Frigid Spring

El juicio de Paris, Enrique de Simonet, 1904

It's a title that works on so many levels. After writing the longest string of words I've ever put together, well beyond my Buffy retrospective and edging out my criticism of Star Trek Into Damnation, part one of my Scarlett Johansson indulgence left me a bit listless. And more than a little irritated that the review's been on the front page for exactly two months and garnered precisely one view - I feel like Rivers Cuomo after Pinkerton, which I haven't heard, or Bill Murray after The Razor's Edge, which I haven't seen. Er, point made. Having readers might help. All I need is a little discourage, or perhaps as with Donnie Darko over a decade ago I'm waiting for other people to discover it so that I can refresh the tree of smugness with the blood of latecomers. I haven't been as single-minded about a film since I saw Battle Royale - I've got the Under The Skin soundtrack on vinyl, a promo ad cut out of The Guardian I read on the day I saw it, and my DVD pre-order date stamped over a month ago. Despite that, I'm still far more restrained than the individual on IMDB who declared of Ms Johansson that he would happily "drink her bathwater". People like that make fans look like obsessives and ruin my chances of ever having children with her. It's spring after all - a time of fertility and flourishing of the quick.

Sweet Bird of Truth

P52 Verso, Public Domain

This may read as a disjointed rambling piece as it was stitched together from three parts.

You have to beLIEve me!

As an atheist I have to admit to being quite envious of the sense of community I see in churches. One of the reasons I try to go to the local shop as often as possible, while others point out how much I could be saving by visiting the outlets of the megacorps, is to hold even the slightest sensation of community.

The increasingly belligerent tone of the new Dawkinsian atheists has turned me off. I really have no appetite to go round actively (de)-converting people and pulling them from their church for the aforementioned reasons. This raises a genuine problem - essentially the concept of 'the noble lie'. Is it right to use a lie to effect good in the world? That was pretty much the theme at the end of The Dark Knight and the beginning of The Dark Knight Rises concerning the cover-up of the corrupted Harvey Dent's crimes. For the protagonists, it was absolutely necessary to preserve the heroic status of Dent that they had long sought.

Promised You A Miracle

Islamic interlace patterns, public domain

Elsa: What've you got there?
Jeremy: The Gutenberg Bible... it was in the Rare Books Room.
Elsa: Think God's gonna' save you?
Jeremy: No... I don't believe in God.
Elsa: You're holding on to that Bible pretty tight.
Jeremy: I'm protecting it.
-The Day After Tomorrow, 2004

I don't recall a time when I ever believed the stories from The Bible or what I was told in Sunday School - which is not to say I had somehow transcended it at the age of ten or earlier. The only bits of the Bible that ever really interested me were the maps as I had a fascination with atlases at the time, and even then I couldn't tell what I was looking at. I can remember being in Primary 5 and having to read Genesis (likely part of Religious Education). The cover of whatever children's edition we were using particularly annoyed me with its colourful depiction of Noah's Ark and a vivid rainbow. This was at least six months before the Black Sea Deluge Hypothesis was published, but as a keen Horizon viewer I'd probably been exposed to discussions about the historicity of the flood myths and spending class time on that would have been far more interesting and at least factual. From Horizon and other science programming I was well versed in several theories. In the same year I recall advocating the impact hypothesis in a debate about the extinction of the dinosaurs, and in second year RE I was called on to try to explain the big bang and the Tunguska blast (interdimensional cross-rip?). So it would probably seem odd to the outside observer that I've long treasured, or at least not buried in a box in the basement, a children's illustrated book about the story of Easter.

As Far From God As Angels Can Fly

The Door to Hell in the Nighttime, flydime, 2010

In October my most recent promulgation on theology veered off from its intended target into an argument against circumcision. It's unsurprising that in the end I ditched half of the draft, as it took seven months to turn a collection of notes, quotes, and links into a publishable post. Amidst it I did touch upon my own perception of the servile nature of Christianity, and indeed all the Abrahamic religions - accepted translations for the words Islam (iSLaM) and Muslim (muSLiM), from the Semitic triliteral root š-l-m (cf. Hebrew 'Shalom'), are 'the act of submitting' (submission) and 'one who submits'. I grossly reject the subservient streak of those theologies - the metaphorical patriarchy, the use of the language and imagery of shepherding, and the idea of serving (in heaven). I said I was one of those people more interested in ruling in Hell. It's an expression, of course, as I remain an atheist and the one thing more ridiculous than worshipping Santa Claus is worshipping the Bogeyman. I don't think it's coincidental that those names are appropriate substitutes for God and Satan because they really are near identical methods of social control.

