| Sunday Sermonette: Jesus Christ, Vampire Hunter |
[May. 27th, 2012|10:11 am] |
A very nice young man offered to prove to me that God exists. The ultimate and incontrovertible proof of God, he said, can be found in the First Letter of John, chapter 5. God exists because he tells each and every one of us so, in our hearts, and gives us concrete evidence by the fact that he sent his son Jesus. He raised Jesus from the dead to prove that he has given us eternal life, but only those who accept the evidence that God has provided.
I can hear the tinkle of scales dropping from eyes and the heavy thud of formerly godless readers dropping to their knees in repentance. Why didn't we think of that?
Let's leave aside the unprovable assertion that God speaks in our hearts and promises eternal life you have to die to see, and go straight to the offered physical evidence: Jesus.
Did Jesus even exist?
A lot of people question whether he was ever born. According to the Gospel of Luke, Jesus was born in the time of Herod the Great, who died in 4 BC, when Quirinius was Governor of Syria, which was between 6 and 12 AD, during a census that Caesar Augustus never decreed, by which his parents were absurdly ordered to travel for days to the birthplace of an ancestor who'd been dead a thousand years.
From the time of the Enlightenment, there has been considerable scholarship questioning the historicity of Jesus. These things we know: The Gospels do not record Jesus ever writing on anything more permanent than sand. None of the people who had personal knowledge of him wrote anything down. There are no potsherds or archeological remnants. There are no eyewitnesses, no contemporaneous accounts. Everything we know about Jesus comes to us from decades or even centuries later. The very earliest writings we have are from Paul of Tarsus, writing roughly a quarter of a century after Jesus died. His writings confirm that he never met Jesus while he was alive. His best claim was that he talked to people who had seen Jesus many years earlier.
Myths about dying and rising gods were common in the Middle East at the time. We can still find elements of Mithraism and other Eastern religions in Christianity today. Paul himself made reference to non-kosher additions to what were supposed to be Jewish practices.
It's interesting stuff you could spend years studying and researching. Perhaps there was a Jewish mystic named Jesus who lived in the first century, but how many of the stories that have accreted to his record are true? How can you tell? A book came out a couple years ago involving a well-known historical figure, someone who we have proof existed, and a major motion picture about him will be in theaters next month. Will people two thousand years from now be wondering about Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter?
The intersection of history, myth, and fantasy is fascinating, but it's irrelevant. My friend is incorrect in thinking that the existence Jesus in any way proves the existence of God. It wouldn't matter if the born of a virgin, water-walking, loaves and fishes feeding, rising from the dead stories were true. None of these can prove the existence of God. They just create more questions. How did Jesus walk on water? We don't know. How did Jesus feed the multitudes? We don't know. It doesn't matter how many unknowns you pile up; you can't explain them with an appeal to another unknown.
Humans will say almost anything rather than admit they don't know. The trouble is, "God did it" is an answer that provides no information whatsoever, it's just an attempt to halt further inquiry.
Call it the Argument from Personal Incredulity: "I can't imagine how X could have happened, therefore Y."
I heard a noise in a spooky dark abandoned house, therefore ghosts. What is a ghost? Why, it is the imaginary undetectable energy field that somehow contains a human personality and survives his death, becoming momentarily perceptible in creepy places like empty buildings when the lights are out.
I saw unexplained lights in the sky and therefore UFOs. What's a UFO? Funny how quickly the "Unidentified" is identified. Alien life forms traveled millions of miles to our planet, where they put on light shows and perform the occasional prostate exam on a rural person.
Put that way, it sounds ridiculous, and it is. The fact that millions of people deeply and sincerely believe in ghosts and aliens does not change that fact.
I heard a story from a long time ago told by unknown authors writing decades after the event about a magical religious figure, therefore God exists. And what is a God? Why, whatever incoherent combination of attributes answers all unanswerable questions, of course. "His ways are mysterious and it is not given that mortal men should understand" is a particularly good catchall.
How many unexplained effects does it take to make an answer? Just as many zeroes as it takes to add up to one. |
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| I quit |
[May. 27th, 2012|08:45 am] |
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So you don't show up for work for three days; only call in sick on the first day out, no call no show on days 2 & 3, so when the boss asks when you intend to return you quit via email. Ok no problem, you've been unreliable for months anyhow. What confuses me is how after you quit you file an unemployment claim and then the same day we get the paperwork you are calling begging for your job back. You think we want you back after you quit voluntarily and then try to screw us over by trying to get unemployment? Oh and the day you quit you told coworkers you already had another job do why beg or file? Oh you lied? Another reason to NEVER hire you back. Posted via LiveJournal app for iPhone. |
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| Friday Night/Saturday Morning. |
[May. 27th, 2012|05:32 pm] |
So did any readers in Melbourne experience unusually bad pain overnight on Friday? And if you've had a fracture in the last few years, or you have osteoarthritis or similar...how was your night?
