A couple of readers have expressed some interest in learning more about the quirky psychological phenomenon known as
Jerusalem Syndrome. The first official diagnosis dates to the 1930's, but there are tales of similar happenings going all the way back to the various Crusades of the middle ages. It is a temporary mental illness that strikes about fifty tourists a year, most without any previous history of psychosis. Coincidentally, 97% of the would-be messiahs just happen to be fundamentalist Christians.
The typical course of events starts with the person running down the street wrapped in a hotel bedsheet, usually on their way to an historical site where they begin to preach to the bemused tourists. Like regular church sermons, these are typically longwinded and confused ramblings. Some reports are even more entertaining, like the woman who thought she was the Virgin Mary and tried to give birth in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, despite the fact that she wasn't even pregnant. Many of the male victims identify with John the Baptist and are found wandering around the Judean desert suffering from dehydration.
This past year my parents went on a Holy Land tour and I was terrified that my dad would get the syndrome. He wanted to go more as a pilgrim than a tourist and was talking about sneaking away from the group and spending the night on the Mount of Olives, but my mom kept him on a tight leash. It still might happen though, he is planning on going back to Israel by himself one of these years during the biblical Feast of Trumpets (which is when he thinks the rapture is supposed to take place).
If only more fundies would follow
this guy's example...
A US tourist visiting the Holy Land became even more irrational than usual and jumped off a building at the behest of god, suffering extensive injuries upon landing. Doctors diagnosed the man with Jerusalem Syndrome, a well known psychiatric ailment in which fundamentalists traveling to Israel begin experiencing "delusions of grandeur", believing themselves to be in direct contact with the Messiah. Funny, when they exhibit the same behaviour at home it's just called Christianity.
Of course
Jesus almost did the same thing. He once climbed up onto the roof of the temple and listened as a voice told him to jump off and let the angels carry him down gently. Fortunately he was able to resist the temptation long enough to be horribly tortured to death instead, so it all worked out okay. I'm thinking that American tourist maybe should've gotten to know his Bible a little better before he tried becoming the Messiah for himself.
Well I'm back after a quick couple of days in Whitehorse. I had to go in for some teacher stuff, but it was a good excuse to see the new Indiana Jones movie. I have to say it rocked - totally worth the 400 km drive.
The first movie came out when I was just twelve years old and I didn't just love Indiana Jones... I
was Indiana Jones. I would walk all over town wearing a brown leather jacket, a fedora hat and a homemade bullwhip (my parents wouldn't let me get a real one). Unlike most teenager/parent relationships, my parents were the ones who were embarrassed to be seen with me by their friends. I think I just loved the fact that here was an action hero I could relate to. Indie was more than just a brawny doofus with superpowers - he was a potent combination of intelligence and skill, esoteric knowledge tempered with streets smarts.
Well the Westboro Baptist Church had a good run, but it looks like things may
soon be over for the organization. The last legal challenge preventing their property from being seized in a lawsuit has now been cleared and the repo boys are set to go to work. This will not only bankrupt the Phelps family, but it should prevent them from pulling any more stunts like protesting at funerals (which is what the lawsuit was about).
Good riddance from the public discourse, although their hatred and vituperation probably did more to further the acceptance of homosexuality in the American mainstream than any other group during its time. And maybe, just maybe, that was the point all along.
It seems like every other week scientists are discovering yet another transitional species in the fossil record, thus creating two gaps where only one existed before. If things keep up at this rate the fossil record will soon be full of more holes than a creationist's brain.
This one is worth a mention, however, as it fills in a crucial gap in our knowledge about the course of amphibian evolution, which has apparently been a hotly debated topic for a number of years. It has now been decisively shown that both frogs and salamanders "
evolved from one ancient amphibian group called temnospondyls". The creature,
Gerobatrachus hottoni, is a creationist's nightmare - a weird conglomeration of various amphibian parts, resembling the unholy love child of a frog and a salamander. It's just the sort of creature we would expect to find if evolution were true, but we can't rule out the possibility that Satan planted it into the fossil record just to screw with us.
