen on the ground to keep from providing offspring for his brother. ¹⁰ What he did was wicked in the Lord’s sight; so the Lord put him to death also. – Genesis, Chapter 38

But Rosie, you're all right
(You wear my ring)
When you hold me tight
(Rosie, that's my thing)
When you turn out the light
(I got to hand it to me)
Looks like it's me and you again tonight, Rosie – Jackson Browne, Rosie

Courtesy of the Atheist Republic:

Mormons Release Video Declaring War on Masturbation

 

It’s time to cry havoc, and let slip the floggers of war. (oh…all right. Not very good. Trot out your own damned euphemisms then.)

It seems as if the Mormon church is trying to get a handle on this ‘problem’. But hey, wait: how is it a problem? It isn’t. It’s a normal, natural step for people to understand  their own sexuality. In fact, most professionals say that it’s actually quite healthy (unless of course, the practice interferes with relationships, work, or general intercourse with other people).

So why do these wearers-of-holy-underwear, these baptizers-of-the-dead, these polygamous sanctimonious purveyors of a hat-born religion give a rat’s ass in a whirlwind what anyone does with their privates in private? That’s right – because old Scratch is giving us all hand-jobs to lure us away from Jebus.

All because some nitwit in the lying bible made up a story about sperm landing in the dirt.

Ridiculous.

Till the next post, then.

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Allegories Gone Wild: The Mad Hatter Joins The Tea Party

Cross posted @ the Atheist Oasis
'But I don't want to go among mad people,' Alice remarked.
'Oh, you can't help that,' said the Cat: 'we're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad.'

Much as I detest the bible, one quote springs to mind: “If a blind man leads a blind man, both will fall into a pit."

There is perhaps no better illustration of this than this bit of profound stupidity:

Government shutdown just the start for America's Biblical revolutionaries

John Cornyn, the US senator from Texas, has been a stalwart of conservative causes. He did his best to destroy the Affordable Care Act. He opposes reproductive freedom and same-sex marriage. His voting record gets a perfect grade from the NRA, and he explained that cutting government benefits helps the poor because they "need a hand up, not a hand-out".

But apparently, he WASN'T "conservative" enough for many Republicans in Texas. Over the past few weeks, Tea Party activists floated the idea of replacing Cornyn with David Barton, the evangelical activist who has done more than anyone else to advance the "Christian Nation" myth. Although Barton withdrew his name from consideration Wednesday, Glen Beck (among others) is still holding out hope that a "true conservative" might step in to take down the perfidious Cornyn.

The fact that this kind of discussion is even taking place helps put to rest two very common misperceptions about the right wing of the Republican party. The first is that the Tea Party is primarily about fiscal and economic issues. It is not; it is also about religion.

The second misperception that Barton's abortive candidacy exposed is that the Tea Party is a conservative and patriotic force in American politics. In fact, it is a radical movement that seeks to destroy our present system of government. There is nothing comparable to it on the left or the right in American politics.

Let's take a closer look at what David Barton really stands for. He presents himself as a historian, but by now, no serious person can buy that characterization. His most recent book, The Jefferson Lies, turns out to have been filled with distortions of the actual facts. The book came under criticism from numerous conservative Christians – most notably, Grove City College professors Michael Coulter and Warren Throckmorton, who published a detailed refutation of the book titled Getting Jefferson Right: Fact-Checking Claims about our Third President. In August 2012, Barton's Christian publishing house, Thomas Nelson, stopped production of the tome, announcing that they had "lost confidence in the book's details".

But the facts have never stood in the way of Barton's "history", because the history merely serves as a platform for more ambitious goals.

Barton's political agenda couldn't be clearer. The organization he founded, Wallbuilders, holds the idea that church-state separation is a myth as its chief talking point. Barton also launched the Black Robe Regiment, an association of clergy members and "concerned patriots" whose goal is to establish "the American Church" as "overseer of all principalities and governing officials, as was rightfully established long ago".

Barton's ideas spread well beyond American's system of governance. In his worldview, global climate change is God's punishment for abortion. He also takes some interest in economic issues, usually to offer a "Biblical" perspective. People are on welfare, he announced on Wallbuilders Live, because they don't read Bible!

If Barton were some out-in-the-woods extremist, we could appreciate him as a colorful detail in the diverse and vibrant landscape of American religion. But he is on a first-name basis with Newt Gingrich, Rand Paul, Rick Perry, Ted Cruz, and Michele Bachmann. One of Barton's go-to organizations is the American Renewal Project, which is closely aligned with the fundamentalist policy group the American Family Association and whose "pastor briefings" bring rightwing clergy together with politicians.

The immediate cause of Barton's rumored run for office had to do with the government shutdown. Specifically, it had to do with Cornyn's failure to throw his support behind Cruz and push the button on an economic meltdown.

It would be wrong to characterize those who were itching to push that button as the "fiscal conservatives" in the room. Instead, the appeal of the shutdown to folks who follow Barton is precisely its apocalyptic nature. They want to create a crisis because they understand intuitively that the kind of change in our society that they wish to bring about can really only happen in the context of some major crisis.

Which brings up the second lie that Barton's candidacy exposed: that he and the forces he represents are conservative and patriotic. The separation of church and state that Barton decries as a "myth" has been at the foundation of the American system of government for more than two centuries. The claim that Barton and friends want to "take back" America is nonsense; they want to turn America into something it never was.

According to Barton, God is punishing American for its grievous sins, like granting women reproductive rights. Clearly, Barton's God is mad at America. But it isn't hard to see that Barton is doing the judging. He really doesn't like the electorate that returned Barack Obama to power. He doesn't like our diverse, pluralistic society that worships many Gods and no God. He doesn't like our nonsectarian public schools. And if he bothered to study the works of some of our Founding Fathers, such as Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine, he probably wouldn't like them, either.

Some establishment Republicans might take solace in the fact that Barton has decided not to burden the Texas GOP with a nasty primary battle, just as they might rejoice in the defeats suffered by the Tea Party in the elections this week. But they shouldn't be overly optimistic. The predictable defeats of Tea Party stalwarts in 2010 and 2012 didn't stop the Tea Party and its raging base from being a persistent force in American politics, and we shouldn't forget that true Tea Partiers, such as Ken Cuccinelli and Dean Young, came within only a few percentage points of defeating their much better-financed rivals. The civil war within the GOP is by no means over, and if, as the Tea Party believes, you've got God on your side, it takes a lot more than a few narrow losses at the ballot box to stop you.

And David Barton has earned the title of ‘Mad Hatter’. How so? Despite the multitudinous quotes and speeches where many presidents have stated that SOCAS is indeed a reality (from Jefferson and Madison to Kennedy and Obama), Barton has declared that SOCAS is a myth. And who told him so? Everybody’s favorite imaginary sky-daddy, that’s who.

He’s had books pulled off the shelf because they were jam packed with lies, he’s also affiliated with racist theocrats like the Christian Identity, and to top all that off, he also is lecturer for Glenn Beck’s online university (another lowly fucktard who also makes too much money off of his moronic lies).

Luckily, Barton has declined – the thought of that particular crazy asshole running for office had me seriously considering purchasing a handgun. Why? Because they’ll pry the SOCAS out of my cold dead hands, that’s why.

That a sane person would even listen to either of these people means that the state of American education is crumbling into sound bites, madness and half-truths.

Till the next post, then.

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Allegories Gone Wild: ‘Exorcising The Gay’

Cross posted @ the Atheist Oasis
It grows tiresome, these idiotic insistences of the deluded:Ex-gay survivor's tales of exorcism in middle England

After $30,000 for controversial conversion therapy, three attempts at exorcism and one failed marriage, Peterson Toscano finally resolved the conflict between his faith and sexuality - he was gay.

It took 17 years to accept it.

Whether called gay to straight, conversion or reparative therapy, the practice Mr. Toscano put himself through purports to help individuals change their sexual orientation.

