You are currently browsing the monthly archive for February 2009.
It’s been a good week for ichthyologists… first the discovery of the awesomely groovy Barreleyes species, with its cool see-through head, and now a new bouncing, psychedelic frogfish. Fish are the new tetrapods! (technically tetrapods are the new fish, I suppose, but I’m excited.)
It’s the ongoing discovery of little oddities like these that make the sciences such fascinating disciplines. Both fish display some intriguing evolutionary adaptations – the barreleye protects its vulnerable oculars
from stinging jellyfish tentacles by keeping them inside its head (I can’t get over how cool that is), whilst our little bouncy frogfish has developed a specialised colouration to blend in with the surrounding coral. I look forward nevertheless to the inevitable creationist: “I can’t see how that could have evolvified, so… er… godiddit” argument…
Almost forgot to mention – if you, like me, are a fan of the sex, you might like to know it’s Sex Week at Frodology. Why not trundle over there and find out all about the squelchy business of Hobbit-centric intercourse?
If you’re not a subscriber to National Geographic, then you’ll have missed David Quammen’s interesting article on Darwin in last month’s issue. Fret not though, you can check it out here – it should quash the myth of the finches once and for all.
The waterways of Bristol are predominantly the province of seagulls, intermittent cormorants and a particularly aggressive flotilla of swans, so I was surprised on my stroll into work this morning to spot a couple of barnacle geese pottering about on the harbourside. Not a bird we often see around these parts, Bristol being somewhat off their main migratory routes. They’re prettier (IMHO) than regular geese, slightly smaller, and less keen to take off your arm at the elbow (I’m never going back to that petting zoo, mummy!). The most interesting thing about barnacle geese, though, is the name. Why the hell would someone think to name a large bird after a tiny crustacean?
The answer lies in Catholicism, oddly enough. In times gone by, observant Catholics had a rough time of it during Lent, when delicious meaty goodness had to be replaced by fish, or worse (if you lived far from the sea) beans and vegetables. Desperate for the juicy savour of animal flesh, the Catholic Church decided that geese – you’ll love this – were in fact a kind of seafood. The logic? They figured that, since the head and neck plumage of the goose bears a vague resemblance to the shell of the goose barnacle, the two were obviously related. In fact, concluded the protein-starved churchgoers, it’s clear that the barnacle must be the juvenile form of the goose. Since baby geese are a kind of shellfish, it follows that adult geese must be shellfish too, and shellfish (in spite of Leviticus) are perfectly permissable during Lent. More roast goose, bishop?
People do some odd things in the name of religion, and MSN has helpfully compiled a slideshow of some of the oddest. Check out especially the crazy Shugendo version of abseiling…
Let’s assume for a moment that you’re the Second Coming of Christ. Whereabouts on the planet are You going to choose to make Your glorious encore? Israel would seem the obvious place, but You’ve been there before, and it’s kinda hot and dusty and full of war – as an incarnate god, You reckon Your last trip to Earth ought to start somewhere nice. America? The fundies would love it (they rather expected You to kick things off there anyway) and You’d get great media coverage, but the Evangelical Right have always freaked You out a bit, and You don’t fancy getting executed again just because Your message doesn’t necessarily match up with theirs. What about good old England? Well, the weather sucks (although as God, You could always fix that by fiddling with the Atlantic currents) and the food is often execrable. Besides, Britain isn’t the hefty quarterback on the global playing field that she once was – nowadays she’s more of a cheerleader girlfriend for the big, burly USA. Japan and China are both out (don’t speak the lingo, plus You’ve never really been that big in the Orient anyway), and You don’t really get the strange mutations that Christianity’s undergone in Africa, so best not pop up there either. How about the depths of Siberia? Yeah, You know – freezing Russian steppe, vast tracts of it. Sounds good? Well, unfortunately, someone’s beaten you to it – he’s all set up in the middle of nowhere, and he calls himself Vissarion.
Vissarion started out as a traffic policeman called Sergei Torop, but when he lost his job a divine revelation indicated that he was the Second Coming of Christ. Adopting the handle Vissarion Christ, he founded the Church Of The Last Testament, claiming that Christianity in its current form was incomplete and lacked the Doctrine of Truth which he preached. The Church has its headquarters in the middle of freakin’ nowhere, out in the far reaches of Siberia, because this is the part of the world that will survive when the giant death-comet of Armageddon impacts the Earth. Did I not mention that? Bet you’re wishing you’d got there first, now. Yes, Vissarion predicts the imminent destruction of civilisation by comet “very soon”. You can’t fault his wisdom in keeping the exact date secret, after all, he’d look a right nelly if the prediction didn’t come true.