The Babylonian creation myth is one of the most exciting: war between the gods, vengeance and betrayal, secret plots and bodily fluids everywhere.
Apsu (the god of fresh water) and Tiamat (the goddess of the ocean) were the very first of the deities. It doesn't sound like they'd make a good combination, but they were the original wild couple. His male fluids pulsed into the tempestuous chaos of her tides at every opportunity and their torrid love affair eventually brought the very fabric of existence into being.
Like most passionate young couples they were happy together for a time, until they made the tragic mistake of having children. The kids turned out to be so rude and annoying that Apsu, like any normal dad, decided to slaughter them all. Unfortunately their grandson, Ea, learned of the plan and made a preemptive strike. Ea killed Apsu and made his house on top of the dead body. Shortly after he and his wife moved into the new digs, she gave birth to Marduk - the main god of the Babylonians.
Of course, Tiamat was none too pleased by this turn of events and vowed revenge. She created eleven monsters and used them to wage a brutal war across the heavens. She quickly defeated one god after another until only Marduk, the storm god, was left to fight. After convincing the council of the gods to put him in charge, Marduk went at Tiamat with lightning and hail and hurricanes. He finally defeated the goddess of chaos by trapping her in a net and puffing her full of air from one of his stormy winds.
It was at that moment when the creation of the world began. Marduk killed Tiamat by smashing her head in with a club, then divided her body in half to create the land and the sky (the rain is the leftover spittle dripping down from her cold dead mouth). To make humans, which he needed to perform all the chores the gods were too lazy to do for themselves, Marduk needed to "borrow" someone's blood and bones. To do this, Marduk killed off one of the other gods, Kingu, who had become Tiamat's lover after the death of Apsu and he used the various parts to form our mortal bodies.
I'm sure any astronomy fans out there will have known about this for a while, but there is a cool story in
Discover about a fascinating new telescope, the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) which is scheduled to come on-line in 2014 .
Unlike regular observatory telescopes, which typically feature an old geezer sitting on a giant chair and squinting out through the lens with one eye while his grad students crank the giant levers to swing it into position, the LSST is more like a giant movie camera which will film the skies of the entire northern hemisphere every three days, over and over again.
It will look further out into space, deeper into the darkest recesses of the universe than any other telescope has before. And through constant repetition it will mark the minute changes which have escaped all those lonely astronomers who have peered out at the heavens through their tiny lenses since the time of Galileo. And as the most secretest nooks and crannies of space become revealed, our understanding of the cosmos will increase dramatically. I wonder if we will be ready for what we find.
This is hilarious! In the comments section of that post about
Baptism for the Dead, I'm having a great discussion with a Mormon who is attempting to defend this dubious practice. Nothing wrong with that, but he just pulled out the
"it's-so-batshit-crazy-that-it-must-be-true" defense.
I haven't heard that one for a while. It is basically the admission that the belief is so illogical and stupid that no rational person would have made it up, therefore it must actually be true. The reasoning goes that if Joseph Smith were just inventing a new religion to attract followers he would have made it somewhat coherent. The fact that he didn't means it must really have been a divine revelation - direct from god himself.
Anyone convinced yet?
The Archbishop of the Anglican Church in Nigeria, Peter Akinola has begun a
major crackdown on polygamy within his congregations. Nigeria is divided between a predominately Muslim north and a Christian south, so there is some movement between the two religions. Up until now Muslim polygamists who convert have been allowed to keep their extra wives rather than doing the Christian thing and abandoning them on the streets to fend for themselves.
Ironically (but not surprisingly), the decision to break apart these families was undertaken in order to strengthen the archbishop's "pro-family" message, part of his strategy to oppose the ordination of gay priests within the Anglican church. Here's the money quote:
“Those of us who are in the forefront of the prophetic call for a return to Biblical truth cannot close our eyes to the increasingly blatant disregard for the teaching of the Bible on family life”. Has this man even read the Bible? Practically everyone of importance in the Old Testament was a polygamist and the prophets didn't even bother with the institution of marriage, preferring to just sleep around with every spare prophetess available (by the command of god, of course).