There are those who claim the practice, largely supported by fundamentalist Christian churches, to have changed them from homosexual to heterosexual. They are know as "ex-gay".

But as far as Mr. Toscano - who calls himself an "ex-gay survivor" - is concerned, not only does it not work, the process is "psychologically damaging".

Mr. Toscano, now 47, grew up in an average Italian American Catholic home in Upstate New York.

But as a devout Christian, and member of the Evangelical Church, he found it difficult to resolve what he saw as a conflict between his sexual orientation and his faith.

"I was doing something spiritually and morally wrong that I would be punished for in the afterlife. And so there was a lot of fear and terrible desperation," he told BBC Religion.

As a teenager in early 1980s America, Mr. Toscano experienced a time when the word "gay" was synonymous with Aids. Up to 1973, US psychiatrists had been classifying homosexuals as insane.

"I put two and two together and made what I thought was a logical equation at the time of saying 'that's wrong, that's bad, I need to fix it'. And then 17 years later I finally woke up and came to my senses," he said.

His years of treatment are painful for him to recall. After an interview with US National Public Radio that triggered a period of depression, he now avoids recalling the specifics.

However, he recounts one of the darkest incidents in some of his performance work. During a two-year residential stay at Love in Action, now called Restoration Path, in Memphis, Tennessee, Mr Toscano was required to record all the homosexual encounters he ever had.

He was then told to choose the most embarrassing to read out to his family.

Mind you, this is not an isolated example (as many religious people will claim): this is a regular occurrence in many countries especially (I am ashamed to say) in America. If anything proves that prayer fails spectacularly, it is this assinity of ‘pray the gay away’.

There’s more to this ludicrous story (unfortunately):

The post-exorcism cuppa

Such therapy was not confined to the US. Mr Toscano visited England for an extended stay in the 1990s as part of his quest to suppress his sexual identity.

Most tourists plan trips to London or Shakespeare's Stratford-upon-Avon; Mr Toscano took a trip to Kidderminster for an exorcism in a cottage overlooking a safari park.

He had already undergone two failed attempts at exorcism in the US. But he describes his experience with a minister in Worcestershire as "more like Reiki than deliverance".

"She never touched me, there was no screaming, there were no buckets of vomit like previous experiences I've had," he said.

"She felt the demons were dislodged enough to come out and then she just said in the most sweet gentle way, 'all right the demons are ready to come out now, all you need to do is take a very deep breath out and poof. There they go'.

"And then she literally put on the kettle and we had tea.

"She was very well meaning, but yet again she re-enforced this notion that there was something, very, very wrong with my insides, that my feelings weren't natural, they were actually demonic.

"That sort of teaching is so psychologically damaging, especially to young people. If you believe that, you will then do whatever you can to rip up your own soul."

In the US, moves are now under way to partially ban the practice in California. Governor Jerry Brown is currently considering a bill to make reparative therapy illegal for children in the state. If this is enacted it will be the first of its kind in the US.

The Evangelical Alliance, which oversees the UK Evangelical community, did not wish to comment on Mr Toscano's experience.

However, there are those within the Anglican community who believe in offering different kinds of support to people of faith conflicted by their sexuality.

And here we strike the sticking-point: there is and always will be  a conflict between sexuality and religion, because the religious do more damage by their intolerance to difference; it is always their way to the heavenly highway. The ancient Israelites wiped out entire clans based on that clans’ sexual proclivity. And over the centuries, the Big Three of Monotheism has done more to suppress natural desire than all the cold showers ever taken or saltpeter ever administered.

As for this ‘partial ban’ nonsense: it should be entirely banned. It has no foundation in reality whatsoever, and is as big a wash as those abstinence programs.

Keep religion out of our bedrooms, out of our schools, and out of legislation, and then hell yes we can get along like adults.

Those are the three rules. Can’t abide by them? Then put up your dukes, we’ll surely have it out.

Till the next post, then.

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Allegories Gone Wild: The Unmarried Mythical Man-Child

Cross posted @ the Atheist Oasis
These little news ‘factazoids’ always crack me up:

Jesus cites wife in fourth-century script, says US scholar

A Harvard University professor has unveiled a fourth-century fragment of papyrus she said is the only existing ancient text quoting Jesus explicitly referring to having a wife.

Karen King, an expert in the history of Christianity, said the text contains a dialogue in which Jesus refers to "my wife," whom he identifies as Mary. King says the fragment of Coptic script is a copy of a gospel, probably written in Greek in the second century.

King helped translate and unveiled the tiny fragment at a conference of Coptic experts in Rome. She said it doesn't prove Jesus was married but speaks to issues of family and marriage that faced Christians.

Four words in the 1.5 x 3in (3.8 x 7.6cm) fragment provide the first evidence that some early Christians believed Jesus had been married, King said. Those words, written in a language of ancient Egyptian Christians, translate to "Jesus said to them, my wife," King said in a statement.

He added that in the dialogue the disciples discuss whether Mary is worthy and Jesus says: "She can be my disciple."

Christian tradition has long held that Jesus was unmarried even though there was no reliable historical evidence to support that, King said. The new gospel, she said, "tells us that the whole question only came up as part of vociferous
debates about sexuality and marriage".

"From the very beginning, Christians disagreed about whether it was better not to marry," she said, "but it was over a century after Jesus's death before they began appealing to Jesus's marital status to support their positions."

King presented the document at a six-day conference being held at Rome's La Sapienza University and at the Augustinianum institute of the Pontifical Lateran University. While the Vatican newspaper and Vatican Radio frequently cover such academic conferences, there was no mention of King's discovery in any Vatican media on Tuesday. That said, her paper was one of nearly 60 delivered on Tuesday at the vast conference, which drew 300 academics from around the globe.

I think the following paragraph exposes just how tenuous this entire dog-and-pony show is:

The fragment belongs to an anonymous private collector who contacted King to help translate and analyse it. Nothing is known about the circumstances of its discovery, but it had to have come from Egypt, where the dry climate allows ancient writings to survive and because it was written in a script used in ancient times there, King said.

And of course, someone takes the inevitable swing at it:

A New Testament scholar claims to have found evidence suggesting that the Gospel of Jesus's Wife is a modern forgery.

Professor Francis Watson, of Durham University, says the papyrus fragment, which caused a worldwide sensation when it appeared earlier this week because it appeared to refer to Jesus's wife, is a patchwork of texts from the genuine Coptic-language Gospel of Thomas, which have been copied and reassembled out of order to make a suggestive new whole.

In a paper published online, Watson argues that all of the sentence fragments found on the papyrus fragment have been copied, sometimes with small alterations, from printed editions of the Gospel of Thomas.

The discovery has already sparked fierce debate among academics, but Watson believes his new research may prove conclusive.

"I think it is more or less indisputable that I have shown how the thing was composed," he said. "I would be very surprised if it were not a modern forgery, although it is possible that it was composed in this way in the fourth century."

It’s ridiculous that people actually spend time and money and squander resources on this nonsense. The entire ‘gospel’ is a hoax, unwittingly perpetrated perhaps, but a hoax nonetheless, a compost of stolen syncretism’s and plagiarized back stories that are richly interwoven bullshit. Mental pollution at it’s narcissistic best, masturbatory delusions that people still use to stroke their broken self-esteem.

One can only hope that our species will eventually outgrow this vile, anachronistic nonsense.

I for one, am not holding my breath.

Till the next post, then.

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Allegories Gone Wild: The Ugandan Warlord

Cross posted @ the Atheist Oasis
No doubt many of you are familiar with the Kony 2012 campaign on Youtube. Joseph Kony is a Ugandan warlord who is guilty of horrendous crimes against humanity. Likelihood is good that the source of this campaign (who was scarring his own child teaching him about Kony) is somewhat out of his mind. Uganda is understandably upset about this bad press, and has released a counter-video claiming that Kony is no longer in the country, and that they are making every effort to apprehend this monster.

