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Author Archive for Derek Murphy
Jack the Giant Killer, a re-telling of European myth and folklore, starring Nicholas Hoult, Stanley Tucci and Ewan McGregor, is coming out summer 2012! Although you probably know the story by heart, I’ll bet you didn’t know it’s biblical roots. Read on to learn where the story really comes from!
History of Jack and the Beanstalk:
The earliest printed edition which has survived is the 1807 book The History of Jack and the Bean Stalk, printed by Benjamin Tabart, although the story was already in existence sometime before this, as a burlesque of the story entitled The Story of Jack Spriggins and the Enchanted Bean was included in the 1734 second edition of Round About Our Coal-Fire. But where does the story really come from?
The beanstalk is reminiscent of the ancient Northern European belief in a world tree connecting Earth to heaven. But dig deeper, and we discover that the biblical tale of Jonah closes rather abruptly with the hero resting under a fast growing gourd, Hebrew קיקיון (qiyqayown), the only time in Scripture so mentioned.
While scholars place the historical events in the 8th century BCE they were not recorded by Hebrew scribes until some centuries later. Aha, now things get really interesting. There is a long standing tradition that, when the Israelites moved from Egypt into their promised land, they did so by displacing the previous inhabitants; including an already vanishing race of extremely large people.
“There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.” Genesis 6:4 (KJV)
Over and over in the Bible, the Israelites fret about how they are going to overpower this tall and strong race.
“But the people who live there are powerful, and the cities are fortified and very large. We even saw descendants of Anak there. (29)The Amalekites live in the Negev; the Hittites, Jebusites and Amorites live in the hill country; and the Canaanites live near the sea and along the Jordan.” (30)Then Caleb silenced the people before Moses and said, “We should go up and take possession of the land, for we can certainly do it.” (31)But the men who had gone up with him said, “We can’t attack those people; they are stronger than we are.” (32)And they spread among the Israelites a bad report about the land they had explored. They said, “The land we explored devours those living in it. All the people we saw there are of great size. (33)We saw the Nephilim there (the descendants of Anak come from the Nephilim). We seemed like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and we looked the same to them.” Numbers 13:28-33 (NIV)
“Where can we go? Our brothers have made us lose heart. They say, ‘The people are stronger and taller than we are; the cities are large, with walls up to the sky. We even saw the Anakites there.’” Deuteronomy 1:28 (NIV)
When they wage war and are victorious, they celebrate it.
“At that time Joshua went and destroyed the Anakites from the hill country: from Hebron, Debir and Anab, from all the hill country of Judah, and from all the hill country of Israel. Joshua totally destroyed them and their towns.” Joshua 11:21 (NIV)
The story of David and Goliath is known to even casual church goers – one little boy destroys a strong and mighty giant; this may be the inspiration for Jack and the Beanstalk – but who is the real hero? Keep in mind that Goliath was defending his homeland. David and his Israelites were a migrating band of highly territorialistic colonizers/conquerers, creating genocide to destroy all traces of the peoples who were already living in the land they had decided (or God had told them) that was theirs to possess.
David takes Goliath’s sword, and his head, and puts them in Solomon’s Temple.
Fascinatingly, 1 Chronicles 20:6 says the giants have six fingers and toes: “And yet again there was war at Gath, where was a man of great stature, whose fingers and toes were four and twenty [24], six on each hand, and six on each foot: and he also was the son of the giant.”
Several traditions also tell of giants in North America, and some researchers have indicated that they fled the Middle East out of persecution, and resettled in S. and North America. (The red-haired Lost Tribe of Dan; also reported to have moved to Ireland, taking Goliath’s legendary sword with them!)
The Ethics of Jack and the Beanstalk
The story portrays a “hero” unscrupulously hiding in a man’s house, playing on his wife’s sympathies in order to rob and finally murder the owner of the house. In Tabart’s moralized version, a fairy woman explains to Jack that the giant had robbed and killed his father, thus transforming the acts into justified retribution.[10] (Andrew Lang follows this version in the Red Fairy Book of 1890.)
Jacobs dropped the justification on the grounds that it had not been in the version he had heard as a child, and because children knew that robbery and murder were wrong without being told so by a fairy tale.[11]
Many modern interpretations have followed Tabart and painted the giant as a villain, terrorizing smaller folk and often stealing items of value, so that Jack becomes a legitimate protagonist. For example, the 1952 film starring Abbott and Costello blames the giant for Jack’s ill fortunes and impoverishment, as he has been stealing food and wealth from the smaller folk of the lands below his home, including the hen that lays golden eggs, which in this version originally belonged to Jack’s family. In other versions it is implied that the giant had stolen the hen and the harp from Jack’s father. However, Brian Henson’s 2001 TV miniseries Jack and the Beanstalk: The Real Story is an alternative version of the tale which abandons Tabart’s additions and significantly vilifies Jack, due to Henson’s disgust with Jack’s morally questionable actions in the original story.[12]
If the story can really be traced as far back as Israel’s slaughter of the Philistines, can we compare Jack to David? David paid for his bride, the daughter of King Saul, with the foreskins of 200 Philistines he’d killed – a grotesque offering akin to the more modern equivalent of scalping. He later became a thieving, murdering pillager, harassing legitimate rulers in the area, demanding to be paid for not destroying farmlands (but sometimes killing everybody anyway). Eventually he amassed a huge fortune and become the King of both Judah and Israel.
In the original Jack and the Beanstalk story, Jack and his mother are poor – Jack gets the magic beans, goes “upstairs” and breaks into the Giant’s house, and steals the magic golden egg-laying hen. But he wasn’t satisfied:
Well, Jack was not content, and it wasn’t long before he determined to have another try at his luck up there at the top of the beanstalk. So one fine morning he rose up early and got to the beanstalk, and he climbed, and he climbed, and he climbed, and he climbed till he got to the top.
Next, Jack found out that the ogre also had a magical singing harp:
After breakfast was over, the ogre called out, “Wife, wife, bring me my golden harp.”
So she brought it and put it on the table before him. Then he said, “Sing!” and the golden harp sang most beautifully. And it went on singing till the ogre fell asleep, and commenced to snore like thunder.
And here we find another link to King Saul/David: David’s original successes came from his harp playing and ability to soothe the former King of Israel:
Saul, King of Israel, was troubled by an “evil spirit from the Lord”. Saul was recommended to have David to play on a harp in order that harmony might drive this evil spirit back to the Lord who sent it. The Jews’ harp was played successfully, and Saul was often relieved from the evil spirit by the aid of David. And so David was appointed armor-bearer to the king.
After stealing the harp, Jack runs away, but this time the giant follows him.
But Jack jumped down and got hold of the ax and gave a chop at the beanstalk which cut it half in two. The ogre felt the beanstalk shake and quiver, so he stopped to see what was the matter. Then Jack gave another chop with the ax, and the beanstalk was cut in two and began to topple over. Then the ogre fell down and broke his crown, and the beanstalk came toppling after.
Then Jack showed his mother his golden harp, and what with showing that and selling the golden eggs, Jack and his mother became very rich, and he married a great princess, and they lived happy ever after.
In the King David story, David stuns Goliath with a stone, then takes the giant’s own sword and hacks off his head, then later marries the King’s daughter (Princess Michal).
It seems pretty conclusive that Jack and the Beanstalk is based on King David – but the real question we need to ask, is who is the bad guy? If someone breaks into your house and steals your shit, and then kills you when you try to get it back, wouldn’t you hope for a little justice? Even if you are big and ugly?
