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Archive for the ‘Religion’ Category

Got a sin? Phone it in!

Posted in My Chinese Checkered Past, News, Religion, tagged , , , on February 10, 2011| 11 Comments »

Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. This is my first confession …”

And so started my first session in the dark closet that is a Catholic confessional. I was seven, and scared shitless. The rumors that flew through my particular gaggle of initiates ranged from a congratulatory bowl of M&Ms appearing to the floor giving way at the pull of a lever by a priest unhappy with what he was hearing, and although we’d been well prepped by having the required words drilled into our young brains, no one had bothered to explain the process beyond how bloody vital it was we get it right.

And how I wanted to get it right! After all, there was a brand new dress at home (Bridal white and with a veil, even, and what 7-year-old girl wasn’t put all aflutter by the thought of walking down an aisle in that?), the wearing of which depended upon passing the test of confessed.

Of course, I had by this time succumbed to curiosity enough to have taken a peek or two into the blabbing box … an action I was expected to confess, I suppose … but all had happened in guilt-ridden anxiety and I’d not had anything like a good look around, so its mystery held fast, and by the throat.

Nervous as a Catholic school girl in her first confession, appropriately, when nunned through the door, I dropped to my knees and began the ritual that was pouring out my soul. I told of pinching my brother and filching a cookie and might have mentioned skipping threesies in a game of jacks, all the horrific acts a child was compelled to tell if that dress was to happen.

I must have run on for at least five minutes, then …

a little screen slid open and the priest, who’d apparently been torturing listening to the kid in the closet on the other side of him, was ready to hear MY confession.

One more time, and from the top …

That was a long time ago, and, dammit, to think now I could have just phoned it in!

The news that the popester has given the nod to a new app for iPhones and iPads that makes confession a breeze almost makes me wish I was a Catholic school girl all over again.

Okay, that’s nowhere even close to true, but idea of the $1.99 app on sale through iTunes is cracking me up.

The Catholic Church has approved an iPhone app that helps guide worshippers through confession.

The Confession program has gone on sale through iTunes for £1.19 ($1.99).

Described as “the perfect aid for every penitent”, it offers users tips and guidelines to help them with the sacrament.

Now senior church officials in both the UK and US have given it their seal of approval, in what is thought to be a first.

The app takes users through the sacrament – in which Catholics admit their wrongdoings – and allows them to keep track of their sins.

Ah, the hilarity out of the Vatican!

A bit of explanation for those not familiar with stuff catholiky:

The Sacrament of Reconciliation, more commonly referred to as Confession by most Catholics and Christians, should be a vital part of the Catholic faith.

… When the person enters the confessional, he should kneel (or sit), bless himself (with the sign of the cross) and say “Bless me Father for I have sinned.” The person will then tell the priest how long it has been since his last confession. Then the priest will tell the person to confess his sins. From there, the person will tell his sins to the priest. Once he is done, the person should say an “Act of Contrition.” Once the person has done all of this, the priest will give the person penance. The penance will usually consist of a set amount of prayers (such as The Lord’s Prayer or The Rosary) the person must say. The priest will then say a prayer and absolve the person of the confessed sins.

… Confession helps to rid people of any guilt they may have been feeling because of their sins and also allows them to experience the love and forgiveness offered by God.

Got it?

Okay, so now a bit about sacraments in general:

A sacrament, as defined in Hexam’s Concise Dictionary of Religion, is what Roman Catholics believe to be “a rite in which God is uniquely active.” Augustine of Hippo defined a Christian sacrament as “a visible sign of an invisible reality.” … Examples of sacraments are Baptism and the Eucharist. Therefore a sacrament is a religious symbol or often a rite which conveys divine grace, blessing, or sanctity upon the believer who participates in it, or a tangible symbol which represents an intangible reality. As defined above, an example would be baptism in water, representing (and conveying) the grace of the gift of the Holy Spirit, the Forgiveness of Sins, and membership into the Church. Anointing with holy anointing oil is another example which is often synonymous with receiving the Holy Spirit and salvation. Another way of looking at Sacraments is that they are an external & physical sign of the conferral of Sanctifying Grace.

Apparently, God is now “uniquely active” via iPhone. If one leans toward buying into the church stuff in the first place, this might be bloody fucking handy, dontcha think?

It looks like the new app gives a commandment-by-commandment rundown of possible infractions and provides a handy checklist, making it harder to “forget” transgressions, since lord knows! forgetting is no excuse for not unburdening and taking your holy lumps.

Kill anyone?
a) yes
b) no
c) Does a Muslim count?

Commit any rape?
a) yes
b) no
c) Just an alter boy.

Tell any lies?
a) yes
b) no
c) Only about the alter boy.

Piece o’ cake, heh?

And if that’s so easy, why not apps for sacs other than reconciliation?

There could be a do-it-yourself baptism app, a “Do you take this woman to be your wedded wife” tick-a-box app, and even one for performing last rites and burials. (Pre-order holy water, salt, unction oil, even vacuum-packed communion wafers through the post … $49.99 the set … and have all on hand for the next religion-related emergency.)

