Contact: Book versus Movie

A few decades ago, I read The Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. I love Dickens and I have been seeing television versions of it since I was a child, probably at least two dozens. Heck, even the Six Million Dollar Man did a version of it. I was curious as to how accurate they were to the book. I discovered that reading it wasn't as enjoyable as I'd expected. Really. It was beautifully written of course, but because I knew the story so well, there were no surprises, same characters, nothing new.  Most of these film and play productions of the Christmas classic, it ends up, are actually quite accurate. I was expecting my reading of Carl Sagan's Contact to be like this because I had seen the movie so many times. It was not, at all.

Contact, the 1997 Robert Zemeckis film, is one of my favorites. Jodie Foster in a thought-provoking hard science fiction (a real sci-fi story, not like Star Wars) with ethical and theological paradoxes ... what could be better? Not much actually. I have seen this film many times. Much is different in the book, which makes it an enjoyable read, but unfortunately, it might be one of those few books where the movie is better than the book. 

**Fair warning: I tell you now, if you have not read the book or seen the movie, there are spoilers coming. You have been warned.  You may want to stop and watch the movie now. You won't regret it.  

The first thing you should realize is that it was originally conceived of as a movie, not a book, in 1977. Sagan and Ann Druyan (whom he later married) wrote the story. It bounced around Hollywood for a few years taking on many different forms, in the meantime, Sagan decided to write the novel which was eventually published by Simon and Schuster in 1985. It reached #7 on the New York Times Best Seller list. It returned to the list in 1997, briefly, when the movie came out. 

In the book, we get a lot more of Ellie Arroway's (Jodie Foster) back story. She was based on Jill Tarter, an astronomer for SETI.  Her name comes from Eleanor Roosevelt and Francois-Marie Arouet (aka Voltaire).  We do get the scene of her with her father conversing about the stars and he dies while she is still young, but the book also shows her mom remarrying a very pious man whom Ellie does not get along with and there are some surprises to their relationship as well. In the movie, her mother dies while giving birth to Ellie and is a non-entity in her life. She calls her mother throughout the book. We also read about Ellie going to college with her sexual exploits and the continued sexism she gets exposed to her in her field. Many characters are in the book that don't make it into the movie. Her lover is Presidential Science Adviser Ken der Heer. He isn't even in the movie. The movie has Ellie in a relationship with Palmer Joss (Matthew McConaughey) which is only hinted at in the book. She seems to be attracted to him but is more interested in their intellectual sparring than anything physical. 

Some characters from the movie are not in the book at all, like the guys in the lab. They are there, but they aren't named. Remember the blind guy, Kent (portrayed by William Fichtner). Not in the book. One of the most memorable scenes in the movie is when Kent actually hears the message from space in the static, he hears structure while others cannot. I could imagine this scene was added to create drama to the moment of discovery. This character is based on a real guy, a scientist that worked at SETI, Kent Cullers.  Rob Lowe's Richard Rank is a parody of Ralph Reed and is not in the book. The book does have Billy Jo Rankin but he is less extreme and less cartoonish. I can understand this change since the book came out in the 80's and much had changed with religion in American, a la the Christian Coalition, by the late 90's when the film came out. It needed an upgrade. James Wood owns the character of Kitz. Kitz who is in the book and is still quite obnoxious but Wood pushes him into the realm of belligerence which makes him much more interesting. He is a character you love to hate.  

One big change is that the US President, in the book, has a big role and the president is a woman. The movie only shows the President once and it is Bill Clinton. Zemeckis very creatively uses news footage from 1996 of Clinton talking about a Mars rock, but the clips are so vague it appears that he is talking about the message from Vega. Zemeckis received a complaint letter from the White House because they never granted permission for the footage. The original plan was for Sydney Poitier to play the president but he turned the role down. So the president wasn't a woman in the film but was supposed to be black, both of which were quite progressive for their time. 

There is more science in the book which is a good thing. Carl Sagan is one of the best science educators of the 20th century and it makes sense that even in his only book of fiction, he continues to educate. As I read I learned about the star Vega and Polaris, about the moons of our solar system, about message decoding, radio and television waves, and about the general nature of the universe. A number of compelling conversations/arguments take place between scientists and religious folks throughout the book. These are fascinating, as they are in the movie, but the book has more of them.  

Of course, the movie is filled with stuff  not in the book that must have been added because it works. Another memorable scene is Ellie laying on her Thunderbird's hood with headphones listening to the "cosmic static." Not in the book, but it is a fine scene. Her relationship with Dumlin (Tom Skerritt's character) is strained, but it is a much bigger part of the movie than it is in the book. He was her faculty adviser and was disappointed in her career choice of searching for E.T.

The message is prime numbers (mathematics is the language of science) and is being broadcast from distance aliens with hidden instructions to build a machine. They don't know what the machine is, a Trojan Horse perhaps. It takes about a decade to build in the book, but it doesn't seem that long in the movie. The world builds two in the movie, but three in the book because the USSR had to build one as well. Written in 1985 after all, the Cold War is still raging in Sagan's future. The book's machine has five seats while the movie's only has one for Ellie. In the book, her trip across the galaxy takes place on New Year's Eve 1999; there is no mention of the Y2K bug. The trip takes 20 minutes Earth time while the movie has it taking just a few seconds. 

The oddest thing about the book is the terrorist attack. This is a big moment in the movie. Ellie recognizes a religious fanatic at a testing of the machine and he has a bomb on him. It goes off and destroys it. It is quite a spectacle. While reading this in the book, I was reminded that Sagan is not a novelist, but a scientist. It only took place in one paragraph that ended the chapter. I wasn't even sure it had happened so I reread it. It was there, but very vague. The next chapter started with Drumlin's funeral so it was there. I don't think I would have known what happened if I hadn't seen the movie. 