Life in the Vissarionite commune is hard – the gulag kibbutz has no running water, poor soil which is frozen for much of the year, no transport links to the outside world and a long list of rules, regulation and prohibitions. Veganism is compulsory, monetary exchange is forbidden, nicotine and alcohol are an ironclad no-no. Vissarion’s followers survive by scratching meagre crops from the mountain terraces, foraging in the woods and bartering with local villages, effectively living in conditions not dissimilar to their Iron Age ancestors. Part of the sect’s message is that hardship leads to salvation, so regressing to a pre-industrial hunter-gatherer society (without the hunting) is their way of ensuring that they get an express ticket to somewhere more comfortable come the inevitable giant death-comet.
The teachings of Vissarionism are a mix of Russian Orthodox Christianity and Buddhism, with the emphasis of Vissarion’s role as the mouthpiece of God. Although he claims to be a reincarnation of Jesus, Vissarion breaks with conventional Christian doctrine (really? You don’t say!) in claiming that he, himself, is not God; merely a mouthpiece for the Lord’s holy utterances. This does not stop his disciples from giving it the full “zOMG! you r teh winz!!one!!eleven!” routine whenever they mention him – “He radiates incredible love,” “Definitely the Son of God,” “He’s the only person I know who lives what he preaches,” “Our tender father” are all descriptions dropped from the lips of his wide-eyed, addle-brained, hippy-starchild fanboy followers. Essentially a cult of personality, then, Vissarionism has much in common with other tiny wee sects scattered around the Siberian mountains. The difference lies in the scope of Vissarion’s vision. He sees himself as a global personality, and regularly jets off around the globe to win converts outside of his tiny frozen commune. To date, there are around ten thousand practicing Vissarionites worldwide, generally organised into small, Amish-esque communities. It seems that all you need is a beard, a twinkly smile and a remote Siberian base to become the Second Coming.
One of the (few) nice things about living in a country with an official state religion is that decisions concerning that religion can be made not by religious leaders, but by Act of Parliament. I was reminded of this reading Betrand Russell’s Why I Am Not A Christian recently, in which he points out that it is not necessary to believe in hell in order to be a true Christian, because: “[hell] ceased to be an essential item because of a decision of the Privy Council.” This decision, taken in a ruling of 1876, related to a dispute over whether a parishioner was eligible to receive Communion in the face of his denial of hell. The Privy Council eventually ruled that:
“Even if the appellant denied the personality of Satan and the eternity of punishment, he is not liable to exclusion from the Sacrament in consequence. If the doctrine of eternity of punishment is taken from the Athanasian Creed, then the clergymen who object to it are, equally with the appellant, unworthy to receive the Sacrament. The services and prayers which recognise the existence of Satan are a code of devotion, not of doctrine required to be believed.” Jenkins v Cook (1875 -1876)
As a result, the doctrine of damnation is no longer officially a part of Anglican dogma.
I think I’m right in saying (and I’m open to correction if not) that this makes the Church of England somewhat unique, in that it’s the only faith in which a secular government can make doctrinal decisions over the heads of Church leaders. In enforcing the ruling mentioned above, the Privy Council overruled both the Archbishops of Westminster and Canterbury. Since the official and absolute leader of the Church of England is the monarch, and since the Council effectively wields authority on the monarch’s behalf, we have the interesting situation in which a group of non-Christians (theoretically, since no religious affiliation is necessary to gain a seat on the Privy Council) can run the largest Christian outfit in Britain.
Anybody else thinking of going into politics?
So it’s fine to kick out an MP from another European state who criticises the barbarism of Islam, but we’re good to go if a bunch of bigoted fuckwits from darkest Kansas want to come to the UK and scream abuse at gay people? A touch of double standards here, surely?