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and Mila Kunis are teaming up with a great cast in a Wizard of Oz remake/prequel, that tells the story of how a charlatan in Kansas, who is part of a traveling circus, goes on an odyssey when he mysteriously lands in Oz and becomes it’s ruler. We can expect the genre to be much like 2012′s John Carter – a “normal” guy goes to another world and becomes a superpower. We can’t help noting, however, the implications for organized religion:
Through Deception and Manipulation, this guy will trick everybody into believing that he’s capable of miracles and omnipotence.
His legend grows until, someday in the future, Dorothy and her friends believe he can get her home, give Scarecrow a Brain, give Lion a Heart. I wonder how many contemporary prayers ask for the same things? (Get me home safely, let me pass my exams, give me more courage and confidence). Is there really a God behind the curtain, or just maybe something with more technology who’s played us for fools?
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The Grey (2011, starring Liam Neeson) is, on the surface, a man versus nature survivalist story about a group of man facing the elements and a pack of vicious wolves in the aftermath of a plane crash. However, this background is really just a platform to explore the movie’s true theme: dignity in the face of death, and whether or not religion is helpful to ease the transition.
On the one hand, given that the protagonist and champion of the film is an atheist whose ordeals confirm rather than challenge his lack of faith, the Grey appears to be an intriguingly atheistic film – one of the only films I’m aware of where atheism is portrayed as a just and worthy choice. On the other hand, a Christianizing theological interpretation of the movie is also possible (it’s a stretch, but it can be made). This post will seek to untangle both readings.
After the crash, one of the few surviving characters asks, “how could we survive the plane crash if it wasn’t meant to be… ordained.”
“Ordained by who?” comes the response. “Nah, just blind luck. Fate doesn’t give a fuck. Dead is dead. Where do you think those boys are now…in heaven? Getting fit for wings? I’ll tell you where they are. They’re nowhere. They’re gone.”
“Well… I don’t believe it.”
“I do. Wish I didn’t. Really wish I could believe in that stuff. This is real. The cold. The air in my lungs. those bastards out there in the dark stalking us. it’s this world….”
At this point we get some evangelizing:
“What about your faith?”
To which the protagonist responds, “What about it?”
“It’s important…” he offers lamely.
The central theme revolves around a poem verse that becomes increasingly meaningful:
“Once more into the fray, into the last good fight I’ll ever know, live and die on this day, live and die on this day.”
All of them die off, one by one, but are greeted by loved ones (or at least think they are.)
You would think this movie would end, like so many others have before it, with the main character suddenly being saved by some miraculous convergence of events that restores his lost faith (aka Mel Gibson’s “Signs”). Instead, when the hero is at his lowest point, and actually does turn to God for help in a moment of weakness, when he demands that God earn faith, he’s met with silence:
Do something, you phony prick, you fraudulent mother fucker. come, PROVE it. Fuckface, earn it. Show me something real. I need it now, show me NOW and I’ll believe in you until the day I die, I swear, I’m calling on you, I’m calling on you.. Fuck it, I’ll do it myself.
Christians might say this is his cardinal sin or hubris – he believes that God has to make the first move. He needs to see evidence of God BEFORE God helps him, which would violate his free choice to believe; God can’t help him until after he decides, without evidence, to believe anyway.
And yet, nearly all of the early fathers of Judaism and Christianity, Moses, Jacob, etc – they all demand that God give them benefit before they follow him – in fact God approaches them first with increasingly large promises: I’ll make you my chosen people, I’ll give you a land and your sons will live forever. God needs to buy the allegiance of his first converts, because he’s a new comer in a saturated market. Increasingly, he begins to demand more and more of the Israelites, giving less and less in return. Fast forward a few thousand years, and now God is completely absent. He won’t save you when you’re dying in the woods whether or not you believe in him (all of the characters in the movie that had faith, died earlier. Where was God?) The one character who survives the longest does so on the basis of his own strength and courage. He survives because he’s defiant. The other characters can’t believe this is really happening; they have to fit their current experience into a lifetime of faith and belief. They hope and expect that this is a misunderstanding, or a test. They can’t believe that God would abandon them.
The atheist, meanwhile, who has lost all faith in life after his wife died (was taken from him?) and was ready to kill himself just before the crash (symbolically disrupted by a wolf – the same creature who later takes his life?) has no illusions to distract him. He focuses on the here and now. He appreciates the necessity of the fray. Life is a brutish battle. Only the strong survive.
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Any good Christian has to believe in demonic possession. After all, Jesus was always casting out demons. If the Bible and Christianity is true, then Jesus couldn’t have mistakenly viewed mental illness using the common superstition of possession. He would have known better. So they’re real.
That basis has been the support for dozens of demonic possession/exorcism movies, which mostly make good entertainment because, demonically possessed people look really freaking scary. They are great horror flicks.
But the new movie “The Devil Inside” takes the genre a step further, by filming in the guise of a documentary that one daughter makes after her mother kills 3 people while being exorcised.The movie’s website (http://www.therossifiles.com/) invites you to be a part of the continuing investigation, shows a “real” newspaper article about the case, shows the “real” hospital footage, and the “real” original emergency call – all of this leading viewers to ask the question, “Is Maria and Isabella Rossi’s story a true story?”
The answer, although a resounding “no” (everything about the movie is fake) nevertheless gets confusing; on online chatboards users discussing the movie argue that it is based on real events, because demonic possession is true and exorcisms are real. According to one user on yahoo answers:
Yes, “The Devil Inside” is based on a true story. They filmed it that way so that it would look real. No one believes in that stuff until it happens to them. Then when it does happen to them they try to share their experience to others and other people still don’t believe. No one wants to believe the Devil is real. That doesn’t mean that he isn’t nor will it protect any of us from him. That movie is true. It is based on true events. It may not be a 100 % real because it was recreated, but the the whole movie of “The Exorcist” wasn’t either. The priest did not throw himself out of the window at the end. The devils greatest victory is getting people to believe that he doesn’t exist. People want to do what they want and don’t want to think about the consequences or what will happen if they suddenly realize all the “fun” they are having is sinful. People are becoming upset because they want the truth and they feel they are not getting it. The fact of the matter is, they are getting the truth they just choose to find something wrong so they can prove that it is false. Once they prove that it is false then they don’t have to face it and they can go on living thinking that it is just another story. Ignorance and anger for things that we all know deep down to be true, yet no one is ready to admit it. It was a good movie. I learned a lot.
To further confuse the matter, the Devil Inside website has links to real newspaper articles about possession, such as a post on the Telegraph called “Surge in Satanism sparks rise in demand for exorcists, says Catholic Church” and “Satanism through the ages”. What isn’t clear is that both of these articles are thinly-veiled propaganda.
According to one, “The term Satanism represents a broad range of religions, world views, and literature that all look favourably on Satan or similar rebellious figures.” What they don’t point out, however, is that there are No Satanists that believe Satan is real! Satanists view Satan favorably as a literary symbol, because he champions humanist values like self-direction, willpower, strength, free speech, the right to challenge authority. This includes the Church of Satan founded by Anton LaVey in 1966. But they don’t worship him as a God!
A handful of sensationalist book projects claiming to be from victims of Satanic cults (like Rosemary’s Baby, which was made into a movie in 1986), described all the disgusting details of these baby-eating, fornicating devil worshipers – leading to the widespread belief that these cults were real.
However, these books have all proven to be complete fabrications by evangelical fear-mongers. The FBI has never found ANY instance of a Satanic cult – and for obvious reasons, for anyone who believes and excepts religious ideaology cannot help but know that God is the eternal victor, and that there is no hope or reason to support the perpetually failed rebel figure. From within orthodox religion, Satan can NEVER be the hero, precisely because the rules defineGod to be the champion.