So what's the greater evil: the practice of polygamy or the tearing apart of existing families, thus condemning women to a life of abject poverty and social isolation? Sadly, Christian morality often consists of blind obedience to an ideal rather than allowing people to do what is right in a given situation.
This news is about a week late, but I just found out that sadly I no longer qualify as the sexiest Canadian.
That title has now been taken by
Jayde Nicole, recently named Playboy's Playmate of the Year for 2008. She's a small town northern girl who has somehow managed to stay incredibly hot after all those cold Ontario winters. She defines sexy in a land where fleece underwear still counts as lingerie and public broadcasting is often the raciest programming available.
Even her listed turn-ons are pure Canadiana:
"Intelligence, honesty, politeness - and hockey fights". Okay, I made that last one up, but apparently she does have the intelligence thing down. At an age when most people are still living in their parents' basement and wondering what to do with their lives, Jayde has already started her own modeling company, written a beauty and fitness book and is currently working on a soon-to-be-released reality show about her life. Presumably the show will be filled with sexy shots of her shoveling snow and drinking beer at the curling rink:
Rowwr!
Electoral officers concerned with low levels of voter turnout in western democracies should take a lesson from Burma. Just days after countless numbers of its citizens had been killed by Cyclone Nargis and while millions were still homeless, starving and trapped by flooding and devestation, the government held a referendum.
Well the
results are now in and it seems that they had an incredible 99% voter turnout, despite the wreckage. The enthusiastic citizens overwhelmingly accepted the popular military Junta's plans for the future. Now that the important business of the referendum is over the people are free to return to what they were doing before - happily starving to death while standing out in the pouring rain.
Inquiring minds want to know. Now that we've discovered what Catholics think of aliens,
Tommy started pondering about how Young Earth Creationists would react to the arrival of alien beings. I started to reply in the comments of that last post, but it is too juicy of a story to leave buried off the main page.
There has actually been a lot of discussion about this topic within the fundamentalist churches and the consensus seems to be that one day so-called "aliens" really will show up on earth, right during the beginning of the End Times. However they will not actually be aliens at all, but demons in disguise pretending to be an advanced race of godless beings who will trick the masses into rejecting god.
As a kid I was even forbidden to watch the popular TV show A.L.F. because my parents believed at the time that it was a satanic plot to get kids to think that aliens were fun. They went on to assure me that real aliens would probably be more reptilian because Satan was represented by a snake and had once controlled all the dinosaurs, eventually leading them to their doom in an ill advised attack on Noah's Ark. It is assumed that recent UFO sightings and stories of alien abductions were the work of demons laying the groundwork for the eventual rise of the Antichrist.
Warning: I am not making this story up. It is from a reputable news agency in Australia - not from a spoof site like the Onion. Although, I have to admit it is kind of hard to tell.
Today the official
Vatican astronomer waded in on the burning theological issue of whether the atoning death of Christ actually covers space aliens or just us sinful earthlings. I can't speak for anybody else, but I was already thinking that Hell would be bad enough before I realized I'd have to share it with Klingons. Inevitably the priest ruled that god torturing himself to death on the cross once was enough for everybody, scoffing at the notion of alien Jesuses being sadistically put to death on the many far-flung planets across the universe. Of course, they would still have to be baptized Catholic in order to benefit, I'm guessing.
When asked about the possibility of extra-terrestrial life, the priest noted that nothing in the bible ruled out such a thing (it's almost as if the bible writers couldn't have imagined such a scenario). He went on to speculate about whether on some of those other planets there might still be sinless alien beings living in a garden-of-Eden type setting, refusing to eat the forbidden fruit. Let's just hope those ones don't invade - they're bound to be incredibly boring and self-righteous. I think I'd actually prefer the Klingons after all.
