The parable of the blind men and the elephant is often used by the religious (or general mongers of woo) to argue for the validity of their beliefs. The parable is meant to show that no body knows the whole truth, therefore (apparently) no one can ever say that the teller of the parable is wrong. The problem with the parable though, is that it is only half of the story. The blind men are confused by the elephant only because all of them have different results. But, once they follow the scientific method and verify each others results, compare them, and build a model, I have a feeling they would eventually come up with a pretty good description of an elephant.

__

There were three blind men that came across an elephant. They were all unfamiliar with elephants and had no idea what this creature looked like. Lining up against the elephant, they all began to feel with their hands:

Blind Man 1: (feeling it’s tail) Well, it seems to be some sort of brush.
Blind Man 2: (feeling it’s abdomen) I’m getting much different results. To me it feels like a huge wall. One, are you sure it’s a brush?
Blind Man 1: That’s what my results show.
Blind Man 2: Ok, do you mind if I verify it?
Blind Man 1: Of course, we need to be sure (the men trade places and recheck each others work). Yes, the results do seem to be the same when I run the test as well. Would you like to verify my results?
Blind Man 2: Let’s see what Three is up to. Three, what results have you got?
Blind Man 3: (feeling it’s trunk) it’s a great rope.
Blind Man 1: Are you sure?
Blind Man 3: Oh,yeah, I’ve picked up on it’s mystical energies
Blind Man 1: Well, we’ve been verifying each others results. Let’s come over there and double check yours.
Blind Man 3: No! I don’t need anyone to check my results. I have “Another Way of knowing”
Blind Man 1&2: Get out of the way, please
Blind Man 3: In order to say you know it’s an elephant, you have to think you know everything!
Blind Man 1&2: Shut up.

A new bill to protect the traditions of Christmas has been introduced by Representative Henry Brown ( R-SC) into the US Congress on 12.8.09

H.Res.951 – Expressing the sense of the House of Representatives that the symbols and traditions of Christmas should be protected for use by those who celebrate Christmas.

Protect Christmas? Mmmm, yes, I see. The world has suddenly been transformed into a Rankin and Bass claymation holiday special. The evil Heat Miser will soon come into town to melt all the holiday snow …. oops, I mean Christmas snow.

I get a feeling this bill could easily be crossing more than a few church/state separation lines.

Text of Bill

Expressing the sense of the House of Representatives that the symbols and traditions of Christmas should be protected for use by those who celebrate Christmas.

Whereas Christmas is a national holiday celebrated on December 25; and

Whereas the Framers intended that the First Amendment of the Constitution, in prohibiting the establishment of religion, would not prohibit any mention of religion or reference to God in civic dialog: Now, therefore, be it

Resolved, That the House of Representatives–

(1) recognizes the importance of the symbols and traditions of Christmas;

(2) strongly disapproves of attempts to ban references to Christmas; and

(3) expresses support for the use of these symbols and traditions by those who celebrate Christmas.

Definitely an odd bill written by some one with a pretty tenuous grasp of the first amendment.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;

Meaning, taking a neutral stance. Pretty simple, neither helping nor hindering. This bill would be helping and would thereby not be neutral.

Not to mention, most of the atrocious offenses against Christmas, at least the ones that I’ve seen causing boycotts by religious groups, are just businesses that decide to express inclusive messages during the holidays. Not really a lot a government bill can do about that without micro-managing private industry.

Silly, silly stuff.

Ancient Christian art and written documents show that not only were same sex unions tolerated in the ancient Church, they were celebrated. It fact, it looks as though the rigorous anti-gay rhetoric did not begin until the 14th century.

A Kiev art museum contains a curious icon from St. Catherine’sMonastery on Mt. Sinai in Israel. It shows two robed Christian saints. Between them is a traditional Roman ‘pronubus’ (a best man), overseeing a wedding. The pronubus is Christ. The married couple are both men.

Is the icon suggesting that a gay “wedding” is being sanctified by Christ himself? The idea seems shocking. But the full answer comes from other early Christian sources about the two men featured in the icon, St. Sergius and St. Bacchus, two Roman soldiers who were Christian martyrs.

…

While the pairing of saints, particularly in the early Christian church, was not unusual, the association of these two men was regarded as particularly intimate. Severus, the Patriarch of Antioch (AD 512 – 518) explained that, “we should not separate in speech they [Sergius and Bacchus] who were joined in life”. This is not a case of simple “adelphopoiia.” In the definitive 10th century account of their lives, St. Sergius is openly celebrated as the “sweet companion and lover” of St. Bacchus. Sergius and Bacchus’s close relationship has led many modern scholars to believe they were lovers. But the most compelling evidence for this view is that the oldest text of their martyrology, written in New Testament Greek describes them as “erastai,” or “lovers”. In other words, they were a male homosexual couple. Their orientation and relationship was not only acknowledged, but it was fully accepted and celebrated by the early Christian church, which was far more tolerant than it is today.

