of Lars J. Nilsson

Tonight the firebird will rise from the ashes, spring will come again and the son be reborn. Funky stuff. Although, as folk tales go, the execution of Christ seems rather unimpressive. And illogical too, I mean, how on earth is that supposed to save us? And lets see, Jesus gets one day of torment and one day of death and then he’s up to heaven and then it’s wine and virgins all day again. On the other hand, Judas who acts out Gods divine plan, gets to take his life in remorse and then spend eternity in hell. And I’m supposed to pity Jesus and revile Judas? Yeah, right.Doesn’t seem very profound does it?Even Frankensteins monster managed to rise from the dead. Certainly gods have been doing it all the time. And will mot likely continue to do so for a while yet. Here, for example, is what Mr Wednesday learnt, swinging from the tree:

“I know a charm that can cure pain and sickness, and lift the grief from the heart of the grieving.”I know a charm that will heal with a touch.”I know a charm turn aside the weapon of any enemy.”I know another charm to free myself from all bonds and locks.”A fifth charm: I can catch an arrow in flight and take no harm from it.”A sixth: spells sent to hurt me will only hurt the sender.”A seventh charm I know: I can quench a fire simply by looking at it.”An eight: if any man hates me, I can win his frindship.”A ninth: I can sing the wind to sleep and calm a storm for long enough to bring a ship to shore.”These were the first nine charms I learned. Nine night I hung on the base tree, my side pierced with a spear’s point. I swayed and blew in the cold winds and the hot winds, without food, without water, a sacrifice of myself to myself, and the worlds opened before me.”For a tenth charm, I learned to dispel witches. to spin them around in the skies so that they will never find their way back to their own door again.”An eleventh: if I sing it when a battle rages it can take the warriors through the tumult unscathed and unhurt, and bring them safely back to their hearths and their homes.”A twelfth charm I know: if I see a hanged man I can bring him down from the gallows to whisper to us all he remembers.”A thirteenth: if I sprinkle water on a childs head, that child will not fall in battle.”A fourteenth. I know the names of all the gods. Every damned one of them.”A fifteenth: I have a dream of power, of glory, and of wisdom, and I can make people believe my dreams.”A sixteenth charm I know: if I need love I can turn the mind and heart of any woman.”A seventeenth, that no woman I want will ever want another.”And I know an eighteenth charm, and that charm is the greatest of all, and that charm I can tell to no man, for a secret that no one knows but you is the most powerful secret there can ever be.”

As easter is… semi-important for the Christians among us, I thought it prudent to do a few more posts than usual these days. If nothing else, there’s so much one can make fu… comment on.So here’s some etymology for you reading pleasure.Swedish word “påsk” seems taken straight from the Christian school books. As many other languages it stems from “pesach” which is hebrew for “passover”, the Jewish feast celbrating the exodus from Egypt, and is seen in early swedish as “paach”, “pach”, “pask”, “posk” etc.The English word is a bit more fun. In popular science it seems fairly established that the word “easter” stems from Eostre, an Anglo-Saxon goddess of spring. However, in reality things arn’t always that clear. Eostre is first mentioned by St. Bede in his De temporum ratione. Jacob Grimm (of the Grimm brothers) took it up. And so it goes. But there’s no earlier mentioning of Eostre we can find, so possible Bede was incorrect. On the other hand, why would a Christian scholar like him make up a pagan goddess? And there is also the etymology, German “ostern” has been suggested as a root, but then, it might as well be the other way around.In any case, that easter is modelled on top of an older holy day shoudn’t surprise anyone. The list of gods and goddesses preceeding Christianity is quite long. The execution of Christ takes place in the Passover. His birth is funnily enough in midwinter. I’m just surprised there isn’t a major Christian celebration at midsummer as well.So there you go dear English readers. Eggs, spring flowers, young flesh. You’re celebrating the goddess of the dawn, fertility and re-growth. Don’t let the priests tell you differently.

You know, I never understood this easter thing. Even as a Christian I thought is was pretty dump to mourn on the black Friday. You see, I thought like this at the time:

1. Judas betrayed Jesus to the romans. Ok.
2. Jesus gets crucified by the jews. Mind you, not the romans.. Right.
3. By dying on the cross for our sins, he saves our souls. Uhm… Ok, check.
4. Consequently, if he hadn’t died we wouldn’t be saved. Seems right to me.
5. Therefore, it is a good thing he was betrayed and died. Er… Right?
6. I mean, seriously, isn’t this all a part of the divine plan? And god is almighty? Right?!
7. So, hang on, almighty? He really couldn’t have not died then?.
8. Because like, if he wouldn’t have died, the plan for our salvation would have failed.
9. And, I mean… Really. This is getting strange. Ho hum…
10. Ahh, sod it. Praise the lord brother.

Nowadays of course, I’d agree with most of it, except obviously step nr. 10. The Gospel of Judas does make a lot more sense than the traditional Christian gibberings in this case. We should mourn that he finishes off his glourious plan and saves our souls? Oh, bugger off. It just goes to show you what inane fantasies we’ve been taught to swallow the last 2k years. Stupid shit.As the t-shirt says: If Jesus comes back, we’ll kill him again.