(Hat tip
Traumador the Tyrannosaur) (Picture Credit:
Jesus was a Space Alien)
This story made me laugh. In keeping with freedom of religion laws, pagan prisoners in Britain are now going to be allowed to keep
magic wands in their cells.
Have they gone crazy over there? Hasn't anyone in the UK read the Harry Potter series? Once the prisoners get their hands on those wands they'll be stupefying the helpless muggle guards and escaping as fast as they can chant "Alohomora".
Still the actual decision is a bit of a compromise. Critics of the plan were worried that fractious wizards would start beating each other with their 12 inch rods of Yew so the prisoners will only be supplied with short, bendy twigs instead - hardly sturdy enough even to simply Wingardium Leviosa a teacup over to their dinner table.
While I'm the topic of baptism, I thought I'd follow up with a quick personal story. If the idea of an actual baptism ceremony being essential to salvation seems a little uptight to you, then you should know that for some Christians even the specific wording of the ceremony is crucial (kind of like a magic spell). My brother-in-law firmly believes that my mother-in-law, a life long evangelical christian, will burn in Hell merely because she was baptized
"In the name of The Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost" rather than "
In the Name of Jesus".
Now of course there happen to be two verses in the bible which command baptism as a prerequisite to salvation. And of course one of them happens to use the Father-Son-Holy Ghost declaration while the other specifies the Name-of-Jesus. Rather than that be proof that a) it doesn't matter, or that b) there is a clear cut biblical discrepancy; the two sides have fought long and hard over the issue - even to the point of condemning to eternal damnation those who choose the wrong magic words to say.
It has long been known that Mormons periodically indulge in that freaky sounding practice known as "Baptizing for the Dead". However, far from being a voodoo-esque ritual involving rotting corpses and the exhuming of graves, I think they merely baptize volunteers standing in for the deceased. Now the Catholic Church is weighing in on the issue. According to
John Pieret, the Vatican is refusing to hand over baptismal and death registries, which are commonly used for genealogical research, for fear that the LDS Church will use the information to re-baptise good dead Catholics. This is a far cry from the slaughter than ensued during the 16th century when the Anabaptists tried to do the same thing to the same people, albeit while they were still living. I'd say the Catholics are slipping a little.
Of course baptising dead people is a completely loony activity, but it is not without biblical support. There is one puzzling and unexplained mention of the practice in I Corinthians 15:29;
"Now if there is no resurrection, what will those do who are baptized for the dead? If the dead are not raised at all, why are people baptized for them"? It is such an offhand reference with no explanation or supporting documentation for the practice that theologians and biblical scholars have wondered about the issue ever since. I think the only way to understand such a weird practice is to see it in the light of a brand spanking new religion. Hence the Mormon example is crucial to understanding what factors and motivations were likely present in the early church.
Joseph Smith actually invented the current practice in answer to a personal dilemma he was faced with. His father had been very supportive of his new religious direction, but he had tragically died before Joseph had fully evolved his thinking and doctrines. One of the major doctrines of his newfound LDS church was that a person could not obtain salvation unless they had been properly baptized, the Mormon way. Yet, if that were true, the prophet's own father would burn forever in hellfire, even though he likely would have accepted if he had lived just a few years longer. Rather than admit that his whole premise was ridiculous and unjust, Smith scoured the bible looking for some hint of a way that this problem could be resolved. It was at that time when the Mormon leader stumbled onto the verse about baptizing for the dead and realized he had found an escape clause. He immediately instituted the practice and saved his father from eternal damnation. I think it is pretty obvious that the exact sentiments were swirling around the early church and leaders would have had to find a way to placate new believers concerned about previously deceased relatives who had not had the opportunity to accept the gospel.