Regardless of the political upheaval, the background noise of finger-pointing, and any of the other obligatory nonsenses, the fact remains: Kony is a crazy-ass fairy beggar armed with a machete that he’s willing to use freely.

One of the more irritating subterfuges (as I see it), is how everyone seems to be downplaying his religious inclinations. From the Wiki link:

Joseph Kony (pronounced IPA: [koɲ]; born c. 1961) is the head of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), a Ugandan guerrilla group. While initially enjoying strong public support, the LRA turned on its own supporters, supposedly to "purify" the Acholi people and turn Uganda into a theocracy. Kony proclaims himself the spokesperson of God and a spirit medium, primarily of the Holy Spirit, which the group believes can represent itself in many manifestations. Ideologically, the group is a syncretic mix of of mysticism, Acholi nationalism, and Christian fundamentalism, and claims to be establishing a theocratic state based on the Ten Commandments and local Acholi tradition.

A nutshell version of this as follows: he’s batshit crazy.

How did the madness develop? Like most nutcases, he started early:

Kony was born in 1961 in Odek, a village east of Gulu in northern Uganda, to father Luizi Obol and mother Nora, both farmers. He is a member of the Acholi people. Kony enjoyed a good relationship with his siblings, but was quick to retaliate in a dispute and when confronted he would often resort to physical violence. His father was a lay catechist of the Catholic Church and his mother was an Anglican. Kony was an altar boy for several years but stopped attending church around the age of 15 and also dropped out of school.

As a teenager, Kony was apprenticed as the village witch doctor under Jamie Brow, his older brother, and when Jamie died, Kony took over the position.

So superstition and crazy ran in the family? No surprise there. Let’s skip to the meat of the entry:

Kony's group was originally called the United Holy Salvation Army (UHSA), and was not perceived as a threat by the NRA. By 1988 it had become a major player in Ugandan affairs: an agreement between the NRA and the Uganda People's Democratic Army (UPDA) left members of the UPDA unsatisfied, and many joined the UHSA as a form of rebellion. One such person was Commander Odong Latek, who convinced Kony to use standard military tactics instead of attacking in cross-shaped formations and sprinkling holy water. The new tactics proved successful, and the UHSA completed several small victories against the NRA.

WOW. He was so religious, he attacked in cross-shaped formations? Misted people with ineffectual water? The crazy is strong with this one.

The NRA responded by significantly weakening Kony's group through political actions and a military campaign named Operation North. The operation was devastating to the UHSA and, with their numbers reduced from thousands to hundreds, they engaged in retaliatory attacks on civilians and NRA collaborators. The LRA say that spirits were sent to communicate this mission directly to Kony.

Since there’s no such thing as ‘spirits’, it was the voices in his head.

The bulk of Kony's foot soldiers were children. While estimates of the number of children conscripted since 1986 vary, some put the figure as high as 104,000. When abducting the children, Kony and his army often killed their family and neighbors, thus leaving the children with little choice but to fight for him. In 1992 Kony renamed the group the United Democratic Christian Army, and it was at this time that they kidnapped 139 girls from the Sacred Heart Secondary and St. Mary's girls schools.

It is strange, is it not, that for an allegedly peaceful religion, bloodthirsty ogres seem to surge forth from it on a consistent basis?

Let’s plumb the depths of this crazy a little more:

Betty Bigombe remembered that the first time she met Kony, his followers used oil to ward off bullets and evil spirits. In a letter regarding future talks, Kony stated that he must consult his self-styled holy spirit. When the talks did occur, they insisted on the participation of religious leaders and opened the proceedings with prayers, led by LRA's Director of Religious Affairs Jenaro Bongomi. During the 1994 peace talks, Kony was preceded by men in robes sprinkling holy water.

Kony was thought among followers and detractors alike to have been possessed by spirits; he has been portrayed as either the Messiah or the Devil. He reportedly made annual trips to the Ato Hills in Uganda. He would allegedly ascend to the highest of the hills and lie down in the hot sun for days. He would be covered by a blanket of red termites that bit deeply into his skin. Oil from the Yao plant was spread over his body. Then he would enter a cave and stay in seclusion for weeks. Kony believes in the literal protection provided by a cross symbol and tells his child soldiers a cross on their chest drawn in oil will protect them from bullets.

Kony believes in polygamy, and as of 2007 he was thought to have 88 wives, along with 42 children.

Kony insists that he and the Lord's Resistance Army are fighting for the Ten Commandments. He defends his actions: "Is it bad? It is not against human rights. And that commandment was not given by Joseph. It was not given by LRA. No, those commandments were given by God."

The mind boggles. Centuries ago this behavior would be considered holy. Now, it is symptomatic of severe mental illness. I would say that insane is too kind a word.

Did religion cause this profound disconnect with reality? Hard to say. Obviously his environment had a severe impact on his psyche. To the point somewhere along the line he thought he was justified in lopping the limbs off people, and stealing their children.

Every day, the evidence against keeping religion just gets another story deeper. Expanding on that metaphor, there should be enough skyscrapers to blot out the sun.

Till the next post, then.

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Allegories Gone Wild: Satan Wants Your Children!

Cross posted @ the Atheist Oasis

It’s the clarion call of the Christian scaremongers: somewhere deep in the bowels of the earth, some dark thing conspires to control and warp not only the adults, but the children. Oh, think of the children!

If I have been unclear in the past, I shall reiterate: conspiracy theories are for the large part pure hokum. Not being a psychiatrist of any sort, I can only speculate why people become so heavily vested in them. There’s a wide variety out there. There’s the 9/11 wackaloons who are convinced that our government purposely brought down the Twin Towers, there’s the JFK assassination enthusiasts, then there’s the Bilderburg balderdash, the Zurich Gnome manure – the list is exhaustive, and many of you have heard these before. The huge percentage of these are in excessive violation of Ockham’s Razor. This is not to say conspiracies don’t exist – just that the cottage industry is glutted with so many entities, it boggles the rational mind. For the most part, it’s not a battle for hearts and minds. Pursuit of the almighty dollar? Most definitely. But intricate long-term plots to control the world? Please. People are greedy. Ergo, they pursue money, sometimes with a sociopathic fanaticism.

But above all others, the ‘occult conspiracy’ is probably the most pathetic of all. That shadowy taloned fingers are slowly inching towards your ‘soul’ to enslave and/or gobble you/it up? Honky, please.

We’ve all encountered these paranoid people before. Some of us may have relatives that will, without any prompting whatsoever, began slathering their blathering on anyone within earshot. It’s ridiculous. I could cover all the old worn ground like so many times before: the bible has no authority whatsoever, energy isn’t destroyed but proof that information somehow survives death is non-existent (as is the proof that there’s anything remotely resembling the ill-defined ‘soul’), etc. etc. ad nauseum ad infinitum..

If anything deserves ridicule, it’s this comic book conception of our ontological significance.

This garbage has a long history, dating all the way back to when our ancestors attained self-awareness while huddled frightened around primitive campfires, starting at bizarre noises outside the circle of light, and the slightest mishap could make one a predator’s meal. Introversive as our species is, it’s a small leap to assume the world at large has it in for us. And again, the entities multiply needlessly.

Even today, we hear about how playing D&D can lead our children down the path of witchcraft, Ouija boards are the gateway drug to demonic possession, and even how Harry Potter (a fictional person) can pollute our kids’ precious bodily fluids.

So I bring you this blast from the past: one Phillip Phillips (I defecate thee not), who, in the 1980’s, did this bit of idiocy (courtesy of Dribbleglass):

Phil Phillips is the author of Turmoil in the Toybox (1986), Halloween and Satanism (1987), Saturday Morning Mind Control (1991), and Dinosaurs: The Bible, Barney, and Beyond (1994). Turmoil in the Toybox is about how the Smurfs, Care Bears, My Little Pony, He-Man, Mighty Mouse, Cabbage Patch Kids, and Rainbow Bright are all WICKED DEVIL TOYS STRAIGHT FROM THE PIT OF HELL ITSELF leading our precious children into ruin! The other three book titles speak for themselves. Halloween and Satanism includes some perhaps unwitting but still overt anti-Semitism on display in the author's choice of images and captions.