Nevertheless, dozens of high-profile Hollywood movies are based on the central theme of Satan wanting to takeover earth and a bunch of Satanists who need a baby to make this happen. It’s all fiction. Cults are always religious. People who do crazy, stupid, immoral things do it because they think God wants them to – there has never been any indication that they are doing it because they think Satan wants them to. However, some religious folks do convince themselves that they are “possessed” by Satan, therefore they have no choice or power or control. Belief in Satan allows people to let themselves be taken over by their worst impulses.
The Devil Inside Plot Summary
This newest look at exorcism tries hard to prove that possession is real. The daughter goes to Rome to learn more about it and hooks up with a team of young student-priests who are doing underground exorcisms, because there’s so much political tape nowadays that the church hardly gets the opportunity or legal approval to conduct one.
The aim of the movie, furthered by various coffee table discussions about possession, is to find “The REAL difference between demonic possession and mental illness.”
The tagline goes, “When you see a REAL possession, you’ll KNOW it’s not a case of mental illness.” In other words, rather than trust psychiatrists and doctors, who don’t really know anything about it, pure subjective experience of possession is enough to convince any witness. Hence – any Christian/believer who is determined that someone is possessed is RIGHT because the only proof they need is their own experience of the possession (in the same sense that they are right in their beliefs about God, because their personal experiences of Him are non-lingual, impossible to communicate but nevertheless totally convincing.)
Interestingly, the tradition of exorcism doesn’t come from Christianity at all; it’s a remnant of Jewish-Pagan magical practices, based on beliefs in the multiplicity and hierarchies of demons and angels. You need to learn a demon’s name and rank so you can control him (not only for casting him out – in the same way, Isis learned Set’s true name, which is what gave her magical powers, and King Solomon learned the king of the demons’ true name, which is how he got the magic ring with which he controlled all of the demons (who he commanded to build the first temple – yes, Solomon built the first temple through demon labor and black magic.)
Later priests of Jesus used Jesus’ true name as a magical password to command demons – using the same magical tradition that was developed mostly in Ephesus, and you can still find in the Greek Magical Papyri.
In a critical scene, the skeptical camera man says:
“This is it. We are now going to see a person who is possessed. So now we can see if it’s bullshit or not.”
They tie the woman to the bed. I have to wonder how many women were persecuted in the early days of the church for being possessed, in the same way that they were later accused of being witches and burnt; I also have to wonder whether priests got some sadistic pleasure in the ritual).
The Proof: The demon knows the protagonist’s name. Uncanny knowledge and omnipotence is a common proof of demonic possession. Interestingly, the exact same proof was used to sell “Heaven is Real” – a book about a kid who almost dies and goes up to heaven, and comes back with knowledge he just couldn’t have known.
After that scene, everybody is convinced that exorcism is real – then the possession starts to spread like wild fire. Everybody gets possessed. The start killing themselves and each other. It’s madness.
Aren’t exorcisms REAL?
Yes – the Church has a long history of exorcism and maintains that demonic possession is possible. When I was studying theology in Malta, I met one of the Church’s 6 exorcists. However, this movie and many others like it, including the original Exorcist, were based on the true life story of Anneliese Michel; a sick woman who was convinced that she was possessed. Her family finally convinced a young priest to perform an exorcism (even though they’d already asked the Church, who had told them “NO, and continue medical treatment”). In the last year of her life, Anneliese refused all medical doctors and was treated ONLY by the exorcist, a couple times a week. She finally died of starvation and malnutrition.
What we can prove is that there are definitely people who think they are possessed. To my knowledge, every account of possession has only happened to sincere and devout believers – if you believe in Christ and God, you also must fear the Devil. And if your fear eclipses your faith, you may begin to believe that you’re possessed. (The safest way to avoid possession, it seems, would be to become an atheist – I’ve never heard of any possessed atheists; atheists are also much less likely to commit violent crimes, according to all statistics.)
And for someone who thinks they are possessed, exorcism may actually be effective; hence you could argue that exorcists are a critical and vital role in the Church Community – to deal with anybody whose fragile mind is overpowered whenever the priests have too successfully established fear of Satan and Hell.
‘The Devil Inside’ is a 2012 horror film directed by William Brent Bell that stars Fernanda Andrade, Simon Quarterman, Evan Helmuth, Ionut Grama, Suzan Crowley, Bonnie Morgan, Brian Johnson, Preston James Hillier, and D.T. Carney.
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Thanks to New Testament scholar Bart Ehrman’s new book “Did Jesus Exist”, the debate over the historical Jesus has reached mainstream. Today CNN posted an article about called The Jesus debate: Man vs. myth
Interestingly, the only “Mythicist” writers they quote from are Robert Price (author of the Price, author of “Deconstructing Jesus “Deconstructing Jesus” published in 2000) and Timothy Freke (co-author of “The Jesus Mysteries: Was the ‘Original Jesus’ a Pagan God?” published in 2001).
According to CNN, Ehrman “devoted an entire section of his book to critiquing Freke, the mythicist and author of “The Jesus Mysteries: Was the ‘Original Jesus’ a Pagan God?” who says there was an ancient Osiris-Dionysus figure who shares uncanny parallels to Jesus. He says Freke can’t offer any proof that an ancient Osiris figure was born on December 25, was crucified and rose again. He says Freke is citing 20th- and 19th-century writers who tossed out the same theories. Ehrman says that when you read ancient stories about mythological figures like Hercules and Osiris, “there’s nothing about them dying and rising again. He doesn’t know much about ancient history,” Ehrman says of Freke. “He’s not a scholar. All he knows is what he’s read in other conspiracy books.”
On the one hand, Freke and Price’s research have been major voices for the position that Jesus never existed, and it has taken about a decade to reach the point where a mainstream biblical scholar needs to write a book to refute their research. On the other hand, Ehrman is responding to research that’s over a decade old!
My own book, Jesus Potter Harry Christ, as well as many others, build on Freke and Price’s research and introduce so, so much more evidence. Was Freke citing 19th and 20th century authors? Yes. But those authors made solid points, wrote lucidly and intelligently, often read Greek and Latin fluently, and traveled all over the ancient world. (Contemporary Biblical Scholars reject them out of hand because they didn’t go by today’s research standards of citing references.) But the mythicist position, including the uncanny parallels between Jesus and a handful of other dying and resurrecting gods, can be reconstructed entirely with references to reliable, trustworthy, contemporary historians of antiquities and Greco-Roman religions, who aren’t trying to draw such parallels or be sensationalistic. Moreover, in almost EVERY case (Dionysus, Sarapis, Asclepius, Osiris) both Christians and pagans of the first and 2nd centuries already recognized and commented on these similarities. So the “mythicist” position is just picking up a debate that started at the very beginning of Christianity and has never successfully been resolved.
Resurrecting Pagan Saviors?
The heart of this issue is the Resurrection. According to Ehrman and other biblical scholars, no pagan gods resurrected. Oh, sure, they died and returned and continued to teach their followers. They were seen, and felt. But they didn’t physically, in the flesh and blood, actually return from the dead (unlike Jesus, whose followers believed that he did).
But the early Christians’ insistence on this physical Jesus was spotty at best! Perhaps the majority of early Christian communities DID NOT believe Jesus came back in the flesh, instead they saw him as a returned spirit or guiding principle. Conservative scholars make the ludicrous distinction that only the communities who believed in the physical resurrection were “real” Christians, and all those others were “Gnostic” or “Pagan” communities who had gone astray. However those other communities existed as early or earlier than any others, which can be clearly proven by the frantic writings of these “real” Christian communities. Of all of the communities who believed in Jesus Christ, they seemed to be the only ones that declared Jesus was historical rather than spiritual. Letters between these groups generally communicated the same point: beware of what everyone else is saying.