Personally, I’m perfectly happy for Phelps and his inbred family of hate-weasels to try and picket on this side of the Atlantic – it will make the Basingstoke performance of The Laramie Project substantially more popular (book your tickets here, folks!) and will expose them to the ridicule of the (likely far more numerous) Anonymous counter-picket. Free speech does mean freedom for Westboro’s fucktarded views as well – but it also gives us the opportunity to tell them just what a hateful, deranged, pathetic, misguided bunch of ignorant numbskulls they really are.
One of the words used regularly in the Atheosphere to describe those of a religious bent is “sheep”. It implies a herd mentality, a willingness to subsume one’s individuality. We use it as an insult or a criticism, but in actually fact to a Christian it is neither – their own holy book instructs them to be more sheep-like. Matthew 25:31-34 states
“When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his throne in heavenly glory. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left. Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world.’”
In other words, come the Rapture, the sheep are in the money. Goats are screwed – Matthew 25:41 tells us that they’re on their way “into the eternal fire prepared for the devil”. Moral of the story? Don’t be a goat. Goats get turned into barbeque.
But what are the characteristics that distinguish sheep from goats? Here’s a brief summary for those who’ve never spent a summer on a Welsh hill farm:
Sheep Goats
Follow the leader Are highly individual
Can be easily corralled Test boundaries and escape often Run from any perceived threat Are inquisitive and investigative
Stay close to the flock Roam freely, and even climb trees
It’s hardly surprising that the Bible would describe the atheists as “goats” – free thinking individuals who question everything, investigate evidence and refuse to be pigeonholed are an anathema to a religion that propagates itself through subservience and conformity. This passage in Matthew (as well as numerous other parts of the New Testament) speaks of the benefit of being sheep-like, of following the Christian herd and allowing oneself to be shepherded by the Church. Well and good, for those that choose to shrug off the responsibility for having to think for themselves, but personally, I’m happy to declare myself a fully paid up of the genus Capra.
Amongst the many tangents that I’ve investigated as a result of my obsession with all things Japanese is the discipline of Zen Buddhism. A substantial amount of my personal library (well, a couple of shelves-worth) is devoted to the study of Zen – in many ways it’s the closest thing to an atheist religion I’ve encountered. I have long practised zazen, the sitting meditation characteristic of the faith, and I find many of its tenets to be applicable to everyday life. It was with interest, then, that I read Dave Chadwick’s account of his time at a Japanese Zen temple, Thank You And Okay! Chadwick spent a period of some months living and training at Hogoji (actually Shogoji) temple, and the book relates the minutiae of Zen life as seen from the other side of the tatami. Gone are the peaceful, serene and inscrutable monks which spring to mind when one imagines a Buddhist retreat, and in their place the author introduces the argumentative Norman and Shuko double-act, the withdrawn and bitter Jakushin and the affable yet workaholic Koji. Much of the narrative is held together by Chadwick’s respectful account of the decline and eventual demise of Katagiri Roshi, a Zen teacher of some note in the Soto branch of the religion.
This is not really a book about Zen, so those seeking insight and enlightenment should probably go back to their Suzuki and Thomas Cleary translations. Thank You And Okay! is more of a travelogue than anything else, examining the human interactions within the temple and the sensation of being a gaijin Buddhist monk in a highly insular society. Little attention is paid to explaining the philosophy of Zen, but much is made of the practices of the monks – one especially interesting chapter concerns their expedition into town to perform takuhatsu, a sort of formalised begging – and of the relationships within the temple community. Many amusing stories stem from the antagonistic antics of Chadwick’s fellow gaijin Norman and his Japanese opposite number Shuko, who appear to be engaged in a persistent and multi-faceted personal feud with one another, whilst other tales concern the author’s attempts to navigate the maddening waters of Japanese local government bureaucracy, without going insane or being ejected from the country.
Chadwick’s writing is immediate and elegant, and his attention to detail is almost Dickensian at times. Although the narrative is non-linear (different episodes in the author’s experiences are interlaced to provide a sort of emotional tone-poem, rather than a chronological story) the jumps through time and space are not jarring, and in fact serve to heighten the slightly meditative nature of the story. Especially interesting (to me at least) are the book’s little diversions into Japanese Buddhist history and culture, and the comparisons that are drawn with Chadwick’s experiences in American Zen. The non-judgemental stance that he takes gives a further sense of the “otherness” experienced by the foreigner in Japan, and also serves to illustrate some of the Zen principles by which he tries (and, by his own admission, fails) to live.
Recent Comments