Nick Kristof of the New York Times comes at you today with a quiz, regarding the position of the Bible on various social issues. (It's seven questions and isn't automated, so grab a pen and paper.)
The gist Kristof is getting at- aside from promoting the book Unprotected Texts: The Bible's Surprising Contradictions About Sex and Desire by Jennifer Wright Knust- is that what the Bible says, and what you think it says, are often two very different things.
So in addition to the seven questions Kristof provides, I'm going to add something: have you ever, at any point in your life, read the entire Bible front-to-back? The whole thing, from Let There Be Light to Jesus at the end of Revelation saying "Surely I am coming soon". Everything. Every word.
The number's uncertain- one unsourced statistic claims 10% of Christians have, a Rasmussen poll claims 31% but it must be taken with a fair amount of salt because it's Rasmussen. Most places that quote a number seem to prefer the unsourced 10% without ever giving a hint as to where that number came from. The number is probably in that ballpark, though. As much as I read, I know I can't count myself in that group.
If you're part of some other religion, substitute the appropriate piece of scripture and ask the same question of yourself. If you're atheist, don't know what to ask of you.
That established to the meager extent we can establish it, here's the next question to consider.
For all the bickering in the world about how Religious Sect X is more true than Religious Sect Y, fill in however you like... never mind your piece of scripture. Have you ever read theirs, back to front? If you're Christian, have you ever cracked open a Koran? If you're Muslim, have you ever cracked open a Bible? Have either of you read a Talmud? Or one of the Eastern texts? I'm willing to bet not.
In fact, have you ever read any of the competing piece of scripture at all? And, though the adherents' actions are one thing, how can you judge their faith if you haven't?
Showing posts with label religion. Show all posts
Showing posts with label religion. Show all posts
Monday, May 23, 2011
Saturday, May 21, 2011
World Fails To Spontaneously End, Again
If you're reading this, you have already figured out that the Rapture has not come.
Normally, this would go without saying. But today it's apparently news. For the second time in a short while.
How many times do we have to go over this? How many times does the world have to not end before people get the point? How many times do we have to hear that the world will end "soon" before we start asking these people to stop predicting things? I understand you only really need to be right once, but come on now. This isn't predicting. This is throwing a dartboard at a calendar.
And how many people do we have to hear predict the end of the world more than once?
A cursory search of all the times the world has been predicted to end but failed turns up so many entries that I quickly lost count trying to pin down an exact number. All I can say for certain is that we are numbering in the hundreds. It's not even worth my time to try and pin down an exact count.
There is a culture, the Piraha tribe in the Amazon, that has no word for any number beyond two, and just refers to any number bigger than that as "many". (And 'one' and 'two' aren't necessarily one and two, but rather relative values, more akin to small, medium and large.) This is that. There are "many" predictions.
Let's just put it this way. Here's a list of failed end-of-the-world predictions, with the restriction that all the predictions were set for 1998.
Not that this will stop anyone from bringing up the Mayans and December 21, 2012. Or, when that prediction gets proven wrong too, simply moving on to some other guy who will predict the Rapture will come just in time for New Year's.
Normally, this would go without saying. But today it's apparently news. For the second time in a short while.
How many times do we have to go over this? How many times does the world have to not end before people get the point? How many times do we have to hear that the world will end "soon" before we start asking these people to stop predicting things? I understand you only really need to be right once, but come on now. This isn't predicting. This is throwing a dartboard at a calendar.
And how many people do we have to hear predict the end of the world more than once?
A cursory search of all the times the world has been predicted to end but failed turns up so many entries that I quickly lost count trying to pin down an exact number. All I can say for certain is that we are numbering in the hundreds. It's not even worth my time to try and pin down an exact count.
There is a culture, the Piraha tribe in the Amazon, that has no word for any number beyond two, and just refers to any number bigger than that as "many". (And 'one' and 'two' aren't necessarily one and two, but rather relative values, more akin to small, medium and large.) This is that. There are "many" predictions.
Let's just put it this way. Here's a list of failed end-of-the-world predictions, with the restriction that all the predictions were set for 1998.
Not that this will stop anyone from bringing up the Mayans and December 21, 2012. Or, when that prediction gets proven wrong too, simply moving on to some other guy who will predict the Rapture will come just in time for New Year's.
Wednesday, January 5, 2011
That Was Tina Fey, Dammit
From XKCD:
That's a hell of an idea. Get cracking. Odds are sooner or later we'll get to one or more items on the list in further detail, and in fact we did get to one of them on Friday, but to get you started:
*Sarah Palin didn't say 'I can see Russia from my house',
*Al Gore didn't say he invented the Internet,
*Napoleon wasn't short,
*You can't see the Great Wall of China from the moon,
*Cold weather doesn't give you colds,
*Shaving doesn't make your hair thicker,
*Guys don't think about sex every couple seconds, and even if we do, there's no way you can actually test that,
*If a guy's in the water waving his hands and screaming that he's drowning, he's not drowning,
*A fatwa is not a death sentence,
*A jihad is not a holy war,
*And they don't dump toilet waste out of moving airplanes.
Now never say these things again.
That's a hell of an idea. Get cracking. Odds are sooner or later we'll get to one or more items on the list in further detail, and in fact we did get to one of them on Friday, but to get you started:
*Sarah Palin didn't say 'I can see Russia from my house',
*Al Gore didn't say he invented the Internet,
*Napoleon wasn't short,
*You can't see the Great Wall of China from the moon,
*Cold weather doesn't give you colds,
*Shaving doesn't make your hair thicker,
*Guys don't think about sex every couple seconds, and even if we do, there's no way you can actually test that,
*If a guy's in the water waving his hands and screaming that he's drowning, he's not drowning,
*A fatwa is not a death sentence,
*A jihad is not a holy war,
*And they don't dump toilet waste out of moving airplanes.
Now never say these things again.
Wednesday, December 15, 2010
Letters To God
Back in April, a movie came out called Letters To God. In the movie, a boy with cancer writes, well, letters to God. People crack open the letters and heartwarminess and sappiness ensues. The Christian community liked it; everybody else wanted that hour-fifty of their lives back. The movie failed to recoup its $3 million budget.
In the movie, the letters are opened by a substitute postal worker in town. In real life, letters to God often have a different fate.
God, as one would tell you, has no Earthly address. That's a bit of a problem for post offices, who can only deliver to Earthly addresses. Letters to God, therefore, end up at the dead-letter office.
In Jerusalem.
Post offices worldwide, while they can't deliver to God, figure that Jerusalem is the place one is most likely to find him, at least according to the Jerusalem postmaster back in 1990. The fact that many letters to God explicitly carry an address including Jerusalem in it helps that belief along. So unless you've addressed it to some other city (or haven't included an address at all), your letter to God will go to Jerusalem. Some go a little nuts with the addressing, but 'To God, Jerusalem' is enough to obligate the letter to be sent as per international law.
Once there, letters are generally bound for cracks in the Western Wall. The vast majority of the letters are from Christians- not all, they do get some Jewish letters and even a Muslim letter in 2008- however, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Jerusalem's holiest Christian site, does not receive them. Only letters with the Church's address go to that church. The Western Wall has an address as well, but really about half of one. Just 'Western Wall Plaza'. It's enough of a non-address to get the God letters.
Letters to Jesus or Moses or the Holy Ghost don't get delivered. The Chief Rabbi of the Western Wall only permits the letters for God.
Of course, they do get opened and read, and all manner of people write. Some letters are heartwarming, some heartrending, some are political, and then there are those who just want lottery numbers or want to get- or be reincarnated as- hot dates.
How would that movie have looked with those kind of letters?
In the movie, the letters are opened by a substitute postal worker in town. In real life, letters to God often have a different fate.
God, as one would tell you, has no Earthly address. That's a bit of a problem for post offices, who can only deliver to Earthly addresses. Letters to God, therefore, end up at the dead-letter office.
In Jerusalem.
Post offices worldwide, while they can't deliver to God, figure that Jerusalem is the place one is most likely to find him, at least according to the Jerusalem postmaster back in 1990. The fact that many letters to God explicitly carry an address including Jerusalem in it helps that belief along. So unless you've addressed it to some other city (or haven't included an address at all), your letter to God will go to Jerusalem. Some go a little nuts with the addressing, but 'To God, Jerusalem' is enough to obligate the letter to be sent as per international law.
Once there, letters are generally bound for cracks in the Western Wall. The vast majority of the letters are from Christians- not all, they do get some Jewish letters and even a Muslim letter in 2008- however, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Jerusalem's holiest Christian site, does not receive them. Only letters with the Church's address go to that church. The Western Wall has an address as well, but really about half of one. Just 'Western Wall Plaza'. It's enough of a non-address to get the God letters.
Letters to Jesus or Moses or the Holy Ghost don't get delivered. The Chief Rabbi of the Western Wall only permits the letters for God.
Of course, they do get opened and read, and all manner of people write. Some letters are heartwarming, some heartrending, some are political, and then there are those who just want lottery numbers or want to get- or be reincarnated as- hot dates.
How would that movie have looked with those kind of letters?
Saturday, November 6, 2010
In Other Election News...
...we have a Russian performance artist named Oleg Mavromatti, currently based in Bulgaria, who has recieved some death threats accusing him of inciting religious hatred in a previous piece where he had himself crucified.
He has responded by creating a new piece, which he calls Ally/Foe, in which he is putting himself in an electric chair and putting it to an online vote on whether he lives or dies.
Clearly, this guy is unaware of the general demeanor of the Internet, in which normal people end up acting like jerks for no good reason. There's even a theory for it.
As I post this, the vote is not yet active. However, if anyone would like to head over and save him from himself, that would be greatly appreciated. The linked article supplies further information on just what's going on. He'll be in the chair for a week- and probably a whole lot longer than that if things go pear-shaped for him- and so you'll have that long to save his hide. The website is available in English, as well as Russian and Bulgarian. I want to stress here: this is a real person who, if you vote against him, has rigged it so he will really die. If you head over and then vote against him, that's on you.
He has responded by creating a new piece, which he calls Ally/Foe, in which he is putting himself in an electric chair and putting it to an online vote on whether he lives or dies.
Clearly, this guy is unaware of the general demeanor of the Internet, in which normal people end up acting like jerks for no good reason. There's even a theory for it.
As I post this, the vote is not yet active. However, if anyone would like to head over and save him from himself, that would be greatly appreciated. The linked article supplies further information on just what's going on. He'll be in the chair for a week- and probably a whole lot longer than that if things go pear-shaped for him- and so you'll have that long to save his hide. The website is available in English, as well as Russian and Bulgarian. I want to stress here: this is a real person who, if you vote against him, has rigged it so he will really die. If you head over and then vote against him, that's on you.
