Whee, Friday! The start of a long weekend for us Americans. And this first link is a great activity for the weekend.
- Come for a good cause!– May 25 is the annual masturbate-a-thon! Put on by the Center for Sex and Culture it’s a lot more fun then all those walk/run fund raising events. Click here for info on how to participate. (Second link NSFW, first one is nekkid-free.)
- Giant blue earthworms– Australia has all the cool animals, damn it.
- Hippies might have something with that incense crap– A new study, “…describes how burning frankincense (resin from the Boswellia plant) activates poorly understood ion channels in the brain to alleviate anxiety or depression.”
- Christian Civic League of Maine continues to be crazy- Hey, I had to give a shout out to my local crazies. This isn’t the first time they’ve pulled some stupid shit.
- Dr Who to boost church popularity?– “There are countless examples of Christian symbolism in Doctor Who, which we can use to get across ideas that can otherwise be difficult to explain,” The Sunday Telegraph in Britain quoted Andrew Wooding, a spokesman for conference organising group Church Army, as saying.
I just bought some Frankincense at an Indian shop last night, but only because I like the way it smells.
To test this theory, I’m going to contemplate the Museum of Natural History opening up an ID wing (to increase anxiety and depression), then burn some Frankincense to see if it helps.
I wonder what the Church of Doctor Who peeps will make of this…
“There are countless examples of Christian symbolism in Doctor Who, which we can use to get across ideas that can otherwise be difficult to explain,â€
that just goes to show that people will read whatever they want to into anything to prop up their beliefs (and lure people in with something popular).
doctor who exists in an essentially atheist universe, and he uses (sometimes far-fetched and implausible) science to save the day.
but, then again, I may be reading my own beliefs into my favorite show.
oh, well. i guess christians will never stop trying to make their beliefs look hip.
I think Doctor Who is very explicitly humanist. He constantly extols the virtues of curiosity, ingenuity, etc. as well as their abilities to fix their own problems (well, at least without supernatural intervention). In fact, the show goes out of its way to say that any “magic” is just Clark’s Third Law. The only episode (of the recent series) that deals with religion in any overt way would be The Satan Pit, in which the Doctor talks about religions as the “rules” we create for ourselves.
I would like to hear examples of the “Christian symbolism” that supposedly exists.
Now, the finale of the first series of Torchwood, THAT is a classic Jesus/Resurrection story. Still, I doubt that’s something the church would want to draw attention to, considering that “Jesus” (Jack) is a very actively pansexual immortal. Heh, explain that in Sunday school!
Oh and by the way, hi, I’m new here :-)
Welcome, Arcan!
I’m a newbie to this whole Dr Who/Torchwood universe but I certainly don’t get any Jesusy overtones from Dr Who, but I can see the humanism in it.
Hee, Jack as Jesus makes me laugh. That’s a religion I could get on top of, er, behind, er….
I LOVE the masturbate-a-thon!!!!
And yeah, re: Jack. :-)
Yeah, like Richard Dawkins’s guest appearance.
Seeing Xianity in DrWho is simple confirmational bias with perhaps a little bit of a desperate attempt to jump on the bandwagon.
I don’t get the masturbation thing at all, the event not the concept of masturbation. Of all the things on my list of “What’s wrong with the world”, not-enough-masturbating-going-on isn’t in the top thousand. As much it annoys the religious right (and thats always fun) I can’t see how its going to change the world, other than give an excuse to some exhibitionists.
Call me old fashioned, but we’re simple folks in our house, what’s wrong with a little bit of “Private Time”?
Mike Heath:
>>Christians are being labeled as “homophobicsâ€, and criticized when they exercise their free speech rights in opposition to homosexuality, as being uncaring, unloving, judgmental, and hateful.
I think he’s a bit confused. I can support his right to say something and still not like what he’s saying. The opposition has free speech rights too!
Darn–I thought the masturbate-a-thon was on our wedding anniversary, but it misses it by 2 days.
Oh well!