-Colfax Record, 8/24/08

It looks like the original article from the Colfax Record (written by ThosPayne) is now offline, but here a link to the cached copy. It’s a good read.

The author of the original study, Prof. John Boswell, is the author of “Christianity, Social Tolerance and Homosexuality: Gay People in Western Europe From the Beginning of the Christian Era to the Fourteenth Century“. It looks like some pretty interesting stuff.

We are all a product of our culture. When we assume our prejudices are revealed instead of learned, it can easily lead to ill will toward others.

Happy Dies Natalis Solis Invicti (birthday of the unconquered sun), your chance to get all your sun worship out of the way for the year.

December 25th marks the fist day the sun starts to measurably ascend in the sky. Celebrations around the time of the winter solstice have been popular for centuries, though the festival of Dies Natalis Solis Invicti was instituted by the Roman Emperor Elagabalus at the beginning of the 3rd century CE.

Saturnalia:

The festival of Saturnalia goes back to 200 BCE. It was a week long festival lasting December 17th to the 23.  Gift giving, merry making (often leading to extreme merry making) and a reversal of the social order, with masters waiting on their slaves, were common traditions.

Christmas:

There is, of course, no mention of a any particular date for the birth of Jesus in any Christian Bible document, the earliest documents having no mention of Jesus’s earthly life at all. And, other dates were used to celebrate his birthday before December 25th was made official by the pope in the 4th century CE (the Orthodox Church still celebrates Christmas on Jan 6th). There is some evidence that early Christians thought the celebration of birthdays to be a strictly pagan custom that they chose not to participate in.

But, there is actually a Christian meme to explain why JC’s birth date should be celebrated on December 25th: the 3rd century Christian historian Sextus Julius Africanus theorized that because Jesus died and was reborn on the spring equinox, then he must have been conceived on the spring equinox as well (sic), and therefore would have been born in December, around the 25th. Sounds to me like he already had December 25th in mind, especially since the average human pregnancy is 38 weeks, which would put the birth closer to December 16th. Christmas was not made an official holiday until the 4th century under Pope Julius the 1st. .

The Hebrew bible (Old Testament) is filled with all kinds of special numbers: 500, 40, 70, 3, 12, etc. These numbers are used whenever a number is needed to fill in a hole in the story, especially in places of great significance, like the number of the days of creation or the age of David when he took the throne*. Where do these numbers originate? Some of them may be just large round numbers. Others are a bit of a mystery. But, here is a passage from Jewish historian Flavius Josephus’s (37-100 CE) Antiquities of the Jews that might shed some light on the significance of the number 7:

Over against this table, near the southern wall, was set a
candlestick of cast gold, hollow within, being of the weight of
one hundred pounds, which the Hebrews call Chinchares, if it be
turned into the Greek language, it denotes a talent. It was made
with its knops, and lilies, and pomegranates, and bowls (which
ornaments amounted to seventy in all); by which means the shaft
elevated itself on high from a single base, and spread itself
into as many branches as there are planets, including the sun
among them. It terminated in seven heads, in one row, all
standing parallel to one another; and these branches carried
seven lamps, one by one, in imitation of the number of the
planets. These lamps looked to the east and to the south, the
candlestick being situate obliquely.
-Flavuis Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, Book 3, chapter 6, section 7

Don’t think it can get much plainer than that. Numbered after the 7 planets. What were considered the 7 planets at the time and wy were they significant? The seven planets were:

1. Sun
2. Moon
3. Mercury
4. Venus
5. Mars
6. Jupiter
7. Saturn

These were the objects the ancients knew about that moved independently of the rest of the night sky. And, they didn’t move in a simple fixed pattern. Anyone that has had basic earth science in grade school knows that early attempts to model the movement of the planets took some complicated models until Kepler came along with the solution in the 16th century CE.

From what I’ve gleemed over the years this ancient mystery concerning the movement of the planets is the basis of the meme “Seventh Heaven”. Since all of these planets moved independently from the sky and also independently of each other, they were thought to exist on different planes from each other, like a series of concentric domes.

The top most level would be the holiest level, the level God Almighty resides in. The lower levels would be inhabited by supernatural, but less holy, creatures. These realms are the inhabitants of the subjects of myths and there are stories, such as Plutarch’s recording of Isis and Osiris, that speak of their ascension and descension between realms. It appears that in the myths, when supernatural creatures descended levels, they took on the inferior qualities of that lower realm (at least as I understand it).

When applied to mythology, this multi-layered heaven theory makes a few of the appearances of Yahweh in the Bible make a bit more sense (internally to the myth, of course).

Yahweh, when visiting down on earth, took human form and could be seen (in the tent of meeting with Moses, eating dinner with Abraham, or walking through the garden of Eden in the “cool of the day”). However, when humans went up into the heavens to see him, like when Moses climbed the mountain, he was still in his godlike form and could not show himself. Angels, as well, are usually seen as being insubstantial beings, yet, once angels descended down to earth, they took a form that allowed them able to mate with human females, as in Genesis 6. Fun stuff, the Bible. Wild and wacky.