I am a non-believer. I call myself an Atheist but at times, I found this to be extreme. Atheism seems to be fundamentalist approach to science. If I had to come up with a name for what I am, in regards to the whole God question, I would have to call myself an Agnostic leaning strongly towards Atheism.  I have always wondered what I would need to convince me that there is a God, any god. I've never been able to come with anything. What I love about the end of Contact, is that it answers this question. The movie didn't come near this. When Ellie talks to the alien (in the guise of her father), they talk about the number π (aka pi). They talk about how it goes on and on, never repeating, but somewhere in there, the alien says, is a string of ones and zeroes. In this string of binary digits is a message. The book ends Ellie spending her time looking for this message. A message being discovered in pi would do it for me. It is interesting that a book by a great scientist, helped me figure out what I'd need to believe in God. 

Notes on Reading For Whom the Bell Tolls

I am at the point in my life that I have a bathroom book. Since I have committed myself to reading one classic of literature every year for the rest of my llife, these are perfect bathroom books. It means that I may take months to read some of these tomes, two or three pages at each "sitting." Think of me as a contemporary Leopold Bloom with a blog. 

Andy Warhol has a short experimental film called Haircut that I can't help think of when I read Hemmingway. The film is just of a haircut, other than the haircut nothing really happens, and it is quite boring. At some point towards the end of the film, someone sneezes. That simple sneeze seems momentous only because your sense of time and action has been altered by the film. It slows your brain down. This is what it is like reading Hemmingway. 

If you ask someone what For Whom The Bell Tolls is about, they generally say it is about a mission to blow up a bridge during the Spanish Civil War. I take issue with this description. It is really more of a book about a bunch of characters talking about a mission to blow up a bridge. They mention blowing it up on the first page, one hundred pages into the six hundred page novel they are still talking about blowing up the bridge ... page 350 they are still talking about the dam bridge. Nothing much happens, a lot of dialogue, but when the action happens, it just seems momentous, like Warhol's sneeze. The last chapter, the bridge is blown. 

I knew this going in. Slowing your brain down is particularly difficult in the internet age, my brain seems to be hardwired to expect stimulus every few seconds. When I was younger I read The Old Man and the Sea, an entire short novel about a guy trying to catch a fish. I also read the very short story, "A Clean Well Lighted Place," about an old guy in a bar being talked about by waiters. Reading something with so little plot may not have been a problem decades ago, before the rewiring, but it is now. Maintaining my attention span is a task which I have to put work into. I can only read it in spurts, a few pages at a time hence the bathroom reading. My mind wanders too easily for Hemingway. I started reading For Whom The Bell Tolls in late November 2020, I started blogging about it, this post, in December. I expected that I would not be finished until March. I write this sentence today and it is April 2021, I am on page 350. I finally finished the book in early June. 

I don't want to give the impression that I am not enjoying it. I am. Partially. I am saved by the beauty of the writing, here is the opening paragraph of Chapter 9:

They stood in the mouth of the cave and watched them. The bombers were high now in fast, ugly arrow-heads beating the sky apart with the noise of their motors. They are shaped like sharks, Robert Jordan thought, the wide-finned, sharp-nosed sharks of the Gulf Stream. But these, wide-finned in silver, roaring, the light mist of  their propellers in the sun, these do not move like sharks. They move like no thing there has ever been. They move like mechanized doom. 

Regardless of how well it is written, it is as boring as hell. It is a chore reading it, not an enjoyment. I have a completion complex. Once I start a book, particularly a classic, I have a thing about finishing it, so finish it I did. When I read a classic like this I always wonder what a modern editor would do to it. I've always thought that the middle third of Moby Dick would be removed completely if it were published now. If I were editing For Whom the Bell Tolls, much of the flashbacks seem unnecessary. The bullfighting would be yanked from this book. Some love the bravado of it all, but I am bored stiff with it. I'd move the last chapter to the beginning, parts of it, and make a flashback of the time in the cave. 

This is a book about death, not about a mission to bomb a bridge. The mission plot is mere background. It chronicles the four days before the mission, the characters are stuck in a cave about half the time. They know their death is near. Death lingers among them almost as if it were a character in their midst. 

This is a book with a lot of sex and a lot of violence, but it is written conservatively, not salacious or gory. Here is an example of how sexuality is handled, the opening paragraph of Chapter 33:

It was two o'clock in the morning when Pilar waked him. As her hand touched him he thought, at first, it was Maria and he rolled toward her and said, "Rabbit." Then the woman's big hand shook his shoulder and he was suddenly, completely and absolutely awake and his hand was around the butt of the pistol that lay alongside of his bare right leg and all of him was cocked as the pistol with its safety catch, slipped off. 

Sometimes artists can used the limitations imposed upon them and make great beauty with it, as if the limitation are just another color in their pallet. Hemmingway does this with self-censorship. 

Because there is not a lot of action, the dialogue drives the plot forward and it is a challenge. It was written in English but the characters are supposed to be speaking peasant Spanish. This presents a challenge to a writer because Spanish, like French, has a polite form while English has no such thing.  Hemmingway resolves this by using "thou" and "thee" in dialogue. Here is an example of this from Chapter 25:

       "He should learn to control them," Pilar said. "Thou will die soon enough with us. There is no need to seek that with strangers. As for thy imagination. The gypsy has enough for all. What a novel he told me."

        "If thou hadst seen it thou wouldst not call it a novel," Primitivo said. 

All the dialogue reads like this. It makes for odd reading until you realize why it is written this way. 