Typical 1980s sensationalism for the Christian paranoia market. His books were sold in every Christian bookstore, on prominent display right next to those of Texe Marrs.

Phil and his wife Cynthia have since authored Miracle Parenting, on the subject of "Biblical parenting", and a book on Attention Deficit Disorder called ADD: Welcome to Our World. The book (also available in audio version) is based on Phil’s personal testimony of finding out, as an adult, that he was ADD.

Really? Seriously? Yes, seriously. The Smurfs were a part of some vast Satanic conspiracy. As were the Care Bears, He-Man, and…MIGHTY MOUSE?!?!?

Sad. Just sad. Can’t use the word pathetic often enough. I think the best illustration (and best summation) of this folderol was done by Robot Chicken:

 

So, if you’re ever within earshot of some wild-eyed stupid conversation about this topic, just do what I would (or will) do: point and laugh hilariously.

Because all opinions are not even CLOSE to being equal.

Till the next post, then.

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Allegories Gone Wild: The Sky Is Falling…Why? Because It Was Predicted

Cross posted @ the Atheist Oasis

Ah, hell, Shepherd, I ain't looking for help from on high. That's a long wait for a train don't come. – Malcolm Reynolds, Serenity

As my colleague Ray Garton has pointed out (more than once), the inmates are trying to run the asylum. And they’re protected by a built in customer base (religion), a political correctness that borders on fascism (don’t discuss religion or politics at the dinner table), and some serious misinterpretation of both law and the idiocies of their ‘holy book’.

(My neck is tired from all the double-takes: nothing these people do really surprises, any more.)

As this article points out, it’s not enough that these clowns oppose quality-of-life issues like abortion, same-sex marriage, or stem cell research. But exactly why are these puppets rabidly anti-environmental?

Forty-five senators and 186 representatives in 2003 earned 80- to 100-percent approval ratings from the nation's three most influential Christian right advocacy groups -- the Christian Coalition, Eagle Forum, and Family Resource Council. Many of those same lawmakers also got flunking grades -- less than 10 percent, on average -- from the League of Conservation Voters last year.

These statistics are puzzling at first. Opposing abortion and stem-cell research is consistent with the religious right's belief that life begins at the moment of conception. Opposing gay marriage is consistent with its claim that homosexual activity is proscribed by the Bible. Both beliefs are a familiar staple of today's political discourse. But a scripture-based justification for anti-environmentalism?

Many Christian fundamentalists feel that concern for the future of our planet is irrelevant, because it has no future. They believe we are living in the End Time, when the son of God will return, the righteous will enter heaven, and sinners will be condemned to eternal hellfire. They may also believe, along with millions of other Christian fundamentalists, that environmental destruction is not only to be disregarded but actually welcomed -- even hastened -- as a sign of the coming Apocalypse.

If ever there was a clear and present danger from Christianity, this is a sign (no pun intended). There has always been a consistent destructive fantasy among the delusionists (this goes for Muslims, religious Jews, and yes, even Falun Gong practitioners) that someone somewhere is keeping track of all transactions good or bad on some invisible ledger somewhere, and all accounts (and everyone’s hash) will be settled in full at the appropriate time. Let’s never mind that this has never happened: let’s disregard that this has been predicted multiple times beyond count (and not happened): let’s ignore the obvious signs that this will never happen.

It’s disastrous wish-fulfillment of the worst kind. It’s proof that belief in an afterlife poisons everything.  

Am I scare-mongering? Uh-uh:

We are not talking about a handful of fringe lawmakers who hold or are beholden to these beliefs. The 231 legislators (all but five of them Republicans) who received an average 80 percent approval rating or higher from the leading religious-right organizations make up more than 40 percent of the U.S. Congress. (The only Democrat to score 100 percent with the Christian Coalition was Sen. Zell Miller of Georgia, who earlier this year quoted from the Book of Amos on the Senate floor: "The days will come, sayeth the Lord God, that I will send a famine in the land. Not a famine of bread or of thirst for water, but of hearing the word of the Lord!") These politicians include some of the most powerful figures in the U.S. government, as well as key environmental decision makers: Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.), Senate Majority Whip Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), Senate Republican Conference Chair Rick Santorum (R-Penn.), Senate Republican Policy Chair Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.), House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), House Majority Whip Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft, and quite possibly President Bush. (Earlier this month, a cover story by Ron Suskind in The New York Times Magazine described how Bush's faith-based governance has led to, among other things, a disastrous "crusade" in the Middle East and has laid the groundwork for "a battle between modernists and fundamentalists, pragmatists and true believers, reason and religion.")

Nervous yet? I certainly am.

And those politicians are just the powerful tip of the iceberg. A 2002 Time/CNN poll found that 59 percent of Americans believe that the prophecies found in the Book of Revelation are going to come true. Nearly one-quarter think the Bible predicted the 9/11 attacks.

Fifty-nine percent? That number is way too high.

Like it or not, faith in the Apocalypse is a powerful driving force in modern American politics. In the 2000 election, the Christian right cast at least 15 million votes, or about 30 percent of those that propelled Bush into the presidency. And there's no doubt that arch-conservative Christians will be just as crucial in the coming election: GOP political strategist Karl Rove hopes to mobilize 20 million fundamentalist voters to help sweep Bush back into office on Nov. 2 and to maintain a Republican majority in Congress, says Joan Bokaer, director of Theocracy Watch, a project of the Center for Religion, Ethics, and Social Policy at Cornell University.

It is enough to make one weep.

Because of its power as a voting bloc, the Christian right has the ear, if not the souls, of much of the nation's leadership. Some of those leaders are End-Time believers themselves. Others are not. Either way, their votes are heavily swayed by an electoral base that accepts the Bible as literal truth and eagerly awaits the looming Apocalypse. And that, in turn, is sobering news for those who hope for the protection of the earth, not its destruction.

It’s very much an acknowledged fact that global warming is a reality: you’d have to be in severe denial to say otherwise. Even Rupert Murdoch, he of the Fox News and overt Republican idiocies, admits this.

Sure, we’ve all known this for some time: the question is, what are we doing about it? We should do more. I personally engage people regularly (in person) when religion is brought up. I point out the inadequacies, the wrongnesses, the weirdnesses and wackiness of their holy book. It’s tedious: more often, when bracing a ‘true believer’, the dialogue goes a little paraphrase like this: “The bible contradicts itself regularly. The biology in the bible is completely wrong: the historicity of the bible is not only questionable, it’s risible. The bible is short on anything resembling facts, and long on imaginative whimsy.” The TB™ only hears “The bible blah-blah-blah. The blah-blah in the bible blah-blah-blah.” So I introduce it as this: “I refuse to recognize the bible as an authority on ANYTHING.” On occasion, I quip that “I’m short on TP, could I have your copy?”

But these individual efforts are, to quote the bard, “taking arms against a sea of troubles,” or in more modern lingo, a drop in the ocean. Sites like ours do have some impact – a site like Undo Jesus is having impact as well. We can write letters to our respective representatives (in droves, hopefully) informing them that this scabrous textbook is only unsuitable for as an operator’s manual, it’s not fit for children to even read in any context.

So we need to get out there more. Besides the armchair scholarship of blogging. It is doing something, to be sure, but to borrow some terminology, it’s easier to preach to the choir than upbraid a mob.

Till the next post, then.

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Allegories Gone Wild–Holy Mary, Mother Of Who…?