If you’re expecting a crowd, everyone will certainly have their phone with them, so have them download the appropriate app and join in the Kyrie, eleisoning. Think of the fortune saved in candles, since the soft light of touch screens would create the same sort of mood, and processions could be led by iPads raised in solemn tribute.

Yep. I think we’re on to something here, and at the right price iTunes and the church might both be happy.

And here’s a little something from me composed before this app thing made news:

The Sacraments

Water drip
Salt to lip
Hand that baby over

Tiny room
doom and gloom
all that’s just to cover

tongue to host
holy ghost
Quite the cool maneuver

Pick a name
now you’re tame
Don’t contain your fervor

Troth to plight
wedding night
doesn’t bind a lover

Finished toil
unction oil
No, you won’t recover

In a grave
no one saved
Now it’s finally over

Amen. Log off.

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Scientology or wrist action? Your monkey makes the call …

Posted in Celebrities, News, Religion, tagged , , on February 9, 2011| 10 Comments »

An article in The New Yorker perpetuates my pondering on the propensity of peeps to group themselves according to religion, even otherwise freethinking, competent types you might guess would have little need to join such clubs to feel worthy.

The piece is about screenwriter and director Paul Haggis and his recent break with Scientology, a habit he wore for some 35 years.

Haggis was prominent in both Scientology and Hollywood, two communities that often converge. Although he is less famous than certain other Scientologists, such as Tom Cruise and John Travolta, he had been in the organization for nearly thirty-five years. Haggis wrote the screenplay for “Million Dollar Baby,” which won the Oscar for Best Picture in 2004, and he wrote and directed “Crash,” which won Best Picture the next year—the only time in Academy history that that has happened.

I know I’m far from alone in spending some time wondering wtf the attraction could possibly be to such a whacky system of beliefs, and after 26 pages of New Yorker’s look at Scientology I’m even more confused.

Don’t get me wrong here; I’m not opposed to whacky beliefs, the idea that we’re descended from aliens, have immortal souls that recycle, can up our smartness and effect our health. Sounds good to me, and I’m all for anyone believing whatever the fuck they want to believe. What doesn’t compute is the apparent compulsion to form circle jerks in efforts to somehow make it feel real.

“There was a feeling of camaraderie that was something I’d never experienced—all these atheists looking for something to believe in, and all these loners looking for a club to join.”

Huh?

For fuck sake, dude, join a bowling league. It would be a whole lot cheaper and you’d get matching shirts!

David S. Touretzky, a computer-science professor at Carnegie Mellon University, has done extensive research on Scientology. (He is not a defector.) He estimates that the coursework alone now costs nearly three hundred thousand dollars, and, with the additional auditing and contributions expected of upper-level members, the cumulative cost of the coursework may exceed half a million dollars.

Of course, a bowling league doesn’t usually exert mind control over anything other than a 16 pound ball and some pins, where Scientology makes greater claims:

Recruits had a sense of boundless possibility. Mystical powers were forecast; out-of-body experiences were to be expected; fundamental secrets were to be revealed. Hubbard had boasted that Scientology had raised some people’s I.Q. one point for every hour of auditing. “Our most spectacular feat was raising a boy from 83 I.Q. to 212,” he told the Saturday Evening Post, in 1964.

There’s no question about why such claims are made, and every religion expounds long and hard on the benefits of membership. It matters little if bonus points add up to a higher I.Q., a pearly gate pass or 37 virgins-for-the-ravishing-of, it’s the promise of payoff that gets folks to pay up.

Business is business, and those based in amorphous commodities like eternal salvation or “Clear” need to inflate rewards to infinity to get the attention they need for a queue to form at the door.

A person who becomes Clear is “adaptable to and able to change his environment,” Hubbard writes. “His ethical and moral standards are high, his ability to seek and experience pleasure is great. His personality is heightened and he is creative and constructive.” Someone who is Clear is less susceptible to disease and is free of neuroses, compulsions, repressions, and psychosomatic illnesses. “The dianetic Clear is to a current normal individual as the current normal is to the severely insane.”

And that will be $350,000, thank you, but worth every penny. Maybe.

Going Clear “was not life-changing,” Haggis says. “It wasn’t, like, ‘Oh, my God, I can fly!’ ” At every level of advancement, he was encouraged to write a “success story” saying how effective his training had been. He had read many such stories by other Scientologists, and they felt “overly effusive, done in part to convince yourself, but also slanted toward giving somebody upstairs approval for you to go on to the next level.”

Ah, yes … the ever-present promise that your next fix will be the ultimate high, and once hooked it’s not easy to dislodge a monkey, especially when all your friends are so proudly packing theirs around.

Not unlike most religions, Scientology discourages followers from mixing much with the monkey-less, or those sporting a different species. The chance of comparison or contamination is a dangerous prospect to those heavily invested in maintaining a monoculture, and if that means families are to be tossed overboard, so be it.

In fact, redefining “family” to mean those with monkeys that look like yours rather than roots comes in very handy, as dramatically proved by those 909 Kool-Aid drinkers in Jonestown some years back.