Of course after the church had been the dominant religious force for a couple of generations these concerns largely faded and the catholics eventually replaced the baptism of the dead with the practice of baptizing newborn infants ASAP (just to make sure). Yet both systems still manage to make a mockery of the original idea of baptism being a personal choice to dedicate oneself to god, to immerse oneself symbolically in death and rise from the water as a new, born again creature - which was kind of the point of the thing in the first place.
I'm still really enjoying reading the Third Chimpanzee by Jared Diamond although I didn't realize when I bought it that it was written way back in 1992. It wasn't until I noticed that some of his information about human evolution was a bit out of date before I caught on and looked back to check the copyright. I'm currently reading the chapters on The Evolution of Human Sexuality and the Science of Adultery which is a really fascinating read. I have to say that even though I was already aware of most of the basic facts and have thought about these issues myself over the past few years, it is really expanding the way I think about the world.
It is interesting that so many of our "moral values" revolve around sex and sexuality when really it is becoming quite clear that we are just another animal that evolved certain sexual strategies to maximize the successful replication of our genetic material. Our sexual choices, therefore, are at their basic level guided more by the specific needs imposed by long-term child rearing among our species than they are by logical considerations of what is right and proper.
This is where god really fails as an explanatory device. People have long believed that sexual mores were placed upon us by god at the time of creation and that the big guy gets really cranky if anyone veers from his intended will. Yet when we look around at nature we see all kinds of sexual perversion going on all around us. It doesn't make sense to think that the same god who wrote the Old Testament also created all these kinky animals doing it in such weird and wonderful ways. When we also look back at other cultures down through history we can see the way that human sexual strategies have varied somewhat over time and from one place to another.
I'll just close with a choice quote on the topic of how human females have disguised ovulation (a very rare trait in the animal kingdom):
"Whatever the main biological function of human copulation, it isn't conception, which is just an occasional by-product. In these days of growing human overpopulation, one of the most ironic tragedies is the Catholic Church's claim that human copulation has conception as its natural purpose, and that the rhythm method is the only proper means of birth control. The rhythm method would be terrific for gorillas and most other mammal species, but not for us. In no species besides humans is the process of copulation so unrelated to conception, or the rhythm method so unsuited for contraception".
These days most theists seem to view god as good and loving and beneficent, ceaselessly putting himself out for the benefit of mankind. I was reminded of this in a post over at
Atheist Revolution where VJack is attempting to make the point that
"religious belief is part of the human condition". It wasn't directly spelled out that way in the post, but it just struck me as I was reading that the idea of god being compassionate and merciful has become so ubiquitous in modern society that we scarcely remember that the ancients didn't always view him with the same tenderness.
To put it bluntly most of the gods of past were complete assholes. They lived their own lives up on Mount Olympus or in the feasting halls of Asgard and didn't really spend a lot of time worrying about the welfare of us mortals. In fact, the occasional human who did get singled out for divine attention usually ended up suffering horribly as a consequence. Let's face it; there is a reason the Old Testament emphasizes the need to fear god.
I think Bernard Cromwell says it best in his Aurthurian triolgy,
The Warlord Chronicles,
"To the gods we are like mice in the thatch. The less they notice us the better". Modern theologians anxiously wrestle with the problem of how evil can exist side by side with a benevolent and omnipotent god. That wasn't really much of an issue in the brutal world of the bronze age when the gods regularly entertained themselves with our misery. That's why nobody blinked an eye when they first invented the doctrine of eternal hellfire. What else could one expect from a god?
The idea of god really caring about our welfare only recently emerged with our growing awareness of social justice and says more about evolving human moral values rather than anything about the divine.
Up here in the Yukon there is a long tradition of the Sourdough going back to the Klondike gold rush of 1896. The area was literally overrun with hundreds of thousands of fortune seekers parading into the uncharted wilds over a few short years. However, the harsh cold and brutal conditions assured that few stuck around for long.