As Heaven is Wide / Of One Skin

Utrecht Iconoclasm, 2003, Arktos

I haven't written about theology in some time. When I started this blog theological argument was something I was quite driven by. In fact, argument of any kind appealed to me when I was eighteen. I was interested in revolution but not so much the meaning of the revolution. My series of political essays over the past two years has attempted to explain how my ideas have matured and evolved, but the same is also true of my thoughts on theology. This is not coincidental as religion has historically been substantially entwined with politics - consider that the House of Lords is divided between secular and spiritual peers. My opposition to the emergence of elites from intermediary positions is as true of politicians as it is of the clergy. Just as I've come to develop an idea of political self-representation I find a parallel in the concept of the universal priesthood.

A is to B as B is to C

Turquoise Hexagon Monolith, Prij, October 2010

A while back I was accosted by some Jehovah's Witnesses whilst taking a break out on delivery. Once I started talking about causality they dove straight into their bibles for a relevant passage that can be summarised as the old Watchmaker argument. I conceded that the houses around us were indeed built by people, on the grounds that it's quite obvious they were designed and built. We've all seen houses under construction.

There'll Be No Doubt In Your Mind, You'll Believe Everything I'm Saying

X-Files Title Card (Season 1 DVD)

Contemporary events sometimes create a cinematic zeitgeist. After Hale-Bopp passed, Hollywood simultaneously gave us Armageddon and Deep Impact - both films about large objects from space on collision courses with Earth (but only one was any good, which I'll get to at some point). Looking back at the 70s we see a slew of thrillers about political intrigue, paranoia, and conspiracies all borne from the fallout of the Kennedy assassination, Watergate and the involvement of the military-industrial complex in the Vietnam War. Since the 70s, doubting the official line has never been more popular. The X-Files, inspired by those thrillers, prominently tapped into notions of government cover-up concerning UFOs and the existence of alien life. Today doubt knows no bounds, having mostly transformed into full conspiracy theorism. From 9/11 truthers to the birthers who continue to contest the validity of President Obama's nationality, these doubts form more of a dis-belief system than healthy scepticism. And yet in these incredulous times the incredible is accepted so long as it's from an alternative voice.

That Was Then But This Is Now

A Complex Fractal Image, Public Domain

When I was in school I used to watch the BBC's Horizon, back when entertainment hadn't yet cross-bred with factual programming. Cosmology really interested me and I proceeded to loan A Brief History of Time from the school library. One thing that really irritated me was the way Hawking seemed to go out of his way to leave space for a god. Now, with his new book, he has closed the door on that - "It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going".

Architecture and Morality

BM093 New York Skyscrapers, listentoreason, 2005

Back when I was studying social sciences at college one of the classes would assign reports on an issue of our choice relevant to the course. Possibly overreaching into doctorate territory, I repeatedly tried to investigate religion and morality, or more correctly disprove the correlation between them. In fact, one of my lecturers told me it was a good idea but way beyond my means and the scope of the course. I later threw in some swear words and just published my opinion on this blog.

The claim of ownership on morality by religion in general is without substance. The Archbishop of Cantebury, Rowan Williams, in particular irritates me. Softly spoken, every time he pops-up it's to say things would be nicer if we'd just listen more to that swell fellow upstairs (but don't expect him to lift a finger). The Abrahamic religions have spent centuries now claiming that armed with their unique truth and moral compass, the ills of the increasingly secular world can be cured (secularism being equated with materialism). Problem is, this moral compass has been spinning around for millennia. What may have been permissible then is not now, and vice-versa.

Foreign 2: Sense of Doubt

Religion is the largest jump in logic endemic to civilisation. It is ultimately an attempt to explain the natural world. According to the ancient Greeks, lightning was a sign that Zeus was angry. Science knows it involves the buildup and discharge of static electricity caused by friction between ice particles in clouds.