Of course, there’s no future in mass suicide, no money to be made if everybody dies at the same time, so most religions discourage such activities amongst followers … although too often many would be quite happy to see the competition down a few glasses of strawberry-flavored sugar water en masse.

In discussing this as I waited for the kettle to boil, Dave asked if I thought the inclination to glom onto the like-minded religion-wise wasn’t some sort of manifestation of a fear of the unknown.

Hm.

Fear of the unknown I get, and coming up with beliefs to fill in gaps is a human hobby going way back. The sun rises because it’s some guy’s job to hop in his chariot and drive it across the sky every morning. Fine. But did that guy require pricy temples and an army of worshipers, or was all that just a measure to reduce lines at the employment office and set up some in a Zeusified lifestyle here on Earth? Would he not bother showing up for work one dawn unless thousands or millions of people expected him to and agreed on the expectation?

It’s the herding instinct that gets people to agree on the expectation, not the need for answers. Answers to the unanswerable can come one-at-a-time and for free. But you get what you pay for, and free thinking doesn’t come with a crowd and chanting “We are all individuals!” in unison must be comforting for those not sure they really are, like the tree falling in the forest with no one to hear its timber.

We are a social species, and our survival depends upon our need for, and ability to, mix and mingle. It does not, however, rely on us rooting for the same team, supporting the same businesses and thinking the same thoughts.

We should, in fact, rail against being spoon-fed predigested pap, especially pricy pap, and resist the urge to join a pack that requires we swallow. Mass ingestion is a dangerous prospect and far too easy …

Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it.
~Adolf Hitler

Anyone up for unstrapping the monkey and getting in a couple of frames of bowling? We can … ya know … just hang and talk about shit …

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Duck Into Church

Posted in History, Religion, tagged , , , on February 6, 2011| 16 Comments »

Yesterday’s post on the interpretation of some perceived holy mandate to go forth and divide leads conveniently to today’s inspired by one of the more reasonable takes on religion I’ve come across lately.

This titled, “The Rabbi Who Believes in Zeus: Why All Intuitions of God Are Incomplete”, comes within spitting distance of rational, although still misses the mark, as it must, being written by one who again makes a living through religion so is therefore obliged to validate the institution.

As a philosophical discussion, this almost works:

There are realms of reality for which our five senses, our frail physicality, and the current evolution of our minds are incapable of fully grasping. Access to the non-physical spiritual realm is through the gift of intuition, which is a dim remembrance of the world from which we came, and that “speaks” to us in images and metaphors. Like James Watson discovering the reality of the DNA double helix structure in a dream of intertwined snakes, we can access deep truths that appear as symbols and metaphors. There are those who, for a variety of reasons, will concretize these visions and insist that these images are literally true, but the initial vision that brought these visions to us, whether Zeus, a man/elephant, or a pair of snakes, are not descriptions of actual people of objects, but are mystical poetry that contain a truth.

That’s pretty, heh? Pondering the meaning of life, searching for said meaning, expanding possible realms beyond the physical … all that sort of stuff … sets us in directions that are, for the most part, good for our souls and keep our brains growing. Coolio. But when the framework is religious it so often ends in a fail.

In this way I believe in Zeus, as a human intuition of a true aspect of the Divine. One could ask if I also believe in Santa Claus or the Jolly Green Giant. The difference here is that every adult knows that Santa Claus is an invention to please children, and that the Jolly Green Giant was designed to sell vegetables. Now one can then say that any image of God is also an invention to appease the childish part of our nature that is confused by the world and afraid of death, and that religion was designed to sell mind control and submission. These simple bromides, though, are not supported by the facts of history or people’s real experiences. No adult has come to a belief in and develop meaningful connection with Santa Claus, while countless people have come to find truth and relationship in their tradition’s interpretation of the unknowable realm of Spirit. And no one has ever struggled with the obligations to be charitable and compassionate as demanded by a can of peas, while billions are elevated by and supported in a religious community and tradition that feeds the poor, cares for the ill, and comforts the bereaved.

And THAT’S where if falls apart. “Elevated and supported”? Maybe, and pie-in-the-sky can do that, but the “feeds the poor, cares for the ill …” biz is what yesterday’s post was all about, and religion does a crap job. Trotting out those old chestnuts should no longer be tolerated and Brownie points for altruism no longer awarded to tax-exempt organizations sitting on billions, yet sucking pennies from the poor.

As far as my grasp of history goes, I can’t come up with one single instance of Santa or the Green Giant bringing on a genocide. Heck, not even one little skirmish inspired by Mr. Claus or Jolly Green pops into my head … aside from my brothers wearing out the batteries on my kids’ Star Trek communicators one Christmas Eve which caused a bit of a tiff … but wars based on “my god’s better than your god” are easily recounted.

The rabbi addresses a bit of this:

Yes, terrible things, like child sacrifice and abuse of women, were done as “religious” acts to appease imagined gods, but these were acts of barbaric cultures disguised as spirituality, and have been — and are being — eradicated as we evolve.