A Sourdough (named after the type of bread starter that many of the miners used) was anyone who survived an entire winter in this lonely place. You had to be here when the rivers and lakes froze over and you were awarded the honoured title only if you were still here to watch the river break up in the spring. Up until that point one was considered a Cheechako (a tenderfoot). Well yesterday the ice finally broke on the river, officially making me a five-time sourdough.
This story begins, like so many other creation myths, with castaways floating on an endless ocean with no beginning nor end in sight. In the Hindu version it is a giant cobra somehow drifting with the tide while the immortal Vishnu sleeps soundly within its coils. It is night and all is quiet and at peace. It is only at dawn when things begin to get a little weird(er).
At the first crack of daylight Vishnu awakens and immediately proceeds to sprout a giant lotus flower from out of his bellybutton (at least he didn't pull it out his ass). But that's not the really weird part... the blossom happens to have none other than Brahma himself sitting on it. Since Vishnu is too lazy to create the world himself, he makes poor Brahma do all the work; making the land, sky and the cosmos out of the three parts of the lotus, then planting all the grass and trees and forming all the beasts and bugs and fish and birds.
Many
modern Hindus take this story metaphorically, as a way of understanding the formation of the cosmos.
"Vishnu is the personification of the eternal multiverse that exists forever without any beginning or end. Brahma is the personification of our temporary physical universe that was created in the big bang".
Well, it's official.
The Taliban is back in power in Afghanistan and not only are we not fighting against them, we are actively propping up their corrupt regime.
The Minister of Information and Culture has proposed a decree that would ban Indian Soap Operas from appearing on Afghani TV sets. The racy shows feature such evils as bare midriffs, mixed groups of males and females talking to each other, dancing, singing and acts of Hindu worship - all very unmuslimy activities. In the ensuing debate it has come out that Afghan law
"forbids the publication of anything contrary to the principles of Islam". Remember that this is the constitution whose creation we oversaw and the government that we installed and which we are currently keeping in power through force of arms. The only entertaining part of this is watching the vile Hamid Karzai trying to play both sides of the fence and failing miserably. First he claimed that
"media freedom will be upheld", then he turned around and stated that
"unsuitable material should not be broadcast". Which one is it Mr. Karzai?
And apparently this was only the first volley in a culture war that threatens the basic rights and freedoms of the Afghani people. According to the article the Afghan government is calling for a
"prohibition against loud music, women and men mingling in public, billiards, video games, playing with pigeons – all measures similar to regulations imposed by the fundamentalist Taliban". Playing with pigeons? WTF?
I honestly don't know what we're still doing there anymore.
The search for porn continues to drive my blog traffic. A few week ago I posted a quick note mentioning that it was my 18th wedding anniversary and I foolishly put the title as "18 years". At the time I didn't even consider how that title would show up as a Google search term (sometimes I'm can be kind of naive).
Now I find myself suddenly inundated with people googling for legal-aged teen pornography. Oh well... at least it's keeping the kiddie porn dealers away.
I think of myself as a humanist, but sometimes I don't really like people all that much. Is it possible to be a misanthropic humanist?
I've written a number of times about how faith healing is stupid and ineffective. And it seems like every time I do, I get some anonymous commenter showing up to share some impossible miracle story with me. Here is the latest one I received:
"I am the mother of a medically documented miracle. My son was born without lungs and given ZERO chance of survival.There was nothing the doctors could do. They took "death" pictures of him. They tried to convince us that it was IMPOSSIBLE for his lungs to grow after birth. They thought we were a bunch of Jesus Freaks (we are). He is now a HEALTHY seven year old".
Okay, let me get this straight. Your child was born without lungs and somehow didn't instantly die at birth, you prayed for him and then he grew a complete set of new lungs? And this is all perfectly documented? I can't help but wonder why wasn't this in the news and written up in medical journals everywhere? I can't speak for other atheists and skeptics, but a person spontaneously growing a whole new set of lungs is exactly the kind of miracle that would convince me that there was actually something to this whole faith healing thing. Of course it is one thing to leave an anonymous comment on a blog and another to provide the actual proof.