Also, the characters are very foul mouthed, but not explicitly. Hemmingway censored himself, because he knew the book would not have been read or published otherwise. Instead of swearing he used words like "expletive" or "unprintable," or used words that rhymed with the real word, like "muck" instead of "fuck." 

Here is a line from Chapter 35, this is the protagonist Robert Jordan talking to himself: 

You're mucked, he told himself. You're mucked for good and higher than a kite.

It is odd at first but you get used to it.  

Robert Jordan, our protagonist, is a stoic, tough and honorable character fighting Franco's fascists on the side of an underdog. He is constantly in a state of self-questioning and doubt. In chapter 39, he refers to another character, Pablo, as being "on the road to Tarsus."  I am familiar with the "road to Damascus" but I really had to think about and research "the road to Tarsus." The "road to Damascus" is a reference to Paul conversion while he walked to Damascus. He changed his name from Saul to Paul and became a disciple of Jesus. Paul's hometown was Tarsus. The "road to Tarsus," is returning to where you came from, a pulling back from your conversion. Jordan may be referring to Pablo, but he is also referring to himself. He wonders what he got himself into. He is in love with Maria, a woman he just met and knows they will not have a life together because their mission is doomed. His challenge is one we all have, do we go with our convictions or do we play it safe? In those four days, they live in the moment and things get tense between the characters. 

Jordan is full of shame. He is ashamed of his father for killing himself. He believes he is "flying above" his father when he joins the cause of the war, which America has no stake in. He is an American Spanish language professor and a munitions expert. Somehow he is pulled into this conflict. It is a losing cause and ultimately, him being there is a suicidal act but his cause is just, unlike his father's.  

I would not recommend this book to everyone, but it is hard to see what American literature would be without it, or American film as well. I see Robert Jordan in Casablanca's Rick and even in Rocky. The film version just arrived in the mail, from my Netflix queue, and I am looking forward to seeing it. With Gary Cooper as Jordan and Ingrid Bergman as Maria, I am expecting to hate it. 

On Catholicism

I grew up Catholic. I have to say, for the most part, it was a positive experience. Yes, they weren't big on free thought or being challenged, but there are other things I got out of it. Having a place to go every weekend, with my dad, to gather with people I know, sing, engage in ritual and socialize afterward, not exactly a bad thing. I actually considered the clergy as a vocation for a short time in my youth. I was that serious about it. At some point in my late teens I realized that I no longer believed in God in any shape or form. I am not sure if I remember this correctly, I may have mythologized it a bit in mind, but I believe it just struck me one day as being a very silly idea. I had some doubt early that gradually grew and I have no idea what got me over the hump.  I told my mom that I had my doubts and that I probably shouldn't be making my Confirmation. She was quite adamant about me sticking with it with something like "... while you live in this house ..." etc. I made my Confirmation which was a big lie. That was the lesson my young mind learned at that point. Sometimes a Big Lie is what you do to maintain the peace.

I made my Confirmation, I lied through the entire process and continued going to church with my dad pretending the whole way through. I even wrote a letter to Bishop Angel proclaiming that I wanted to be a "knight for God's righteousness" some bullshit like that. When I met him in person, he told me that I should be a priest so that I could write sermons. This was the first person ever to compliment me on my writing. Another positive experience. On my 18th birthday, in my senior year in high school, I told my parents that I was an atheist and that I was no longer going to attend church. This had nothing to do with abuse or any actions by anyone in the church, but more to do with my beliefs. The church was complete bullshit to me and my young rebellious mind, and I was sick of lying and pretending. I was an adult now and I was going to make my own decisions. They could throw me out of the house if they wanted to. They did not. I was going off to college anyway.

Most of the priests and nuns in my parish were decent people, some were positive role models and great people to know. I was an altar boy for many years and got to know some of them very well. I was never touched inappropriately by anybody to my recollection and I was alone with them a lot. As far back as I can remember, we did joke about priests being pedophiles. We didn't use that word in the 1970's, but it was something we talked about. I don't know why. The specter was always there it seemed. To my knowledge, none of them ever got charged with anything. My worst experience with a priest was with one we called Father "Rubbernose" when I was very young. I don't remember his real name but it sounded like that. In one of my first experiences in Sunday school, Rubbernose threw a chalk at my wide open mouth as I yawned. It missed but then he yelled that it was rude to yawn in class and that he could see the "dog food" that I had for breakfast in my mouth. I wrote this off as him being insane and old. He retired a short time afterward and was replaced by some hip younger priest, Father Paul. I remember one time going on an outing with him in his sports car with two friends, Ken and Jimmy, listening to Zeppelin and all four of us singing "Stairway to Heaven." My best memory is of Father Lessard on an altar boy outing at Camp Ker-Anna in Cumberland, RI when he let us boys climb on top of him in the lake and he would pick up each of us kids and throw us to the deep part. He was a very strong, stoic and sweet man. He seemed to really love us and we respected him a lot.

Regardless of these mostly positive memories, I really hate Catholicism. Everyone that knows me knows how much I hate the Republican party. It is all over Facebook and Twitter. Yet most don't know what I think about Catholicism. Well, here it is. My disdain for the Catholic Church far outweighs my disdain for the Republican party perhaps tenfold. Republicans suck, but at least, they are obvious about it. Regardless of how disgusting the Republicans are, we don't leave our children with them. Catholics claim righteousness and then are guilty of one of humanities worst crimes, preying on children. I generally don't bring it up because I don't want to lose my composure, so please excuse me while I do so in writing.