There, for me, is the salient point … the fact that barbaric cultures can and do use the cloak of spirituality to disguise and excuse just about anything. I have far less ‘faith’ in eradication than the good rabbi, and feel if religion came with caveats rather than gravitas many barbarians would find themselves naked and exposed for what they are, rather than idolized for their vision, leadership, conviction to belief… whatever.

The carte blanche so often automatically conveyed to religion, the knee-jerk acceptance of religion as a good thing no matter the evidence to the contrary, the insistence that there is not only a value but also a need to believe, all perpetuated by those with a vested interest in maintaining the status quo is what prompts me to to clang this bloody bell of mine as often as I do.

As for those who do feel that need, I’m thinking Daffy Duck would look mighty good on an icon. No need to spend a fortune on gold-threaded robes, either. He and Donald might not get along, but the most their followers would have to throw at each other would be a few lisps and quacks. And the Word According to Daffy … well, baptism would no longer require a font.

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And God Said: Let there be greed

Posted in Health, History, News, Religion, tagged , , on February 5, 2011| 15 Comments »

… And so it was done, and greed and hypocrisy spread over the Earth as god’s people went forth and divided.

It’s this article winding the Saturday clock today, titled: What the Flap Over Health Care Tells Us About American Religion.

That interesting juxtaposition of words caught my eye since the fact that there is a flap never ceases to amaze me and I’m often curious about religion, American or otherwise. Not curious in a “What’s it all about?” sense as much as “How does such a load of bollocks manage to fly?”, but curious, nonetheless.

One reason it does fly, apparently, has much to do with that hypocrisy thing:

We begin with the teachings of Jesus, for his message was clear.

He told his followers to care for the poor. In fact, providing for those he called “the least of these” was perhaps his highest priority. He didn’t say how to get that job done. He just said, Do it.

But in this richest nation on earth, where 75 percent of its people claim to be Christian, the poor — even the working poor — routinely fall through the cracks. One would think that Christians in this country would utilize “any means necessary” to make sure that no one in this country is homeless or starving or naked or without basic healthcare.

…

Indeed, one would think that the 75 percent of the nation’s population that claims to follow Jesus would rejoice when the government creates a tool to provide healthcare for virtually all the nation’s poor. And one would think that those same Christians would rise up in furious protest and righteous indignation when some politicians attempt to sabotage that tool — and thereby sabotage the nation’s poor.

But that seldom happens. In fact, many Christians denounce the health care law as a tool of the devil and support its repeal.

How odd.

Or is it?

The guy writing the piece makes a living off religion as “Distinguished Professor of Religion and Director of the Sider Institute for Anabaptist, Pietist, and Wesleyan Studies at Messiah College” … Huh? … so must be well invested in the idea that there’s value in them thar holy hills and pointing out an obvious disconnect is worth the effort it takes to do that.

To me, however, it seems a gianormous waste of time akin to trying to get Sarah Palin to shutthefuckup with the stupid shit by publishing every stupid shit thing she says. Wouldn’t it be easier to just state once and flatly that Palin is a moron and religion is a load of crap, then drop both subjects?

Is it helpful in the least to mention Frederick Douglas and Martin Luther King, as this article does, and their ponderings on the false virtue of sanctimonious pretense as an attempt at finger-wagging when sanctimonious pretense is the name of the game?

In fact, when Christians read the Bible through the lens of American individualism, limited government, and free-market conservatism, there is no way they can acknowledge what the Bible teaches about social justice and compassion for the poor.

A man who responded to one of my editorials, for example, complained, “No where does the Lord, or his Son, Jesus Christ, say that government should take care of the poor and downtrodden.”

Yeah … like that guy will be shamed by a finger-wag in his direction. Not bloody likely. But he will most certainly be proud as all get-out of his adherence to Christianity, consider it some sort of personal moral victory, trot it out often, wave it around and try to shove it down the necks of others.

A handy thing, a defining title, a membership in a club that conveys some version of gravitas; to be able to say “I’m a Christian” and have that taken to mean something significant.

The only question is this: how will America’s Christians respond?

I’m guessing … with greed and hypocrisy, as always.

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Nihilism / schmihilism

Posted in History, Nature, Religion, science, tagged , , , , on January 18, 2011| 15 Comments »

Yesterday’s post on You=tube and being all DaDaDandy needs a follow, and although I’m far from growing wings and going chirpy I may possibly have something percolating between synapses that offers other than gloom for a Tuesday.

When in discussions with folks who subscribe to Life is Short and Then You Die and That’s All She Wrote line of thought, one question that pops into mind is: Why?

Not, “Why do you think this is all there is?”, because that actually makes a lot of sense, but “Why?” as a broader issue.

Although I do understand the biological imperative we carry to find meaning to life in our efforts to figure out what’s going on and therefore somehow protect ourselves with the result being we stick around longer, that doesn’t feel quite enough to get us to the point of doing so so well.

In the course of evolution, changes in species arise because something new and different works, and works well enough and is repeated often enough to have those with it make more others than those without. Many new adaptations are very costly involving trade-offs in expenditures of energy.