So here is my challenge, open to anybody who thinks they have a medically documented account of an actual faith healing (no stories of sore backs feeling better or of people surviving cancer - it has to be something impossible to have happened on its own): Send me copies of the documentation and any medical reports or official write-ups and I will admit to the world that I was wrong and that faith healing is true. I will then apologize for my stupidity and turn from being an atheist.
Any apocrypha fans out there? Those last two posts and a comment from a reader questioning how much the gods really eat, reminded me of the story of
Bel and the Dragon. The story features Daniel (of lion's den survival fame) demonstrating that: 1. The gods (at least in their earthly statue form) don't really eat all that much, 2. Priests are generally a bunch of thieving con men and 3. He doesn't really believe in Freedom of Religion either.
The story begins with Daniel expressing his disbelief in Bel, saying that he will only worship the true living god, not some hokey statue. King Cyrus is taken aback and claims that Bel must be a living god because every day the people set food out before the statue and during the night it all disappears, even though the temple is locked tight. By morning there are always only empty plates and a couple of picked over bones left - proof that Bel must be indulging in a midnight snack under cover of darkness. There could be no other explanation.
Daniel sets out to prove to the king that all is not as it seems. He secretly sprinkles ashes all over the floor of the temple after the food has been set out for the night. In the morning the king looks in and what does he see but the footprints of the priests left in the ashes, showing the secret doors they use to get in and out of the temple. The footprints lead up to and away from the now empty food trays.
The story ends with all of the priests of Bel (and their wives and children) being put to death in a typically gruesome manner. Now if only Daniel could have applied all that logic to his own version of god...
So today is the National Day of Prayer down in the States. I wasn't going to comment seeing as how it's not my country being swept up in a wave of sectarian religious nonsense, but it was interesting to note that what started out as an ecumenical endeavour has now changed into a narrow conservative Christian event in which other faiths are excluded.
It brings home
the point I made last week, that fundamentalist and evangelical Christians don't really believe in Freedom of Religion. They seriously want their religion to be imposed on everyone else by the government. That is the goal and they will stop at nothing less, for they feel that god will surely bring judgement against America if they allow other religions (and non-religion) to flourish.
Stop me if I've already told this one, but the whole attitude reminds me of an episode from my teenage years. Our family was driving down to Vancouver for the weekend when we passed the new Sikh temple that was still under construction in view of the highway. My parents became visibly agitated:
"How dare they be allowed to build that monstrosity in plain view", they said.
"If those people want to do stuff like that they should go back to their own country. Canada is a Christian nation". The ironic part? We were on our way to a missions conference which was raising money to help build churches in India.
The global food shortage has claimed another victim. It seems that Hindu devotees of Hanuman, the illustrious monkey god, have begun
skimping on donations now that rising food prices have driven many of them into even greater poverty than before. It used to be that the god was bathed in creamy milk every morning in a New Delhi temple and baskets of bananas, as well as coconuts, marigolds and incense sticks were left at the foot of his statue. Now the rations are gradually disappearing as people have to choose between feeding the god and starving themselves.
It's a low day for a god like Hanuman who was once renowned for leading the rescue of Rama's beloved wife, Sita, from the evil hands of the demon Ravanna and his invincible flying chariot. Hanuman and his monkey army stormed the island fortress of Sri Lanka by jumping across the sea from India to fight in the epic battle of the gods, thus saving humanity. (And all he asks in return is a couple of lousy bananas a day and the occasional morning milk bath).
The priests are said to be worried and I don't blame them - they traditionally eat the god's leftovers.
In the beginning there was only water and sky. There was no land and all the creatures floated on the sea with nowhere to set their feet. Even the gods wondered what was below the water, but nobody knew.
