On deconversion

This clip with Matt Dillahunty details nearly my precise experience with deconversion (forward to about 3:45 through 8:00):

When all the evidence from the Bible, early Christian writings, theology, Jewish historians and philosophy falls, the only thing believers have left is the case from faith, which, as Dillahunty notes, can be applied to the belief in anything, from Christ to Shiva to Xenu to Isis to Horus to Osiris to the great and benevolent FSM.

What people like Dillahunty find is that because they care enough to try to figure out whether their beliefs are actually true or not, they are met with the following choice: to continue the ruse of belief just to make themselves and other people happy, in other words, to be a hypocrite, or the only other option, to be genuine about how they really think and feel. I realize some nonbelievers must continue the ruse out of fear of reprisal, threats, etc. (and that is unfortunate in and of itself), but extenuating circumstances aside, people, like Dillahunty and myself who find themselves in that chasm between faith and nonbelief usually decide to give up the ruse because it is the only ethical position to take.

Life in the major key

Evidently, some enterprising people with too much time on their hands have been creating remakes of songs, this time in rendering minor-key songs in the major.

Here is a major key version of R.E.M.’s “Losing My Religion,” which was originally written, and for good reason, in A minor:

Yuck. Yes, there’s a reason why it was written in a minor key. This is the original by comparison:

Here is another bizarre ear-bleeding tune:

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Tarantino’s movie universe

IGN.com

I highly recommend this article from Ali Gray at IGN.com on how characters within Quentin Tarantino’s movies are either connected with characters from his other movies or who have actually seen the movies themselves, thus creating some kind of ultra-fictional bizarro-world of character interactions.

I can’t break down the whole article without taking a lot of time because it is long, but here is one example: Mia Wallace in “Pulp Fiction” refers to a pilot episode of a show called “Fox Force Five,” which is eerily similar to elements in “Kill Bill:”

In fact, we should give Tarantino more credit than that: he’s created two universes in one. Quentin has confirmed that From Dusk Till Dawn (which he co-wrote) and Kill Bill are “Movie movies” i.e. they’re films that the characters from his /other/ films enjoy. For instance, in the little-seen, Tarantino-produced drama Curdled, a character is seen watching the Gecko brothers from FDTD on TV. This goes some way to explaining their cartoonish violence and supernatural elements; it’s also why no one in Reservoir Dogs lives in fear of a vampire attack. The rest of Tarantino’s films exist in the ‘Realer Than Real’ universe, which is marginally less ludicrous but nonetheless abides by the rules of our world. Brands like Red Apple Cigarettes and Big Kahuna Burger might exist in both universes, but characters can’t cross between them.

This information leads you down all sorts of exciting paths. Is it feasible that, having watched Kill Bill and marvelled at The Bride’s expert swordsmanship, Pulp Fiction’s Butch Coolidge had his eye drawn to the samurai blade in that ill-fated pawn shop? Even more out there: can it be mere coincidence that Mia Wallace’s description of her failed TV pilot, Fox Force Five, sounds so much like the plot of Kill Bill? Is it Uma Thurman playing The Bride, or Mia Wallace?

Hang on a minute. Maybe you noticed Michael Parks‘ lawman drawling his way through From Dusk Till Dawn, Kill Bill /and/ Death Proof? That’s Sheriff Earl McGraw, and he’s an exception to the rule. Tarantino considers him a crossover character, capable of existing in both the ‘Movie Movie‘ universe and the ‘Realer Than Real’ universe. Why? Just to be difficult, we imagine. Tarantino also considers Harvey Keitel‘s fixer ‘The Wolf’ a crossover character (despite the fact his only appearance is in Pulp Fiction), so don’t be surprised if he turns up as the villain in Kill Bill Vol. 3 in the year 2024. We’re through the looking glass here, people.

Here is the “Fox Force Five” clip:

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Shocker: Priests quibble over gay bishops

For people who talk so much about morality, the divine and transcendence, believers sure do find a way to make the church and religion look more and more like the man-made, carnal institutions that they are.

Although New York Times op-ed contributor Alan Cowell doesn’t break any new ground with his headline, “A Church Diverted by Issues of Sexuality and Gender,” his article does, once again, highlight just a few of the ways the church as an institution is positively obsessed with sex, sexuality and what happens in bedrooms once the doors are closed. He notes that last month,

the Church of England voted — narrowly and against the judgment of its priests and bishops — to reject the notion of women’s joining the episcopate, even though the titular supreme governor of the church is a woman: Queen Elizabeth II.

In January, the bishops themselves followed up with a potentially epochal ruling admitting openly gay priests in civil partnerships to their ranks, provided that, unlike heterosexual bishops, they remain celibate.