Cross-posted @ the Atheist Oasis

Ah so long Marianne
It’s time that we began
To laugh and cry and cry
And laugh about it all again – Leonard Cohen, “So Long Marianne”

“Read the Bible again sometime. Women are painted as bigger antagonists than the Egyptians and Romans combined. It stinks.” Serendipity, the movie ‘Dogma’

One of the more familiar tirades against that compendium of cautionary fables is the correct accusation of misogyny. And let’s face it: it’s true. From Eve to Jezebel to Mary Magdalene, women have been maligned, mistreated, and bartered off like chattel. There’s old Abraham, pimping his wife (not once, but twice!) under the disguise of siblinghood. Eve ate the fruit (apple, whatthefuckever) and doomed all of us. Samson met his demise because of Delilah (although from all accounts, Mr. Jawbone was a multiple jackass anyways). Women weren’t taken as disciples during the alleged Palestinian Ministry but were second-raters, right behind the 75 righteous guys (messiah groupies?). And the man-child myth constantly dressed down his mother through 3 of the 4 books.

Becoming a vessel for the divine, however symbolic it may be, is considered something of an honor. Pre-Christian fertility rites were ubiquitous until the holy-rollers rolled in and started banging bibles over the pagans’ heads. Males have always feared and been mystified by a woman’s ability to conceive. A shift from the matriarchal to the patriarchal intensified this irrational fear, even fostered it. But there is no denying the power of a woman – it is a reality, and one that even the most fortitudinous delusionist cannot explain away. And so begin the stories…

I speak of that strange illusion of the Marianne Apparition.

This woman is seen everywhere. On grilled cheese sandwiches, for one. Tree stumps for another. There’s no doubt a laundry list, but we’ll skip over those. They’re everywhere anyways.

Anyways, the definition (from the link above) says:

A Marian apparition is an event in which the Blessed Virgin Mary is believed to have supernaturally appeared to one or more people.They are often given names based on the town in which they were reported, or on the sobriquet which was given to Mary on the occasion of the apparition. They have been interpreted in religious terms as theophanies.

Marian apparitions sometimes are reported to recur at the same site over an extended period of time. In the majority of Marian apparitions only a few people report having witnessed the apparition. Exception to this include Zeitoun, and Assiut where thousands claimed to have seen her over a period of time.

And as well to be expected, the reports vary so widely in so many ways, it’s obvious that they can’t be taken seriously. I’ve gone on at length on one such topic, but centuries of ‘eyewitnesses’ would seem to testify that…these people saw something, albeit the likelihood is that they saw what they wanted to see.

For the most part, careful examination of these events opens subsequent cracks in the stories, some with holes in them large enough to drive a semi through. In fact, there is so much wrong with eyewitness identification, that there are actually rigorous standards used to assess the reliability of a witness. Note that when religion is involved, these standards vanish like light clouds on a windy day.

We’ll go ahead and skip to the criticisms for the sake of brevity:

Some Protestant Christians and non-Christians regard claims of Marian apparitions as being hallucinations encouraged by superstition, and occasionally simply as deliberate hoaxes to attract attention. Many such apparitions are reported in economically depressed areas, attracting many pilgrims who bring trade and money into the region. For instance, some sources dispute the very existence of Saint Juan Diego.

Yes, it’s mostly Papists who indulge in this sort of tomfoolery. Small wonder there.

Some spontaneous healings reported at apparition sites such as Lourdes are also disputed by some scientists^[who?]. Other scientists^[who?] have claimed that a handful of unexplained cures have occurred; the Lourdes Medical Bureau has recorded sixty "inexplicable" healings which match its requirements.

I don’t know about anyone else, but this is the first Wiki entry I’ve ever seen where the footnotes says ^[who?].

Critics maintain that some other healings are incomplete, leaving the sufferer with disabilities or chronic illness, and that other claimed healings are likely to be the relatively rare but unmiraculous spontaneous remission of illness or injury. Such remissions might be expected to occur in a few of the large numbers of ill (and perhaps credulous) people who visit such sites. That viewpoint is debated by religious people and by some in the medical profession. The Lourdes Medical Bureau will not review cases of claimed healing involving illnesses known sometimes to go into remission by themselves, or incomplete healings, or those which take place gradually.^[106]

It always boils down to this one sentence: It’s all guesswork. Nobody subjects any of these ‘miracles’ to anything resembling the scientific method, the ‘testimonials’ turn out to be a smorgasbord of ridiculous anecdotes that nobody in their right mind would take seriously, and the only people doing any exhaustive research on these hallucinations are the Catholics (can you say ‘conflict of interest’, boys and girls?).

So there you have it: if you see a woman in your grilled cheese sandwich, everyone will laugh at you. Unless you claim there’s divine iconography involved, in which case you can sell the fucking on EBay for thousands of dollars. Nice return: it costs what? About a buck-fifty to make the sandwich?

It’s a sad, stupid world we live in sometimes.

Till the next post, then.

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Allegories Gone Wild - Happy Zombie Day!

⁵¹ At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth shook, the rocks split ⁵² and the tombs broke open. The bodies of many holy people who had died were raised to life. ⁵³ They came out of the tombs after Jesus’ resurrection and went into the holy city and appeared to many people.  -  Matthew 27

“Sweet zombie Jesus!” – Hubert J. Farnsworth, Futurama

“Jesus is not a zombie!” - Special Agent Seeley Booth, Bones

Yes boys and girls, ladies and gentlemen, meine damen und herren, it’s that bizarre time of year again, when the hopeless romantics (and even more hopelessly superstitious) celebrate and embody (pun intended) their thanatophobia by praising an event that by all accounts never happened. Not once.  Much of this can be found here,

I recall a lecture I attended some years ago by Richard Carrier, where he pointed out that in ancient Rome, it was a federal offense to rob graveyards, regardless of what culture it occurred in. In fact, it was a capital offense. And yet, oddly, no furor was raised, no task forces dispatched. Sure, it’s an argument from silence, but it’s a pretty powerful one.  Seeing as how the Jews took great care and reverence in preparing the deceased, a Jewish grave robbed was likely a huge event – which very easily could’ve sparked a huge riot, both then as well as now.

Really? The entire tale, read objectively, reads like some badly written crazy-ass hallucinogenic fantasy. Don’t even get me started on the inability of four people (who all ‘saw’ the same things) to tell the same tale.

It’s a zombie story. And by ‘zombie’, I mean “the body of a dead person given the semblance of life, but mute and will-less, by a supernatural force, usually for some evil purpose.”

This fascination with the dead coming back to life is understandable. More than a little morbid, too. Who enjoys the loss of a loved one? What wouldn’t any of us give to have those people back? A lot. But my wants and needs won’t circumvent reality. It’s a messed up system, more proof the universe gives neither jot nor tittle if we breathe or hurt or gasp or fuck someone. All the more reason we should take care of each other, not less.

We’ve had legends of zombies dating back as far as ancient Greece (remember Cadmus and the Dragon’s teeth?), Mesopotamia, Sumeria, etc. A zombie by any other name still falls under the definition as given above.

It’s a popular and pervasive meme. I can’t count how many zombie movies I’ve seen (though I haven’t tried yet) – and zombies are almost as ubiquitous as any religious fantasy.

So, for the braver among you – tomorrow (or today, it’s 11:28 PM PDT where I am), if someone says, “Happy Easter” or “Happy Bunny Day!”, respond with “Happy Zombie Day!” And come back and tell us (brief synopsis as possible) how that went exactly. Just stay out of harm’s way (if for instance you were to holler this at say, this bunch, that would likely be highly inadvisable), be sensible and safe with it. Oh, and try not to laugh at their umbrage. It’s tough (I can get away with it), but try to make them think if you can.

Till the next post then.

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Allegories Gone Wild–The End Timers Are At It….Again (Groan!)

Cross posted at the Atheist Oasis

It's the end of the world as we know it.
It's the end of the world as we know it.
It's the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine. – It's The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine) - R.E.M

The more fantastic an ideology or theology, the more fanatic its adherents - Edward Abbey

This was bit of an animated discussion today, in my apartment complex. My buddy’s girlfriend Linda and the older lady Arliss upstairs were chatting with me, when this friendly young man in a Carolina blue dress shirt and yellow tie came down and started joining the conversation. We’re a friendly crowd here. But he started talking about studying ‘pastoral theology’ at which point I went to check the mail, and when I returned, he was blathering on about ‘god this god that’. Upon which I pointed a finger at him and announced that ‘God doesn’t exist, and there’s nobody up there.’ He was taken a little aback at that. Then Linda mentioned the tsunami in Japan, and how it made her nervous, and Arliss chimed in that the End Of The World was going to occur on May 12th, 2011.

