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One of the principle disadvantages of atheism is that we’re deprived of one extra reason to skive off work – religious holidays. “Sorry, I can’t come in today because 2000 years ago nothing of any major note happened,” is, apparently, not considered a valid excuse by most employers. So I started thinking – if I wanted to accrue some major extra holiday time, which religion offers the best bang for my buck? What faith should I convert to for maximum enforced leisure time?
On the surface, Judaism looks pretty good. The requirement to keep the Sabbath basically rules out 52 days in every year. Not only that, but you really can’t do much on the Sabbath at all; there’s an extensive list of no-nos including untying knots and putting out fires (so if you’re tied to a burning bed you’re royally screwed). That’s 52 days of uninterrupted chilling, which sounds like a sweet deal. However, I work standard UK office hours – nine-to-five, Monday to Friday – so I’m getting the Sabbath off every week anyway. Plus, I’m allowed to put out my bed if it catches fire, which is definitely an improvement on the Jewish approach. So Judaism gets the thumbs down – I’ll have to find another way to stiff my employer.
Christians get Sundays off (unless you’re a Seventh-Day Adventist) for worship, but that’s a hangover from their Jewish roots, and is covered by the weekend anyway. They also get Christmas and Easter as bonus work-free days, and that’s not half bad. Christmas, as everyone knows, is an awesome festival of gluttony, and Easter means an overabundance of Cadbury’s Crème Eggs, possibly the best confectionery ever crafted by mortal hands. I can definitely see the attraction; but then I live in a Christian country, so I get these two days whether I want them or not. In any case, two days out of a whole year is rather weak; I’m after a bit more free time than that. I could get a few extras by joining the more-than-a-little-unhinged Philadelphia Church of God, who pack in an extra week’s-worth by nicking Jewish festivals, but I don’t live in Philadelphia (although I do enjoy the cheese spread).
Muslims are also expected to observe one day a week – in their case it’s Friday – but are also supposed to observe their major sacred days. However, observance is all that’s required; there’s no technical reason for a Muslim to avoid work on Mawlid an Nabi (Mohammed’s birthday) or on any other holy day. I suppose I could try and swing it – after all, how many UK employers possess an intricate knowledge of Islamic festivals? – but they don’t actually have that many religious days anyway, so would it really be worth it?
Some faiths get bugger-all in the way of holidays. Daoists get just two, the Chinese New Year and the Moon Cake Festival, but pity the poor Shintoists, who get only one – Gantan-sai, the Shinto New Year ceremony – which has already passed this year anyway. Those crazy Scientologist kids are also limited to just the one festival, which naturally is the birthday of their cult’s founder, March 13th.
The Baha’is, now, they’ve got the idea. I count nine Baha’i holy days on which trading is officially suspended: Naw Ruz, First Day of Ridvan, Ninth Day of Ridvan, Twelfth Day of Ridvan, Declaration of the Bab, Ascension of Baha’u'llah, Martyrdom of Bab, Birth of the Bab and the Birth of Baha’u'llah. Add that to the weekends and Christian holidays which I get for free, and that’s a total of 115 days off per year, nearly a third of my entire working life. I think I sense a religious epiphany coming on…
Well, now that I’ve given up on Dr Michael Bisconti as a Poe, I’m forced to look elsewhere for my daily dose of religious wingnuttery. Enter Bible Doctrine News, a strange mix of Rapture Ready fundamentalism, astrology and numerology, which looks at current events through a highly skewed lens. Some highlights are the explanation of numbers in Scripture, the page about how Ted Bundy’s life parallels the rise of the state of Israel, some information on Mars being an astrological analogy for Jesus on the cross and of course, the obligatory Obama bashing – although this time President Obama comes under fire for having long, narrow hands, “like a liberal arts major with inherent instability…”
Amazing as it may seem to those of us who regularly dive into the lakes of fundy-mentalism, there are Christians out there who do not believe that the Genesis account is a true and accurate historical record of events at the dawn of time. They do, in fact, regard it much as we do, as a myth, created by people with little scientific knowledge to explain the origins of the world they saw around them. Such Christians have no problems with the theory of evolution, since they recognise that Genesis is a fable, intended not to describe actual events but to point to a higher truth: that God created the Universe (by some means) and that Mankind is separated from God by sin. To which I say, good on you, progressive Christian types! Well done for recognising that the Bronze Age didn’t have all the answers! But here’s the thing…
If you accept that Genesis (and, if you’re a really liberal Christian and interested in Middle Eastern archaeology, probably Exodus as well) was fabricated for the purpose of religious edification, what grounds do you have for claiming that Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were not equally fictitious? After all, they constitute the only historical documents we have which describe the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, and it can be easily shown that Mark, Matthew and Luke all share very similar sources, including one another. Nowhere outside the Bible do we have documentation of Jesus’ existence – yes, there’s a forged passage in Josephus, and a couple of other historians like Tacitus mention the existence of the early Christian church, but these make no mention of the man himself – and we have found no archaeological evidence which would suggest he was a real human being. All we have are the words of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, which we know to have been written long after the events they describe. If the authors of Genesis saw fit to compose some nice stories to propagate their faith, who’s to say the Gospellers didn’t do the same?