They had no help from their scriptures; Jesus promised a resurrection, but not of the old body, because the resurrected would be “like angels” (Matthew 22.23-33; Mark 12.18-27; Luke 20.27-40).
Even their founder Paul disagreed with them: It is the same too with the resurrection of the dead: what is sown is perishable, but what is raised is imperishable; what is sown is contemptible but what is raised is what is sown is weak, but what is raised is powerful; what is sown is a natural body, and what is raised is a spiritual body. (1 Corinthians 15:43) What I am saying, brothers, is that mere human nature cannot inherit the kingdom of God: what is perishable cannot inherit what is imperishable. (1 Corinthians 15:50) Christians who affirmed the resurrection of the flesh recognized that they were diverging from Paul’s original message, and complained that this difference of doctrine was all-too-often pointed out to them. Instead of responding to the criticism, and recognizing that the heretics were closer aligned to Paul’s theology, they are merely “annoyed”: Among the other [truths] proclaimed by the apostle, there is also this one, “That flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God This is [the passage] which is adduced by all the heretics in support of their folly, with an attempt to annoy us, and to point out that the handiwork of God is not saved.
Dismissing Paul, these Christians wanted their bodies preserved until some future period when they could reclaim them. Justin Martyr succeeds in representing the opinion of the opposition, without answering any of the questions raised by them: They who maintain the wrong opinion say that there is no resurrection of the flesh; giving as their reason that it is impossible that what is corrupted and dissolved should be restored to the same as it had been. And besides the impossibility, they say that the salvation of the flesh is disadvantageous; and they abuse the flesh, adducing its infirmities, and declare that it is the cause of our sins, so that if the flesh, say they, rise again, our infirmities also rise with it. By these and such like arguments, they attempt to distract men from the faith. And there are some who maintain that even Jesus Himself appeared only as spiritual, and not in flesh, but presented merely the appearance of flesh: these persons seek to rob the flesh of the promise. (Justin Martyr, Fragments of “On Resurrection,” Chapter 2).
To what extent Jesus and his resurrection were physical, spiritual, divine, both or neither were a heated source of contention for the first 9 centuries of Christianity; so to claim that Jesus is different from other pagan saviors who died and came back because he really came back, in the flesh, is a poor argument.
And if Ehrman thinks that pagan gods didn’t die and come back to life, he doesn’t know much about ancient history. I get the feeling “All he knows is what he’s read in other conspiracy books.”
If Ehrman really wanted to educate himself about Christ myth theory, he would begin not with the decade-old research by authors like Price and Freke, which while good were meant to be popular and totalizing introductions, he would seek out the most salient and rewarding aspects of contemporary mythicist research. In particular, the point Christianity comes closest to Paganism is in the deliberately crafted cult of Sarapis – for which we have a great many precise details, records, and testimonies, and which was viewed almost interchangeably with Christianity when it arose.
In Egypt those who worship Sarapis are Christians and those who call themselves Christ’s bishops (‘overseers’) are addicted to Sarapis. Jewish rabbis, Samaritans and Christian priests in Egypt become astrologers and soothsayers. The visiting archbishop is obliged to worship Sarapis by some and by others Christ. (Witt 235 (Athan. Vit anton. 90: FRA 561, 24)
In the Egypt of the time of the emperor Hadrian those who called themselves bishops of Christ are recorded to have devoted their souls to Sarapis. The link between the two faiths was the gospel of salvation. (Witt 54, phlegon, Epist. Ap. Vopisc, (Saturnin.), 8: FRA 280, 15)
(read more about Sarapis and Jesus here)
The truth is that Freke and Price only scratched the surface of this topic and, while their individual research can be criticized, Christians (and the biblical-scholar-apologists who defend them) can’t begin to explain away the vast, rich and profound wealth of material and evidence that indicates Christianity was a Jewish-Pagan synthesis of a variety of spiritual traditions that had for centuries been merging together through the syncretic influences (both deliberate and accidental) of the Greek and Roman Empires.
To separate Christianity from the fascinating ancient religious beliefs that contributed to it directly is both intellectually dishonest and spiritually bankrupt. It can only be done by annexing all of the myth and symbolism of Jesus and reducing him to a nameless, faceless, failed Jewish rebel, who died tragically, but in the sort of death that was shared by thousands of others and was in no way unique to him. This Jesus so strenuously safeguarded by biblical scholars is not the Jesus of Christianity, but is necessary for the mere possibility of Christian Faith.
The only reason to preserve the idea of a historical Jesus is to protect a religion which, although deeply assimilated into the fabric of Western Society, has never been shown to have a positive impact on either a collective or an individual scale.
Why Shouldn’t we believe Ehrman on this? For precisely the same reason he feels he’s an expert: he’s been writing and researching the historical Jesus for almost 30 years – which means he has, in all that time, consolidated and reaffirmed his thinking, and every bit of new evidence he comes into contact with gets filtered through his beliefs and opinions about who Jesus was. Basically, Ehrman is an expert on who the historical Jesus really was – Ehrman’s Jesus is not the Jesus of the gospels or of Christian faith.
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In the book trailer for the new book “Did Jesus Exist”, Bart Ehrman says “as a historian, I can assure you, that no matter what anybody else says about him, Jesus most certainly existed. There is as much evidence for Jesus, Ehrman continues, as the evidence for dozens of other historical figures. So lack of evidence should not lead us to doubt the historical Jesus.
This much is true – but lack of evidence isn’t the problem with the historical Jesus, it’s his similarity to other dying and resurrecting pagan saviors. Ehrman neatly sideswipes this entire issue (although he claims he will address it directly in his book) with his ultimate conclusion: Jesus existed but he was completely different from the Jesus everybody thinks they know. Jesus was basically a Jewish prophet who believed the world would pass away in his lifetime and God would come and establish a kingdom – which was obviously a failed prophecy. So, according to Ehrman, his followers developed all of the other more amazing and supernatural claims to cover this embarrassment.
Here’s the problem with the argument.
A) Jesus existed
B) Supernatural claims were made, borrowing heavily from pagan sources, to build up the myth and legend, which gave rise to Christianity, until very little of the real Jesus could be seen anymore.
C) SO – all of those pagan similarities don’t matter, because that’s not who Jesus really was, so they can’t prove he wasn’t historical.
However in proving the historical Jesus, Ehrman conservatively propagates (or allows Christians to propagate) their beliefs without making absolutely clear that
A) it is HISTORICALLY IMPOSSIBLE for Jesus to have been who he is recorded to have said he was, to have done the things ascribed to him, or to have taught most of what he taught, and hence
B) 99% of Christianity as it is practiced today didn’t come from Jesus, and 99% of the things Christians believe about Jesus never happened in history.
I find it rather strange that Ehrman is arguing so vehemently for Jesus’ existence; it appears that he and I are absolutely at odds, over irreconcilable differences. (Jesus either existed or not, right? One of us is wrong?) But instead Bart and I, based on the evidence, both believe that the historical Jesus, if he existed, could not have been the Jesus of the gospels.
When I say “Jesus didn’t exist as a historical person”, I’m talking about the Jesus that Christians proclaim, the biblical Jesus, who traveled around healing the sick, was crucified, and (may have been) raised from the dead, etc. I think Bart and all other biblical scholars will agree – THIS JESUS is a literary fiction, an amalgam of very traceable sources. This Jesus did not exist.
When Bart says that “Jesus existed” – he’s talking about his own Jesus, that is hidden behind veils upon veils of tradition, a Jesus for which there is very little, if any evidence, a Jesus that I cannot prove wasn’t there (although I can probably prove convincingly that his name wasn’t Jesus and that he didn’t do or say any of the things in the Bible – and if I disagree with Bart’s CENTRAL CLAIM that Jesus called himself Jesus, that it was his real name, are we even talking about the same person? I don’t doubt that there was an influential hellenized rebel zealot Jew who planned to overthrow Rome and combined pagan philosophy with Greek tradition to come up with a new spiritual system – Bart can have him. Of course there were people like that.