I immediately mocked the idea. Pantomiming a ‘believer’, I stated, “Oh, here it comes, the END! OF! THE! WORLD! Any second now…damn. Didn’t happened. AGAIN.” I looked at the young man. “Guess we’ll have to re-work those numbers.” He seemed actually amused. I then proceeded to explain to these folks, that

A. We’ve always had natural catastrophes throughout the centuries, we just find out about them quicker due to media saturation. Everyone knew about Krakatoa, but in that case, there was little choice,
B. The END! OF! THE! WORLD! has been predicted (unsuccessfully) so many times, it’s lost all meaning, and
C. Human beings seem to think there’s an end to everything, and to some degree there is. In the world’s case, it’ll be the Y5B problem, and we’ll all likely die in our sleep (if we’re lucky), long before that.

I also took the liberty of announcing that all religion is superstitious crap. The young fellow seemed in a permanent state of startled, and the two ladies told him that I was the resident cynic. As he left, he stated that he was to be married in the summer, and he hoped the Apocalypse would wait until afterwards. I assured him nothing was going to happen, all would be well.

People get the strangest damndest ideas sometimes, don’t they?

As to this “May 12th” nonsense, where did this compost arise?

One Harold Camping, to be precise.

Here’s his website. It’s a hoot, to be sure:

We are living at a time when mankind seems to sense that the end of all things is very near. Just about everyone has a theory as to how the world is threatened and when that end might come. The media and the Internet are full of doomsday speculations concerning the New Age "Mayan Calendar" and the year 2012. Some scientists predict that Global Warming could wipe out life on Planet Earth within a certain number of years. At the same time, politicians work to halt the proliferation of life-destroying nuclear weapons before it is "too late." High profile news reports of economic downturns, crime, wars, tsunamis, earthquakes, and disease outbreaks cause people to question whether God is bringing judgment on the world.

As opposed to what say, a thousand years ago? When everyone thought the world would end at the year 1000? Or the latest hullabaloo of 2000? The media and Internet reflect how the majority of people are, and what most of them are is addled.

These ideas cause people to fear greatly. Some realize that God knows how and when the end of the world will come, so they wonder if He tells us. Rather than turning to the Bible as the source of all truth for these answers, they turn to the churches and religious leaders. They may be told that the end will not come until Antichrist rises as a political leader who will make them take the "mark of the beast." Many are told that God will rapture His people before a 7 year Great Tribulation after which Christ will set up a 1000 year reign from an earthly throne in Jerusalem. Others are told that Christ will come to rapture believers the same day he destroys the world. While just about every church has a different idea as to what the Bible teaches concerning the end, they all seem to agree on one thing; no man can know the day or the hour of Christ's return because the scriptures say that He is coming as a thief in the night. But are they correct? Can We Know?

No we can’t. Not according to the patchwork hodgepodge twaddle you call the bible. The bloody thing was (and is) so wrong on so many topics and on so many historical events, and the contradictions? Don’t even get me started. And the whole “he’s gonna sneak up on your asses!” thing is just so…I dunno, I’m split between sociopathic and infantile.

This web site serves as an introduction and portal to four faithful ministries which are teaching that WE CAN KNOW from the Bible alone that the date of the rapture of believers will take place on May 21, 2011 and that God will destroy this world on October 21, 2011. Please take your time and browse through the teachings of Harold Camping, President of Family Radio. Visit EBible Fellowship, Bible Ministries International, and The-Latter-Rain to read and listen to many faithful teachers give scriptural insight on the doctrines that God is teaching His people. Learn about the Biblical Timeline of History, the correct method of Bible interpretation, the End of the Church Age and God's command to believers that they must depart out of the churches. Study the proofs that God has so graciously given in His Word showing us that these dates are 100% accurate and beyond dispute. Above all, please READ THE BIBLE and prayerfully ask God to open your spiritual eyes to these truths. May it please Him to have mercy on each of our souls.

Presuppositionalists are perhaps the most difficult people to dispel of these notions. Further entrenchment occurs when there’s a vested interest (say, a career or a revenue stream) involved. Declare yourself a born-again author (or any other profession), and boom! Instant customer base. I’m willing to wager, however, that when these mission-critical dates come and go, and no fanfare is blared from on high, and the heavens don’t split and spill brightness upon us all, and there is not one person plucked from streets, this particular doomsayer will be reduced to either a mumbling lost ‘soul’, or he will ‘run the numbers’ again, and start all over.

When a false prophet makes a profit, who gets a refund?

Till the next post then.

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Allegories Gone Wild – The Shish-Kebab Of Destiny

Cross posted @ God Is 4 Suckers!

“ESOTERIC, adj. Very particularly abstruse and consummately occult. The ancient philosophies were of two kinds, -- exoteric, those that the philosophers themselves could partly understand, and esoteric, those that nobody could understand. It is the latter that have most profoundly affected modern thought and found greatest acceptance in our time.” – Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary.

As an extension of pareidolia, humanity has ever sought succor from symbols, amulets and talismans. Possession itself is an outgrowth of mammal territorialism, and we’ve all no doubt heard people claim that ‘their’ team (how it can be ‘theirs’ is a stumper, since they’re not on the bloody team itself) will only win if they paint their faces or sit on a ‘lucky’ couch, or mumble some arcane formula to a rabbit’s foot. It seems to be our lot to suffer the fools who seem to think that some scapular or wafer contains a potency against unseen unproven forces.

Herein is a bit of a tale – that spear that allegedly pierced the mythical man-child of Christianity.

According to Christian texts, the Spear of Destiny (also known as the Holy Lance, Holy Spear, Lance of Longinus, or Spear of Longinus) is the spear that is reported in the Gospel of John (19:31-37) as having pierced the side of Jesus during his crucifixion.

In the oldest known references to the legend, in the Gospel of Nicodemus (of uncertain date, possibly 5th or 6th century), the soldier who pierced Christ's side is identified with a centurion called Longinus (making the spear's "correct" Latin name Lancea Longini). Later Christian tradition, harking back to the novel The Spear by Louis de Wohl (1955), further identifies him as Gaius Cassius. It should be noted that there is a historical figure named Gaius Cassius Longinus, one of the conspirators responsible for the death of Gaius Julius Caesar. Another "Longinus" is credited with the authorship of the treatise On the Sublime. Roman names held little variety, especially among members of the same family.

The Gospel of Nicodemus is categorically rejected by the delusionists – but this is old news.

There are many prototypes and analogues of the spear in other legends, it can be compared to the ancient Irish weapon, the Spear Luin, and is similar to the Bleeding Lance of Grail mythology, which was eventually claimed to be the Spear of Destiny.

Mystical swords and spears litter the legends of history. There are a few tridents and bows, , but nowhere near the profligacy of the first two.

Back to the Spear of Destiny. Lo and behold, nobody can agree on which one is the item in question (Surprised? No? Me neither.):

One such "Holy Lance" was allegedly unearthed by a Crusader named Peter Bartholomew in Antioch in 1098 while the Crusaders were under siege from the Seljuk Turks under Kerbogha. Peter Bartholomew reported that he had had a vision in which St. Andrew told him that the Holy Lance was buried in St. Peter's Cathedral in Antioch. At the time some were skeptical, but others were convinced. In any case, after much digging in the cathedral, Peter Bartholomew took a hand and, in a few moments, discovered the lance. For some of the Crusaders this was a marvelous discovery. At the same time, dissension had begun in the ranks of the Muslim army besieging the city. This combination of factors resulted in the Christian army being able to rout the Muslims a few days later when they joined battle, allowing the Crusaders to decisively capture Antioch. That object is now at Etschmiadzin in Armenia. Scholars believe that it is not actually a Roman lance but the head of a Roman standard.