I ask because my night was a bit of a shocker and I'm trying to work out whether it's that barometric pressure thing that I'm still getting used to, or something else.
Quite a few bits of me were hurting, and there were GI symptoms as well. So it might simply be Crohn's Disease. (Woke up with a possibly inflamed eye too...which also points to Crohn's Disease, but I'll know more about that when I see my eye specialist this week).
But it was unexpected, and there was also some very specific trouble around the site of the first femoral fracture and the knee and hip - enough that I wondered if something undue had happenned with the femoral nail, the femur, or both.
And it cleared up. Which is not something I would expect a Crohn's flare to do. |
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| (no subject) |
[May. 27th, 2012|12:40 am] |
Things are much better with a bacon sandwich in my belly and a Whisky Mac in my hand
ash |
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| (no subject) |
[May. 26th, 2012|11:31 pm] |
I dont know if I will be able to go to Pennsic this year. It will all depend on How my mother is doing. (we didnt think she would make it this far this well) she will get scans to see how the lung cancer is progressing this week. IF this set of chemo has slowed the growth I may be able to go.
She has agreed in theory to let a friend of mine help once the scans are done. (I may not have much but I have my friends and in that im lucky) Between that, my sister, and one of my aunts who have all said they will help.
I need to start sewing for D, Crash and Mrs Crash, and myself.
I also want to make a cover for our pennsic bed.
If I cant be there I wish I had a companion for Himself to watch over and comfort him. He is now at roses with out me and I know he misses me. |
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| Salad |
[May. 26th, 2012|09:27 pm] |
It was 85 degrees today! The Unindicted Co-Conspirator wilts at anything above 70. It was not a day for warmed over lentil loaf (a regretable experiment best left unmentioned). Today was a day for salad.
Here is Sydney Smith's famous recipe.
Recipe for a Salad
-- Sydney Smith (1771 - 1845)
To make this condiment, your poet begs
The pounded yellow of two hard-boiled eggs;
Two boiled potatoes, passed through kitchen-sieve,
Smoothness and softness to the salad give.
Let onion atoms lurk within the bowl,
And, half-suspected, animate the whole.
Of mordant mustard add a single spoon,
Distrust the condiment that bites so soon;
But deem it not, thou man of herbs, a fault,
To add a double quantity of salt.
Four times the spoon with oil of Lucca crown,
And twice with vinegar procured from town;
And, lastly, o'er the flavored compound toss
A magic soupçon of anchovy sauce.
Oh, green and glorious! O herbaceous treat!
'T would tempt the dying anchorite to eat;
Back to the world he'd turn his fleeting soul,
And plunge his fingers in the salad bowl!
Serenely full, the epicure would say,
“Fate can not harm me, I have dined to-day!”
The fact that this recipe rhymed made it memorable, and the recipe became popular in the United States as well as England. Though there are at least three versions of this poem extant, they all combine the same ingredients: boiled potato, egg yolks, mustard, onion, olive oil, vinegar, fish sauce, and salt. In the New York Times of September 12, 1857, a columnist begged to disagree.
“Now, Sir, I have tried that, and a compound more execrable is not to be thought of.”
“A bowl of lettuce is the Venus of the dinner-table. It rises upon the sight cool, moist, and beautiful, like that very imprudent lady coming out of the water, Sir! And, to complete the image, Sir, neither should be dressed too much!”
Bon Appetit! |
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| Sparing a ton of details this time.... |
[May. 26th, 2012|08:13 pm] |
Emily is home. With three vehicles in the driveway containing most of her worldly possessions.
She's in no hurry to offload them. I'm too exhausted to even worry about it.
At the moment, I'm more stoked about the movie-theatre broadcast, week after next, of the UK National Theatre's live production of Frankenstein, with Battling Sherlocks Benedict Cumberbatch and Jonny Lee Miller alternating the roles of Victor and The Creature. Spoiler alert: instead of "Puttin' on the Ritz," the Creature demonstrates his skills to the sound of Douglas playing "Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines," with similar bad results.
I made noise last night about not leaving the house for three days. Today proved otherwise, and we're out of cat fud after tomorrow morning, so I'm on the verge of settling for a non-ambulatory Memorial Day- if I can remember to:P
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