I really don’t understand what all the fuzz is about. The Rational Response Squad makes a PR-bid and challanges people to put a video of themself denying the holy spirit on YouTube, with the incentive that they’ll get a free copy of The God Who Wasn’t There.Were’s the problem? When PZ links to a defense, the normally thoughtful and readable Orac weights in:

[...] it irritated me because it was just plain immature and silly, not to mention probably based on a false premise. It also inspired truly childish and embarrassing spectacles like the guy who cleaned up dog crap with the pages of the Bible.

Silly? I don’t understand what’s silly with it, it seems like a well executed PR coup to me. It “inspired” childish spectacles? *shrug* I certainly couldn’t care less, the idea that athests are less childish than xians is misplaced, you will get all sorts, good and bad. And even so, who cares? I can point out childish xian behaviour, but I wouldn’t use it in an argument, and I expect any xian wishing to argue with me to do the same.And “based on a false premise“? Well, yes, perhaps and “probably”. From the article:

The blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is making the claim that the works of the Holy Spirit are actually the works of Satan. It has nothing to do with denying the existence of the Holy Spirit [...]

So, if they had said “I deny the work of the holy spirit”, would that have been more palatable? I think not. This sort of defense is slightly emberasing if taken serously. Fortunately I don’t, I think it misses a number key point.Also I think Greta forgot a key point (although her post is very good, go read it) in why, perhaps The Rational Response Squad, but certainly many of the “childish” posters, are doing it: Because it’s good old entertainment poking fun at authority, even more so when the target can’t at all take it. Is poking fun at authority silly? I don’t think so. Is childish behaviour when poking fun at authority childish? Perhaps, but if the target takes it too seriously, they’re often being just as childish.And let’s not forget, as Greta points out, that there’s some really good responses in there, just look at the ones she posted for example.Anyway. I really don’t understand what all the fuzz is about. It seems like good old fun to me.

A very good overview, by Derk Pereboom, University of Vermont, here. I thought I would make some comments of my own, but I haven’t had time yet. We’ll see if I can get to it the next couple of days.

Celebrate Xenu! If you’re reading this and don’t know who this “Xenu” person is, you can start here. Thet’s right. It’s the space alien L. Ron Hubbard created as the back-story for Scientology. In Birmingham (UK) I was frequently annoyed by Scentology people on the streets, and my favourite answer as I swept pass them quickly became a sneering: “In Xenu I trust!” They quickly stopped bothering me. I wonder why?No more “oh shit, I don’t have a subway map, where the hell am I going!” for me. Here.Streaming philosophy radio on line? Why not? I havn’t had time to check it out properly yest, but it does seem like a cool idea.

Ok, so this has been all over the place already. It is still very good. Here.

Again from Going Postal. The book is stock full of stealth philosofy. Here’s a conversation which should be of interest to any moderate theists:

“Alright, alright, I really didn’t want to go into this, but it’s against my religion,” said Moist, who’d had time to think. “We’re forbidden to have any image made of us. It removes part of the soul, you know.”"And you believe that?” said Sacharissa. “Really?”"Er, no. No. Of course not. Not as such. But… but you can’t treat religion as a sort of buffet, can you? I mean, you can’t say yes please, I’ll have some of the Celestial Paradise and a helping of te Divine Plan but go easy on the kneeling and none of the Prohibition of Images, they give me wind. It’s table d’hôte or nothing, otherwise… welll it would be silly.”

On the subject of the bible, and improvements thereof:

You and I both know that it would take us five minutes to produce a book that offers a more coherent and compassionate morality than the Bible does. Did I say five minutes? Five seconds–just tear out Leviticus, Deuteronomy, Exodus, and 2 Samuel from the Old Testament, and 2 Thessalonians and Revelation from the New Testament. The book would be mightily improved. Would it then be the most profound book we have on morality (or cosmology, biology, psychology, etc.)? Not by a long shot. But it would be a much better book than it is at present.

He is speaking to Andrew Sullivan in a “blogalogue”, which you will find here. At the time of this post, they’re not finished but so far Mr. Harris is doing good. Go read it.

I’m reading Richard Morgans Woken Furies at the moment. Godd stuff. His Altered Carbon was a brilliant first novel. This is more mature, slightly slower, but better. So here’s some Takechi Kovacs for you. On theists ignoring the bad sides of religion:

Many of you cringe along in complience, hoping to peel something of worth from the less phycotic directives of you genocidal belief system because you don’t have the wit or nerve to build something entirely new.

Whee! Ok, I did change the qoute somewhat. I changed one character to make it more general. Can you find the caracher I switched? Here’s another, targeted towards a pregnant woman who claims to freely choose an opressive male dominated religion (like christianity or islam):

I’m calling you a gutless betrayer of your sex. I can see your husbands angle, he’s a man, he’s got everything to gain from this crabshit. But you? You’ve thrown away centuries of political struggle and scientific advance so you can sit in the dark and mutter your superstitions of unworth to yourself. You’ll let your life, the most precious thing you have, be stolen from you hour by hour and day by day as long as you can eke out the excistence your males will let you have. [...] You’ll do all of this because of your fucking faith, and if that child in your belly is female, then you’ll condemn her to the same fucking thing!

Classic! Takechi Kovacs is not a nice man at all, not at all, but the rant above is well worth the ride.