Saturday, October 30, 2010
Consuming, Imbibing, and Engaging In Amusement
First off, it's Rally to Restore Sanity Day. It's going on right now, in fact. Go, be fruitful and propagate the mindset.
But I would advise you to be careful before you eat, drink and be merry. Surely, you have heard of the phrase. I'm not so sure you know its origin or, more importantly, its context. So, today, let's take care of that.
The phrase 'eat, drink and be merry' comes from the Bible, first off. Bible-wise, that doesn't say much all by itself. There are a lot of different anecdotes that eating, drinking and being merry could be plugged into. The Last Supper. The Garden of Eden. Samson living it up.
In actuality, "Eat, drink and be merry" pops up twice. The first comes in Ecclesiastes 8:15. As the King James version puts it, "Then I commended mirth, because a man hath no better thing under the sun, than to eat, and to drink, and to be merry: for that shall abide with him of his labor the days of his life, which God giveth him under the sun." Sounds pretty close to what everyone imagines it to be, right?
Let's fill in the surrounding verses, 11-17. This we'll use New International for, even though it changes the key phrase, because it's much, much easier to make out; King James is a tad on the archaic side.
What you see here, in the entire chapter, is King Solomon recognizing the limits of wisdom. Sometimes life just doesn't make any sense, sometimes the bad guys win and you don't know why, and sometimes you're just not going to understand it. And if you spend too much time trying, you're going to drive yourself nuts, so you might as well lighten up once in a while.
Again, pretty much by the book.
I said there was a second place it popped up, though. Luke 12:19. The King James original: "And I will say to my soul, Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years; take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry."
Still about how one would imagine it. This time, though, context hits like a ton of bricks. It's part of Jesus' Parable of the Rich Fool. Switching back to New International, which this time keeps the key phrase, for verses 13-21.
Jesus is railing against fuigmism. The message: Eat, drink, be merry... but make sure you let those around you join in. You can really only get a certain amount of merry from having a lot of stuff, and you can really only eat and drink so much. Be nice. Spread it around. Others would like to be merry too.
But I would advise you to be careful before you eat, drink and be merry. Surely, you have heard of the phrase. I'm not so sure you know its origin or, more importantly, its context. So, today, let's take care of that.
The phrase 'eat, drink and be merry' comes from the Bible, first off. Bible-wise, that doesn't say much all by itself. There are a lot of different anecdotes that eating, drinking and being merry could be plugged into. The Last Supper. The Garden of Eden. Samson living it up.
In actuality, "Eat, drink and be merry" pops up twice. The first comes in Ecclesiastes 8:15. As the King James version puts it, "Then I commended mirth, because a man hath no better thing under the sun, than to eat, and to drink, and to be merry: for that shall abide with him of his labor the days of his life, which God giveth him under the sun." Sounds pretty close to what everyone imagines it to be, right?
Let's fill in the surrounding verses, 11-17. This we'll use New International for, even though it changes the key phrase, because it's much, much easier to make out; King James is a tad on the archaic side.
When the sentence for a crime is not quickly carried out, the hearts of the people are filled with schemes to do wrong. Although a wicked man commits a hundred crimes and still lives a long time, I know that it will go better with God-fearing men, who are reverent before God. Yet because the wicked do not fear God, it will not go well with them, and their days will not lengthen like a shadow.
There is something else meaningless that occurs on earth: righteous men who get what the wicked deserve, and wicked men who get what the righteous deserve. This too, I say, is meaningless. So I commend the enjoyment of life, because nothing is better for a man under the sun than to eat and drink and be glad. Then joy will accompany him in his work all the days of the life God has given him under the sun.
When I applied my mind to know wisdom and to observe man's labor on earth—his eyes not seeing sleep day or night- then I saw all that God has done. No one can comprehend what goes on under the sun. Despite all his efforts to search it out, man cannot discover its meaning. Even if a wise man claims he knows, he cannot really comprehend it.
What you see here, in the entire chapter, is King Solomon recognizing the limits of wisdom. Sometimes life just doesn't make any sense, sometimes the bad guys win and you don't know why, and sometimes you're just not going to understand it. And if you spend too much time trying, you're going to drive yourself nuts, so you might as well lighten up once in a while.
Again, pretty much by the book.
I said there was a second place it popped up, though. Luke 12:19. The King James original: "And I will say to my soul, Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years; take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry."
Still about how one would imagine it. This time, though, context hits like a ton of bricks. It's part of Jesus' Parable of the Rich Fool. Switching back to New International, which this time keeps the key phrase, for verses 13-21.
Someone in the crowd said to him, "Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me." Jesus replied, "Man, who appointed me a judge or an arbiter between you?" Then he said to them, "Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; a man's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions."
And he told them this parable: "The ground of a certain rich man produced a good crop. He thought to himself, 'What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops.'
"Then he said, 'This is what I'll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I'll say to myself, "You have plenty of good things laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry."'
"But God said to him, 'You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?'
"This is how it will be with anyone who stores up things for himself but is not rich toward God."
Jesus is railing against fuigmism. The message: Eat, drink, be merry... but make sure you let those around you join in. You can really only get a certain amount of merry from having a lot of stuff, and you can really only eat and drink so much. Be nice. Spread it around. Others would like to be merry too.
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
I DON'T KNOW WHY WE'RE YELLING!
I have already laid out my general views on religion in this space. I'm not concerned with what religion you follow, what you believe, or even if you don't have a religion at all, so long as whatever it is you believe makes a decent person out of you.
But that, obviously, is not the religious issue at hand lately. The religious issue at hand revolves around the proposed so-called "Ground Zero Mosque". We'd deal with the facts surrounding that, but they seem to have fallen by the wayside as far as importance to the debate, which has morphed from a single 'should we build this at this site' question to a broader... you hate to call it a "discussion" because it's more of a "shouting match"... no ,wait, that's not really the right term either; let's go with "shrieking aural hellscape" concerning Islam in general. It's not about 'should this mosque be built here'. It's 'should any mosque be built anywhere', and in one case noted on the Rachel Maddow Show earlier tonight, it has actually gone as far as 'should Islam be legal in the United States'.
Clearly, the "Ground Zero Mosque" itself has become vestigial. It's not the subject anymore. It is simply the backdrop of a larger subject, perpetuated in a country that is mostly Christian with a decent Jewish contingent.
So to all three of you, here comes a bombshell.
You're all worshipping the same guy.
Let me repeat that, a bit louder:
God, Yahweh, and Allah are the same guy.
Seriously, did the three of you think it a coincidence that you're all fighting over the same city, Jerusalem? Because it's not.
Collectively, the three faiths are known as the Abrahamic religions. They started out on the same page, with the same historical lineage.
Everybody originally started out as Jewish. There was a gradual, growing split that saw off the Christians, but it's generally accepted that the major event that kicked things off was the Rejection of Jesus in 30 AD. For our purposes, that's enough. We just need enough historical backstory to establish the fact that the two began as one, but split off somewhere along the way. The split centers around the fact that while the Christians held Jesus up as a messiah, the Jews did not, because of a number of factors shown here. We'll stick with one- that the Messiah must be descended on his father's side from King David. As Jesus was born of the virgin Mary, this is impossible. Claims that Mary herself is descended of David are dismissed by, among other things, the fact that family lineage is passed on only through the father. And, of course, what father?
That's Jesus, though. God never appeared as human. In fact, he is not mortal. This, the Jews have zero scriptural issues with- according to our previous source,
Any of the three faiths will tell you that their high deity takes many names. Yahweh, of course, is the Jewish name, or, as it is officially, YHWH, all capitalized and without the vowels.
If you Christians will crack open your Bibles, most of you will not-so-coincidentally notice a name in there that is also written in all caps, a practice begun by one William Tyndale in the 16th century. What is it?
LORD.
The problem is, the New Testament writers- different from and chronologically later than those who did the Old Testament- had their own idea of who should get the 'lord' label, and they picked Jesus. This results in a certain amount of confusion within the Bible itself, as 'lord' is meant to refer to two different entities. The way you can tell the difference is to look at how it's written. 'Lord' is Jesus. 'LORD' is the mutual God.
So that's those two. We must still establish Islam's connection, and remember that we're not necessarily trying to establish a triangle link of Islam/Christianity, Christianity/Judaism and Judaism/Islam; only establish a common ancestral origin.
This, for Islam, is a more complicated matter. One has to start delving into the theology of it all rather than just relying on straight history. But let's start with the origin. The Muslim faith, of course, began with the prophet Muhummad, who received his first revelation from God at age 40 in 610.
You'll note I just said 'God'. I didn't say 'Allah'. This is because I'm speaking English. 'Allah' is nothing more than the Arabic word for 'God'.
The big question, obviously, is how do you know it's the same God that the Jews and Christians worship?
The Qur'an says so itself, in verse 46 of Surah 29, Al-Ankaboot. Three translations are shown in the link; we'll just go ahead and show all three.
A more detailed argument in favor of this passage can be seen here.
Now, an argument exists as to whether this is enough of a statement to qualify; whether the 'your' in 'our Allah and your Allah' refers to Jews and Christians, or simply other Muslims, and whether the 'Book' or 'Scripture' means the Talmud and Bible, or just the Qur'an.
Remember, though, Islam is known as an Abrahamic faith. Muhummad was only the last of many prophets of Islam. Abraham was another, known as 'Ibrahim' in the Qur'an. Among the others, some of which are more questioned than others but all of which show up in some interpretation or other and some spellings of which are disputed: Adam, Idris, Nuh, Lut, Ismail, Is'haq, Yaqub, Yusuf, Ayyub, Musa, Harun, Dawud, Sulaiman, Ilyas, Al-Yasa, Yunus, Zakaria, Isa, Yahya.
Those names, translated respectively: Adam, Enoch, Noah, Lot, Ishmael, Issac, Jacob, Joseph, Job, Moses, Aaron, David, Solomon, Elijah, Elisha, Jonah, Zechariah, Jesus, John.
Any further questions? Any of you? What do you think that one, singular God is thinking up there? How do you think this all looks to him, with everybody praising him and fighting for him while at the same time yelling to his other followers that he's not the correct god? He must think you're all stupid. He might love you all, but in the way one loves a dog that will excitedly chase a squirrel, bonk its head into a tree, smear himself in something disgusting, and then walk around pooping on the lawn.
Anyone want to look stupid in front of the Big Guy? Anyone? Anyone want to have a long, depressing conversation with whoever's guarding the entrance to Heaven/Paradise? Then calm down. All of you.
