Cranial Gas – Desultory Musings

Professor fired for discounting the story of the garden of eden as a ‘fairy tale’

A community college instructor in Red Oak claims he was fired after he told his students that the biblical story of Adam and Eve should not be literally interpreted.Steve Bitterman, 60, said officials at Southwestern Community College sided with a handful of students who threatened legal action over his remarks in a western civilization class Tuesday. He said he was fired Thursday.

http://www.desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2007709220333

A talking ass (Numbers 22) and a god as strong as a unicorn, perhaps we should consider the possibility that the story is allegorical if not an outright fabrication.

Who reads this crap?

As I explained in what the hell is cranial gas? I’m bored out of my mind and housebound so I thought I’d play with writing a blog. Within an hour of my first set of postings I received the following comment on my
posting Bill Maher on Religion

Satan: Have you ever told a lie during your lifetime?

Bill Maher: Yes, I have lied numerous times…everyone has

Satan:
“The word of God says All liars shall have their part in the lake of fire”- Revelation 21:8

“It also says if you fail one part of the law you fail the whole law” – James 2:10

No attornery for law breaking Bill. Break the law you get punished.

Not being a very clever person, I thought I’d look to see what http://formerthings.wordpress.com was posting to see if I could understand why the devil was quoting scripture. Surely scripture must be evil if the devil quotes it. I found this post

Seven Youths Claim to See Lennon in Hell
“This man was John Lennon, the member of the music group “The Beatles.” John Lennon was a man who mocked and made fun of the Lord during his life. He said that the Christianity was going to disappear and Jesus Christ would be forgotten by everyone. However, today this man is in hell and Jesus Christ is alive!! Christianity hasn’t disappeared either.” – Taken from Revelations of Hell Testimony

Things John Lennon said that got him a special room in hell, the one that plays Barry Manilow

“All we are saying is give peace a chance.”

“And so this is Xmas for black and for white, for yellow and red, let’s stop all the fight.”

“I believe in God, but not as one thing, not as an old man in the sky. I believe that what people call God is something in all of us. I believe that what Jesus and Mohammed and Buddha and all the rest said was right. It’s just that the translations have gone wrong.”

“I don’t believe in killing whatever the reason!”

“Possession isn’t nine-tenths of the law. It’s nine-tenths of the problem.”

“Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn’t argue with that; I’m right and I will be proved right. We’re more popular than Jesus now; I don’t know which will go first — rock and roll or Christianity. Jesus was all right, but his disciples were thick and ordinary. It’s them twisting it that ruins it for me.”

• One of the most controversial statements Lennon ever made, this was published in England’s Evening Standard newspaper (4 March 1966) as part of an interview with writer Maureen Cleave. This single quote (taken out of context — Lennon was often misquoted as stating the Beatles were “bigger than Jesus”) was to spark protests across the Bible Belt in America. Beatles records were burned en masse, and the Ku Klux Klan burned a Beatles effigy and nailed Beatles albums to a burning cross. The band members were dismissive of this, as they pointed out that first the people had to buy the albums in order to burn them.

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Lennon

So I guess we make up a discussion in which Bill admits to having told a lie, have the devil quoting scripture to Bill and come to conclude that having told the truth in admitting having lied in whole or in part at some time in his life, Bill must be going to hell. Well at least the Beatles are better than listening to harps all day long.

Forged Origins of the New Testament

Nexus Magazine posted an interesting article

Constantine’s intention at Nicaea was to create an entirely new god for his empire who would unite all religious factions under one deity. Presbyters were asked to debate and decide who their new god would be. Delegates argued among themselves, expressing personal motives for inclusion of particular writings that promoted the finer traits of their own special deity. Throughout the meeting, howling factions were immersed in heated debates, and the names of 53 gods were tabled for discussion. “As yet, no God had been selected by the council, and so they balloted in order to determine that matter… For one year and five months the balloting lasted…” (God’s Book of Eskra, Prof. S. L. MacGuire’s translation, Salisbury, 1922, chapter xlviii, paragraphs 36, 41). At the end of that time, Constantine returned to the gathering to discover that the presbyters had not agreed on a new deity but had balloted down to a shortlist of five prospects: Caesar, Krishna, Mithra, Horus and Zeus (Historia Ecclesiastica, Eusebius, c. 325). Constantine was the ruling spirit at Nicaea and he ultimately decided upon a new god for them. To involve British factions, he ruled that the name of the great Druid god, Hesus, be joined with the Eastern Saviour-god, Krishna (Krishna is Sanskrit for Christ), and thus Hesus Krishna would be the official name of the new Roman god. A vote was taken and it was with a majority show of hands (161 votes to 157) that both divinities became one God. Following longstanding heathen custom, Constantine used the official gathering and the Roman apotheosis decree to legally deify two deities as one, and did so by democratic consent. A new god was proclaimed and “officially” ratified by Constantine (Acta Concilii Nicaeni, 1618). That purely political act of deification effectively and legally placed Hesus and Krishna among the Roman gods as one individual composite. That abstraction lent Earthly existence to amalgamated doctrines for the Empire’s new religion; and because there was no letter “J” in alphabets until around the ninth century, the name subsequently evolved into “Jesus Christ”.
…
There is an explanation for those hundreds of years of silence: the construct of Christianity did not begin until after the first quarter of the fourth century, and that is why Pope Leo X (d. 1521) called Christ a “fable” (Cardinal Bembo: His Letters…, op. cit.).