The report that came out this week about priest pedophiles in Pennsylvania isn't old news. This is just the latest. Over 300 priests, over 1,000 victims in 70 years in only six dioceses. Some of the victims are as young as 18 months old. Some of the offenses happened in places we consider very "safe" like in hospital rooms. Wrap your head around that!  Someone sexually abused an 18 month old kid. Someone did it in a hospital room. Families trusted these people with vulnerable members of their families and they betrayed that trust. The report I read in the Washington Post described some really gruesome acts. Other reports I've heard have described priests passing boys around among a small group of priests in-the-know ... like trading cards. Sick shit!

The Church knew about all this and did their best to hide it. When caught, they simply shuffled the priests to other parishes so that they could prey on other innocents. The leadership structure in the Vatican hasn't changed. No reason exists, other than the investigations, for this behavior not to continue. They've changed nothing and the Pope's response (supposedly a "good" Pope)  is pathetic. America isn't the only place this is happening. Australia, Chile, Canada, France, Ireland and Germany all have major investigations going on.

Here is the thing that really disgusts me: people I know, and some I even love, are still members of the Catholic Church. If you are still a member of this sick entity called the Catholic Church, you are a part of the problem. If you give them money, you are supporting pedophilia. If you are bringing up your children in a Catholic Church, the only reason why they are safe is because they are being watched. The moment the world stops watching, they will be at it again. Why would you continue associating with this organization? I question your intelligence and your morality. It is time you join the ranks of the recovering Catholics.

Now, I know I sound intolerant, but intolerance is okay when you are intolerant of a disgusting organization like the Catholic Church. My intolerance isn't the problem, your complacency is. And if you are a member of one of these churches, you are complicit. Judgement of you will ensue.

Why Bowling Is Better Than Religion

I used to be active in a Unitarian Universalist church. That's right, you can be an atheist and a Unitarian. You just have to respect the idea that everyone is on a journey. This was mostly a great experience. I was active for about eight years. I felt warm fellowship from many people and they did help me to get through some hard times. I also met my wife through the church. I enjoyed going to church on Sundays ... smelling the coffee brewing and chatting with friends about the sermon. Yes, religious people can respect science, out-of-the-box thinking and people who are different from themselves.

I am still good friends with many of the people I met through the church, but my membership in the church did not end well. I had a falling out with the church. When I announced I was leaving, I expected a lot of calls from fellow parishioners expressing their concern for me, making sure I was okay. I only received two calls, one from the pastor who seemed far more concerned about something I said about him than concern for me. The other call came about six weeks later when they realized my checks were no longer coming. That caller didn't express concern from me either, just for my money. I thought they were different than other religions, but apparently I was wrong. They are more about the money than the fellowship.

Earlier this week my father passed away. He was 89 years old and he lead a good life. This blog post isn't about how much I loved him or how much he will be missed or what a great father he was. I could write a lot about those and I probably will in the future. This blog post is about bowling. He loved bowling. He used take me and my little sister bowling a lot on his days off when I was a kid. He had two jobs during my youth so he didn't have a lot of time off.  We always had a great time.

My father was in the same bowling league for twenty years. He was also a practicing Catholic his entire life. He went to church every weekend for almost 90 years. I stood in the receiving line at his wake on Tuesday and there must have been 30 people, perhaps 50, that told me that they knew my dad from bowling. This is not an exaggeration. These were beautiful friendly people who said such nice things about him. They obviously knew him really well and would genuinely miss him. They described his wry wit and his unfiltered nature and how he'd make everyone at the alley laugh. I was really impressed with the depth of their friendship and they made me feel much better on a really miserable day.

If you are looking for fellowship and life-long friendship ... join a bowling league, not a church. Not a single person said that they knew him from the church.

My New Religion: Boxerism

I have pondered in the past about how many of our religions today are based on books of superstitions written in the Bronze Age. This thought always makes me think, why not have a religion based on a newer book from the last century perhaps. But of course L. Ron Hubbard beat me to it. I would rather have a religion based on a good book, something from the literary canon. What about Animal Farm by George Orwell? This an allegorical book not to be taken literally. This is the perfect book to base a religion on.

In the book, after the animals take over the farm, the pigs take charge and found a religion called Animalism. I could start following Animalism. Why not? I love animals. This does cause me some personal conflicts. The first commandment of Animalism is "Whatever goes upon two legs is an enemy." I do identify with this. I trust and like most four-legged creature more than I do two-legged, but this first commandment would put me in the category of the enemy. This is not a good religion for me. I need a religion that puts me at the top, that puts me as the good one and the other (non-followers) as the bad. I could rewrite the tenets to support my needs like the pigs did.  For example, they added the words "to excess" to the fifth commandment to be "no animal shall drink alcohol to excess" and they added "without cause" to the sixth to be "no animal shall kill any other animal without cause."  In kind, I could amend the first commandment to be "whatever goes upon two legs is an enemy except for me and my friends." That might work. I could easily use this commandment to demonize anyone I wanted to. That is one of the best advantages of having a religion, you get to moralize and get to have an easy template to judge others. Ultimately, Boxerism works better for me.

Boxer is the horse in Animal Farm, more specifically a work horse. Boxer is simplistic, naive, innocent and hard working. He does most of the work on the farm. He believes all you need to do in life is work hard and good things will come to you. "I will work hard," is his motto. He is a hero of the rebellion for he was an important factor in the Battle of Cowshed where he had a decisive victory over the stable boy. He ends up breaking his leg and the pigs sell his carcass for some whiskey and his remains carted off to be made into glue. I love this book. I've got to reread it again.

Boxer is perfect for a religious figure. For one, he is a rebel. Like most rebellions it was only successful for a short of time The human overlords were simply replaced by porcine overlords, but he is still a heroic figure, someone the people can look up to. He was killed, perhaps martyred, by someone he trusted that is a plus in the religious realm. He returned after his death as glue. 

The workhorse reins will be our religious symbol, we will wear these around our neck:

If our bosses complain, we will claim religious persecution. After all, it does bear the motto, "I will work hard" on its base.