But that, obviously, is not the religious issue at hand lately. The religious issue at hand revolves around the proposed so-called "Ground Zero Mosque". We'd deal with the facts surrounding that, but they seem to have fallen by the wayside as far as importance to the debate, which has morphed from a single 'should we build this at this site' question to a broader... you hate to call it a "discussion" because it's more of a "shouting match"... no ,wait, that's not really the right term either; let's go with "shrieking aural hellscape" concerning Islam in general. It's not about 'should this mosque be built here'. It's 'should any mosque be built anywhere', and in one case noted on the Rachel Maddow Show earlier tonight, it has actually gone as far as 'should Islam be legal in the United States'.
Clearly, the "Ground Zero Mosque" itself has become vestigial. It's not the subject anymore. It is simply the backdrop of a larger subject, perpetuated in a country that is mostly Christian with a decent Jewish contingent.
So to all three of you, here comes a bombshell.
You're all worshipping the same guy.
Let me repeat that, a bit louder:
God, Yahweh, and Allah are the same guy.
Seriously, did the three of you think it a coincidence that you're all fighting over the same city, Jerusalem? Because it's not.
Collectively, the three faiths are known as the Abrahamic religions. They started out on the same page, with the same historical lineage.
Everybody originally started out as Jewish. There was a gradual, growing split that saw off the Christians, but it's generally accepted that the major event that kicked things off was the Rejection of Jesus in 30 AD. For our purposes, that's enough. We just need enough historical backstory to establish the fact that the two began as one, but split off somewhere along the way. The split centers around the fact that while the Christians held Jesus up as a messiah, the Jews did not, because of a number of factors shown here. We'll stick with one- that the Messiah must be descended on his father's side from King David. As Jesus was born of the virgin Mary, this is impossible. Claims that Mary herself is descended of David are dismissed by, among other things, the fact that family lineage is passed on only through the father. And, of course, what father?
That's Jesus, though. God never appeared as human. In fact, he is not mortal. This, the Jews have zero scriptural issues with- according to our previous source,
Maimonides devotes much of the "Guide for the Perplexed" to the fundamental idea that God is incorporeal, meaning that He assumes no physical form. God is Eternal, above time. He is Infinite, beyond space. He cannot be born, and cannot die. Saying that God assumes human form makes God small, diminishing both His unity and His divinity. As the Torah says: "God is not a mortal" (Numbers 23:19).
Any of the three faiths will tell you that their high deity takes many names. Yahweh, of course, is the Jewish name, or, as it is officially, YHWH, all capitalized and without the vowels.
If you Christians will crack open your Bibles, most of you will not-so-coincidentally notice a name in there that is also written in all caps, a practice begun by one William Tyndale in the 16th century. What is it?
LORD.
The problem is, the New Testament writers- different from and chronologically later than those who did the Old Testament- had their own idea of who should get the 'lord' label, and they picked Jesus. This results in a certain amount of confusion within the Bible itself, as 'lord' is meant to refer to two different entities. The way you can tell the difference is to look at how it's written. 'Lord' is Jesus. 'LORD' is the mutual God.
So that's those two. We must still establish Islam's connection, and remember that we're not necessarily trying to establish a triangle link of Islam/Christianity, Christianity/Judaism and Judaism/Islam; only establish a common ancestral origin.
This, for Islam, is a more complicated matter. One has to start delving into the theology of it all rather than just relying on straight history. But let's start with the origin. The Muslim faith, of course, began with the prophet Muhummad, who received his first revelation from God at age 40 in 610.
You'll note I just said 'God'. I didn't say 'Allah'. This is because I'm speaking English. 'Allah' is nothing more than the Arabic word for 'God'.
The big question, obviously, is how do you know it's the same God that the Jews and Christians worship?
The Qur'an says so itself, in verse 46 of Surah 29, Al-Ankaboot. Three translations are shown in the link; we'll just go ahead and show all three.
YUSUFALI: And dispute ye not with the People of the Book, except with means better (than mere disputation), unless it be with those of them who inflict wrong (and injury): but say, "We believe in the revelation which has come down to us and in that which came down to you; Our Allah and your Allah is one; and it is to Him we bow (in Islam)."
PICKTHAL: And argue not with the People of the Scripture unless it be in (a way) that is better, save with such of them as do wrong; and say: We believe in that which hath been revealed unto us and revealed unto you; our Allah and your Allah is One, and unto Him we surrender.
SHAKIR: And do not dispute with the followers of the Book except by what is best, except those of them who act unjustly, and say: We believe in that which has been revealed to us and revealed to you, and our Allah and your Allah is One, and to Him do we submit.
A more detailed argument in favor of this passage can be seen here.
Now, an argument exists as to whether this is enough of a statement to qualify; whether the 'your' in 'our Allah and your Allah' refers to Jews and Christians, or simply other Muslims, and whether the 'Book' or 'Scripture' means the Talmud and Bible, or just the Qur'an.
Remember, though, Islam is known as an Abrahamic faith. Muhummad was only the last of many prophets of Islam. Abraham was another, known as 'Ibrahim' in the Qur'an. Among the others, some of which are more questioned than others but all of which show up in some interpretation or other and some spellings of which are disputed: Adam, Idris, Nuh, Lut, Ismail, Is'haq, Yaqub, Yusuf, Ayyub, Musa, Harun, Dawud, Sulaiman, Ilyas, Al-Yasa, Yunus, Zakaria, Isa, Yahya.
Those names, translated respectively: Adam, Enoch, Noah, Lot, Ishmael, Issac, Jacob, Joseph, Job, Moses, Aaron, David, Solomon, Elijah, Elisha, Jonah, Zechariah, Jesus, John.
Any further questions? Any of you? What do you think that one, singular God is thinking up there? How do you think this all looks to him, with everybody praising him and fighting for him while at the same time yelling to his other followers that he's not the correct god? He must think you're all stupid. He might love you all, but in the way one loves a dog that will excitedly chase a squirrel, bonk its head into a tree, smear himself in something disgusting, and then walk around pooping on the lawn.
Anyone want to look stupid in front of the Big Guy? Anyone? Anyone want to have a long, depressing conversation with whoever's guarding the entrance to Heaven/Paradise? Then calm down. All of you.
Friday, July 16, 2010
The Same Thing Said In 27 Different Ways
Perhaps mankind's most reliable source of conflict over the course of history is religion. My god is better than your god, and I am going to save you from hell if I have to send you there myself in the process. Christians hate Muslims. Muslims hate Christians. Islam has a standing death sentence to anyone who abandons Islam for some other faith. Both Christians and Muslims hate the Jews. The athiests hate everybody. Everybody hates the athiests. Factions within a particular faith hate each other. And we haven't even gotten into the non-Abrahamic faiths.
Personally, I belong to a Lutheran church, which on a day-to-day basis is just about as low-key and laid-back a Christian sect as you're likely to find. Getting absolved of all your sins basically involves going to church. Sometime during the congregation, you will be relieved of all your sins. That is literally it. No Hail Maries, no pilgrimages, no tithing, no confessions, no real spiritual exertion whatsoever.
But Lutheranism isn't really the end of it for me. Along the way, I also picked up a belief in karma. Not really a pure good-deeds-lead-to-good-fortune, bad-deeds-lead-to-bad-fortune cause-and-effect-- there's far too much evidence to the contrary for that, and when it does happen, the proximity of act to reciprocation is all over the place-- but more of a system where your deeds get played against your well-being at the end, deeds getting more weight. Humanity gets a chance to sort it all out on its own, and then metaphysics accounts for any imbalance at the end. Which basically means the ones who got away with it in life get it the worst in the afterlife.
But more importantly, I feel that it really does not matter, in the slightest, what you believe so long as you parlay that belief into being a generally decent human being that can on some level get along with as many people as possible. In short, if heaven doesn't have room for Mother Teresa, Gandhi and Socrates, all at the same time, I don't want to go there.
It all comes back around to the Golden Rule, and no matter what you believe, if you believe, or where you come from, there is almost assuredly a Golden Rule for you. Some would claim that karma itself is simply an enforced Golden Rule. As much as the moral codes of all the world's faiths and cultures differ, the Golden Rule is remarkably- and thankfully- resilient.
Some present it multiple times, but we'll keep it to one telling per faith (as best reckoned)...
-------------------
Akkadian
"Do not return evil to your adversary; requite with kindness the one who does evil to you, maintain justice for your enemy, be friendly to your enemy."
Bahá'í Faith
"Ascribe not to any soul that which thou wouldst not have ascribed to thee, and say not that which thou doest not." "Blessed is he who preferreth his brother before himself." (Baha'u'llah)
Brahmanism
"This is the sum of Dharma [duty]: Do naught unto others which would cause you pain if done to you". (Mahabharata, 5:1517)
Buddhism
"Hurt not others in ways that you yourself would find hurtful." (Udana-Varga 5:18)
Christianity
"Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets." (Matthew 7:12, King James Version)
Confucianism
"Tse-kung asked, 'Is there one word that can serve as a principle of conduct for life?' Confucius replied, 'It is the word 'shu' -- reciprocity. Do not impose on others what you yourself do not desire.'" (Doctrine of the Mean 13.3)
Ancient Egyptian
"Do for one who may do for you, that you may cause him thus to do." (The Tale of the Eloquent Peasant, 109 - 110)
Hinduism
"This is the sum of duty: do not do to others what would cause pain if done to you." (Mahabharata 5:1517)
Islam
"None of you [truly] believes until he wishes for his brother what he wishes for himself." (Number 13 of Imam "Al-Nawawi's Forty Hadiths.")
Jainism
"A man should wander about treating all creatures as he himself would be treated." (Sutrakritanga 1.11.33)
Judaism
"What is hateful to you, do not to your fellow man. This is the law: all the rest is commentary." (Talmud, Shabbat 31a)
Mozism
"If people regarded other people's families in the same way that they regard their own, who then would incite their own family to attack that of another? For one would do for others as one would do for oneself." (Mozi)
Native American Spirituality
“Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves.” (Chief Seattle)
Paganism, Greek
"Do not do to others that which would anger you if others did it to you." (Socrates)
Paganism, Roman
“The law imprinted on the hearts of all men is to love the members of society as themselves.”
Samaritanism
This one was founded off of Jesus' parable of the Good Samaritan. Need I say more? I mean, really?