When I was a boy, one of my favourite books was Roger Lancelyn Green’s Myths Of The Norsemen. The stories of Thor, Odin, Loki et al were immensely thrilling, and I whiled away many happy evenings reading about the Æsir and their adventures. I think it’s fair to say that of all the religions, the ancient Vikings had by far the most bitchin’ pantheon – but I never thought any of it was real.
What am I to make then, of the Odinic Rite, a cult for whom Roger Lancelyn Green’s book is basically the Bible? This lot genuinely believe in the Norse gods, not as literary or mythical figures, but as real, present entities, who can be encountered in daily life. They’re big on runic magic, ancestor worship and mead. Many of them have moustaches. They also manage to simultaneously hold fairly right-wing conservative views (they don’t like homosexuals or abortionists) and environmental hippy-pagan opinions (very big on sustainable living) side-by-side.
I want to like the Odinists (how many other religions can honestly wear this T-shirt without a shred of irony?) but they do have a slightly disturbing undercurrent of racial superiority going on. It’s not overt, but there are a number of statements like:
“…we Odinists must ceaselessly seek to restore again in our folk their folk-consciousness and pride and responsibility.”
“HAIL THE FOLK!
HAIL OUR ODAL LANDS!”“The natural religion for the Indo European peoples (often called Northern European) is what today is called Odinism.”
“The legitimate right of ALL peoples to pursue their cultural traditions in a racial or national context has been submerged”
which would hardly look out of place on a BNP site. Maybe I’m misjudging them, but I get the impression that there are very few Black or Asian Odinists out there. It’s very much a faith for white, Anglo-Saxon Viking-wanabees.
Kudos to ‘em, though, for sticking rigidly with a mythology which makes even Mormonism look like a rational and well-reasoned faith. No matter how metaphorically they spin it, I can’t really get over the idea that these guys genuinely believe in Thor…
Remember a few weeks back, when Christian Voice decided the atheist bus campaign should go up before the ASA?
The ASA have “concluded the adverts were unlikely to mislead or cause widespread offence and closed the case.”
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAA!
Here’s a link to Stephen Green’s apoplectic response…
(h/t to Nullifidian for spotting this)
Yes, it’s a Poe. Sorry to disappoint.
Problem is, when satire gets this close to reality, can we honestly continue to call it satire? Fred Phelps and his ilk happily trumpet the exact same sentiments – in the exact same words – and we know damn well that they’re for real. So how close to the bone can you get before your lampoon becomes seen as a legitimate endorsement?
I confess, I’ve long believed that the LF Nexus was for real, but my recent trawlings of the site have finally convinced me that it’s Poe-worthy. Little things like the ridiculous numbers, the truly bizarre and extreme views, the tagline “A Stew of SATIRE, Science & Spirituality” (their caps), the blurry pic of Dr Bisconti that looks (in the words of FrodoSaves) “like Harrison Ford with wine-stained lips”… it’s all added up to a conviction that I have, in fact, been royally Poe’d upon. The killer blow was when I decided to take a look at the homepage of WebPsyops, Inc, who are building Bisconti’s new website. As well as a time machine, apparently. I snorted with laughter, and then finally came to the conclusion that some (very industrious!) person out there was yanking my chain.