Our religious city will be in India, Motihari, the birth place of George Orwell. We will lead bus tours for the holiest of Boxerists. Our gift shops will make a killing selling kitschy crap like this:

Why? Because Boxer is sacred. "All hale Boxerism!"

Since we don't know what day Boxer was transformed into glue, we will randomly pick a day to be our high holy days ... let's say, I don't know sometime in late December. 

I once had a girlfriend who told me that she cried when she read Animal Farm. This was toward the end of the relationship of my young adulthood, when I was grappling for reasons to like her. My ears perked up.  "Do tell!"  Was she lamenting the state of the humanity, a doomed political animal? No, she said, "Poor Boxer!" Yes, it does work at a literal text. It is perfectly fine to extol the masses and then take their money. Televangelist do it everyday. Let me snort their glue (in religious ceremonies only of course) and be happy with their delusions.

Amen.

I Am Charlie, We Are All Charlie #jesuischarlie

In the age of social media, freedom of expression couldn't be more important. We are not only consumers of media anymore but we are the media. In a world where you get shot or put on a hit list, if your cartoon offends a certain group or your novel offense that same group, no one is safe. If you say something in your Facebook status or Twitter that gets the wrong group of people angry, it could be the end for you. Many people respond by being quiet for fear of offending. I think this is the wrong approach. My immediate response makes me want to Photoshop pictures of their prophet doing perverted things with squirrels. I am grateful that I restrain myself mostly.

I know that most of Islamic people are not insane murderers but are just like everyone else ... just trying to figure things out. I am sure if I had Internet access when I was a teenager, lacking self control, I'd be posting whatever came to my mind.  Now I am a bit more reserved. I got somewhat depressed on Monday night after watching this week's PBS show Frontline on the National Rifle Association. It kept me awake. I then got up for work, read my news feed over coffee and heard about shootings in France. My frustration and fatigue turned to anger. Someone on Facebook shared an image that really captured what I was feeling:

I don't know who created it and I assume they don't mind me sharing it here because I think it is genius. It is a bullet going through a pencil plus a pencil sharpener equals two pencils. This is how I react to senseless violence.  Cartoonists being killed due to their biting satire just makes me want to write ... scream first but then write. I don't want to just write but to be provocative, to offend, to write something that will metaphorically slap them in the face. I want to stand by Charlie Hebdo. I had never heard of Charlie Hebdo until the shooting but now I am enthralled. The shooters want to intimidate us, sure, that worked to a certain extent. They certainly stopped these particular cartoonists from producing any more. But we are hydra-like. You cut off one head, two will grow in its place. Their aversion to satire is only going to produce more. We'll have more security and we'll be a little bit more freaked out, but we won't stop satirizing. Not even close.

The founders of America knew something that is lost on the violent sects of the Muslim faith. Criticism makes you stronger. Freedom of speech is something we take for granted in modern America. The basic idea is that we want all the ideas out there, even ideas that are diametrically opposed to our own. In each criticism, even the unfair ones, there is a kernel of truth. In this maelstrom of competing ideas somewhere is truth.  When an organization dogmatically follows an ancient book and follow it literally, growth isn't exactly their forte.

My feelings about religion have been well documented in this blog. I am not going to rehash it only to say it seems that the world would be a better place without it. People have different ideas about the nature of humanity and origins of the universe. This is a wonderful thing, yet something seems to get lost when we institutionalize it. An idea that begins as a thing of beauty is set in immovable stone in the halls of an institution and then it dies from lack of growth. It is from that point the ideas of   us and them are formed.  The Us is those who embrace the idea and Them is those that don't. When the us is threatened by the them, you often have violence.

Religion has done some good for humanity. Even a staunch atheist like me acknowledges this. In the Dark Ages, before we had any institutions, religion provided structure and a moral code. Now that we have many other institutions that provide what religion used to, do we still need religion? Spiritual beliefs are so personal that most people have their own regardless of what their church what their church has to say about it. Most church goers cite social connection as their biggest reason to be in a church. I get that. I joined a Unitarian Universalist church a few years ago. I loved the community but all that religion was just too much for me. Even with all the loose rules of a liberal theology, the group think was too much for me, but I really miss the fellowship over coffee sometimes.  I can't imagine those folks wanting to behead anyone. They'd have to discuss it for a decade and then form some committees, nothing would ever happen.

Perhaps the Muslim religion is too young of a religion. I have been told that Christianity was around the same age that Islam is now when Christianity performed all their violent deeds. So the religion just needs to mature. In an era of nuclear and chemical weapons, I just hope humanity survives their ascent into adulthood. Until then, I intend to support anyone's right to express themselves regardless of how wrong or offensive they are. It is wrong and offensive not to.

Let There Be God But Not In My Foxhole

In the beginning, man created god. Man said, "Let there be God" and God was a formless void. Then man said "Let there be religion," then there was a God created in his image. Now we had us and we had them, those who believed and those who didn't. We could now have someone to thank, someone to blame, someone to give credit and someone to point the finger at in shame. Now man was off the hook for God got all the credit. Man now had convenience and ritual.

Man then created many gods for many purposes. The gods would bring the sun across the sky, they would make the waves crash on the beaches, make the thunder and lightning and change the seasons. A perception of order was created throughout the world. This order was the garden where the seeds of civilizations were planted.

This made sense for a while. Then some interlopers started explaining things using experimentation and proof. So the gods, most of them, got smaller and disappeared. The many gods dwindled to be few, for some down one and for some down to none at all.  Few are left, but linger ... for now. Man loves ritual and this carries on even now that the Bronze Age is over.