Scientology
"Try to treat others as you would want them to treat you." (The Way to Happiness, by L. Ron Hubbard)
Secular
"Don't be a dick." (http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Don't_be_a_dick)
Shintoism
"Be charitable to all beings, love is the representative of God." (Ko-ji-ki Hachiman Kasuga)
Sikhism
"We obtain salvation by loving our fellow man and God." (Granth, Japji XXI)
Sufism
“The basis of Sufism is consideration of the hearts and feelings of others. If you haven't the will to gladden someone's heart, then at least beware lest you hurt someone's heart, for on our path, no sin exists but this.” (Dr. Javad Nurbakhsh, Master of the Nimatullahi Sufi Order)
Taoism
"Regard your neighbor's gain as your gain and your neighbor's loss as your loss." (Tai-shang Kang-ying P'ien)
Vedism
"This is the sum of duty. Do not unto others that which would cause you pain if done to you." (Mahabharata 5:1517)
Unitarianism
“We affirm and promote respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.” (Unitarian principle)
Wicca
“A'in it harm no one, do what thou wilt” (i.e., do whatever you want to, as long as it harms nobody, including yourself). (The Wiccan Rede)
Yoruba (Nigeria)
“One going to take a pointed stick to pinch a baby bird should first try it on himself to feel how it hurts.”
Zorostrianism
"That nature alone is good which refrains from doing unto another whatsoever is not good for itself." (Avesta, Dadistan-i-dinik 94:5)
----------------------
In conclusion, here's a guy that completely misses the point.
Personally, I belong to a Lutheran church, which on a day-to-day basis is just about as low-key and laid-back a Christian sect as you're likely to find. Getting absolved of all your sins basically involves going to church. Sometime during the congregation, you will be relieved of all your sins. That is literally it. No Hail Maries, no pilgrimages, no tithing, no confessions, no real spiritual exertion whatsoever.
But Lutheranism isn't really the end of it for me. Along the way, I also picked up a belief in karma. Not really a pure good-deeds-lead-to-good-fortune, bad-deeds-lead-to-bad-fortune cause-and-effect-- there's far too much evidence to the contrary for that, and when it does happen, the proximity of act to reciprocation is all over the place-- but more of a system where your deeds get played against your well-being at the end, deeds getting more weight. Humanity gets a chance to sort it all out on its own, and then metaphysics accounts for any imbalance at the end. Which basically means the ones who got away with it in life get it the worst in the afterlife.
But more importantly, I feel that it really does not matter, in the slightest, what you believe so long as you parlay that belief into being a generally decent human being that can on some level get along with as many people as possible. In short, if heaven doesn't have room for Mother Teresa, Gandhi and Socrates, all at the same time, I don't want to go there.
It all comes back around to the Golden Rule, and no matter what you believe, if you believe, or where you come from, there is almost assuredly a Golden Rule for you. Some would claim that karma itself is simply an enforced Golden Rule. As much as the moral codes of all the world's faiths and cultures differ, the Golden Rule is remarkably- and thankfully- resilient.
Some present it multiple times, but we'll keep it to one telling per faith (as best reckoned)...
-------------------
Akkadian
"Do not return evil to your adversary; requite with kindness the one who does evil to you, maintain justice for your enemy, be friendly to your enemy."
Bahá'í Faith
"Ascribe not to any soul that which thou wouldst not have ascribed to thee, and say not that which thou doest not." "Blessed is he who preferreth his brother before himself." (Baha'u'llah)
Brahmanism
"This is the sum of Dharma [duty]: Do naught unto others which would cause you pain if done to you". (Mahabharata, 5:1517)
Buddhism
"Hurt not others in ways that you yourself would find hurtful." (Udana-Varga 5:18)
Christianity
"Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets." (Matthew 7:12, King James Version)
Confucianism
"Tse-kung asked, 'Is there one word that can serve as a principle of conduct for life?' Confucius replied, 'It is the word 'shu' -- reciprocity. Do not impose on others what you yourself do not desire.'" (Doctrine of the Mean 13.3)
Ancient Egyptian
"Do for one who may do for you, that you may cause him thus to do." (The Tale of the Eloquent Peasant, 109 - 110)
Hinduism
"This is the sum of duty: do not do to others what would cause pain if done to you." (Mahabharata 5:1517)
Islam
"None of you [truly] believes until he wishes for his brother what he wishes for himself." (Number 13 of Imam "Al-Nawawi's Forty Hadiths.")
Jainism
"A man should wander about treating all creatures as he himself would be treated." (Sutrakritanga 1.11.33)
Judaism
"What is hateful to you, do not to your fellow man. This is the law: all the rest is commentary." (Talmud, Shabbat 31a)
Mozism
"If people regarded other people's families in the same way that they regard their own, who then would incite their own family to attack that of another? For one would do for others as one would do for oneself." (Mozi)
Native American Spirituality
“Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves.” (Chief Seattle)
Paganism, Greek
"Do not do to others that which would anger you if others did it to you." (Socrates)
Paganism, Roman
“The law imprinted on the hearts of all men is to love the members of society as themselves.”
Samaritanism
This one was founded off of Jesus' parable of the Good Samaritan. Need I say more? I mean, really?
Scientology
"Try to treat others as you would want them to treat you." (The Way to Happiness, by L. Ron Hubbard)
Secular
"Don't be a dick." (http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Don't_be_a_dick)
Shintoism
"Be charitable to all beings, love is the representative of God." (Ko-ji-ki Hachiman Kasuga)
Sikhism
"We obtain salvation by loving our fellow man and God." (Granth, Japji XXI)
Sufism
“The basis of Sufism is consideration of the hearts and feelings of others. If you haven't the will to gladden someone's heart, then at least beware lest you hurt someone's heart, for on our path, no sin exists but this.” (Dr. Javad Nurbakhsh, Master of the Nimatullahi Sufi Order)
Taoism
"Regard your neighbor's gain as your gain and your neighbor's loss as your loss." (Tai-shang Kang-ying P'ien)
Vedism
"This is the sum of duty. Do not unto others that which would cause you pain if done to you." (Mahabharata 5:1517)
Unitarianism
“We affirm and promote respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.” (Unitarian principle)
Wicca
“A'in it harm no one, do what thou wilt” (i.e., do whatever you want to, as long as it harms nobody, including yourself). (The Wiccan Rede)
Yoruba (Nigeria)
“One going to take a pointed stick to pinch a baby bird should first try it on himself to feel how it hurts.”
Zorostrianism
"That nature alone is good which refrains from doing unto another whatsoever is not good for itself." (Avesta, Dadistan-i-dinik 94:5)
----------------------
In conclusion, here's a guy that completely misses the point.
Monday, June 21, 2010
The Xhosa Cattle Killings
Previously on this blog, we explored the willful, excessive, near-total destruction of cattle in the Soviet Union's Riazan oblast in 1959.
South Africa underwent something similar. But while the Soviet destruction was undertaken for political reasons, the South African destruction came due to simple faith and desperation.
Dateline, April 1856. The Xhosa people have been spending the last 80 years fighting the odd skirmish with British colonials. On this day, along the banks of the Gxara River, is a young girl named Nongqawuse, along with her friend Nombanda (who will play no further part in this story). She sees spirits, thought to be ancestors, come to her and give her a message. A message she relays to her uncle, Mhalakaza.
The message: all Xhosa cattle are to be destroyed. All Xhosa grain is to be destroyed as well. No new cattle or grain is to be produced. Once it was all gone, nothing else was to be done except to prepare for a new beginning in which food would issue forth from the earth- new, better food, including new cattle- and the English would be driven out. The Crimean War was fresh in their minds, and the Russian soldiers who fought in it were thought to be Xhosa ancestors reborn there.
(NOTE: Save that link for later. We'll be coming back to it at the end.)
When the message was originally received, naturally, it didn't go over very well. But then Nongqawuse returned to the Gxara soon afterward, with Mhalakaza, and the spirits gave her the same message. Mhalakaza could not see the spirits, but Nongqawuse assured him they were only visible to her. Mhalakaza couldn't hear them either, but could after Nongqawuse translated their speech.
Contemporary theories speculate that there may have been something wrong with the cattle, perhaps a lung disease that was in the area at the time. But whatever the cause, eventually, Mhalakaza was not only convinced, but proceeded to lead the charge.
And eventually, tribal chief Sarili went along with it, ordering a slaughter. The British in the area, according to some theories, may have been complicit at some point, but more likely they were merely spectators to something which to them was nothing less than horrifying, and if it was started as an effort to drive out the British, there wasn't much the British could do to stop it.
Not all of the cattle would die, as some Xhosa thought the kill-the-cattle idea to be pretty obviously crazy. They were facing a losing battle, as Mhalakaza and Nongqawuse would later bring Sarili to the Gxara. Sarili, as the Guinness Book of Historical Blunders noted, bore witness to corn and beer, a recently-dead son, and a favorite horse. His faith affirmed, the slaughter continued.
Until people started pressing for details as to just when exactly the salvation would happen once the task was carried out. This is where Mhalakaza began to unravel: he began giving specific dates. The prophecy had gone from a vague 'whenever the ancestors are satisfied' to a much more verifiable 'on this day'.
It was only a matter of time. First it was the end of July- a full moon. Nothing. Then it was August 16- a new moon. Nothing still. The Xhosa were frantic, thinking any odd noise could be the one heralding the resurrection and the exile of the British. Mhalakaza did his part to keep them that way, continually adding new wrinkles to the events that would occur once all the cattle and grain were destroyed. Above all, he used the fact that cattle still remained alive to explain away any delay in the resurrection as new moons continued to come and go. He increased the pressure by making dire predictions of doom on anyone who failed to slaughter their cattle.
Finally, on January 31, 1857, Mhalakaza made his final prophecy: February 18. The sun would rise, the sea would dry up, the sky would fall to head height.
On the morning of February 18, the Xhosa watched the sun rise. They watched the sea just as wet as ever. They watched the sun set. They saw no cattle. They saw no grain.
Game over. Sarili was out of patience. But Mhalakaza was not his chief target for blame.
"The reason we are broken today," Sarili exclaimed, "is on account of this girl."
Nongqawuse. The girl that had seen the visions in the first place.
It may not have been her in the driver's seat for most of the ordeal, but it was impossible to argue her role. She, along with many of those able, fled into the arms of the British, who would temporarily place her in protective custody on Robben Island. Mhalakaza would, fittingly, become a victim of the self-imposed famine.
The British, finally with an opening to act, would relieve the famine as best they could, but by now there was little they or anyone else could do. The damage was done. Many by this time were simply too far gone to save, if they were not already dead. By the end, 300,000-400,000 cattle were killed, and the Xhosas were reduced from 105,000 people to under 27,000.
Sarili would die in a later frontier war with the British in 1879. Nongqawuse, upon her release from Robben Island, would settle on a farm in the Eastern Cape until her death in 1898. The day of judgment Nongqawuse, Mhalakaza, Sarili, and the rest of the Xhosa hoped against hope would arrive was a day they would not live to see.