As Frank Sinatra put it, “Imagination is crazy, your whole perspective gets hazy.”

Another of the many Spears of Destiny is the one in The Vatican. The earliest reports of that Spear were circa A.D. 570, described as having been on display in the basilica of Mount Zion in Jerusalem adjacent to the Crown of Thorns. The point of the spearhead was alleged to have been snapped following the Persian conquest of Jerusalem in A.D. 615. The point was set into an icon, and found its way to the church of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople. It was later transported to France, where it remained in the Sainte Chapelle until the 18th century. The icon was briefly moved to the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris during the French Revolution, but it subsequently disappeared. The lower section of the spearhead was allegedly conveyed from Jerusalem to Constantinople sometime in the 8th century. It was sent by Sultan Beyazid II as a gift to Pope Innocent VIII in 1492; Innocent had the relic placed in St. Peter's Basilica in Rome. It still resides there. The Catholic Church makes no claim as to its authenticity.

The holy spear that was used by the Holy Roman Emperors (cited from Otto I, Holy Roman Emperor on, the one most often referred to) as a part of their imperial insignia found its way to Vienna, Austria, where they are kept in a museum. Dr. Robert Feather, of England, a metallurgist and technical engineering writer, tested that Holy Lance in January of 2003. He was given unprecedented permission not only to examine the Spear in a laboratory environment, but was also allowed to remove the delicate bands of gold and silver that hold it together. The silver band bears the inscription "Nail of Our Lord". It was added to the Holy Lance by order of Henry IV, the third German Holy Roman Emperor, in 1084. Around 1350 King Charles IV Of Bohemia had a golden sleeve put over the silver one, inscribed "Lance and Nail of the Lord."

In 1411 Sigismund was made Holy Roman Emperor. In 1424 he announced: "It is the Will of God that the Imperial Crown, Orb, Scepter, Crosses, Sword and Lance of the Holy Roman Empire must never leave the soil of the Fatherland." This collection of relics, known collectively as the Reichkleinodien or Imperial Regalia, were moved from his capital in Prague to his birth place, Nuremberg.

When the army of Napoleon Bonaparte approached Nuremberg in the spring of 1796 many were terrified that Napoleon would seize the Spear and rule the world with it. The city councilors decided to remove the Reichkleinodie to Vienna for safe keeping. The collection of relics was entrusted to one Baron von Hügel, who promised to return the objects as soon as peace had been restored and the safety of the collection assured.

The Holy Roman Empire was officially dissolved in 1806. Baron von Hugel took advantage of the confusion over who was the legal owner of the Reichkleinodie and sold the entire collection, including the Spear, to the Habsburgs. Baron von Hugel's perfidy did not come to light until after Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo. When the city councilors of Nuremberg asked for their treasures back the Austrian authorities' response was a curt rejection. And there they stayed until the Anschluss, when Adolf Hitler claimed the Spear of Destiny as his own.

Another purported Holy Lance has been in Krakow since at least the 1200s, though German records indicate that the lance was a copy made from the German lance under Henry II, Holy Roman Emperor, with a small sliver of the original embedded. Another copy was given to the Hungarian king at the same time.

Far be it from the conspiracy theorists to take this and spin it into all sorts of malarkey:

Trevor Ravenscroft’s 1973 bestseller The Spear of Destiny has fixed his version of the legend in the minds of many today. He claims that Adolf Hitler started World War II to capture the spear, hypothesizing that Hitler's interest in the relic probably originated with his interest in the 1882 opera Parsifal — by Hitler’s favorite composer, Richard Wagner — which concerns a group of knights and their guardianship of the Holy Grail, as well as the recovery of the Spear. Though a number of historians cast doubt on Hitler's obsession with the Spear as it was reported by Trevor Ravenscroft et al, recent work by researcher and author Alec MacLellan has unearthed material from Ravenscroft's original source that seems to validate some of the stranger assertions.

Is it me, or does Ravenscroft seem somewhat…deranged?

Ravenscroft maintained that the spear came into the possession of the United States of America on April 30, 1945; specifically, under the control of the U.S. 3rd Army led by General George Patton. Later that day, supposedly in fulfillment of the legend that to lose the Spear meant death, Hitler committed suicide. Patton became fascinated by the ancient weapon and had its authenticity verified. Patton did not go on to use the spear, as orders came down from General Dwight Eisenhower that the complete Habsburg regalia including the Spear of Longinus were to be returned to the Hofburg Palace, where it remains today. It is interesting to note that George Patton, in his poem Through a Glass Darkly, curiously posits himself as Longinus in a previous lifetime.

This is a direct reference to the Vienna spear, which was dated to the 7th century CE. Oh, and the crazy gets crazier:

Ravenscroft repeatedly attempted to define the mysterious “powers” that the legend says the Spear serves. He found it to be a hostile and evil spirit, which he variously referred to as the Antichrist and the Spirit of the Age. Smith and Piccard similarly attempt to identify what they too perceive as a malignant spirit reaching through the Spear. In a mishmash of quantum physics, Christianity, and the New Age they offer a handful of ideas, from the Spear channeling the “angry God of the Old Testament” (Jehovah) to it somehow transferring a part of The Crucifixion to the Spear, with the Spear becoming a Doppelgänger for the Holy Spirit, becoming, as they put it, an Unholy Spirit.

See children? This is what happens when you don’t have healthy hobbies. Buechner proves to be a little less flamboyant, but still something of an overactive imagination:

Dr. Howard A. Buechner, M.D., professor of medicine at Tulane University and then Louisiana State University, added a strange chapter to the tale in his two books on the Spear. He claims he was contacted by a former U-boat submariner who in turn claimed to have helped take the Spear of Destiny to Antarctica in 1945 and to have helped to recover it in 1979. Buechner was a retired Colonel with the U.S. Army who served in World War II, and had written a book on the Dachau massacre as a witness to the event. He was presented by the pseudonymous “Capt. Wilhelm Bernhart” with the log of the 1979 Hartmann Expedition and photos of some of the objects recovered.

According to Buechner, the Spear currently on display in the Schatzkammer in Vienna is a fake. He claims that he had evidence that Heinrich Himmler, head of the Occult Bureau of the SS, had formed a circle of Knights dedicated to the Holy Lance and further, had Japan's greatest swordsmaker create an exact duplicate of the lance. Buechner claimed that the duplicate went on display in Nuremberg while the real one was used in arcane black magic ceremonies in a specially appointed castle in Wewelsburg, Germany. Even wilder, he wrote that Hitler personally had selected Col. Maximilian Hartmann to send several of his most prized possessions, including the Spear of Destiny, and Hitler and Eva Braun's ashes to Antarctica. According to him Col. Hartmann recovered the Spear of Destiny from the ice in 1979 and it is now in hiding somewhere in Europe, in the possession of the Knights of the Holy Lance.

After contacting most of the members of the alleged expedition and others involved, including senior Nazi officials and close associates of Adolf Hitler, like Hitler Youth Leader Artur Axmann, Col. Buechner became convinced the claims were true and that he was either the victim of an elaborate hoax, or the Spear of Destiny really did reside for a while in Antarctica and may well be in the hands of one or more individuals who believe, as Col Hartmann may have said “the Holy Lance points ever towards our eternal Deutschland.”

He may as well start waving it around and yell, ‘ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn’.

Smith and Picard are a bit more to the point, but no less wild:

Col. Buechner's story is examined and partially corroborated by both Alec Maclellan and the research/writing team of Jerry E. Smith and George Piccard. These writers focus on the mysterious surrenders of two U-boats to Argentine authorities months after the war’s end and how they may have been part of the “Fuehrer Convoy” taking high ranking Nazis and maybe treasure, to Argentina and/or Antarctica.

