- So apparently God was married. Guess it didn’t work out. (From jes3ica.)
- Why are women really leaving engineering?
- Church responding to growing demand for exorcists. The Vatican warns that the internet is helping Satanism spread. Way to go, internet. (From Rosaire.)
- Jane Goodall’s field notes digitized.
God was married? I smell a sitcom.
I count myself one of the lucky ones to sit in on a Jane Goodall lecture a few years ago and was enthralled by her passion for the subject she so clearly embraces.
It’s wonderful to hear that her field notes will be digitized for posterity and that future primatologists will be able to easily avail themselves of her fulsome notes and vivid descriptions.
Jane remains a beacon to young women/men who have a field of interest they want to pursue.
Great…exorcism spam.
The religious won’t care. They’ll dismiss it. It’s my understanding that there’s evidence (before this) that yahweh was a sky god in a pantheon, and over time, he became the only one worshipped. Not that any of this matters.
I’m in the process of reading the Bible and it’s pretty clear that Yahweh was not considered to be the only deity until fairly recently.
Very much of the Old Testament is about worshiping El/Yahweh over all the other gods that were still accepted. Over time, Moses or other leaders started making a bigger deal about not worshiping Asherah specifically, so apparently they went through a messy divorce. The same story is repeated over and over, where the Israelites start worshiping other gods in addition to Yahweh, then Yahweh gets jealous and curses them. And Asherah is specifically mentioned numerous times.
There are also plenty of instances where the god that they are currently worshiping tries to convince the Israelites that he is the same one their ancestors worshiped, even though he’s going by a different name now (El, Yahweh, etc).
@catgirl: Wife walks out on a narcissistic, insanely jealous, violence-prone deity, and then he takes it out on the kids.
@scribe999: And who says religion isn’t American? ;-)
@scribe999: COTW!
@jthewonderllama: “He’s an all-knowing, all-powerful Lord-over-all with a jealous streak as long as the Nile.”
“She’s an all-loving, all-merciful Mother-of-all-that-lives who’s been locked away for thousands of years.”
“Watch how they make it work out between them, while taking care of almost 7 billion crazy kids. Every Thursday night on “That’s my Yahweh!”
This week’s episode: “Whoops! Platypus!”
If you like the Asherah/Yahweh story I highly recommend that you read the novel Snow Crash. Not only is it one of the best Sci-Fi novels ever but it deals a lot with the back story of this religious area.
@MiddleMan: Network exec/Temple priest: Hmmm…the Platypus episode only drew a 3 share with the 18-35 male demo in this week’s ratings. I think we’re going to have rework the show. Can we write this Asherah out somehow?
@scribe999: “Sure! Hey, let’s replace her with a zany son and all of his wacky friends!
@scribe999: “Sure! Hey, let’s replace her with a zany son and a bunch of his wacky friends!”
COTW to this entire thread!
@MiddleMan: I like it! A sort of Touched by an Angle meets Seinfeld. Can we lose the Holy Ghost though? It gives whole thing a Scooby Doo vibe, which doesn’t speak to today’s younger viewers.
@jthewonderllama: Ok, but I think we’re going to lose the whole spirit of the show…
BTW: “Touched by an Angle” This weeks episode: “Protractor or Contractor” Euclid and Pythagoras find themselves in a bind when trying to convince their builder friend that you can’t trisect an angle with just a compass.
Here’s a quick video (about 10 mins) by Evid3nc3 about that whole “Yahweh is part of a polytheistic pantheon” thing for anyone who cares to know more about it but is too lazy to read whole books about it. :P
Recommended for pretty much anyone.
Church responding to growing demand for exorcists.
Well yeah, there are a lot of demons in the Catholic church.
God was married Correction, is married, her name is Lucy and I watch that sitcom as often as I can. ;)
If you want to cast out demons, you need to invoke the right god, Thor. They even named a treatment after him, the mighty Thor-a-zine. If that doesn’t work there is always Electra and her lightning fast treatment: Electra-shock.
The Washington Post – The stupid, it burns.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-buzz/post/mercurys-in-retrograde-and-were-all-in-trouble/2011/03/30/AFrxhH4B_blog.html
My comment there is meant to be sarcastic and hopefully incite a war among astrologers. Help?
@jthewonderllama: It had better be acute angle if it’s going to touch anyone like that.
@illinoisfrank: That must be the explanation of why the computer I’m trying to work on crashed. Fortunately, it’s a test system (or I wouldn’t be trying this without on-site support.) It had been up for almost 4 years. Rebooted to install some security patches and to make sure all the startup command files were up-to-date. (Of course, some weren’t.) Going through it step by step, was about 90% done, when it just dropped off the face of the Earth. (It’s in California, I’m in Massachusetts, so that’s not totally unlikely.) It appears not to have rebooted. They’ve laid off most of their personnel, and outsourced a lot of the remainder, and the guy in charge of the test systems is either on vacation or telecommuting (car-less) from about 50 miles away. The only person on duty in the computer center (an enormous, mostly empty building which still has about a thousand servers in it) is trying to FIND the computer in question, but has never dealt with it before. (It’s a test system, and like I said, it had been up for almost 4 years, so the people there pretty much ignore it. I described it as best I could and have been on hold for about 15 minutes while she looks for it.
Should have known better than to attempt this while Mercury was retrograde!
Sorry for the totally OT rant/whinge. At least I get a chance to read Skepchick while waiting on hold. But it’s way past dinner time.
@MiddleMan: COTW!