At least they wouldn't. Years later- many, many years later- the Xhosa would stage a miraculous comeback. Perhaps you've heard of a few modern-day Xhosa.
Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela.
----------------------
POSTSCRIPT: If you'll scroll back up, the link reading 'Xhosa ancestors' goes to an article by South Africa's 'Christian Action' magazine, 2004, Vol. 2, entitled 'The National Suicide of the Xhosa'.
This article, it was noticed over the course of my research, is a top-to-bottom plagiarization of another one of my sources, The Guinness Book of Historical Blunders by Geoffrey Regan, copyright 1994. Specifically, the unnamed "author", with only the feeblest of alterations- substituting a period with an exclamation point and similar cosmetic adds and subtractions of words like "the", adding Bible verses at the beginning and end of the "article", deleting the last paragraph of the original piece, inserting subheadings between sections of the piece- copied nearly word-for-word the entry entitled 'Dies Irae' seen on pages 155-160 of the Guinness Book.
Guinness and Christian Action have both been notified of the infraction.
South Africa underwent something similar. But while the Soviet destruction was undertaken for political reasons, the South African destruction came due to simple faith and desperation.
Dateline, April 1856. The Xhosa people have been spending the last 80 years fighting the odd skirmish with British colonials. On this day, along the banks of the Gxara River, is a young girl named Nongqawuse, along with her friend Nombanda (who will play no further part in this story). She sees spirits, thought to be ancestors, come to her and give her a message. A message she relays to her uncle, Mhalakaza.
The message: all Xhosa cattle are to be destroyed. All Xhosa grain is to be destroyed as well. No new cattle or grain is to be produced. Once it was all gone, nothing else was to be done except to prepare for a new beginning in which food would issue forth from the earth- new, better food, including new cattle- and the English would be driven out. The Crimean War was fresh in their minds, and the Russian soldiers who fought in it were thought to be Xhosa ancestors reborn there.
(NOTE: Save that link for later. We'll be coming back to it at the end.)
When the message was originally received, naturally, it didn't go over very well. But then Nongqawuse returned to the Gxara soon afterward, with Mhalakaza, and the spirits gave her the same message. Mhalakaza could not see the spirits, but Nongqawuse assured him they were only visible to her. Mhalakaza couldn't hear them either, but could after Nongqawuse translated their speech.
Contemporary theories speculate that there may have been something wrong with the cattle, perhaps a lung disease that was in the area at the time. But whatever the cause, eventually, Mhalakaza was not only convinced, but proceeded to lead the charge.
And eventually, tribal chief Sarili went along with it, ordering a slaughter. The British in the area, according to some theories, may have been complicit at some point, but more likely they were merely spectators to something which to them was nothing less than horrifying, and if it was started as an effort to drive out the British, there wasn't much the British could do to stop it.
Not all of the cattle would die, as some Xhosa thought the kill-the-cattle idea to be pretty obviously crazy. They were facing a losing battle, as Mhalakaza and Nongqawuse would later bring Sarili to the Gxara. Sarili, as the Guinness Book of Historical Blunders noted, bore witness to corn and beer, a recently-dead son, and a favorite horse. His faith affirmed, the slaughter continued.
Until people started pressing for details as to just when exactly the salvation would happen once the task was carried out. This is where Mhalakaza began to unravel: he began giving specific dates. The prophecy had gone from a vague 'whenever the ancestors are satisfied' to a much more verifiable 'on this day'.
It was only a matter of time. First it was the end of July- a full moon. Nothing. Then it was August 16- a new moon. Nothing still. The Xhosa were frantic, thinking any odd noise could be the one heralding the resurrection and the exile of the British. Mhalakaza did his part to keep them that way, continually adding new wrinkles to the events that would occur once all the cattle and grain were destroyed. Above all, he used the fact that cattle still remained alive to explain away any delay in the resurrection as new moons continued to come and go. He increased the pressure by making dire predictions of doom on anyone who failed to slaughter their cattle.
Finally, on January 31, 1857, Mhalakaza made his final prophecy: February 18. The sun would rise, the sea would dry up, the sky would fall to head height.
On the morning of February 18, the Xhosa watched the sun rise. They watched the sea just as wet as ever. They watched the sun set. They saw no cattle. They saw no grain.
Game over. Sarili was out of patience. But Mhalakaza was not his chief target for blame.
"The reason we are broken today," Sarili exclaimed, "is on account of this girl."
Nongqawuse. The girl that had seen the visions in the first place.
It may not have been her in the driver's seat for most of the ordeal, but it was impossible to argue her role. She, along with many of those able, fled into the arms of the British, who would temporarily place her in protective custody on Robben Island. Mhalakaza would, fittingly, become a victim of the self-imposed famine.
The British, finally with an opening to act, would relieve the famine as best they could, but by now there was little they or anyone else could do. The damage was done. Many by this time were simply too far gone to save, if they were not already dead. By the end, 300,000-400,000 cattle were killed, and the Xhosas were reduced from 105,000 people to under 27,000.
Sarili would die in a later frontier war with the British in 1879. Nongqawuse, upon her release from Robben Island, would settle on a farm in the Eastern Cape until her death in 1898. The day of judgment Nongqawuse, Mhalakaza, Sarili, and the rest of the Xhosa hoped against hope would arrive was a day they would not live to see.
At least they wouldn't. Years later- many, many years later- the Xhosa would stage a miraculous comeback. Perhaps you've heard of a few modern-day Xhosa.
Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela.
----------------------
POSTSCRIPT: If you'll scroll back up, the link reading 'Xhosa ancestors' goes to an article by South Africa's 'Christian Action' magazine, 2004, Vol. 2, entitled 'The National Suicide of the Xhosa'.
This article, it was noticed over the course of my research, is a top-to-bottom plagiarization of another one of my sources, The Guinness Book of Historical Blunders by Geoffrey Regan, copyright 1994. Specifically, the unnamed "author", with only the feeblest of alterations- substituting a period with an exclamation point and similar cosmetic adds and subtractions of words like "the", adding Bible verses at the beginning and end of the "article", deleting the last paragraph of the original piece, inserting subheadings between sections of the piece- copied nearly word-for-word the entry entitled 'Dies Irae' seen on pages 155-160 of the Guinness Book.
Guinness and Christian Action have both been notified of the infraction.
Thursday, May 20, 2010
Dead Like Me
It's not unheard of for someone who's been declared clinically dead to subsequently come back to life. (Let's be clear, by 'clinically dead' we don't mean 'we thought he was dead but it turns out he was just in a coma or sleeping'. We mean verified, flatlining beeeeeeeeeeeeep.) Clinical death is actually medically distinct from what everyone thinks of as death.
But if you're going to come back, you've generally got a window of, at the most, three minutes, at least if you're expecting to go on to make a full recovery. That's how long your brain will usually begin to sustain permanent damage due to ischemic injury, a thing all organs accumulate due to loss of blood flow.
Generally, at least. Every human dies, and seeing as we document as many deaths as we possibly can, you have what amounts to an immense sample size. And in a sample size that large, there will be outliers. So what's the record?
It appears to be an hour and a half, set by Don Piper of Houston, Texas.
Going into his near-death experience, Piper was a minister, having been one since 1984. Five years into his ministry, in 1989, Piper was on his way back from a church conference when his Ford Escort was struck head-on by a tractor-trailer. Clinically, he was killed instantly. Four different EMT's arriving on the scene would verify this.
Meanwhile, from Piper's perspective, he was standing outside the gates of Heaven meeting with dead loved ones. His experience interpreted Heaven as Christian-exclusive. The thing is, though, Piper admits that to be merely his interpretation; he was not told that explicitly by a higher power and in fact went the duration of his experience without a meeting from Jesus. He rather, in his website, uses John 14:6 to back up his claim, "No man comes unto the Father but through me", as well as having only met with other Christians.
In addition, near-death experience researcher Rene Jorgensen notes that Piper's experience is not unique. Jorgensen argues that people with near-death experiences tend to see afterlives compliant with whatever faith they've practiced in life, even if some experiences turn out to contradict one another. Essentially, you see the afterlife you think you're going to see. If you're a Christian, you get sent to a Christian afterlife. If you're Muslim, you get sent to a Muslim afterlife. Jewish, Buddhist, Shinto, Baha'i, Flying Spaghetti Monsterism, Aztec/Hindu Fusionism, the afterlife aims to please. As Jorgensen sees it, there seems to be no one single way to a desirable afterlife. You follow your own path, the other guy will follow his, and perhaps everyone can have their own happy ending.
Back to the side of the road in Texas. A fellow minister, Dick Onerecker, showed up within the hour and, according to him, God told him to start praying, which he promptly did next to Piper's body, which authorities allowed him to remain next to. After his praying, Onerecker began to sing the hymn "What a Friend We Have in Jesus".
Which Piper ended up singing along to. Cue a long, hard recovery, followed by rock-star status in the Christian community, his own ministry, and a book, 90 Minutes In Heaven, followed by Jorgensen's rebuttal and expansion on the subject, Behind 90 Minutes In Heaven.
Piper got 90 minutes. You likely have three at the most.
But if you're going to come back, you've generally got a window of, at the most, three minutes, at least if you're expecting to go on to make a full recovery. That's how long your brain will usually begin to sustain permanent damage due to ischemic injury, a thing all organs accumulate due to loss of blood flow.
Generally, at least. Every human dies, and seeing as we document as many deaths as we possibly can, you have what amounts to an immense sample size. And in a sample size that large, there will be outliers. So what's the record?
It appears to be an hour and a half, set by Don Piper of Houston, Texas.
Going into his near-death experience, Piper was a minister, having been one since 1984. Five years into his ministry, in 1989, Piper was on his way back from a church conference when his Ford Escort was struck head-on by a tractor-trailer. Clinically, he was killed instantly. Four different EMT's arriving on the scene would verify this.
Meanwhile, from Piper's perspective, he was standing outside the gates of Heaven meeting with dead loved ones. His experience interpreted Heaven as Christian-exclusive. The thing is, though, Piper admits that to be merely his interpretation; he was not told that explicitly by a higher power and in fact went the duration of his experience without a meeting from Jesus. He rather, in his website, uses John 14:6 to back up his claim, "No man comes unto the Father but through me", as well as having only met with other Christians.