*In David’s case we get a trifecta of special numbers: He took the throne at 30, reigned for 40 years, which gives us a total of 70. As a bonus, he took control over all Judah and Israel after 7 years of rule.

Forget singles bars. If you really want a swinging time, join the Catholic Church.

“Bookshops throughout India’s Christian communities in Kerala have already sold out of Amen, the autobiography of Sister Jesme, who has alleged that priests and nuns not only broke their vows of celibacy with each other but regularly forced novices to have sex with them.

The Catholic Church in India is mired in a series of sexual controversies, and has only just begun to recover from the dismissal of a senior bishop who “adopted” an attractive 26-year-old female companion as his “daughter”.

The book by the former nun reveals how as a young novice she was propositioned in the confession box by a priest who cited biblical references to “divine kisses”. Later she was cornered by a lesbian nun at a college where they were teaching. “She would come to my bed in the night and do lewd acts and I could not stop her,” she claims.

When she was sent to Bangalore to stay with a priest known for his piety, he lectured her about the need for “physical love” and later assaulted her.”

Of course, the best (and by “best”, I mean “worst”) part of the story is the trivial nature in which her claims are treated:

Dr Paul Thelekkat, a spokesman for the Syro-Malabar Catholic church said he had some sympathy for sister Jesme, and respected her freedom to express her views, but he believed her claims were trivial. “How far what she says is well-founded I can’t say, but the issues are not very serious. We’re living with human beings in a community and she should realise this is part of human life,”

“THE Vatican on Thursday warned Italy’s bishops against letting deserted churches be transformed into nightclubs if the decision was taken to sell the places of worship.”

Do it! Turn it into a night club. What’s the worst that could happen? It’s not like people are going to be stripping on the alter.

“He gave the example of a church in Hungary which was ‘transformed into a nightclub and where striptease took place on the altar.’”

Ok, so people will most probably be stripping on the alter. People have to fantasize about something while they’re sitting through long boring sermons.

It’s like Trading Places. Even after the house has been sold some people just can’t accept that the new owners may get rid of the glass unicorn on the mantle. Hey, things change. This may be one way of getting some ex-catholics back into the building again, though. With the subtle lure of booze, disco, and striptease.

Warning: Hot to the touch!

Until this week, Mary Jo Coady had never given her iron a second thought. Then she saw a likeness of Jesus staring back from its not-quite stainless steel bottom.

Well,  it’s not that great of a Jesus. I’ve seen better. But, at least it’s not the “Virgin” Mary. Those get a little old.

She simply thought others of faith might want to see an image that surprised her, cheered her, and made her want to return to St. Lucy, her Catholic parish, after a difficult two years.

That hardly seems likely. It God wanted her to return to the Catholic Church, he would have put a Virgin Mary on the iron. Or a saint Who-its. He obviously wants her to switch to Pentecostalism. You can tell by how ecstatic the Jesus looks. He’s looks like he about to get up and dance.

“I think it’s how we interpret things. It’s more of a personal thing. God works in his or her own way,’’ said Keyes, who believes that God or saints might choose to appear “in person, as opposed to on a toaster, or a cinnamon roll or a Frito, or whatever. But then, God does what it wants.’’ A spokesman for the Archdiocese of Boston did not comment yesterday.

Don’t even need to comment on that bit. Hilarious. I do like how she refers to God as “it”, though.

Coady’s iron is otherwise unremarkable: manufactured for the Wal-Mart house brand, with a basic dial for fabric settings and a steam/dry switch.

Steam! But, that’s Satan’s work. That’s not Jesus at all, it’s … it’s … Rick Astley!

Sources have revealed that the “Old Pope”, Karol Wojtyla, aka John Paul the 2nd, would, at least on occasion, flagellate himself as a form of penance. This old school method of penance was officially banned by the Catholic Church in the 14th century and is usually kept pretty hush within the church, but the Opes Dei order as well as Mother Teresa have also partaken in the practice.

“As part of the Vatican’s investigation, thousands of documents have been examined by officials from the Congregation for the Causes of Saints. Among them is the testimony of Polish nun Tobiana Sobodka, a member of the Sacred Heart of Jesus order.

She worked for Pope John Paul in his private Vatican apartments and at his summer residence in Castel Gandolfo near Rome.

Sister Sobodka said: “Several times he would put himself through bodily penance.

“We would hear it – we were in the next room at Castel Gandolfo. You could hear the sound of the blows when he flagellated himself. He did it when he was still capable of moving on his own.”

The whipping is also confirmed by Bishop Emery Kabongo, for several years a secretary for Pope John Paul.

He said: “He would punish himself and in particular just before he ordained bishops and priests before passing on the sacraments he wanted to prepare himself. I never actually saw it myself but several people told me about it.” “

The doctrine of Redemptive Suffering teaches that Christ died for our sins, suffering while doing so. And, members of the Catholic Church are part of the body of Christ. Therefore … ok, it’s getting pretty deep in here …

Thank you sir, may I have another