The religious bear many gifts for us non-believers. They created temples, churches and cathedrals with spectacular architecture, music and art. They created the Book of Leviticus as a gift to comedians.  For genre writers, they gave the Book of Revelation. For poets, they gave the Book of Psalms. And for us atheists, they gave the Book of Job.

If you believe in God after reading the Book of Job you have to wonder why you would worship this God at all. This is a god that takes one of his children and completely fucks with him to prove a point to Satan. Satan claims that Job is only pious because life is good. To prove Satan wrong, God gives Satan permission to destroy all of Job's relatives and possessions. Satan kills Job's family while they are at a feast and destroys all his possessions. After this is done, Job praises the lord and the smug God gives Job an even better family and possessions. Well that's awesome!  Be pious and God will kill your family and give you a better one. So glad everyone is worshiping this God!  (This is sarcasm in case you haven't noticed.)

Often I find myself having to defend atheism which seems odd since atheists are not the ones with a belief system. One shouldn't have to defend a lack of something. No tomes of atheism or scrolls of atheism exist that I am aware of.  The closest one could find is perhaps a copy of a Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchens book, but these are not ancient.  Humanism is close to atheism in that it looks to humanity to resolve problems with the world, but a humanist can still believe in a god. I write this today on Easter Sunday, the most holy of Christian holidays (which they celebrate with chocolate bunnies and egg hunts), because I am a little tired of people bashing atheists. I am usually quiet about my atheism because really it is not something I think much about until someone bothers me about it. I am not sure why I should have to. My memory is imperfect and the sense of history is limited, but I don't remember ever hearing about any groups of atheists flying any planes into skyscrapers. I don't remember ever hearing about any groups of them lynching people from trees or burning people at stakes. Yet I am somehow told occasionally how immoral it is being a non-believer or that all morality comes from God. I have no doubt the mythical Job felt that way. This may just go on my long list of things that I don't understand, but if you need to cling to a Bronze Age superstition to make yourself moral, please do so, but leave me alone if I don't. Don't come to my door with pamphlets and don't fill my Facebook feed with self righteous indignation.

Atheism is not a religion (it is the antithesis of religion), but if it was, it would be the fastest growing religion in America. There is something else growing in America, civility. Violence is down and has been steadily dropping for years. All violent crime has been dropping for decades. Fear of crime is higher (thank you 24 hours news cycles), but violence is the lowest it has ever been. Yes, even gun violence is down. We have big news stories when a shooting happens but overall gun violence is down. I am not so bold that I am drawing a direct line here, but if atheists were so immoral, wouldn't crime be getting higher?

There seems to be two aphorisms being proved wrong here. One is that when the economy gets bad, then crime gets bad. This is somewhat true in that property crime, like theft, has been higher since the economy got bad, but this hasn't affected violent crime. The bigger aphorism of course, that adverse conditions make people turn to religion, that there are no atheists in foxholes, is obviously wrong as well. If people turn to religion when times are hard, shouldn't Atheism be decreasing?

The aphorism that "there are no atheists in foxholes" is particularly egregious to me. Apparently, when conditions get really bad for me, I am going to abandon everything I believe in and start believing in God. There is no basis for this. Many religious people who experience war, like Job become more religious, but many don't. It goes both ways, but conversion doesn't happen, not on any scale whatsoever. It occurred to me one day as a young Catholic that the idea of God just seemed silly and illogical. It wasn't an epiphany, it was too anticlimactic for that. It just happened. It was a great weight lifted off of my back. In the more than 30 years since then, I haven't once considered I was wrong. No crisis, no foxhole, no pamphlet or Facebook video is going to change my mind.

Roger Williams

As a native Rhode Islander, the name Roger Williams conjures up many images for me, most of them involving the park in Providence. Roger Williams Park is home to the zoo where my family went to visit at least once a summer when I was a kid. It is also a great place to bike or to have a barbecue or see an occasional concert. I have fond memories of it. He also lends his name to Roger Williams University with its beautiful 160 acre campus on Narragansett Bay in Bristol. Other than that, his name didn't mean much to me. I knew he founded Rhode Island under the auspice of religious tolerance after being thrown out of Massachusetts, but that is about it.   

Roger Williams was raised in London and educated at Oxford University. He arrived in the new world in February, 1631 on a ship named the Lyon. He was 27 years old and married to Mary Barnard. He was working as a private chaplain to a cousin of Oliver Cromwell. He was hired by the Puritan church in Boston, MA, as a religious teacher. The teacher they intended to hire, John Wilson, was returning to London on the Lyon's return trip to get his wife. Williams was a separatist and his beliefs quickly clashed with their allegiance to the Church of England so he didn't take the position. They didn't like what he had to say all over the colony. When he started telling them how much they were sinning by being loyal to the Church, they didn't take kindly to it. The Puritans were a pretty tough crowd. The colony was only about a year old at this time. They were the survivors and they didn't take kindly to his admonishments. The Pilgrims down in Plymouth, the Boston folks, the Salem folks ... not really known for their tolerance.

His big concern were the first four commandments, the ones dealing with God. They were a matter for the church and not for the state. These were sins not crimes. The church dealt with sin, the state dealt with crime. This is a radical idea, one that we would refer to these days as the separation of church and state. He pissed off so many people so they sent him packing. He went to Plymouth but apparently, they weren't as separatist as he thought they should be. He preached against corporeal punishment for non-believers and thought that their punishment would come after death in hell. He thought we should punish them by preaching and trying to convert them. I think this idea persists today. I can tell by observing the crazies that come to my door with a big black book in their hands and keep returning no matter how rude I am to them. Eh! I guess it beats corporal punishment. Thomas Jefferson became famous for this idea, but it probably came to him from the same source material as it did to Williams. One of Williams' mentors, Edward Coke, was one the most important English lawyer of his day and defender of the Magna Carta. Coke's legal textbook, Institute of the Lawes of England, was used for at least 100 years and read by a young Thomas Jefferson. While Jefferson believed that government needed to be protected from religion, Williams believed the opposite, religion needed to be protected from government.