In addition, near-death experience researcher Rene Jorgensen notes that Piper's experience is not unique. Jorgensen argues that people with near-death experiences tend to see afterlives compliant with whatever faith they've practiced in life, even if some experiences turn out to contradict one another. Essentially, you see the afterlife you think you're going to see. If you're a Christian, you get sent to a Christian afterlife. If you're Muslim, you get sent to a Muslim afterlife. Jewish, Buddhist, Shinto, Baha'i, Flying Spaghetti Monsterism, Aztec/Hindu Fusionism, the afterlife aims to please. As Jorgensen sees it, there seems to be no one single way to a desirable afterlife. You follow your own path, the other guy will follow his, and perhaps everyone can have their own happy ending.
Back to the side of the road in Texas. A fellow minister, Dick Onerecker, showed up within the hour and, according to him, God told him to start praying, which he promptly did next to Piper's body, which authorities allowed him to remain next to. After his praying, Onerecker began to sing the hymn "What a Friend We Have in Jesus".
Which Piper ended up singing along to. Cue a long, hard recovery, followed by rock-star status in the Christian community, his own ministry, and a book, 90 Minutes In Heaven, followed by Jorgensen's rebuttal and expansion on the subject, Behind 90 Minutes In Heaven.
Piper got 90 minutes. You likely have three at the most.
Sunday, May 9, 2010
Conviction In Being Wrong
Most debates end up fairly inconclusive. Everybody argues, but nothing is really settled, and everybody comes back the next day for more. Some questions can't be settled in this matter- just about any question that is at its core subjective, or that nobody really has proof of one way or the other, is usually destined to be finished more or less where it started. How do you best end a soccer match that ends in a tie? Are you better off now than you were four years ago? Should the toilet paper roll go over or under? Aruba or St. Lucia? Ford or Chevy? DH or no DH? Are we really alone in the universe? What happens after we die? All arguments that are destined to live for another day.
But on THIS day, you've really stepped in it. Your argument that the Civil War ended in a tie went down in flames the second someone brought up Appomattox Court House. You've been proven objectively, conclusively, irrefutably wrong.
Now what?
For most of us, this isn't even a question. You admit defeat, admit you had your facts wrong, and adopt the new thing you learned.
But let's face it: unless you're predicting doom and the reality is flowers and maypoles, being proven wrong sucks. Everybody is wrong on something. But it's hard to take for some people. It's an admission that you're, well, wrong. You're imperfect. You're human. Some people can come to terms with that better than others, but it's never fun.
Some simply can't come to terms with it at all. They can't comprehend the fact that they might be wrong, or it may be too painful in whatever way for them to consider. They dig in. They look for progressively more feeble reasoning to entrench in their original viewpoint.
Surely, if you've argued on the Internet long enough, you are positive you have dealt with one of these people, although most are dismissed as trolls. And to be sure, some are- people that don't truly believe what they argue but are needlessly nonconstructive for whatever reason.
Do not dismiss, however, the possibility that... well, first off, don't dismiss the possibility that, in fact, you're the one who's wrong. But we'll set that aside and assume that you are actually right and the other guy is wrong. Do not dismiss the possibility that your opponent is simply unable to comprehend their own wrongness.
These people do exist, but to best display that, we can't use anything even remotely political. So let's go back to 1954, when Leon Festinger of the University of Minnesota caught wind of one of your periodic doomsday cults, called the Seekers, led by Chicago grandmother Dorothy Martin, who professed that on December 21, 1954, a series of natural disasters would kill most people on the planet.
Festinger wanted to be there to see what would happen when the world failed to end. His theory: the Seekers would just keep on believing, and in fact would believe even harder than before. He had a theory he called 'cognitive dissonance'. Yep. This is where that term comes from. As Festinger figured, if you've sunk enough emotionally and physically into a certain belief- if you've staked your job, your marriage, years and years of your life- on a certain belief, coming to the realization that you've bet all your money on the wrong horse is a tad on the 'emotionally shattering' side. You will do whatever you have to do to avoid it. So instead of obeying the law of sunk costs, admitting defeat, and starting to rebuild, you just dig in. In fact, you try and convert others into believing your already-proven-wrong theory. After all, if other people believe it, it must be true, right?
Right?
RIGHT?!
Festinger, of course, was dead on, or else you wouldn't recognize the phrase 'cognitive dissonance' today. Festinger- and a crew- had to first gain admittance to the Seekers, which they were only able to do through the invention of anecdotes supporting the cult's position.
Specifically, Martin- who Festinger renamed 'Marian Keech' for his resulting book When Prophecy Fails- claimed to have been receiving messages via "automatic writing" from the planet Clarion, warning of flooding and tidal waves that would raise sea levels and swallow up the Midwest. This would be a problem for Martin, who lived in Chicago, but at the appointed hour- midnight, December 21- UFO's from Clarion would arrive to carry the cult away. (Though Martin thought the UFO might show up early.)
As Alex Boese argues in his book Elephants On Acid and Other Bizarre Experiments, Festinger had already tainted the experiment at this point, as he was providing the supporting viewpoints that cognitive dissonance craves, and thus artificially confirming the hypothesis. As it would turn out, though, if Festinger hadn't, someone else would have, because as December 21 drew closer, Martin's home was targeted again and again by a series of people trying to prank her. Just about everybody who pulled a prank wound up going home happy, including the man who asked the cult to come look at his flooded bathroom, and the man who claimed to receive a message from "Captain Video From Outer Space".
A note: Captain Video- specifically, Captain Video and his Video Rangers- was a TV show at the time, famous for its low budget. At this particular point in time, it was in its seventh and final season. A major character was a robot named "I TOBOR", named such because they accidentally stenciled the name onto the costume backwards.
Come December 20, there's nothing left for the Seekers to do but sit around, remove all metal items from their person (metal would conduct heat aboard the UFO), and hold out until midnight.
Midnight comes. Nothing happens.
12:05 comes. Nothing happens. Someone notices a clock saying 11:55. Okay, maybe that clock's right and it's not really midnight yet.
12:10 comes, or as the other clock says, midnight. Still nothing. The flooding is supposed to start at 8 AM.
4:00 AM. Nothing. The Seekers are lost for an explanation. Martin starts to cry.
Right here is when Martin really could have used someone to try and snap her out of the whole thing, but the only people that could were running an experiment designed specifically around finding out what she did unassisted.
4:45 AM. Martin receives an automatic writing message. The explanation comes: the Seekers had spread so much light that the world was spared. Soon afterward, another message comes telling the Seekers to spread the word. Merry Christmas!
The rest of the day is spent throwing open the drapes to the media, who until now the cult had been shunning, to the point that on the release of When Prophecy Fails, even though Festinger had changed Martin's name, it wasn't too hard to figure out it was her. She would later change her name to Sister Thedra and spend time making progressively less specific doomsday predictions in Arizona, moving from Chicago on threats from the police of being committed to a psychiatric hospital, and later Peru.
One final note on Martin, by the way: prior to the entire episode, she had been involved with L. Ron Hubbard's Dianetics movement, the forerunner to Scientology.
And we all know how hard they are to convince of anything.
But on THIS day, you've really stepped in it. Your argument that the Civil War ended in a tie went down in flames the second someone brought up Appomattox Court House. You've been proven objectively, conclusively, irrefutably wrong.
Now what?
For most of us, this isn't even a question. You admit defeat, admit you had your facts wrong, and adopt the new thing you learned.
But let's face it: unless you're predicting doom and the reality is flowers and maypoles, being proven wrong sucks. Everybody is wrong on something. But it's hard to take for some people. It's an admission that you're, well, wrong. You're imperfect. You're human. Some people can come to terms with that better than others, but it's never fun.
Some simply can't come to terms with it at all. They can't comprehend the fact that they might be wrong, or it may be too painful in whatever way for them to consider. They dig in. They look for progressively more feeble reasoning to entrench in their original viewpoint.
Surely, if you've argued on the Internet long enough, you are positive you have dealt with one of these people, although most are dismissed as trolls. And to be sure, some are- people that don't truly believe what they argue but are needlessly nonconstructive for whatever reason.
Do not dismiss, however, the possibility that... well, first off, don't dismiss the possibility that, in fact, you're the one who's wrong. But we'll set that aside and assume that you are actually right and the other guy is wrong. Do not dismiss the possibility that your opponent is simply unable to comprehend their own wrongness.
These people do exist, but to best display that, we can't use anything even remotely political. So let's go back to 1954, when Leon Festinger of the University of Minnesota caught wind of one of your periodic doomsday cults, called the Seekers, led by Chicago grandmother Dorothy Martin, who professed that on December 21, 1954, a series of natural disasters would kill most people on the planet.
Festinger wanted to be there to see what would happen when the world failed to end. His theory: the Seekers would just keep on believing, and in fact would believe even harder than before. He had a theory he called 'cognitive dissonance'. Yep. This is where that term comes from. As Festinger figured, if you've sunk enough emotionally and physically into a certain belief- if you've staked your job, your marriage, years and years of your life- on a certain belief, coming to the realization that you've bet all your money on the wrong horse is a tad on the 'emotionally shattering' side. You will do whatever you have to do to avoid it. So instead of obeying the law of sunk costs, admitting defeat, and starting to rebuild, you just dig in. In fact, you try and convert others into believing your already-proven-wrong theory. After all, if other people believe it, it must be true, right?
Right?
RIGHT?!
Festinger, of course, was dead on, or else you wouldn't recognize the phrase 'cognitive dissonance' today. Festinger- and a crew- had to first gain admittance to the Seekers, which they were only able to do through the invention of anecdotes supporting the cult's position.
Specifically, Martin- who Festinger renamed 'Marian Keech' for his resulting book When Prophecy Fails- claimed to have been receiving messages via "automatic writing" from the planet Clarion, warning of flooding and tidal waves that would raise sea levels and swallow up the Midwest. This would be a problem for Martin, who lived in Chicago, but at the appointed hour- midnight, December 21- UFO's from Clarion would arrive to carry the cult away. (Though Martin thought the UFO might show up early.)
As Alex Boese argues in his book Elephants On Acid and Other Bizarre Experiments, Festinger had already tainted the experiment at this point, as he was providing the supporting viewpoints that cognitive dissonance craves, and thus artificially confirming the hypothesis. As it would turn out, though, if Festinger hadn't, someone else would have, because as December 21 drew closer, Martin's home was targeted again and again by a series of people trying to prank her. Just about everybody who pulled a prank wound up going home happy, including the man who asked the cult to come look at his flooded bathroom, and the man who claimed to receive a message from "Captain Video From Outer Space".
A note: Captain Video- specifically, Captain Video and his Video Rangers- was a TV show at the time, famous for its low budget. At this particular point in time, it was in its seventh and final season. A major character was a robot named "I TOBOR", named such because they accidentally stenciled the name onto the costume backwards.