Anyway, I’m ranting, but my point is this: BART EHRMAN’S Jesus that existed is NOT your run-of-the-mill Jesus worshiped in any Christian churches, and if Bart’s Jesus existed (and he claims he absolutely, most certainly did, on his honor as a historian) than your Christian Jesus, son of God, Savior, just as certainly cannot have ever existed.
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I made this poster for Easter – please share it if you like it!
Thousands of years ago,
people used to believe that in winter the sun “died”, and then came back in the Spring. They created stories about his death and then celebrated his return to life. In Egypt, the legends told how the evil Set cut Osiris up into many pieces, and Isis had to wander high and low, searching for the pieces of Osiris’ body to put back together again. Egyptians re-enacted this myth every year by hiding and discovering eggs, which symbolized the body of Osiris and his rebirth into a new year of light and prosperity.
Isis, meanwhile, was a moon goddess -and if you like sideways at the moon, you can see that the moon looks like a rabbit in an egg (not, as our patriarchal-capitalistic society has taught us, like a man).
And that, Timmy, is what Jesus has to do with the Easter Bunny.
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My sister sent me the following chain letter, which goes into surprising detail about exactly how, physically, Jesus suffered on the cross. The point of the letter is to get you to feel his pain, which generates an emotional catharsis; it makes you first feel guilty, and then overwhelmingly grateful. Don’t forget that this highly robust psycho-religious emotional experience was already being practiced by the Jewish women mourning for Tammuz in the Spring on the walls of Jerusalem (Ezekiel 8:14-17) centuries before Jesus!
The difference is that, the more technical and precise Christians get, paradoxically the more nonsensical it all seems. After all the blood runs out of Jesus, water starts dripping out – as if that was the natural thing that should happen when there’s no blood left? 1 six inch nail is driven through both of his feet in a way to pin him to the cross and support his weight, but it didn’t break any bones?! Something they also forgot to mention is how Emperor Constantine’s own mother traveled to the Holy Land, and after three centuries, claimed to have found the actual cross and nails used in the crucifixion (of course it was under a temple of Aphrodite, which had to be destroyed). According to Theodoret (died c. 457) in his Ecclesiastical History, the True Cross also had powers of healing:
When the empress beheld the place where the Saviour suffered, she immediately ordered the idolatrous temple, which had been there erected, to be destroyed, and the very earth on which it stood to be removed. When the tomb, which had been so long concealed, was discovered, three crosses were seen buried near the Lord’s sepulchre. All held it as certain that one of these crosses was that of our Lord Jesus Christ, and that the other two were those of the thieves who were crucified with Him. Yet they could not discern to which of the three the Body of the Lord had been brought nigh, and which had received the outpouring of His precious Blood. But the wise and holy Macarius, the president of the city, resolved this question in the following manner. He caused a lady of rank, who had been long suffering from disease, to be touched by each of the crosses, with earnest prayer, and thus discerned the virtue residing in that of the Saviour. For the instant this cross was brought near the lady, it expelled the sore disease, and made her whole. (Ecclesiastical History xvii)
The obvious mythology in the above passage is in stark contrast to the vivid realism of contemporary Christian elements precisely because Jesus’ historical suffering is being challenged (by people like myself).
One final point; the letter wants us to focus on remembering the painful and morbid death of Christ – but makes no mention of chocolate and Easter eggs? If Easter is about Jesus, what the fuck is with the Easter bunny? What’s the connection? Actually, the mourning of the dead god followed by the jubilation at discovering his return to life preceded Christianity – one of the major, international celebrations focused on the dying and return of Osiris; Osiris got cut up and hidden and Isis had to go searching for the body parts to recollect them and put them together again (like Humpty Dumpty – part of the same tradition!) This myth used to be re-enacted, by hiding and finding eggs (which symbolized new life/birth – Osiris/Horus was born out of an egg). So searching for Easter eggs is not some pagan custom that became incorporated later into Christian worship – Christianity is a pagan custom that later forgot its mythical foundations!
Subject: FW: Good reminder for all of us during this Lenten season.
JESUS’ DEATH – 60 SECONDS ~~~
60 seconds with God…
For
The next 60 seconds, set aside whatever
You’re doing and take this opportunity!THE DEATH OF JESUS
At the age of 33,
Jesus was condemned to the death penalty.At the time crucifixion was the “worst” death. Only the worst criminals were
condemned to be crucified. Yet it was
Even more dreadful for Jesus, for unlike other criminals condemned to
death by crucifixion, Jesus was nailed to the cross by His hands and feet,
rather than tied…Each nail
Was 6 to 8 inches long.The nails
Were driven into His wrist. Not
Into His palms as is commonly
Portrayed. There’s a tendon in the wrist that
Extends to the shoulder. The Roman guards knew
That when the nails were being hammered into the
Wrist, that tendon would tear and
Break, forcing Jesus to use His back
Muscles to support himself, so that He could breathe.Both of His feet
Were nailed together. Thus He was forced to
Support Himself on the single nail that
Impaled His feet to the cross. Jesus could
Not support himself with His legs for long because of the pain, so He was
forced to alternate between arching His
Back and using his legs just to continue to
Breath. Imagine the struggle, the pain, the
Suffering, the courage.Jesus endured this
Reality for over 3 hours.Yes,
Over 3 hours! Can you imagine this kind of
Suffering? A few minutes before He died,
Jesus stopped bleeding. He was simply pouring water
From his wounds.From common images we see wounds to His hands and feet and even the spear
wound to His side…
But do we remember the many wounds
Made to his body. A hammer
Driving large nails through the wrists, the feet overlapped
And a nail hammered through the arches, then a
Roman guard piercing His side with a spear. And…
Before the nails and the spear, Jesus was whipped and
Beaten. The whipping was so severe that it tore the
Flesh from His body. The beating so horrific that His
Face was torn and his beard ripped from His face. The
Crown of thorns (two to three inch thorns) cut deeply into His scalp. Most
men
Would not have survived this torture.”
He had no more blood
To bleed out, only water poured from His
Wounds. The
Human adult body contains about 3.5 liters
(just less than a gallon) of blood.Jesus poured all 3.5 liters of his blood;
He had three nails hammered into His
Members; a crown of thorns on His head and, beyond
That, a Roman soldier who stabbed a spear into His
Chest..All these without
Mentioning the humiliation He passed after carrying His own
Cross for almost 2 kilometers, while the crowd spat in his
Face and threw stones (the cross beam was almost 30 kg of weight, to which
His hands were nailed).Jesus had to endure this experience,
So that you may have free access to God.So that your sins can be “washed” away.
All of them, with no exception!
Don’t ignore this.JESUS
CHRIST DIED…FOR YOU!For you, who now read this e-mail.
Do not believe that He only died for others
(those who go to church or for pastors, bishops, etc).He died for you!
It is easy to e-mail jokes or silly photos,
But when it comes to God,
Sometimes we feel ashamed to forward a message about Him on
To others.
We are worried of what they may think.Accept the reality, the truth, that
JESUS IS THE ONLY SALVATION FOR THE WORLD.God has special plans for YOU!
Share this with all your friends…
About what He went through to save you.
Really think about it!May God bless you!
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Wearing skulls and dressing in black will get you killed – at least in Iraq, where dozens of teenagers have been stoned recently for wearing black and channeling Emo. “Emo” is a Western subculture that follows the revival of gothic and horror trends in society and literature, and also parallels closely the attraction to vampirism, witchcraft and magic.