Bright coloring in male birds, for instance, takes more energy, but results in breeding opportunities, so it works and is worth it.

Humans stand rather than crawl after developing big ass muscles, an improvement on mobility allowing us to use our hands which led to tool making and a decent living for manicurists. The ability to use tools made killing big stuff possible so we starting living in groups … which spread the cost a bit as the society as well as individuals anted up … and talking to each other so we could manage to deal with mammoth leftovers.

Fine. DadaDandy, even.

Where the evolutionary sense runs off the rails for me, however, is where we got so bloody smart.

Where is the biological imperative in moving from beating on a log while blowing through a reed to Mozart? For that matter, why did we start blowing on reeds in the first place? Chimps have been around as long as we have and done well without making music, so what is it in us that needs it to soothe the savage breast?

What good has it done our species to build extra brain making it possible to turn completely effective grunts to poetry, to develop compassion to the point of giving the shirts off our back to help another in need and the determination to go where no one has gone before even when we well know there’s a dearth of fruiting trees in them thar hills?

Big brains need a lot of calories to form and to work. Why go that way when longer arms or wings or bigger lungs may have served better?

If there’s one thing going on making me suspect there’s more than one thing going on, it would be that we’re over-engineered for what’s needed for survival in this world. Because that over-engineering is so expensive, it seems there must be a better reason for it than simple process of effective mutation explains, and because of that there just might be more to us.

So, from a Monday to a Tuesday, and from Kierkegaard and Nietzsche to a philosopher of our time, Yoda …

Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter.

Perhaps …

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The Meaning of Life … a Monday version

Posted in Health, love, Nature, Peeps, Religion, science, Sex, tagged , , , , on January 17, 2011| 7 Comments »

Dawn is cracking loud today, or maybe it’s the Pistols on the iPod shredding the infamous songwriting duo Kierkegaard & Nietzsche’s classic “Nihilism, So DaDaDandy” I’m confusing with the break of yet another week.

Yes, it’s THAT sort of morning after THAT sort of night following THAT sort of day yesterday having me think THESE sorts of thoughts.

Good morning, World … and how about that idea that we’re all nothing but a tube?

Let’s start this Monday off with the thought that we are plain and simply biological creatures born to live, then die, whose entire raison d’etre is to take in nutrients, excrete … well … excrement and reproduce, and grandiose concepts like some spiritual component, a soul, are nothing but a load of wishful hooey.

Most of science certainly points us in that direction, after all, and easily implicates bio reasons for just about anything going on in us. Everything from our fears to our joys to our passions to our annoyances can be traced to our DNA.

We love our kids because our brains grew big enough to require long childhoods for development, so we grew attached to the little buggers so we wouldn’t boot them out of the cave before they could walk … or eat them.

We dream because of electro-chemical processes. We ponder the stars and the moon because doing so paid off in longer life spans.

We create art and music out of a mandate to communicate that facilitates eating, passing along our genetic material and not being killed for our share of the mammoth.

We fall in love out of primal urges … and fall out of love for those same primal urges. (See reproduction.)

At some point our brains expanded enough to leave room for more than grubbing for grub and screwing, so started wondering about stuff. What we couldn’t explain got stories and stories became habit forming and led to religion and writing and science.

There are no few folks who subscribe wholeheartedly to this concept and appear to be comfy in the knowledge that born-live-die is all there is to it. Some tout freeing aspects in the idea that you only live once, so make the bloody most of it.

I get that. I do. But what I don’t get is the point.

Because it is dictated we must eat, we must survive, we must breed, it’s not like like it’s a party. For many it is really fucking hard and no fun at all, and if the only reason to put up with all the crap is to bring another generation in to put up with all the crap, well, seems saving them the effort wouldn’t be a bad thing.

But, see? That’s where we’re bound, trapped like a bug in amber. It’s in our DNA.

Even our fear of death is rooted in our code because without it … and with nothing else going on … we’d be topping ourselves right and left as soon as we figured out how fucking pointless it is to struggle and suffer for however many decades we’re allowed to struggle and suffer through.

Whoopie.

If we’re looking for meaning, it must come in flashes, in moments the chemicals in our brains pump out warm fuzzies and set us awash in sweet juices. These keep us going, they translate as hope … and are addictive as hell, so we plod through days and weeks and months and years and decades searching for fix after fix.

Anyone want to talk me down from this precipice?

Gawd, I hate Mondays …

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Holy Microbes! … or … Mortise meets Tenon, or not …

Posted in Nature, News, Religion, science, tagged , , , , on January 15, 2011| 4 Comments »

Dovetail tools, bless 'em ...

I have almost no idea why two particular stories in today’s news dovetail in my mind, but for reasons perhaps only the severely disturbed might grasp, they do.

First is this piece on some little dudes who’ve managed to stay alive for … get this … 34,000 years.

It wasn’t long ago that a whole new life form was discovered, and here we are again learning that the impossible is … well … not.