Come December 20, there's nothing left for the Seekers to do but sit around, remove all metal items from their person (metal would conduct heat aboard the UFO), and hold out until midnight.
Midnight comes. Nothing happens.
12:05 comes. Nothing happens. Someone notices a clock saying 11:55. Okay, maybe that clock's right and it's not really midnight yet.
12:10 comes, or as the other clock says, midnight. Still nothing. The flooding is supposed to start at 8 AM.
4:00 AM. Nothing. The Seekers are lost for an explanation. Martin starts to cry.
Right here is when Martin really could have used someone to try and snap her out of the whole thing, but the only people that could were running an experiment designed specifically around finding out what she did unassisted.
4:45 AM. Martin receives an automatic writing message. The explanation comes: the Seekers had spread so much light that the world was spared. Soon afterward, another message comes telling the Seekers to spread the word. Merry Christmas!
The rest of the day is spent throwing open the drapes to the media, who until now the cult had been shunning, to the point that on the release of When Prophecy Fails, even though Festinger had changed Martin's name, it wasn't too hard to figure out it was her. She would later change her name to Sister Thedra and spend time making progressively less specific doomsday predictions in Arizona, moving from Chicago on threats from the police of being committed to a psychiatric hospital, and later Peru.
One final note on Martin, by the way: prior to the entire episode, she had been involved with L. Ron Hubbard's Dianetics movement, the forerunner to Scientology.
And we all know how hard they are to convince of anything.
Friday, May 7, 2010
People More Badass Than You
You've trained, you've sweat, you've sacrificed, but you finally did it. You've completed that marathon.
Pansy.
You've trained more, you've sweat more, you've sacrificed more, but you finally did it. You've completed that Ironman triathlon.
Wuss.
Try the Tendai marathon on for size.
Tendai Buddhist monks, based at Mount Hiei near Kyoto, Japan, are intimately familiar with the Tendai marathon; to them it is a path to spiritual enlightenment. For not only do they have to do the running, along the way they must meditate as well. This would normally be fine. Hey, great, a chance to stop and catch their breath.
Except there are about 255 of these stops.
And they have another marathon the next day. And the next. And the next. And the next. And the next. With peers completely unconcerned as to whether you live or die.
Welcome to the 1,000-day challenge. Just to qualify to run the 1,000 day challenge, one must first complete a 100-day kaihogyo, in which one must run 40 km (24.8 miles) per day, with all the meditation stops, every day for 100 consecutive days. There is a prescribed route, but it's unmarked, much of it along uneven back roads as well as the streets of Kyoto, and you aren't given a map. If you go off-course, too bad; you simply have to find your way back to the route. Your diet is to be vegetables, tofu and miso soup. You're running in a straw hat, sandals, and are dressed in all-white. Your day begins at 1:30 AM. With all the stops, a single 40-km marathon can easily last seven and a half hours.
You are only permitted to sit down once.
And all that time, you carry with you a dagger and a rope cord. That is the consequence for failure, and all along the route, you will see grave markers of countless 19th-century monks who chose that option. For you, it's pretty much symbolic, and nowadays you can simply try again next year, but face death on the mountain and your fellow monks won't be quick about treating you.
As if that weren't enough, one of the 100 days must be a kirimawari- a 33.6 mile (54 km) run. Runners will tend to lose an entire day of sleep completing the kirimawari, but they just have to push on through.
This is just the qualifier.
Should you complete the 100-day kaihogyo, you then have the option of undertaking the 1,000-day challenge. Should you say yes, you then embark on a seven-year oddysey.
And those 100 days you just did don't count.
In years 1-3, you'll be doing one 100-day kaihogyo per year just like the one you ran in the qualifier, except there's no kirimawari. Amidst it all, Tendai monks are required to partake in other training and duties in the Mount Hiei temple. 300 days down. (In the middle of each 100-day term, there's a four-day retreat during which you don't have to run, and which still count towards the 100 days. However, modern monks tack an extra four days onto the end of the run of their own free will.)
These first three years are referred to as "basic training".
In years 4-5, you're still doing a 40-km run, with the meditation stops as always, but now it's for 200 consecutive days. (You might be wondering at this point about what happens in winter. Yeah. Good luck with that, Mr. Monk.) 700 days down, 300 to go.
In year 6, you're back to a 100-day year. But you're not getting off that easy. Oh, no. Remember that 40 kilometers? It's now 60 (37.3 miles). Per day. For 100 days.
In year 7, the final year, you only have two kaihogyos to go. This is when they stop toying with you. Remember that 60 kilometers? It's now 84 (52.2 miles). Per day. For 100 consecutive days. With meditation stops. On back mountain roads and the streets of Kyoto. That dagger's probably looking mighty tempting right about now, though by this point there are plenty of people along the course rooting you on, as word gets around fast that someone's getting close to the end.
Oh yes. You are required to bless them.
The final 100 days send you back to the 40-km kaihogyo, which to anyone that's made it past the 84-kilometer hell seems almost like a victory lap.
A single Year 7 day can hit the 20-hour mark, meaning you aren't worrying too much anymore about performing the other duties and training in the temple, which is small comfort when you've only got four hours a day when you aren't running. As for the lack of sleep, the Tendais aren't too worried about you. They have a saying, "Ten minutes' sleep for a marathon monk is worth five hours of ordinary rest." In addition, by this point you should be trying to rest individual parts of your body during the run.
But wait, there's more.
During Year 5, you will face the seven-day doiri. Mercifully, you will not be running. You'll only be walking 200 meters a day, to retrieve water from a nearby well as an offering for the emperor.
Unmercifully, the walk takes place at 2 AM. And you will not be drinking any of this water. Or any other water. Or food. You won't be sleeping either. Of course there was a catch, silly. This is the Tendai marathon.
All day long, you'll be praying and chanting, performing 100,000 prayers, with two monks by your side simply to make sure you don't break any rules. Prior to the doiri, you'll be reducing your food intake in order to prepare your body. As the London Observer puts it:
Day 5 seems like a slap in the face: your mouth is dehydrated and you're allowed to rinse it out, but you better spit out every last drop of water that you've got in there.
On the occasions you go outside, however, you are allowed to keep all the rain that you can absorb through your skin.
By the end of the doiri, that 200 meter walk can take hours. You will be pale at the end of it There is, of course, a spiritual purpose: to bring you face-to-face with death. Doiri participants report a kind of mental clarity beyond the concepts of good and bad.
Unsurprisingly, they can also smell food being prepared miles away.
The doiri used to last ten days. They shortened it after they found that almost everybody died by the end of Day 10. The idea is to get you CLOSE to death, not to kill you.
Anyone who manages to survive the 1,000-day challenge is declared a Daigyoman Ajari- Saintly Master of the Highest Practice, and only has a 100,000-prayer fasting ceremony to go, 2-3 years after the running is over.
However, since 1585, only 46 men have attained that rank (though some places report 49). Even taking the higher number of 49, that's an average of one completion every 8.7 years. The better part of nine years and of all the people who set out on the challenge, one guy makes it. The most recent completion was by one Genshin Fujinami in 2003.
Do you still feel like an ironman?
(For more information, oh dear Lord will you be shelling out money for a used copy of this book.)
Pansy.
You've trained more, you've sweat more, you've sacrificed more, but you finally did it. You've completed that Ironman triathlon.
Wuss.
Try the Tendai marathon on for size.
Tendai Buddhist monks, based at Mount Hiei near Kyoto, Japan, are intimately familiar with the Tendai marathon; to them it is a path to spiritual enlightenment. For not only do they have to do the running, along the way they must meditate as well. This would normally be fine. Hey, great, a chance to stop and catch their breath.
Except there are about 255 of these stops.
And they have another marathon the next day. And the next. And the next. And the next. And the next. With peers completely unconcerned as to whether you live or die.
Welcome to the 1,000-day challenge. Just to qualify to run the 1,000 day challenge, one must first complete a 100-day kaihogyo, in which one must run 40 km (24.8 miles) per day, with all the meditation stops, every day for 100 consecutive days. There is a prescribed route, but it's unmarked, much of it along uneven back roads as well as the streets of Kyoto, and you aren't given a map. If you go off-course, too bad; you simply have to find your way back to the route. Your diet is to be vegetables, tofu and miso soup. You're running in a straw hat, sandals, and are dressed in all-white. Your day begins at 1:30 AM. With all the stops, a single 40-km marathon can easily last seven and a half hours.
You are only permitted to sit down once.
And all that time, you carry with you a dagger and a rope cord. That is the consequence for failure, and all along the route, you will see grave markers of countless 19th-century monks who chose that option. For you, it's pretty much symbolic, and nowadays you can simply try again next year, but face death on the mountain and your fellow monks won't be quick about treating you.
As if that weren't enough, one of the 100 days must be a kirimawari- a 33.6 mile (54 km) run. Runners will tend to lose an entire day of sleep completing the kirimawari, but they just have to push on through.
This is just the qualifier.
Should you complete the 100-day kaihogyo, you then have the option of undertaking the 1,000-day challenge. Should you say yes, you then embark on a seven-year oddysey.
And those 100 days you just did don't count.
In years 1-3, you'll be doing one 100-day kaihogyo per year just like the one you ran in the qualifier, except there's no kirimawari. Amidst it all, Tendai monks are required to partake in other training and duties in the Mount Hiei temple. 300 days down. (In the middle of each 100-day term, there's a four-day retreat during which you don't have to run, and which still count towards the 100 days. However, modern monks tack an extra four days onto the end of the run of their own free will.)
These first three years are referred to as "basic training".
In years 4-5, you're still doing a 40-km run, with the meditation stops as always, but now it's for 200 consecutive days. (You might be wondering at this point about what happens in winter. Yeah. Good luck with that, Mr. Monk.) 700 days down, 300 to go.
In year 6, you're back to a 100-day year. But you're not getting off that easy. Oh, no. Remember that 40 kilometers? It's now 60 (37.3 miles). Per day. For 100 days.
In year 7, the final year, you only have two kaihogyos to go. This is when they stop toying with you. Remember that 60 kilometers? It's now 84 (52.2 miles). Per day. For 100 consecutive days. With meditation stops. On back mountain roads and the streets of Kyoto. That dagger's probably looking mighty tempting right about now, though by this point there are plenty of people along the course rooting you on, as word gets around fast that someone's getting close to the end.
Oh yes. You are required to bless them.
The final 100 days send you back to the 40-km kaihogyo, which to anyone that's made it past the 84-kilometer hell seems almost like a victory lap.