Skulls and crossbones have become super cool symbols in international pop culture; even hello kitty is on board.
As Baghdad explores its new-found freedom, news articles like this one shock us with horrific violence at the hands of Islamic conservative fundamentalists. In particular, a recent strain of murders have focused on teenagers who want to stand out, be cool and participate in international trends of fashion and culture. This should make anyone indoctrinated into Western ideology hope that Islam as a religion goes extinct quickly: surely we don’t need that kind of backward, tribalistic, head-in-the-sand idiocracy influencing our culture or politics?
And yet, so what if Islam is stoning youths? Doesn’t Yahweh command – in the book believed as the literal word of God for an enormous percentage of American citizens – that we not suffer a witch to live? That anyone practicing magic, not following strict forms of dress code eating the right things in the right way, be punished, and possibly killed?
Didn’t Yahweh approve the slaughter of his own (Israelites) including women and children for worshiping the golden calf?
“27 Then he said to them, ‘This is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says: “Each man strap a sword to his side. Go back and forth through the camp from one end to the other, each killing his brother and friend and neighbor.”‘
28 The Levites did as Moses commanded, and that day about three thousand of the people died.” (Exodus 32:27-28)
Is Emo Satanic?
Said one Iraqi commenter:
“If they are close friends who have something in common, that’s all right. If other things we hear about them are true, like sucking each other’s blood or worshiping the devil, that is not accepted in our society. But I think this is just a trend to imitate the West.”
Sucking blood and worshiping the devil are not really Satanic. They are childish experiments in doing strange things, which have no power of their own. People who don’t believe in Christianity and “Worship the Devil” aren’t really worshiping him (for whatever it is that they believe in, it isn’t the Devil of Christianity). Fake teeth, skulls and bones, black clothes and eyeliner are just bold, rage against the machine fashion statements; a product of the over-commercialization of the Vampire genre and the natural teenage over-indulgence in their own traumatically overpowering emotional states.
What is really Satanic, is Western Liberal Culture: freedom of choice, sexual permissiveness and blending of gender roles, innocent until proven guilty, education and science, the progression of mankind, human rights, religious tolerance. So in killing off any kids that aren’t confirming to the archaic ethics of Islam, this fundamentalists really are “fighting the good fight”. Just as Christians should be in America (Yes, the Bible DOES command you to stone children. Look it up.).
But the question is, if we leave religion aside for a minute and the perverse idea that “God commanded it, so it must be right, even if I don’t understand it”, can’t we begin to see that this kind of God is not good for us. Whether or not he really exists doesn’t matter – even if he exists, if he isn’t good for us, why should we listen to him?
JesusWalk.com says,
Now, now, some people might chide God. You shouldn’t be angry. But God’s anger at sin can’t be understood apart from his own holiness, his separateness from sin, his nature utterly opposed to injustice, sin, and human degradation. Our sins offend God’s very character. The Bible contains hundreds of statements about God’s anger at sin. We, too, are told, “Let those who love the LORD hate evil” (Psalm 97:10a).
If you can’t accept an angry God, then you won’t be able to understand him. If God’s anger at sin offends you, then you have placed yourself above God as his judge, with no understanding of God’s holiness or his mercy.
This kind of thinking is exactly what those Iraqis had in mind when they were bashing teenagers’ skulls. What is the worse sin? Murder of black eyeliner? What kind of world do you want to live in? One where moral action is dictated by divine revelation, and we accept it even though we can’t understand it; or one where each of us makes our own moral choices and continuously strives to improve?
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An online review posted about Disney’s 2012 John Carter of Earth movie runs thus: “John Carter evokes pretty much every sci-fi classic from the past 50 years without having any real personality of its own.”
The essential thing to keep in mind, however, is that Edgar Rice Burroughs’ A Princess of Mars was first published almost a century ago in 1917! Science fiction and fantasy novels and stories since then are deeply indebted to John Carter.
Others influenced by Edgar Rice Burroughs and his John Carter books include James Cameron who mentioned the influence on his science-fiction epic Avatar in The New Yorker magazine and George Lucas, whose Star Wars movies were influenced Edgar Rice Burroughs and by Flash Gordon, which in turn was influenced by Edgar Rice Burroughs.
But something you won’t read about in other online reviews is this:
John Carter is an atheistic movie.
A tagline for the movie could be, “There is no god, only superior technology.” Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Mars is basically like earth – lots of evenly matched civilizations destroying each other for centuries until one gets an advanced technology (gunpowder, etc) and annihilates the other side. But there is also an element of magic, mysticism and religion. The main God (Goddess, actually) on Mars is Isis, and her desires are arbitrated by a supremely advanced, but nevertheless biological, group of beings called the Holy Therns (in other words, the white men… in the novels, John Carter is, like the Therns, the rare white man surrounded by technologically lesser savages).
In both worlds (Earth and Mars) the savages are supremely religious and superstitious, but also dogmatic, closed to change and violent.
The plot revolves around the Thern interfering in Martian history by giving an advanced weapon to a brute leader who will dominate and rule the planet for the years to come. They have chosen him for this role.
This is important – they aren’t interested in ruling themselves; in fact they’ve gone to great lengths to make everybody believe that they don’t really exist. They work very hard at staying invisible, and yet guiding the historical developments. They do this so that they can forge alliances with the leaders they’ve elected, who will let them plunder the planet for valuable resources (exactly as, for example, America’s leaders treat Middle Eastern countries – by supplying weaponry behind the scenes to make sure the person in charge will sell them cheap oil).
The Therns have no interest in helping these races develop or mature; in fact if a smart, benign race were given technology, they would use science to control and understand it – eventually perhaps being able to stand up to the Therns and throwing off the colonialistic plundering. Hence they sabotage the princess’s very close attempt at replicating the technology.
JC, saviour of Mars, is a superman
John Carter (JC!) is the redeemer who has slipped beyond the Therns’ expectations by accidentally changing planets – the lower gravity gives him super-human strength. He is He-Man and Jesus rolled into one. He doesn’t give a crap about things like challenging Isis – he’ll kick her ass if he can reach her.
Keep in mind that this story was written at the end of the enlightenment period: the romantic ideals of technology pushing humanity towards ever increasing progress are starting to be questioned in the face of a growing World War One. Humans cannot handle the technology and are destroying themselves. Religion had already been severely undermined and brutalized by almost a century of anti-Christian, anti-historical Jesus researches, as well as a new form of cultural relativity that witnessed how an immense gap in technology could instigate beliefs in magic and divine power.
It was much more “Scientific” (indeed, it continues to be so to this day) to believe that Jesus was a lost Martian with entirely explainable powers, and that the Gods were a superior race of beings with technologies we can’t begin to image, than to accept the belief – in the face of absolutely no supporting evidence – that there is One God up there who controls everything and is acting in our best interests.
John Carter was the inspiration for just about any comic book super-hero you can think of!
The proof is in the pudding
But this distinction should be easily verifiable: If we look into the history of religion, do we find Gods who encourage technology and the growth of humanity, or do we find Gods who continuously destroy our technological achievements, obfuscate scientific knowledge, obstruct free inquiry, and incite inter-racial planetary violence? Isn’t Yahweh the one who destroyed the tower of Babel and divided mankind by language so that they wouldn’t challenge divine authority?
Isn’t every technological development wrested away from the Gods by force, or “stolen” from them against their will (by Coyote, Prometheus, Orpheus, or any other hybrid/mediator – many of whom are eternally punished for this act of rebellion?)
There are two motivating themes of John Carter: One is PURE REBELLION, all the time, against anyone who tries to force our hand; the other is ecological – we need to stop fucking ourselves over on stupid fights, and pay attention to those Wealthy Bastards who are siphoning out the earth’s last breath.