So, in the latter case, in other words, it is perfectly OK to be a gay bishop; you just have to give up sex as a consequence. Of course one has to wonder, as a person in the article pointed out, how does the church intend to police this stipulation? Video cameras in every bishop bedroom? Every bathroom stall? Every confessional?

Cowell also noted that he recently visited a small church in the northern part of London, and sex was not mentioned at all, leading to this conclusion:

That contrast between the congregants’ modesty and the issues of gender and sexuality absorbing church leaders seems to underline a sense that the Anglican elite and the rank-and-file churchgoers have, like the scriptural Magi after visiting with the infant Jesus, left by different routes.

It could be argued that the congregants themselves are in a kind of denial, reciting their prayers by rote in search of redemption and turning away from themes inspired by Britain’s changing society.

He ends by highlighting some stats that he deemed “ominous” about the state of religion in Wales and England from 2011.

While Christianity remained the dominant faith, the percentage of the 56 million population calling itself Christian fell to 59.3 percent from 71.7 percent over a decade, while other religions, particularly Islam, burgeoned. And the proportion of people professing no religious faith at all increased to 25.1 percent from 14.8 percent.

Millions of people, in other words, dropped out of Christianity and embraced atheism or agnosticism — surely a more ominous trend than the gender or sexuality of any of them.

Actually what appears “ominous” to me is the church’s approach to sex in the first place. The reason, I would wager, that more and more people are leaving faith is that, for one reason, Christianity’s leaders, especially at the Vatican, appear as if they are just making up religious doctrine and law as they go along, the new and ridiculous rules I just mentioned not the least among them. I mean, seriously, the church just can’t make up its mind whether God really loves everyone — like you know, literally, and not in some kind of weird symbolic way — and hence the church should except gay people for who they are, or whether we should “hate the sin but not the sinner” or whether God really does want all gays stoned to death as per the Bible.

Take the case of the Pope‘s esteemed decision to change policy on unbaptized children. For hundreds of years, these unfortunate little ones were exiled to purgatory or limbo or … whatever. Well — hey presto! — forward to the year 2007, and Joseph Ratzinger decides out of the blue that these infants may actually be able to go to heaven after all. I say “out of the blue” because Vatican officials backed this decision based on “extensive theological research” apparently unavailable to every other God-inspired Pope through the Vatican’s long history. This is the kind of gobbledygook that begins to weigh on people after awhile. I mean, people can be compelled to believe all kinds of fairy tales if their eternal soul is on the line, but the constant bickering and infighting among folks of the same religion and endless rerouting of policies and agendas does not bode well for a religion that takes its answers from an all-knowing, awe-inspiring god. If only God would give the faithful a new revelation to clear up some of these policy matters and make it abundantly clear where the almighty stands on gay marriage, purgatory, abortion, stem cell research, condoms in Africa, burning witches, enslaving humans and religious crusading.

Only if …

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Gaming and feminism

Right on cue, P.Z. Myers doesn’t waste any time dubbing this promotional image of a video game called “Dead Island: Riptide for Europe” as “vilely misogynist,” yet fails to ruminate on how he would feel if a “hot” male body was depicted in such a way. I mean, for god’s sake, if you insist on showing graphic content such as this, there are only two options: either you show a mutilated female body or a mutilated male body. Does Myers and the feminist crowd want equality or not? Or do they just want men to be the exclusive victims of violence and women to be portrayed only as fragile flowers who somehow stand above the fray of human suffering? I chafe at this image as much as the next guy, but doesn’t it at least say something about the equality that has already been achieved that marketing material such as this can see the light of day without unraveling society as we know it?

Sun worship and Florence Nightingale

I’m currently reading, “Cleopatra: A Life” by Mary Schiff, and in Chapter V, she mentions a trip Florence Nightingale took to Egypt. Since she remained part of the Church of England, Nightingale apparently did not make the leap from merely observing similarities between the Jesus Christ stories in the New Testament and Osiris and many other gods of antiquity that predate Christ and most likely form the basis for our conception of him.

Here is what she has to say on a Sunday morning in an Isis temple:

I cannot describe to you the feeling at Philae. The myths of Osiris are so typical of our Saviour that it seemed to me as if I were coming to a place where He had lived — like going to Jerusalem; and when I saw a shadow in the moonlight in the temple court, I thought, “Perhaps I shall see him: now he is there.”

Of course, she was also apparently not astute enough to realize that all of them derive from sun god worship, which not surprisingly, has been recorded in most all times and locations in history, from ancient South American myths to Africa, the Middle East and even China.

The Christ myth is basically a hodgepodge of the various common themes.

See also: The number 12Jesus Christ in comparative mythologysolar deities and this video:

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