So – kudos to whoever the real person behind Michael Bisconti actually is, but I’d strongly advise caution. I consider myself a reasonably bright person, and yet it’s taken me a number of in-depth viewings of the site to establish its fakery. Should someone who holds similar views to “Dr Bisconti” happen across the Nexus, it’s quite possible they would take it for reality, and that could lead to a whole world of trouble. The anti-gay stuff is especially inflammatory, and does not appear at all to be tongue-in-cheek. A few more nods, a few more knowing winks interspersed with all the crazy would go a long way towards establishing the LF Nexus as a classic piece of satire, as opposed to a object lesson in fringe lunacy.
Since WordPress introduced this new polling feature a few months ago, I thought now would be a good time to use it. What do you think? Poe or no?
Xthemsqt was rhapsodic.
“This is such a beautiful world,” he/she opined. “Look at the way the light of our distant sun reflects off the equatorial permafrost. Why, our best astronomers have proven that, were our planet but a few million qzeks closer to the sun, the precious ice covering would melt, and we would cook in the heat. And, were we somewhat further away, the ammonia oceans would freeze and we would no longer be able to harvest the precious fzurk-mk.
“It seems to me that only an intelligent Creator could have fashioned such a world. Why, isn’t it too extraordinary to be coincidental that we, who could not survive without methane, just happen to live on a planet whose glacial atmosphere is more than 30% methane gas? And don’t you think it astonishing,” he/she continued, waving a lazy flipper-analogue in the general direction of his/her own opalescent and mucoidal torso-segments, “that we should be provided with such an abundance of tasty exoskin parasites on which to feed?” He/she plucked a quivering lbcksaat-grub from beneath a fleshy fold, and quickly absorbed its electrical charge. “These delicious morsels were clearly designed for our nourishment, don’t you think?”
Flemsqat sensed the mass of his/her elder relative through his/her sensory nodes. Turning his/her third snout in Xthemsqt’s direction, he/she looked pensive.
“Most excellent Xthemsqt,” Flemsqat began. “I fear there is a flaw in your reasoning. Although you are correct, in that we are clearly situated on a world ideal for our needs, I believe you are mistaken when you assume that it was designed for our benefit. Is it not possible that perhaps it is we, in existence for such a short part of this planet’s history, who have adapted to our surroundings?”
A low and disapproving farting sound erupted from Xthemsqt, but Flemsqat continued unabated. “Imagine, if you will, a world very much unlike our own. Suppose that it were much hotter, so hot that hydrogen dioxide melted, and suppose the atmosphere was rich in corrosive oxygen. Imagine a world without dfgrith, where the gravity was ten times our own. Now consider creatures that might evolve on such a world. Carbon-based, say. Bilaterally symmetrical. Creatures that are so alien, so otherworldly, that they experience the universe in a profoundly different way – by detecting electromagnetic wavelengths, for example. Creatures that have to break down organic matter to obtain nourishment.”
Xthemsqt indicated, with a casual twist of a tentacle, that he/she followed.
“Now consider,” continued Flemsqat, “what such beings might think. They would say, ‘Look at how warm our world is, and how well suited for our particular form of life!’ But you and I would know, most excellent Xthemsqt, that such a world was no Paradise, but the worst sort of Hell – why, we would not survive for mere kpliks in a place like that!”
“What is your point, esteemed Flemsqat?” drawled Xthemsqt, languorously wallowing in a pool of his own spthrge. He/she was confused by the course this conversation was taking, and emitted a brief burst of bewildered high-intensity radiation.
“Simply this, O most excellent kinsman, simply this. What if we have not so much been placed in a world designed for our comfort, but rather have evolved to exist comfortably in such a world? Had the setup been different, had the planet been warmer, or larger, or in a different star system, it is true that we would not have arisen as a species – but perhaps something else would! Can you imagine how foolish it would be if the carbon-based creatures we considered a moment ago were to deduce, from the eminent suitability of their planet, the existence of some Divine Creator? Well might you undulate your gibbl in mirth at the idea!”
Xthemsqt looked discomfited. He/she was not used to having his/her ideas questioned, especially by a young upstart like Flemsqat, who was barely out of gbothlk. There did not seem, however, to be a suitable reply. Xthemsqt let out a flatulent sigh and allowed his/her gibbl to droop slightly in defeat. Then, being the elder of the two (and constrained by the dictates of propriety), he/she proceeded to kill and dissect Flemsqat, for the execrable crime of heresy.