“It was actually a very big surprise to me,” said Brian Schubert, who discovered ancient bacteria living within tiny, fluid-filled chambers inside the salt crystals.

Salt crystals grow very quickly, imprisoning whatever happens to be floating — or living — nearby inside tiny bubbles just a few microns across, akin to naturally made, miniature snow-globes.

“It’s permanently sealed inside the salt, like little time capsules,” said Tim Lowenstein, a professor in the geology department at Binghamton University and Schubert’s advisor at the time.

Ah … the stuff we don’t know until it bites us on the ass. (Okay, until science folks dedicated to the looking find. Not the same as an ass bite, sure, but it’s not like the stuff didn’t exist before the finding, is it?)

A quick mention of the fact that both these discoveries come out of California, as do I, and I’m liking that and trying to think of a clever link, but failing.

Perhaps because I’m so far out on the linking limb already in tying that story to this one titled: Is John Paul ll Being Fast-Tracked To Sainthood?

Sure, there’s a time thing they have in common … 34,000 years alive and six years dead … but that’s a stretch, isn’t it? Maybe it’s something to do with bacteria in general?

Or maybe it’s the whole miracle-makes-saint deal …

Pope Benedict XVI has recognized a miracle attributed to Pope John Paul II, bringing the late pontiff one step from sainthood a mere six years after his death, the Vatican announced on Friday (Jan. 14).

By signing a decree accepting the miracle, Benedict completed one of most rapid beatifications in the modern history of the Catholic Church. Another miracle attributed to John Paul’s intercession will be required before he can be declared a saint.

Where am I going with this? (That’s a question to self, btw.)

Let’s try this …

Some old git kicks it back in 2005, the crowd goes wild shouting “santo subito” in that We-are-all-individuals! sort of way and sets up a chain reaction that ignores the fact the dead guy was up to some nasty shit before biting the dust yet does manage to dig up a nun who started feeling better a couple of months later. Okay.

On the other side of the planet, life goes on as it has for the last 34,000 years within some salt crystals.

Both stories make today’s news. One is no surprise at all while the other is an astonishing discovery. One adds to the body of human knowledge as the other points out how pointlessly inane people can be. One recognizes a new and unexpected push at the edge of the envelope we call life while the other bestows honors that are only awarded to dead folks.

I’m thinking 34,000-year-old bacteria actually trump anything that managed to stick around for less than 9 mere decades, so perhaps it would make some sense if the popester were to convey some sort of holyosity on the microorganisms for toughing it out.

Nah. What good would that do them?

But, then again …

What good will it do John Paul at this stage of the game? He’s more bacteria than anything else by now anyway …

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Pigs fly, birds die … we’re doomed

Posted in Nature, News, Religion, science, tagged , , , , , , , on January 6, 2011| 13 Comments »

All this bird dying, fish floating, mass crab croaking stuff is creepy, and I don’t care how many scientists trot about spouting on about how these are normal events.

Sure, I can understand how finding oneself in Beebe, Arkansas on New Year’s Eve could prompt the mutilation migration that had thousands of birds falling from the sky and nearly 100,000 fish rising to the surface in a nearby river in the days leading up to the holiday, but rural redneckitis doesn’t explain major die-offs in New Zealand, the UK and Sweden. (Although I suspect the Swedish situation may be pinned on broken condoms, but I’m not going there today.)

As some drunken Scot put it: We’re doomed, Laddy.

We’re one year away from 2012, and if predictions are to be awarded their due, apparently the road to global annihilation starts the paving process with fish and birds.

Given that one portent of doom suggests $5 a gallon gas by 2012, my world … where gas is about $7 a gallon … is already up there with the bloating snapper.

We’re also well on our way to learning all the steps to the natural disasters pas de everybody and just the global weather of the past month alone is enough to warm us up for 2012 terrors of the climate kind.

Add to it all things like the birth of a panda cow in Colorado … presaged by that wise woman Christine O’Donnel’s ManMindMouse … and the appearance and immediate shooting of a strange creature in Kentucky and there’s a whole lotta strange goin’ on.

After all, a black man is President of the US of A and it’s now okay to be gay in the army, so apparently hell has frozen over and pigs do fly, so the only horror yet to happen is THE END OF THE WHOLE FUCKING WORLD.

I could make a couple predictions myself from today’s news alone … a Momon nutjob taking over the House Armed Services Committee will result in battles of prophecy fulfillment, or not … thousands upon thousands of people will soon suddenly be unable to identify their location due to Starbucks removing their name from the logo. Yes, creepy things are coming at us.

I’m also guessing strange lights will be seen in the skies, entire nations will mysteriously place idiots in powerful positions and millions will be moved to tears by the news a perfect couple has decided to divorce. Yep … all this over the next twelve months leading to 2012.

I can’t help but wonder when the first time was humans prepared for the end of the world. For sure the predictions have been going around a while and no few religions buy into the idea of Armageddon, but did early man include a sense of total destruction as he painted bison running across cave walls? Could unexplainable events in the ancient natural world have been assumed portents of doom?