Spear legend meets Urban legend in the writings of the two conspiracy theory authors, Smith and Piccard. Their retelling of the Spear myth stretches from its purported creation in 3061 B.C. by Tubal-Cain, seventh generation grandson of Adam (the Spear was forged from a meteorite at the same time that he made the sword Excalibur), to Admiral Byrd’s battle (Operation Highjump) in the Antarctic against Nazis in their underground fortress in Neuschwabenland. Their version is replete with Nazi UFOs and the search for Atlantis. They connect the Thule Society (a Nazi secret society) to the Yale University Skull and Bones fraternity and the horrific events of September 11, 2001.

So…is that enough crazy for ya? That Hitler may have evinced some pointed interest in the artifact is likely. However, imbuing the bloody thing with magical powers is…well, foolish and pointless (pun intended). Even if it were the actual article, only one has been dated (the Vienna lance), and the Krakow lance has been declared a copy of the former.

In summation, Man tends to imbue inanimate objects with personality, a vain attempt to project himself onto the world around him. And when it appears that more positive statistics seem to occur in the vicinity of specific objects, religious people begin spinning tales about miraculous properties, unaware that it’s really all down to probabilities. Five million crystals do absolutely nothing, but a few might be in the general circle of a positive outcome, and voila! We got us an amulet, folks! Multiply that by a few millennia, overactive imaginations, and the snowballing effect of embellishment, and it results in eerie Theremin music, some thoroughly ridiculous memes, and the occasional out-in-left-field Fox series.

I hope this has been somewhat educational, because here the lesson endeth.

Till the next post, then.

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Allegories Gone Wild – Of Papists, Popes, And Puerile Prophecies

Cross posted @ God Is 4 Suckers!

In the wild weird and wooly world of woo, the Catholic Church has had some truly bizarre ideas. From stigmata to the cilice, from the flagrum to exorcism, these people seem to have all sorts of crazy ideas.

One of the major fantasies of the monotheists is the concept of the end of the world. As we see lives begin and end, we project this cycle of life and death and rebirth onto the larger world, and the theists among us re-interpret wildly to retrofit reality to their pre-supposed peccadilloes.

Among the odder oddities one can stumble across in the laundry lists of lunacy, is the Prophecy of the Popes, as given by one alleged Saint Malachy:

The Prophecy of the Popes, attributed to Saint Malachy, is a list of 112 short phrases in Latin. They purport to describe each of the Roman Catholic popes (along with a few anti-popes), beginning with Pope Celestine II (elected in 1143) and concluding with a pope described in the prophecy as "Peter the Roman", whose pontificate will end in the destruction of the city of Rome.

Are there issues with this? You bet your sweet aunt’s fanny there is.

The prophecy was first published in 1595 by Arnold de Wyon, a Benedictine historian, as part of his book Lignum Vitæ. Wyon attributed the list to Saint Malachy, the 12th‑century bishop of Armagh in Northern Ireland. According to the traditional account, in 1139, Malachy was summoned to Rome by Pope Innocent II. While in Rome, Malachy purportedly experienced a vision of future popes, which he recorded as a sequence of cryptic phrases. This manuscript was then deposited in the Roman Archive, and thereafter forgotten about until its rediscovery in 1590.

‘Cryptic phrases’? Is this facepalm time?

On the other hand, Bernard of Clairvaux's biography of Malachy makes no mention of the prophecy, nor is it mentioned in any record prior to its 1595 publication. Some sources, including the most recent editions of the Catholic Encyclopedia, suggest that the prophecy is a late 16th‑century forgery. Some have suggested that it was created by Nostradamus and was credited to Saint Malachy so the purported seer would not be blamed for the destruction of the papacy. Supporters, such as author John Hogue, who wrote a popular book titled The Last Pope about the claims, generally argue that even if the author of the prophecies is uncertain, the predictions are still valid.

How so? Let’s take a brief look into it:

Interpretation of the mottos has generally relied on finding correspondences between the mottos and the popes' birthplaces, their personal arms, and the events of their pontificates. For example, the first motto, Ex castro Tiberis (From a castle on the Tiber), fits Pope Celestine II's birthplace in Città di Castello, on the Tiber.

Pope Celestine II (died March 8, 1144), born Guido di Castello, was pope from 1143 to 1144. Self-fulfilling prophecy there. Next.

Pope Clement XIII, referred to in the prophecy as Rosa Umbriae, the rose of Umbria, is stated to have used a rose "as his personal emblem" (his coat of arms does not include one, however, nor was he from Umbria nor had any but the most marginal connection with the region, having been briefly pontifical governor of Rieti, at the time part of Umbria). The technique of word play was evident in instances where interpreters find a phrase fitting more than one explanation.

‘Word play’ is christlation for ‘let’s make it fit!’

It is notable that where the interpretation of the prophecy is clear (as is the case for almost all of the Popes prior to 1590), the reference is almost always to some characteristic possessed by the Pope prior to assuming the Papacy -- e.g., his birthplace, his arms, his surname, or his cardinal see. However, for more recent Popes, efforts to connect the prophecy with the pope have often focused on the events of his pontificate.

This sounds more like a literary version of cold reading to me.

In recent times, some interpreters of prophetic literature have drawn attention to the prophecies, both because of their success in finding connections between the prophecies and recent popes, and because of the prophecies' imminent conclusion. Interpretations made before the elections of recent popes have not generally predicted their papacies accurately.

Small wonder that.

For those interested, the popes and their ‘corresponding mottos’ can be found here. And the skepticism kept on coming for the prophecies of Saint Malarkey:

Spanish writer father Benito Jerónimo Feijóo wrote in his Teatro Crítico Universal (1724-1739), in an entry called Purported prophecies, that the ones by Saint Malachy's were a shameful forgery, claiming that they were created ad hoc during the 16th century. As a proof, he offers an accurate fact: that the first time the prophecy is mentioned is on a handwritten account by patriarch Alfonso Chacón (a.k.a Alphonsus Ciacconus, 1540-1599) in 1590 (this account would be later published, in 1595, by the abovementioned historian Arnold de Wyon); in this account, Chacón only comments the prophecies until the papacy of Urban VII (whose papacy only lasted September 1590, and was the current pope at the time Chacón wrote the comment). According to Feijóo, Chacón, who held a great intellectual prestige at the time, was lured to comment the prophecies by someone who wanted to help cardinal Girolamo Simoncelli (1522-1605) reach the papacy. By showing them to be accurate till Urban VII, it was expected people to believe the next ones; that way, Girolamo Simoncelli could be easily elected pope, since the prophecy after Urban VII's one tells about a pope Ex antiquitate urbis (from the antiquity of the city), a fact that seems to fit him, who was cardinal of Orvieto (literally "old city", urbs vetus), or at least better than Gregory XIV, who was elected pope after Urban VII. Thus, the forgery would have been useless, since Simoncelli was not elected pope. Jesuit father Claude-François Menestrier also claimed that the prophecies were forged in order to help the papal candidacy of Girolamo Simoncelli, offering similar reasons to those of Feijóo. Spanish historian José Luis Calvo points out that the prophecies seem to be very accurate till Urban VII, fitting perfectly even the antipopes, but that afterwards great efforts have to be made in order to make the prophecies fit their pope. Feijóo's explanation is usually regarded as being the most probable proof of the forgery.

So, nutshelling it: said ‘prophecies’ were forged in the 16th century, and were eerily accurate (if you accept the 12th century publication fib) up to Urban VII who was pope during…drum roll please…the 16th century.  Many many tickle up the raisin (if I might use a little wordplay on an old bibble saying). For those of you who don’t get the esoteric mangling: it’s easy to see the writing on the wall, and it’s mostly graffiti that adorn the smoke and mirrors.

And one has to but Google this topic, to see that this obvious hoax has survived nearly 5 centuries, even though anyone with half a mind (or half a critical eye) can see that this is an utter fraud.

The ubiquity of stupidity is appalling.

Till the next post, then.

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