"It's Funny Because It's True"

Totally unrepresentative...

Yes, we have the right to caricature G*d

Hmm, things don't travel as fast as they used to.

I can see the sales of Danish bacon are going to be dented in the Middle East...

New Year: Same Decade

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4573052.stm

Islamic militants have used Israel's treatment of Palestinians to rally support for their violent campaigns.
The chief rabbi however, pointed out that wars in Chechnya, the Philippines and Indonesia would be happening even if Israel did not exist.

He talks about an "anti-semitic tsunami" (which is plainly an attention grabbing phrase a year on from the Boxing Day Tsunami) and then denounces anyone who criticises Israel's internal and foreign policy as an "islamic militant". I've never called for the end of the Israeli state, but I have called for the end of establishmentarianism in Israeli - where being a Jew, being Jewish, or being an Israeli all seem to be the same thing and all make you anti-semitic if you have nothing but blind praise to give.

This just adds to the anti-semitic problem. A few years ago a Romanian newspaper, in an article on the anniversary of the end of WWII, brought up the fact that it wasn't just the Jews who were persecuted. Israel threw a fit and demanded an immediate apology for suggesting the holocaust didn't happen.

If ever a problem was not solved, if ever it just kept growing, welcome to 2006.

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THINK! SIT! PRAY!

This brings up horrible memories of primary school, singing propaganda songs about the birth-of-some-child-that-half-the-world-did-not-believe-was-the-messiah-but-you-damn-well-better-take-that-back-because-we-have-loads-of-evidence-in-our-heart shit.

1:4:9

I was reading the Seven Days pullout of The Sunday Herald last night, and two articles were particularly interesting; One and Two. The latter chimed with the book I'm currently reading: 2010 by Arthur C Clarke (although I've already read 2061 and 3001 since I saw the two films).

In case you haven't figured out what 2001 was about, if I say intelligent design do you get it? You remember when the ape touched the monolith? The future of humanity had been directed by the monolith; and when humans reached the moon, the waiting monolith signalled this to its creators.

So a problem arises... obviously, this is artificial selection - a science. But intelligent design, thus far, is psuedoscience. The current intelligent design movement in the New World is a backdoor creationist movement, but Alien intervention is surely not religious (unless some stupid humans saw stuff come down from the sky they couldn't explain, wrote it down and some other idiots translated it through 5 different languages centuries later - fucking typical).

Ponder this.

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B-16

Pondering my earlier article in which I attacked the pope, the following entered my mind:

The RCC proclaims that all popes are ordained by g*d, Christ, both, whatever (and having a "free" vote amongst the cardinals is contradictory). If you haven't heard B-16 was in the Hitler Jugend, then you've either avoided the whole thing more successfully than I or you live under a rock. I'm irritated no end by the fact that this is trumpeted about endlessly, not because I care about B-16, but because it's downright anti-German.

What you may have heard less in the Tabloid "newspapers" is that membership was compulsory after 1938 - refusal could land one in a KZ, and ultimately, perhaps, death. Thus, in order for Ratzinger to become pope, G*d must have intended for him to join the HJ. If I wanted to draw a logical fallacy, I'd say that G*d was a Nazi. However, as a militant atheist I never acknowledge the supposed existence of G*d nor ever utter the word. I've thus nullified any reason I had to write this article :D

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Free Thought?

Via BBC News

People choose what they like, and some are even able to make a profit from it. But religion constructed on a 'do-it-yourself' basis cannot ultimately help us, help people to discover the true star which points out the way to us: Jesus Christ.

How dare people choose what they like. He then:

demonstrated his emphasis on cross-faith relations, by addressing Muslim leaders and visiting a synagogue.

even though he's just told us Christianity is the one true faith. He

has warned of the dangers of secularism and of "do it yourself" religion, on the final day of his visit to his native Germany... Young Catholics should point people towards Jesus Christ in a Europe turning away from g*d, he urged.

Europe being secular and being the most advanced continent obviously doesn't ring bells in the pope's head. The Vatican should relocate to a banana republic somewhere. I sum up my thoughts with two words for the pope: Fuck Off.

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