The moral? Nobody likes a smartass, even if he’s right.
It’s not enough for Dr Michael Bisconti to make up his own qualifications – he’s also seen fit to imagine himself a special award, too. Yes, Dr Bisconti is the proud winner of a “Samson” award from the Behavioural Science Award Society.
Now you would imagine that a group with a membership of over 160,000 (that’s more than the American Psychological Association and more than four times as many as the American Psychiatric Association) would have a fairly considerable presence on the internet. You would expect a Wikipedia page, a substantial website, membership lists, contact details… Amazingly enough, though, the only site which even mentions the BESCAS is www.bescas.com – the site linked above. Call me suspicious, but when the webpage layout is damn near identical to Bisconti’s, and when it carries the same tell-tale over-inflated figures and “coming soon” announcements, I tend to suspect that the good Doctor may have pulled his “Samson” straight out of his behind…
Bisconti does deserve his award, though, for his advancement of the field of Pneumiatric Psychology. This differs from other forms of psychology in that it… well, it’s hard to say really, since Bisconti has done nothing to define the term, even at the Pneumiatry Institute’s own webpage. Call me a cynic, but I would go so far as to say that “pneumiatry”, much like the related discipline “anthropiatry” is a meaningless, made-up word from out of Dr Bisconti’s head. Given that every page on the internet which mentions either term carries the LF Nexus trademark TimeCube page layout, it’s not too much of a leap to assume that no-one outside of the LF Nexus uses them, and that they therefore have no meaning outside of Dr Bisconti’s batshit crazy institution. We’ve already established that the definition and re-definition of words is something of a Bisconti hallmark…
It’s a good thing for Bisconti that he set up his own National Psychiatric Association, since the APA clearly disagree with him on some fairly fundamental issues – such as homosexuality being a mental illness. In fact, it looks pretty much as though the NPA was set up specifically to promote the agenda of homosexuality as a psychological condition. Mind you, the LF Nexus’ most recent research shows that gay people are not, in fact, mentally ill – they are mentally dead! Upping the ante a bit, Dr Bisconti now claims (as of last Monday) that homosexuality is a choice, and that homosexuals suffer from “a lack of desire to behave normally.” I’m not going to even dignify his nonsense by responding to that. If anyone in this picture is in need of psychiatric or psychological intervention, I think we can safely say that it’s Dr Bisconti himself.
Like New Age hippy shit? Fond of the ideas of karma, reincarnation, astral projection and spirit guidance? Want to subscribe to Eastern mysticism but lack the requisite language skills? You’re going to love Eckankar…
Eckankar, or the Religion of the Light and Sound of God, is a truly genius mish-mash of New Age psychobabble. At its core, it attempts to unite believers with the Divine Spirit of ECK by means of “spiritual exercises” such as chanting the mantra “Hu” (check out their Spiritual Exercise of the Week). Eckists believe in a duality of body and soul, seeing the physical body as mere raiment for the immortal spirit beneath. It is this spirit which they use to travel to astral realms, communicate through dreams and generally perform all kinds of entirely unverifiable feats.
The leader of the Eckankar movement is referred to as the Mahanta or ECK Master. The incumbent Mahanta is Harold Klemp, who has held the position since the early 80s. The ECK Master is not an object of worship for Eckists, but does serve as a sort of all-purpose guru, spiritual conduit, religious leader and ethical advisor. The post was originally held by the founder of the movement, Paul Twitchell, (a former L. Ron Hubbard disciple. Who would have guessed?) in the 1960s, and is passed down from one leader to the next. In spite of the fact that there is no record of the faith prior to Twitchell’s appearance, the faith has apparently been around for millennia, safe in the hands of such spiritual luminaries as Fubbi Quantz, Gopal Daz, Yaubl Sacabi and Rebazar Tarz. Does anyone else think these names sound a little bit Jedi-esque? My personal favourite is Rami Nuri, who lives on Venus. Yes, the planet Venus – Eckankar isn’t just for Earthlings…
The scriptures of Eckism can by found in Paul Twitchell’s book, the Shariyat-Ki-Sugmad, although of course it was actually written by spiritual beings back in the mists of time, and not made up out of whole cloth by Twitchell in any way. The Shariyat is a collection of Twitchell’s writings on astral projection, reincarnation and so on, although they bear remarkable similarities to the writings of Julian P Johnson, a noted writer on Eastern mysticism from the 1930s. So much so, in fact, that Twitchell has been repeatedly accused of plagiarism…
In spite of the fact that Twitchell’s con is now evident (his widow, Gail, who co-founded the movement, later claimed, “Paul just made up the whole Eckankar thing”), Eckankar is alive and well today, and in America alone the cult claims around 36,000 followers. Numbers in the rest of the world are hazy, but could be as high as 500,000. In the mould of Scientology and Mormonism, Eckankar proves that if you spout enough bullshit, eventually you’ll have a full-blown religion.