Williams also believed that Plymouth colony was illegitimate because they didn't get the land deed from the Indians but from the King. He believed that England stole the land from the natives. This is widely believed today. I believe this. When he settled in Rhode Island, he befriended the natives and was one of the first Europeans to publish a translation of their language.

The state of Rhode Island was the first colony to declare its independence from England but the last of the original 13 to ratify the US Constitution, not because they were slow, but because they demanded a Bill of Rights. Even though this happened over 100 years after Williams was dead, his influence is all over this. They rejected the Constitution in 1788, only to ratify it in 1790, basically because they were threatened with being treated as a foreign government. It was ratified with a margin of two votes, the smallest margin of all the colonies.

I don't know how religious tolerant Rhode Island is today, but I know the United States is still one of the most (if not the most) religiously tolerant places on the planet. I know we are not perfect. Some times we look to Europe as examples of progressive thinking. But not on this issue. While France has a ban on burqas in public places and Switzerland has a ban on minarets on Mosques, we have nothing of the sort ... at least on the Federal level. It is difficult to know what Roger Williams would think of us if he magically appeared. Perhaps he'd be proud. Personally, I think he'd freaked out by car and planes but that is another story.

I'm Dreaming of a Green Christmas

You could say that I have struggled with enjoying Christmas as an adult. I have attempted to make it meaningful and have failed. I don't bother anymore. I find Christmas to be a scourge on the planet and boil on the face of humanity. I wish it would go away.

Since it is not going away, I have learned to deal with it. I am not an environmental scientist and don't have any secrets to how keep your Christmas environmentally sound. The only thing you can do to keep your Christmas green, is not celebrate it. But if you are, there are certainly ways to minimize your impact.

Getting a real tree that is grown locally is certainly better than having an artificial tree but the operative word here is locally. Getting a Christmas tree at a Christmas tree farm (aka killing a tree for Jesus) is not as environmentally friendly as many people claim. Yes, they plant trees to grow and be cut down when it is six feet tall or so, this is good for the environment but not as good as planting the tree and letting it grow to maturity. Also, Christmas trees on farms not only don't grow to be large but they don't help to maintain a diverse ecosystems like those that grow in the wild. When birds nest in them, the nests are cleared away. Deer and other herbivores are kept away. When other types of plants sprout around them, they are pulled. This all contribute to these trees being more susceptible to disease and pest infestation which in turn, make the farmer more likely to use pesticides. Yes, these farms are a greener form of real-estate than a strip mall or a parking lot, but green? Not very. If you don't live near one of these farms and live in a big city, when you buy a real tree, you are not being green at all. If you think you are being green, you are kidding yourself. The amount of carbon that was burned to get the tree to the city makes the whole experience a wash. I realize not everyone can buy their tree from a neighbor like I do (not a farm but a guy with a few extra trees in his forested land). If you want to be green, you are better off getting an artificial tree, which is not green either, but it is reusable. You can keep it in a closet and take it out for the next 30 years. 

Unless your house is powered by wind, geo-thermal or solar, your lights on your tree are not green either. Non-electric ornaments are greener. If you have lights on your tree, you can often offset by turning off the lights in that room because the tree lights may give off enough light that you may not need the usual source. If you are one of those people who covers their house in lights and/or buys the huge idiotic plastic lawn ornaments, then you are obviously not green and you are probably not reading this blog posts because you clearly don't give a shit about the environment. 

Obviously, there are those that really do enjoy the Christmas season. You may know that the entire experience will never be green, but you feel that it is worth it considering the joy that you get out of it. Perhaps, but I would hope that you may find a way to offset this somehow with some other event during the year, like maybe planting a tree on Arbor Day ... buy locally, non-plastic and try not to travel just the sake of the holiday. 

Don't buy into the commercialism of it, obviously, but you should probably not buy into the religiousness of it either. If Jesus did exist, he was probably born in June. The December date was chosen by the Catholic church not so arbitrarily. They co-opted the date to coincide it with the winter solstice which was already being celebrated by the pagans. Then the capitalists stole it from the religious folks to sell plastic toys, greeting cards and adrenaline. The irony of this is that as a business model, Christmas is not good for the economy. Businesses lose a lot of money by hiring, training and laying off employees every year for the holiday rush. If the gift giving were staggered, like it is birthday gift shopping, they could maintain a steady employee base, who is well trained and compensated. If you want to help the economy, stop buying at Christmas and double your birthday present shopping. 

Overall, it would be it would be better for everyone if the pagans took the holiday back and made it their own again. It would green and quite a bit more sane. 

Pray Towns, Natick and Deer Island

As an American, it is very easy to find things to be proud of our nation and its history.  Whether it is the US Constitution or the moon landing or something from the private sector like the transistor, Google  or the phonograph, you don't have to dig deep to find some national pride. But when it comes to events in our history that we should be ashamed of, we find it all to handy to ignore them. We live in a collective state of denial about the horrors of our past. Occasionally, we have a glimmer of acknowledgement, whether it is Alex Haley's Roots (about the American slave experience) or Jay Kua's musical Allegiance (about Japanese American interment camps), we have moments of understanding of our past, however fleeting. One of the biggest subjects we like to ignore in our history is the ethnic cleansing that occurred in our country (before and after its creation) of the natives of this continent. We like to tell ourselves that most of them died of polio or other diseases, which is only part of the story. But the American people and our government, that represented our interests, drove these people to the brink of extinction.