http://www.nexusmagazine.com/articles/NewTestament.html

This is a small fraction of the posting.

Shortly thereafter hundreds of blogs posted the article in its entirety, but I didn’t see one that didn’t give attribution to the original or at least the magazine.

For example http://www.thepeoplesvoice.org/cgi-bin/blogs/voices.php/2007/08/06/p18661
Did a fine job of formatting the article in some post 1993 style that a professional publishing house couldn’t seem to pull off.

At least as interesting is the civility internet blogs on the article.

William C. Carlotti thepeoplevoice.org article cited has a protracted analysis of the improbability of the accuracy of the story of Exodus written in a very
academic manner. There are many such comments in postings around the web, both skeptics and believers although the skeptics usually seem to have a better command of the historical facts and the believers have a more “well, I haven’t been convinced that maybe this isn’t true anyway” ring to them. The point is the postings were amazingly civil for a subject matter that could be so potentially divisive and contentious. There were few posting such as

Oh for piss sakes. Lets just get rid of the Bible and the Koran and every other man made fairy tale. Maybe when people quit killing in the name of their God we’ll have some peace.

from SoapScumBuildup.

Which seemed to detract from the civility and academic (rational or theological) nature of the conversations.

As a rationalist I find it amazing how little of the bible most of the truly devout know. They were force fed a condensed version as it is difficult to believe a story filled with 600 year old men, a god who just loves blood spilled on gold in his honor, talking snakes, talking asses, people turning to salt, the only good men in a town throwing their daughters out onto the street to be raped by mobs, etc.

What the hell is Cranial Gas?

Cranial Gas is just a bunch of brain farts and categorized news summaries from around the web.

Too many people who get their “news” from TV.

I scratched the hell out of my cornea last weekend and got a pretty good infection. Now I have to put Vagamox in my right eye once an hour 24 hours a day. Not a lot of time for sleeping, can’t see to drive. So I thought I’d play with starting a blog to replace my daily webstuff mailings derived from my netvibes RSS consolidator. Most of the subscribers prefer the articles such as

Lurking underground in the heart of Tokyo’s trendy Roppongi is a true heart of darkness – a members-only club that combines forbidden sex practices with the art of fine dining.

Now, I know what you’re thinking – if I didn’t read about this in Japan’s respected Mainichi Daily News, I would not have believed it – and I’m not sure I want to believe it *.

The gist of it is, members pay a hefty fee at the door to be allowed to… have sex with the animal of their choice – which is subsequently killed, cooked and served to the violator and his party for dinner!

http://inventorspot.com/articles/new_bestiality_restaurant_caters_6934

But if you’re interesting in things of this nature, check out

• http://www.boingboing.net
• http://www.theregister.co.uk/odds/

and others of that ilk.

So, dear webstuff readers, your webstuff mailings will be trimmed of anything truly useful and focus on the weird.

Please pray for my recovery. It is a corneal abrasion. I’ve had this 4 times, twice in both eyes at the same time. Your prayers may be answered. But don’t pray for amputees. God hates amputees.

http://www.whydoesgodhateamputees.com/god5.htm

Which brings me to my next topic

There can be no free will

The beauty of my deep spiritual faith is my sureness in the all knowing nature of God, the all powerful.

As God has known forever every action I am going to take in my entire life, I couldn’t possibly act any differently than I do, or God would be wrong, which is impossible, therefor I am unaccountable for my own actions. Faith is truly liberating.

See, a brain fart.

See ya around I hope.