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This morning, between about 10am and 12am outside my 5th floor apartment, was a never ending parade of drum, bad karoake and high pitched squeaking clarinets played by people with no training – all blasted from portable megaphones charged with a portable battery. It made me wonder where that old phrase, “everyone loves a parade” comes from. While the noise pollution, pierced sporadically by firecrackers, may seem quaint and exotic, after 8 years living in Taiwan it’s hard to excuse the distraction and invasion into my home office, where I’m trying to concentrate on editing some documents.
But it’s a special occasion – it’s the birthday of the Earth God (Tudigong). You might assume that this would be akin to Western “Earth Day”, where we all gather to make empty vows about recycling and healing our planet. You’d be wrong – Earth God’s birthday has principally become (at least in Taiwan) the day to go and give money to the temple, for your own financial benefit. Hence, all the parades may be seen as a form of power advertising: it’s Earth God’s birthday! Don’t forget to go give him some money, to bless and ensure your own prosperity!
Although this may seem jaded, let me give you the details: Worship of Tudigong, pictured as a kindly old man with a long beard, evolved a special tradition of “changing small money for big money”. There are bronze-statue vending machines of Tudigong where you put in a 10nt coin and receive a 1nt coin. This willing sacrifice is fun and harmless; a nice touristy activity for foreigners and locals alike – spiritually it is similar to the tradition of tithing *(even in the exact percentage – 10%; although with Tudigong you’re really giving 90% and receiving 10% back). The ritual is expected to “bring peace and big fortune”. One temple official reported “the NT$10 coin looks like silver and the NT$1 coin looks like gold… so it’s like changing silver into gold!”
Here a cynic would laugh out loud – coming from a believer, this statement may sound genuine; coming from a community insider, it sounds like a ridiculous scam/sales tactic. Imagine building a machine that took 90% of your money and returned 10% to you, and convincing people that it was a good trade because they were ‘buying luck’. Imagine building a chain of temples with these machines, so that people could line up, eager to give away their money, hopeful for the chance at financial gain.
You can’t really call it a scam, because all you’re selling is hope. And if your customers go away feeling more hopeful or confident about their financial situation, then they’ve got what they paid you for. It doesn’t really matter whether or not it works.
But the temple also serves as a kind of bank, offering loans for business and investment purposes. Most people who borrow from the temple give back twice as much as they received! In this way, the Tudigong temple has grown considerably large and powerful (no wonder they can organize such long parades).
To find out more about Tudigong temple and Taiwanese religion, watch the video:
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***Oops – the movie adaptation of Paradise Lost starring Bradley Cooper has been canned as of February, 2012! It’s a crying shame…Hope they revive it down the road.***
For the past decade, traditionally marginalized or “evil” characters have gained the limelight – witches, vampires and werewolves have changed from creatures of the night to tragically misunderstood victims of humanity’s bitter prejudice. At the same time, Western humanist values caused us to champion rebel heroes – heroes who fight against all hope to topple powerful governments or tyrants. What is less known is that this impetus towards “Freedom at all Costs” started with Milton’s depiction of Satan in Paradise Lost, whose brilliant speeches on the right to self rule and the right to overthrow government directly influenced the poets, artists and philosophers who developed the themes of resistance and rebellion and the need for absolute freedom and equality. The US Declaration of Independence and Constitution are indebted to the liberal ideology of Milton’s Satan.
So it is with extreme interest that I’m watching the development of Paradise Lost into an epic Hollywood movie made by Legendary Pictures and Warner Brothers. Sure we’ve seen this kind of “rebel hero against the gods” motif before, most recently in the Wrath of the Titans movies. But so far any movie with an explicitly Christian theme (God vs Satan, or Devils vs. Angels) Satan has always been the bad guy. Prometheus rebelling against the Gods and tyrannical Zeus, stealing fire to bring to humanity, and being chained to a rock to eternity as punishment, is a hero. Satan, the exact same literary motif but placed in a Judaic context (stealing the apple of knowledge from the possessive/jealous God who doesn’t want humans to be free and independent) is a villain.
So the obvious question is:
Who will be the hero in the new Paradise Lost movie?
There are some indicators that this will be the movie that changes everything.
According to Bradley Cooper, who will play Lucifer:
To me it’s a very small story … about two brothers and their father and what happens when one son feels utterly betrayed. I always loved the depiction of Lucifer as a very sympathetic character. There’s a lot of personal ways into this character, which is why it makes it so exciting to do it with this kind of scope and with a director that has the kind of vision that Alex does.
Another connection you need to make in the Biblical context: we’ve all heard the parable of the prodigal son. The “bad son” returns and the father greets him with warmth and love, as if he’d never left. In Christian teachings, Jesus loves the sinners, the wayward sheep, even more than loyal followers. But how is it that Satan never receives this welcome? Satan rebels because (at least in Milton) he was God’s first born son, the most beautiful of angels, created BEFORE Jesus, but then Jesus comes along and God tells Satan to bow down, give up his place at the table. Jesus was given kingship and authority without needing to prove himself worthy (for Milton, who endorsed meritocracy or rule by merit, this was the chief issue). Satan rebels, not because he wants to rule or take God’s place, but simply because he feels he deserves the ability to retire and think things through, to consider his options, to use reason and intelligence to pick a future path. It is his belief in his right to self-govern when the current authority seems unjust or irrational, that is his “inflated sense of pride or hubris”. The same sense of pride and hubris, of course, led to the American Revolution and the founding of America.
The epic of Milton’s Paradise lost has been going on since the birth of Christianity and is so far unresolved. Countless retellings always place Satan in Hell, because God is still the clear victor, both in terms of moral superiority (immutable laws, infallibility) but also military power. But his rule is on shaky grounds. Many people are starting to grow weary of his yoke. Just like the recent middle-eastern revolutions, the Atheist and Agnostic movements are using social media to quickly spread anti-religious, freethought and humanist material to lead people into open rebellion. More and more people are starting to realize that an unjust ruler does not automatically deserve allegiance, no matter how powerful. If the Paradise Lost movie of 2013 follows this same trend, we may see a sympathetic Satan as the protagonist struggling against the tyrranny of God the Father.
And I’m optimistic that we will – however, given the current state of things, I also won’t be surprised if Satan is again portrayed as a proud and stubborn youth who throws off the love of his family and goes down the path to evil, confirming and perpetuating classical readings of the literary Satan.
| The Cast | |
 |
Bradley Cooper LUCIFER |
| Benjamin Walker MICHAEL |  |
| Djimon Hounsou ABDIEL |  |
 |
Rufus Sewell SAMAEL (BEELZEBUB) |
| Casey Affleck GABRIEL |  |
| Sam Reid RAPHAEL |  |
 |
Dominic Purcell MOLOCH |
| Callan McAuliffe URIEL |  |
| Diego Bonita ADAM |  |
| Camilla Belle EVE |  |
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If you’ve watched “limitless” you may have been inspired (as I was) to research into the “smart pill” debate that has been brewing for the past several years. Is there really a drug that can make you smarter? ADHD medication like Adderall and Ritalin are classified as nootropics and commonly referred to as “Mental Enhancers”. It should come as no surprise that such drugs, although regulated by prescription, will be taken off label. Gingko Biloba, which has never been proven to improve cognitive function, still sells several billion dollars worth of products claiming to do just that. We are a caffeine-fueled, ultra-competitive society of adventurers addicted to time management and productivity.
So as rumors grew that taking ADHD medication like Adderall and Ritalin can speed you up, make you think clearer, focus on manual tasks without distraction, be more efficient, and more focused, naturally “smart drugs” became a whole new kind of drug use. (I was tempted to use the term ‘recreational drug’ or ‘drug abuse’, but neither seemed fitting.