I’m guess, yep. I’m also guessing thoughts of surviving such made up a whole bunch of that old time religion that’s morphed into what we have today.

Since we can’t even figure out how to keep oil companies from wasting millions of gallons of their pricy product on useless endeavors like turning the Gulf of Mexico into sludge, much less how to travel to distant, possibly more habitable, planets, what hope could there be in trying to avoid the coming apocalypse?

The only question really then, is: What to do between now and the end of the world?

Of course, a number of options present. We can, for example:

1) Curl up in a ball and do the “Oh, woe is us” thing
2) Turn to a higher power in hopes that gives some leverage
3) Live life to the fullest every day while considering each a gift
4) Figure out a way to make a buck while riding the hysteria wave
5) Ignore all
6) Consider all an adventure and go with the flow

Okay … there are a whole lot more options and I’m willing to hear others, but that’s all the list I have time for right now since there’s no use wasting too much of that on just another bloody blog post, is there?

For my part, I’ll try my best to concentrate on ducking falling fowl, putting one foot in front of the other, having a good time when I can, writing about stuff I find interesting … or amusing … or annoying … taking care of my kids (just in case there turns out to be a world for them to inherit), hanging with my friends, laughing, loving, snorkeling and trying not to spend too much time fretting about stuff I can’t fix.

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InSantaTy: or it’s all a mythtery

Posted in History, News, Religion, science, tagged , on December 21, 2010| 18 Comments »

I wrote earlier today on the magic of belief in Santa Claus, the gift to the imagination that shiny bit of tinsel can hang on children before they reach the age when flying reindeer and fat men squeezing their bulk down chimneys to leave bikes and dolls no longer makes any sense and they face the realization that Mom and Dad are bigger benefactors than they’d figured.

We consider the progression to be in the natural order of things; hopeful frivolity gives way to information, knowledge, to familiarization with the way things really are. Also learned in time is a sense of history that serves to put traditions in context, to illuminate how one thing led to another to another and eventually to St. Nicholas morphing into Santa Claus.

Okay … so my eight-year-old is on the verge of twigging to the Santa gag, and even though I’m hoping he gets this one more year of the fantasy the writing is on the wall. He’s a smart, curious kid who loves to learn and wants to know stuff, and in the long run all that is a good thing.

I can’t help, however, but be amazed at the huge number of people who never get further than the fairy tales.

Those in this article for example:

A new Gallup poll, released Dec. 17, reveals that 40 percent of Americans still believe that humans were created by God within the last 10,000 years.

Yeah … I could have gone with the whole Holy Night tale, but although it is almost Christmas other angles came across my reindeer radar today, and the idea that only 16% of Americans buy the idea of evolution without divine guidance feels to me like a call for intervention.

Don’t get me wrong — I like Christmas music as much as the next indoctrinated American-raised harker of Harold the singing angel, and the idea of Peace on Earth, Goodwill to Men (and women and children) is worth propagating. It does rather piss me off when the concept is hijacked once a year by peeps whose agenda is suspect and divisive.

When high on said agenda is keeping people stupid … well … even more reason to bah and humbug, and trotting out Eden as fact while science is swept up with the torn wrapping paper is doing exactly that.

The poll also revealed that beliefs in creationism and evolution are strongly related to levels of education attained. When results are narrowed to those with college degrees, only 37 percent of respondents maintain beliefs in creationism. Meanwhile, the belief in evolution without the aid of God rises to 21 percent.

Those numbers are still appalling, but do give some hope that education has some force against ignorance.

Lest anyone think I’m picking on Christians to put the Christ in Christmas, another story in today’s news made the same point, but in a bit more gruesome a manner. Titled “Koran Written In Saddam Hussein’s Blood Poses Problem For Iraqi Leaders”, it could be considered another candle on the holly branch …

The unique Koran’s creation took over two years:

It was etched in the blood of a dictator in a ghoulish bid for piety. Over the course of two painstaking years in the late 1990s, Saddam Hussein had sat regularly with a nurse and an Islamic calligrapher; the former drawing 27 litres of his blood and the latter using it as a macabre ink to transcribe a Qur’an. But since the fall of Baghdad, almost eight years ago, it has stayed largely out of sight – locked away behind three vaulted doors. It is the one part of the ousted tyrant’s legacy that Iraq has simply not known what to do with.

Slate notes that Saddam was never one for subtlety, and that this undertaking would serve propaganda purposes for when the dictator need to be seen as pious; he “decided to show the world that he was willing to literally sacrifice his blood for the sake of his religion.”

His blood. Nice. What a sacrifice, heh?

And to think Santa would have just left a lump of coal in his stocking and called it a day while assuming he’d made the point that genocide goes on the naughty list. Of course, if Santa was the issue, Saddam would have grown out if it by the time he was 10 or 12 … or 30.

So, why is it okay … normal, reasonable … to mature beyond the dude-in-red flying down from the North Pole, but Adam and Eve and Mohammed once ingested are to last a lifetime? Why is A Visit from St. Nicholas considered light verse, but the second chapter of Luke gospel? (Okay, bad choice of words, but you get my drift.)