Finally Napi decided to find out. He called over Duck and asked him to dive down as far as he could to find out what was at the bottom of all things. The duck went down, down into the water, as far as he could go, but he was unable to reach beyond the depths and at last came gasping to the surface empty handed. So Napi called Otter, but the same thing happened once again. Then, presumably because he had run out of animals known for their swimming ability, he sent down Badger. Unsurprisingly, Badger failed at the task as well.
Finally, Napi saw a muskrat floating by and pleaded with him to go down to the very bottom of the ocean. So Muskrat took a deep breath and dove beneath the surface. He was gone a long time and the others had almost given him up for drowned when he suddenly came bursting out of the water grasping a small pawful of mud.
Napi took the ball of mud, dried it and formed it into the earth we know today. He carved out the mountains and the valleys, the rivers and lakes and forests. Then the creatures rejoiced and made their home on the good earth. So the next time you find yourself enjoying some beautiful scenery, thank Napi - and his muskrat friend.
Orchids are known as the most romantic plant of all and are strongly linked to sexual desire - hence their rank as the favourite prom date corsage of hopeful, pimply-faced teenagers everywhere. Now it turns out that there may be more reason for that connection than we knew.
Some species of orchids, particularily the Australian tongue orchid,
mimic female insects to such an extent that male bugs are enticed to actually mate with the plants. Wasps were observed vigorously thrusting away on the orchids (and getting covered with pollen in the process). Researchers then tested the plants afterwards and found them soaked in wasp sperm.
Further research found that over 200 species of insects were fooled by the amourous orchids. No word yet on whether the orchids actually like being doused regularly in semen or if it's just an unavoidable hazard of attracting so many frisky pollen spreaders.
I got a bookstore gift card recently and finally got around to buying a book. I really wanted to get
Your Inner Fish by Neil Shubin but I'm cheap and it's still only in hardcover for a whopping $28 at the store. So I decided to console myself with
The Third Chimpanzee by Jared Diamond instead. I've only read the first chapter but I'm loving it already and I thought I would occasionally post my thoughts as I read.
Two points really grabbed my interest so far:
The first point is that not only is the chimpanzee our closest relative in the animal kingdom, but we are it's closest relative as well. It's something we often overlook because it doesn't fit our ideas about our natural place in the hierarchy of things, but chimpanzees and bonobos are more closely related to humans than they are to gorillas or other apes. As I read it and the realization of what it meant dawned on me, it actually felt like the ground under my feet started shifting and my perspective seemed momentarily skewed.
The other point that took me aback was the timeline of human evolution which Diamond briefly goes over. It was nothing I hadn't heard before in other places but it just struck me as I was reading how very recent our cultural acquisitions are. Sure we've had big brains and the corresponding ability to control fire and to create rough stone tools for a couple of hundred thousand years, but the imagination needed for abstract thought (the thing that really separates us from other animals) has only existed for about 40,000 years. That may sound like a big number by Young Earth Creationist standards, but it's minuscule compared to 6 to 8 million years that have passed since the hominid and chimp lineages broke apart.
I'll post more as I read. In the meantime check out this article from
ScienceDaily on the latest genetic evidence helping to pinpoint human population changes over the past 200,000 years (the time of our last common ancestor known as Mitochondrial Eve). It seems that about 150,000 years ago two distinct lineages of humans broke apart (one in Southern Africa and the other in Eastern Africa) and evolved separately for about 100,000 years. By 70,000 years ago human populations hit a low point, numbering only around two thousand - basically one disaster short of becoming extinct. Soon afterwards the population began to surge and, as their territories expanded, the two groups began to merge together once again. This rapid expansion is also thought to have led to the out-of-Africa migrations about 60,000 years ago.
A couple of readers have expressed some interest in learning more about the quirky psychological phenomenon known as Jerusalem Syndrome. The first official diagnosis dates to the 1930's, but there are tales of similar happenings going all the way back to the various Crusades of the middle ages. It is a temporary mental illness that strikes about fifty tourists a year, most without any previous history of psychosis. Coincidentally, 97% of the would-be messiahs just happen to be fundamentalist Christians.
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