Recently, I delivered a rather harsh critique of Debra Rufini’s latest afterbirth of an argument directed at Richard Dawkins. Most of her points could be dealt with as succinctly as they were made, but one – the idea that living things possess an intangible animation which differentiates them from inanimate matter – was quite new to me, and that at least means it warrants a fuller investigation.
My initial response to this is actually quite straightforward. In common parlance, we use “living” as a descriptive term to denote entities which exhibit certain characteristics. Generally speaking, “living” things are those which maintain a homeostatic internal state through metabolic processes (they ingest certain molecules and excrete others), grow, reproduce and exhibit responses to stimuli. This distinguishes an armadillo, say, from a rock. However, it is quite possible to build, with modern science, an artificial entity which exhibits all of these characteristics. We have already built self-replicating, stimulus-responsive, metabolically-powered robots (though not yet any single robot with all the properties of a living thing); so it’s surely only a matter of time before we create something which is, for all functional definitions of the term, alive. From this, we can deduce that the spark of life is really nothing more than a way of determining certain information about something, in the same way that we use the term “orange” to describe objects which reflect a particular electromagnetic wavelength, or “warm” to refer to things whose molecules are in a more excited state than our own.
I doubt, however, that Ms Rufini will be satisfied with this. Her argument concludes that, “The miracle of life can only come from a Creator God,” so one is to assume that she derives the existence of God from the existence of life. This is a highly specific formation of the Design Argument: we don’t have a scientific explanation of how life arose, so goddidit. The problem is, we do have a scientific explanation of abiogenesis – just not a simple, bite-sized one that can be understood easily. With apologies to all concerned, I offer my very-much-dumbed-down explanation…
It was Stanley Miller’s famous “primordial goo” experiment in 1952 which set the whole abiogenesis ball rolling. By passing an electrical charge through a mixture of compounds thought to simulate Earth’s early atmosphere, Miller and his colleague Harold Urey were able to spontaneously generate organic molecules such as amino acids (the basic building blocks of proteins). Miller and Urey theorised that lightning strikes and volcanic activity could have powered reactions in the Earth’s infancy which created the fundamental molecules of life.
It was later shown (and much trumpeted by creationists) that Miller’s estimates for the ratio of gases in his experiment was drastically wide of the mark, and the results proved far less conclusive when a more realistic mixture was used. However, his work did pave the way for further investigation into abiogenesis, and among the many competing theories, it is the study of RNA replicators which is proving most promising.
One of the most prominent theories in the field is the RNA World hypothesis. RNA can be thought of as a sort of primitive DNA – as you can see from the diagram, it has a structure not dissimilar to DNA. The RNA World hypothesis posits that life-forms based on RNA (which forms comparatively easily in the primordial mix that replaced Miller’s) arose and populated the world before DNA-based life. The problem with this idea is that no-one has ever encountered or created self-replicating RNA strains – until now. Recent research at the Scripps Research Institute in California has shown that RNA molecules can not only reproduce without the extra cellular machinery that was thought necessary, but can also evolve and compete for resources. In effect, they have created RNA-based life, which gives considerable credence to the concept of an RNA World. From there, it is a short step to DNA-based life, and thence to – us!
Unlike the theory of evolution, the RNA-world hypothesis still has a number of flaws, and may yet be disproved entirely. However, it’s a far simpler explanation for the origins of life on Earth than divine intervention. Positing a god leaves you open to a vast variety of criticisms, such as, “How did God create the basic proteins of life?”, “Where did God come from?”, “Why did God do it?” and so on. We may not know for certain why we are alive, but we can say, with confidence, that there are a great many theories which provide a better explanation than a Creator God.
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