A single Year 7 day can hit the 20-hour mark, meaning you aren't worrying too much anymore about performing the other duties and training in the temple, which is small comfort when you've only got four hours a day when you aren't running. As for the lack of sleep, the Tendais aren't too worried about you. They have a saying, "Ten minutes' sleep for a marathon monk is worth five hours of ordinary rest." In addition, by this point you should be trying to rest individual parts of your body during the run.
But wait, there's more.
During Year 5, you will face the seven-day doiri. Mercifully, you will not be running. You'll only be walking 200 meters a day, to retrieve water from a nearby well as an offering for the emperor.
Unmercifully, the walk takes place at 2 AM. And you will not be drinking any of this water. Or any other water. Or food. You won't be sleeping either. Of course there was a catch, silly. This is the Tendai marathon.
All day long, you'll be praying and chanting, performing 100,000 prayers, with two monks by your side simply to make sure you don't break any rules. Prior to the doiri, you'll be reducing your food intake in order to prepare your body. As the London Observer puts it:
The first day is no problem, but there is some nausea on the second and third days. By the fourth and fifth days the hunger pangs have disappeared, but the monk has become so dehydrated that there is no saliva in his mouth and he will begin to taste blood.
Day 5 seems like a slap in the face: your mouth is dehydrated and you're allowed to rinse it out, but you better spit out every last drop of water that you've got in there.
On the occasions you go outside, however, you are allowed to keep all the rain that you can absorb through your skin.
By the end of the doiri, that 200 meter walk can take hours. You will be pale at the end of it There is, of course, a spiritual purpose: to bring you face-to-face with death. Doiri participants report a kind of mental clarity beyond the concepts of good and bad.
Unsurprisingly, they can also smell food being prepared miles away.
The doiri used to last ten days. They shortened it after they found that almost everybody died by the end of Day 10. The idea is to get you CLOSE to death, not to kill you.
Anyone who manages to survive the 1,000-day challenge is declared a Daigyoman Ajari- Saintly Master of the Highest Practice, and only has a 100,000-prayer fasting ceremony to go, 2-3 years after the running is over.
However, since 1585, only 46 men have attained that rank (though some places report 49). Even taking the higher number of 49, that's an average of one completion every 8.7 years. The better part of nine years and of all the people who set out on the challenge, one guy makes it. The most recent completion was by one Genshin Fujinami in 2003.
Do you still feel like an ironman?
(For more information, oh dear Lord will you be shelling out money for a used copy of this book.)
Sunday, April 4, 2010
The Worst Pope Ever
No, it's not Ratzinger, though he is getting to be in the team photo.
I'm fighting off a cold and am extremely loopy at the moment, so any writing I do is going to be rough at best, so I'll leave you a link to a really detailed bio on my candidate, John XII.
To put it simply, he ruled during a period known as the "Pornocracy".
I'm fighting off a cold and am extremely loopy at the moment, so any writing I do is going to be rough at best, so I'll leave you a link to a really detailed bio on my candidate, John XII.
To put it simply, he ruled during a period known as the "Pornocracy".
Saturday, March 27, 2010
Ratz!
Recently, in what has become a grand tradition, sexual abuse in the Catholic Church, the pope himself has found himself caught in scandal, having been found to have engaged in conduct allowing the abuse to take place. Specifically, when it was found that Father Lawrence C. Murphy of Milwaukee molested over 200 boys, then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger decided against a defrocking despite urges from local Archbishop Rembert Weakland. He also, as Archbishop of Munich, allowed an admitted pedophile to return to parish work; the pedophile would reoffend.
There have been calls for Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, to resign. Don't count on him going anywhere. Most of the points I'm raising are covered in the linked article, but here goes anyway.
First off, the pope can't be fired. He's there as long as he wants. There is precedent for firing a pope- Silverius was deposed by a Byzantine general, Belisarius, in 537 and demoted to monk on allegations of treasonous correspondence with the Goths- but papal power has increased greatly since then, formally if not secularly.
The pope can resign, but according to canon law, he can only do so of his own volition. He can jump, but he can't be pushed. And given that the pope's inner circle has circled the wagons, Ratzinger clearly has no desire to jump.
And the last pope to actually resign did so in 1415, Gregory XII, and he only did so because there were three people claiming to be pope at the time- one an antipope (which means he doesn't officially count), one ruling from Rome, and one ruling from Avignon, France. Others have made plans for potential resignation, but none have followed through for almost 600 years.
Which, of course, leaves him to serve out his tenure as little more than one more member of the Catholic Church that's seen as a kid-diddler, even if he didn't do any of it himself. And it leaves the rest of us more or less disregarding and discrediting the Church until such time as we do need a new Pope.
That all said, in an effort to have some unique content, let's do some Papal trivia.
*Before John Paul I, the most recent pope to take a name that had not already been taken by a predecessor was Pope Lando. Lando served for six months from 913-914 and there isn't much known about him. He's so forgotten that he once had a song dedicated to him on the basis of being the 'most unimportant pope'.
*Until John II in 533, popes used their personal names as their regnal name. Why did John II take another name? Because his personal name was Mercurius, and Mercury was a Roman god.
*The first 35 Popes have been canonized. Liberius is #36. The 13 Popes that came after Liberius have been canonized too.
*The most recent canonized pope is Pius X, who served from 1903-1914.
*The numbering of popes by name has gone a bit wonky over the years due to antipopes, mistaken spellings and whatnot. For example, Martin's count is two high because of the count being mistakenly lumped in with that of Marinus. But, according to how the Church has it, the numbering for each name used stands as follows:
23- John
16- Benedict, Gregory
14- Clement
13- Innocent, Leo
12- Pius
9- Boniface, Stephen
8- Alexander, Urban
6- Adrian, Paul
5- Celestine, Martin, Nicholas, Sixtus
4- Anastasius, Eugene, Felix, Honorius, Sergius
3- Callixtus, Julius, Lucius, Sylvester, Victor
2- Adeodatus, Agapetus, Damasus, Gelasius, John Paul, Marcellus, Marinus, Paschal, Pelagius, Theodore
1- Agatho, Anacletus, Anicetus, Anterus, Caius, Conon, Constantine, Cornelius, Dionysius, Donus, Eleutrus, Eusebius, Evaristus, Eutychian, Fabian, Formosus, Hilarius, Hormisdas, Hyginus, Lando, Liberius, Linus, Marcellinus, Mark, Miltiades, Peter, Pontian, Romanus, Sabinian, Silverius, Simplicius, Siricius, Sisinnius, Soter, Symmachus, Telesphorus, Valentine, Vigilius, Zachary, Zephyrinus, Zosimus
*To date, popes have come from the following modern-day countries, as far as anyone can tell: Croatia, France, Germany, Israel, Italy, Netherlands, Palestine, Poland, Portugal, 'Roman Africa' (which here likely means either Algeria or Tunisia, and most likely the Carthage area of Tunisia), Spain, Syria, United Kingdom.
*Until John Paul II in 1978, a new pope went through a coronation ceremony. Part of this ceremony included the new pope being told "Annos Petri non videbis", which translates to a preliminary adminoshment that the new Pope won't be able to live long enough to match St. Peter's tenure.
Ratzinger could have used it.
There have been calls for Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, to resign. Don't count on him going anywhere. Most of the points I'm raising are covered in the linked article, but here goes anyway.
First off, the pope can't be fired. He's there as long as he wants. There is precedent for firing a pope- Silverius was deposed by a Byzantine general, Belisarius, in 537 and demoted to monk on allegations of treasonous correspondence with the Goths- but papal power has increased greatly since then, formally if not secularly.
The pope can resign, but according to canon law, he can only do so of his own volition. He can jump, but he can't be pushed. And given that the pope's inner circle has circled the wagons, Ratzinger clearly has no desire to jump.
And the last pope to actually resign did so in 1415, Gregory XII, and he only did so because there were three people claiming to be pope at the time- one an antipope (which means he doesn't officially count), one ruling from Rome, and one ruling from Avignon, France. Others have made plans for potential resignation, but none have followed through for almost 600 years.
Which, of course, leaves him to serve out his tenure as little more than one more member of the Catholic Church that's seen as a kid-diddler, even if he didn't do any of it himself. And it leaves the rest of us more or less disregarding and discrediting the Church until such time as we do need a new Pope.
That all said, in an effort to have some unique content, let's do some Papal trivia.
*Before John Paul I, the most recent pope to take a name that had not already been taken by a predecessor was Pope Lando. Lando served for six months from 913-914 and there isn't much known about him. He's so forgotten that he once had a song dedicated to him on the basis of being the 'most unimportant pope'.
*Until John II in 533, popes used their personal names as their regnal name. Why did John II take another name? Because his personal name was Mercurius, and Mercury was a Roman god.
*The first 35 Popes have been canonized. Liberius is #36. The 13 Popes that came after Liberius have been canonized too.
*The most recent canonized pope is Pius X, who served from 1903-1914.
*The numbering of popes by name has gone a bit wonky over the years due to antipopes, mistaken spellings and whatnot. For example, Martin's count is two high because of the count being mistakenly lumped in with that of Marinus. But, according to how the Church has it, the numbering for each name used stands as follows:
23- John
16- Benedict, Gregory
14- Clement
13- Innocent, Leo
12- Pius
9- Boniface, Stephen
8- Alexander, Urban
6- Adrian, Paul
5- Celestine, Martin, Nicholas, Sixtus
4- Anastasius, Eugene, Felix, Honorius, Sergius
3- Callixtus, Julius, Lucius, Sylvester, Victor
2- Adeodatus, Agapetus, Damasus, Gelasius, John Paul, Marcellus, Marinus, Paschal, Pelagius, Theodore
1- Agatho, Anacletus, Anicetus, Anterus, Caius, Conon, Constantine, Cornelius, Dionysius, Donus, Eleutrus, Eusebius, Evaristus, Eutychian, Fabian, Formosus, Hilarius, Hormisdas, Hyginus, Lando, Liberius, Linus, Marcellinus, Mark, Miltiades, Peter, Pontian, Romanus, Sabinian, Silverius, Simplicius, Siricius, Sisinnius, Soter, Symmachus, Telesphorus, Valentine, Vigilius, Zachary, Zephyrinus, Zosimus
*To date, popes have come from the following modern-day countries, as far as anyone can tell: Croatia, France, Germany, Israel, Italy, Netherlands, Palestine, Poland, Portugal, 'Roman Africa' (which here likely means either Algeria or Tunisia, and most likely the Carthage area of Tunisia), Spain, Syria, United Kingdom.
*Until John Paul II in 1978, a new pope went through a coronation ceremony. Part of this ceremony included the new pope being told "Annos Petri non videbis", which translates to a preliminary adminoshment that the new Pope won't be able to live long enough to match St. Peter's tenure.
Ratzinger could have used it.
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