These are not drugs people take to get high or party – they are used by college and grad students, financial investors, professors and other people who need to be able to think quickly and deeply, all the time. They are a coffee substitute.
My experience with Modafinil
After researching them quite a bit, I came to the conclusion that Modafinil was the one for me. Modafinil is said to be less shaky and crazy, more stable and focused. I’ve found this to be true. A standard dose is 200MG, which for me is way too much. 100MG is a powerful dose, and I find taking 50~80 is about enough. Taking it in the morning on an empty stomach works better; adding a cup of coffee boosts effects.
Positive effects
1. Responsibility: Modafinil makes me feel like doing the things I don’t want to do. It makes me want to clean my house, do the dishes, and have the energy to scrub the corners. If I have a paper or work to do, I can sit down and focus for hours and hours doing the work, without getting distracted as much.
2: Smartness/Cognitive Function: I really do “feel smarter” on Modafinil. I can organize my thoughts better. Some people report decreased creativity on this… possibly true for brainstorming new ideas or painting abstract art or something. But for organizing a draft of a paper, novel or book (juggling huge amounts of text and plot events) I’ve found it helpful.
For studying languages: I found this interesting comment on Psychology Today
Finally, it is not clear that the benefits of ADHD medications truly are benefits. The strongest effect of ADHD medications is that they seem to enhance learning of items from a list. There are times, of course, where it is important to learn arbitrary kinds of information. I remember taking a neuroscience exam in college for which I had to know the names and locations of many brain regions. But, there are also lots of times where it is more important to know why something occurs rather than what happened. It simply is not clear from the studies that have been done so far whether ADHD stimulants help with that kind of learning. In some learning situations, it might be better to forget some of the specific details in order to remember the gist of what you have encountered.
The argument is that “real study/intelligence” is being able to remember, understand and use information – but ignores the implications of language learning, a great deal of which focuses on rapid memorization of vocabulary. I’ve used Modafinil to cram-study Chinese Characters to good effect.
3: Eloquence: Modafinil is a tongue-loosener for me. I feel bold, confident and smart – I can stream-talk information, quite eloquently, without stopping to organize my thoughts. I have had some interesting class sessions where I spew out advanced philosophical arguments and metaphors. In my own head I felt like a genius, however I suspect my classmates were entertained/amused by my hyped-up appearance or vocality in discussion.
4. Happiness. Modafinil makes me feel cool, smart, confident and optimistic. I feel nicer, kinder, more ‘on top of things’, excited about the future. These are excellent benefits.
Negative Effects
Modafinil makes me smarter, but also really stupid. The boldness/confidence also makes you less cautious. It leaves you open for disastrous screw-ups.
1. Motor function. You will feel basically invincible, which means your driving/riding a bicycle will tend to be faster and careless. This ‘carelessness’ extends even to walking, stepping over something, picking something up even – just a little less precise in movement. You need to be very careful moving around.
2. No filter. Modafinil lets you speak your mind with no filter – so you are very likely to say things you regret. Things that ‘come out wrong’ could be your cutting criticism or perception of a situation or person. Basically it can turn you into an asshole.
3. Selective Memory. A few times I’ve had an important date or made plans with someone, and I just forget and do something else. I feel like there’s something I should be doing, but can’t place it. You’re more focused on the immediate surroundings, what’s in front of you, which is excellent for task-based work, but you may lose some general ability to keep track of your life (so make notes for yourself/calendar).
4. Decreased effect. I find Modafinil works for me if I take it about once a week. If I take it a few days in a row, after the first day it either doesn’t work or can make me feel even slower than usual. Also the day after may feel slow… so ideally I’d take it on a Friday/Saturday to catch up on stuff, then relax Sunday.
WARNING:
Although these effects seem fairly common and universal for Modafinil, it will effect everyone differently. If you live in the USA, it’s a controlled substance – which means you’re breaking the law if you order it online from internet pharmacies in India, etc. However this process is fairly easy and safe, so the decision is yours.
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If you found out that your employee was a child-molester, would you fire them? According to a new Supreme Court ruling, you may not be able to.
Here’s the story: a woman is working for a church, but she develops narcolepsy (she can’t help falling asleep). The church fires her and gets a new employee – but she threatens to sue because she should be protected under the Disabilities Act. But the Supreme Court refused her right to sue, on the basis that it could not interfere with a church’s right to chose its own representatives (freedom of religion, etc.)
The ethics of this conflict are murky: The Western practice of diagnosing everything as a disability means that soon everybody will be protected against firing, and employers can no longer count on hiring able and competent people to work for them. This does not mean I am anti-disability; people with disabilities who are just as capable of doing a good job, should have that opportunity. But having a job should not be a right guaranteed to disabled people – unless perhaps, the government is paying for it. But should the government force a private company to keep an employee who isn’t doing her job?
On the one hand I don’t think that religion should be exempt from law unilaterally – the ruling also means that an employee fired after sexual harassment can’t sue, for example. This is an issue of employee vs. employer rights which should be clarified universally and churches should not be exempt. At the same time, I’m a bit of a shark who feels the best person for a job should get it, rather than the person who needs it the most (ala “Atlas Shrugged”).
However, in a related issue, last week Greece shocked the world (and itself) by reclassifying certain conditions – like Pedophilia and Kleptomania – as disabilities; now able to get higher government compensation than other “lesser” disabilities. While it may seem insane, the trend of diagnosing and classifying these serious personal problems as diseases/disabilities is an international trend.
If you put the Greek law together with the Supreme Court’s new ruling that religious employees of a church cannot sue for employment discrimination, it would mean that the all-too-many cases of pedophilia in the (Catholic) church could not sue after being fired.
In contrast, before, someone who abused children in the church and was then fired may have been able to sue the church for termination! So the change seems like a step in a direction away from crazy. But now, under the new law, if a former employee of the church was terminated because they tried to stop pedophilia, then they couldn’t sue.
What do you think? Should church hiring practices be off limits to the Supreme Court?
Sources:
Supreme court cannot get involved in church disputes
Greece classifies pedophilia as disability
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Seventh-Day Adventists in Loma Linda, California, are in a fight against fast food chain McDonalds. The reason: 50% of the town practices a form of Christianity that endorses a clean, healthy and vegetarian diet. In their defense, the town has statistically higher health than many places in the world. The conflict: should they be allowed to prohibit the other 50% of the people from eating garbage?
The “opposition” chosen to represent the heathens is a fat, batman-hat wearing guy who says “If you don’t want to be healthy, don’t be, if you want to be healthy, be healthy.” People should be allowed to choose unhealthy, health-harming (and by extension, ecosystem/economy destroying) practices.
But why? Spiritual traditions around the world, including Christianity, more or less agree that vegetarianism is better for ourselves and the world; it also seems to make people more relaxed, aware, and peaceful. I’m not vegetarian – but mostly because I eat whatever is cheap and convenient.
What would the world look like if the government took steps to ensure that what was available was also what was healthiest? What if they prevented huge corporations from using their resources to dominate the food growth, preparation and consumption market?
I’m pretty sure I don’t agree with the 7th Day Adventists from a legal perspective (in fact they are sure to lose) but I also feel that Western Civilization’s defense of malignant lifestyle practices is doomed to epic failure; humanity is a cancer that has been given free reign to grow however it wants, destroying whatever came before, ignoring “natural” laws of maintenance – all under the protection of “free will” (the ultimate corporation slogan!)
Other interesting bits in the video – The first McDonalds anywhere was about 5 miles out of Loma Linda! Also, there is already a Carl’s Jr. in town (who was asleep at the wheel when that happened?)
Watch the video below:
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