But really, does this …

And Mama in her ‘kerchief, and I in my cap,
Had just settled our brains for a long winter’s nap —
When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter,
I sprang from the bed to see what was the matter.
Away to the window I flew like a flash,
Tore open the shutters, and threw up the sash.
The moon on the breast of the new fallen snow,
Gave the lustre of mid-day to objects below;
When, what to my wondering eyes should appear,
But a miniature sleigh, and eight tiny rein-deer,
With a little old driver, so lively and quick,
I knew in a moment it must be St. Nick.

… make any less sense than this …

And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were
sore afraid.

And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord. And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.

And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.

… ?

Sure, the first quote rhymes and only has a couple of songs to go with, but more importantly it wasn’t shouted from pulpits in our direction, and I can’t help thinking that’s one big diff. That and the fact that Santa has little political clout and other than marketing not much economical sway, either.

As I said in my earlier post, I don’t see Santa as a dangerous illusion fostered by parents, but a bit of magic meant to stir imagination. The other stuff could be the same, but folks don’t seem to outgrow that shit.

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Pulling Up a Chair With Aliens

Posted in Health, Hopeful thoughts, Nature, Religion, science, tagged , , on December 5, 2010| 26 Comments »

I’ve been asked to come up with some thoughts on Alien Beings … this is what spilled out.

I am often invaded by thoughts that would to someone else feel alien; weird, formless phantoms that interrupt my work and set me to following bright, shiny objects instead of concentrating on matters at hand.

And what do I do when so annexed? I pull up a chair, pour some tea … or wine, if the hour is right … and invite my visitor to settle in for a while and share whatever it is they’ve popped into to ponder with me.

Today my alien is an alien, and although alien is the most easily accessible word for this guy, he’s not actually alien in the least …

… unless, of course, we all are.

And we are. Or, at least, I am. I don’t presume to speak for anyone else and understand many are distinctly uncomfortable with any notion suggesting they’ve ever been anything else or have even the smallest shred of anything else anywhere in their makeup.

Like the legions of folks who resent the hell out of any implication there might be shared DNA between them and … say … a chimp, others are right pissed off when handed a card reading: What you see is NOT what you are.

Sputter … gasp … choke … but, but, but …

But as I said, I’m only speaking for myself here, and this is what I am, and am not: a human woman of a certain age living on a small island in the Indian Ocean on Planet Earth.

It’s true. But not the complete truth.

I am also:

1) A result of millions of years of evolution

2) A system of biological functions

3) A transport service for a bunch of other beings that digest my food, live in my eyelashes and occasionally make me feel like shit.

4) Energy

The first three are a brief sum of what I am NOW. The fourth is what I am ALWAYS.

Given our biology and our residence, albeit very brief, on Earth, it’s an easy thing to forget the bigger neighborhood. FFS … how many people in Podunk, McMiddleAmerica forget Africa? We get all wrapped up in blankets and burritos and Manolo Blahnik and begin to assume this is what it’s all about … and all there is.

Boring. Limited. And a fucking waste of time and energy if it were the case. But it’s not, at least not in my world.

And, yes, I have a world. I’d say we all do, but that would be pushing the edges of this post’s envelope since I’m sticking to just me and my alien.

We’re one and the same, you see …

I was born Sandra, but before I was Sandra I was. (Okay … maybe not before, since time is an option, but for sake of not spinning this head off my axis and setting out after another shiny object, I’m sticking to linear for reasons of convenience.) It’s very likely I was born before, in the sense that I emerged from a human woman, grew, walked around and all the stuff I do now, only under different circumstances and geography. I have memories and experiences from stuff that happened impacts stuff that happens.

Some people and places draw me, some situations terrify me, some things give comfort and others make me extremely uncomfortable and I have no doubt reasons reach back further than my years.

Because I am, for the moment, human, it is not within my realm to assimilate experiences I had when not human, nor are those relevant. For one thing this little brain I have, all biochemical and wired for NOW, couldn’t process the data, but I do get to access it once I shuck the biological shell.

Not at all Earthcentric, I don’t assume every dance I’ve been to happened here; no, I’m sure my card has been many times filled with waltzes I couldn’t presently recognize if they stomped on my toes and called me Sweetie.

This is a big-ass hanging universe … and it’s just the one we have some idea of presently … and stuck here, as I am, on this little blue marble in my skin I have a lot to deal with through my three-score-and-ten, or whatever I end up with. I’m here for reasons I knew before I arrived, but programed to forget; a set up I like to think of as my way of making sure I don’t cheat.

I’m a blob of energy … even on those days I don’t want to drag my ass out of bed … doing the Macarena through time and space paying no attention to speed limits (I thumb my nose at 186,000 miles per second), temporarily confined to quarters. I’m a single cell in a massive organism free to move about after doing whatever it is I’m to do here and now. I’m an alien being from another world doing time on Earth. I’m a harbinger of doom, a ray of hope, dark matter, bright light.

Ah … what the fuck …

As Popeye so succinctly put it: I yam what I yam.

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