One of the worst examples of this is the Trail of Tears when President Andrew Jackson defied the US Supreme Court's decision (the only President to do so in history) in the  Cherokee Nation versus the State of George and drove men, women and children, at gun point, out of their homes in western Georgia and force marched hundreds of miles to a reservation in Oklahoma. Yet, we still put this man's face on currency. While other nations acknowledge the horrors of their history, we turn a blind eye to it.  We prefer to clings to words like American Exceptionalism even though the evidence proves otherwise. Denial is easier and is more politically palatable.

I lived for 10 years in the Boston area.  For some time, I lived close to the town of Natick and I knew nothing of its history.  Natick was founded as one of fourteen praying towns.  Praying town were founded in 17th century Puritan New England for the distinct purpose of converting Native Americans to Christianity. These were not barbaric people. In no way were they in need of saving. Most of other praying towns were also in Massachusetts like Nantucket, Gay Head, Dartmouth and Mashpee but there were three in Connecticut.  The true horror of the praying towns isn't evident until 1676 after the King Philip's War began (also known as the First Indian War).  Once Metacomet, aka Philip, organized the native nations to attack the British settlements, the praying towns were dissolved. The good Christians of Natick, fearing attack by their newly converted, transported all of them onto Deer Island in Boston Harbor.  They were given no blankets and were not allowed to build fires.  Most of them starved to death during the Winter months. The few who survived were allowed to return after the war to find that they no longer had property, tools or any means to support themselves anymore.

What can be done ... this is our past?  Of course, we cannot change it, but we can acknowledge it. We can know and remember our history.  It would also helpful if we didn't put butchers like Andrew Jackson on our currency.  Please sign my petition for his removal.

The SS Exodus

Breakfast at Tiffany's is one of my favorite films of any era. It is bitingly dark, sardonic and thought provoking. Also, when I watch it, I get to look at Audrey Hepburn, as the iconic Holly Golightly, which is always a treat. If not for one scene in the film, I would say it was the perfect film. Anyone in a modern audience will notice this scene immediately because it is completely out of sync with the rest of the film. Of course, I am talking about the Mickey Rooney scene. It might just be the most outright racist scene I have ever seen in a Hollywood film, which is saying a lot considering their treatment of African and Native Americans throughout the years. Rooney plays Holly's Japanese landlord, believe it or not. I think it was meant as comic relief at the time, but does not have the same effect nowadays. The scene is just painful to watch. Like the rain of frogs in the film Magnolia, this scene simply ruins an otherwise perfect film.

I could not help but think of this scene today when I start watching Otto Preminger's 1960 war epic Exodus  with the very WASP-looking Paul Newman as the star in his first big roll. Throughout the film, I kept thinking of how badly this film was cast.  Exodus is based on the Leon Uris novel of the same name about the founding of Israel. This was pre-Dustin Hoffman Hollywood, where it was okay to be Jewish when you are behind the camera or in production, but you certainly couldn't be in front of the camera. If you were on film and Jewish, you certainly couldn't look it.  Newman's father was Jewish and his mother was a Christian Scientist. I have read that  Kirk Douglas wanted to star in this film but I cannot find anywhere as to why Newman chosen. Douglas does seem to be a better match for this role.

Since I am woefully ignorant of most things Middle Eastern, I watched this film with my Mac on my lap giving Google and Wikipedia a good workout for the 3.5 hour run time. Leon Uris was famous for the amount of research he did for his historical fiction. The biggest criticism I could find of the book was that it was biased toward Israel, while the Arabs were portrayed as thugs. The film's biggest criticism seems to be its length. Preminger was so faithful to the novel that the film went so long.  At one point during the film premiere, comedian Mort Sahl yelled "Otto, let my people go." In the film, the British seemed to be much more thug-like than the Arabs. Overall, I found it entertaining, but indeed too long.  It was only educational in that I was researching the gaps in my knowledge throughout my viewing.

The biggest gap in my knowledge is the transition period after World War II and the founding of Israel in 1948.  Where did those people go? Nine concentration camps were created on the island of Cyprus to house over 50,000 survivors of Hitler death camps. After surviving the Holocaust, living through ungodly horrors, they were moved to Cyprus awaiting admission to Palestine. The camps were operated by the British from August 1946 to January 1949. Camp conditions were horrendous. Better than Terezine, but surely not comfortable. Britain had their own problems at the time.

The SS Exodus was a ship that left port in France in 1947 carrying thousands of Jews, mostly Holocaust survivors, seemingly headed toward Cyprus. None of them had certification for immigration to Palestine, so they had to go to the camps instead.  The ship was actually commanded by the Haganah, a Jewish paramilitary organization. It intended to break through the blockade and illegally immigrate to Palestine. Eventually, it was seized by the British navy and forced to return to France. To add insult to injury, it was refused entry and they eventually relocated back to Germany.

It is very easy to get angry and frustrated with modern Israel. Indeed, they have a right to defend themselves, but they do seem to overcompensate. I am not qualified or informed enough to discuss the situation much more. The more I learn of how the Jewish people have been treated throughout history, the more I understand their behavior in modern times. I don't justify it, but I do begin to understand it.

Planets Kobol and Kolob

If you are a science fiction fan, you probably already know that a very good sci-fi show is hard to find.  The Sci-Fi Channel is probably not the best to find one, most of the time. Since the reboot of Battlestar Gallactica went off the air, there is very little on this station worth watching. Gallactica was not only the best they ever put out, but arguably the best sci-fi show ever. It was more mature and edgy than any of the Star Trek shows and more profound and socially relevant than most of other shows on television, sci-fi or otherwise. It was a sad day in 2009 when it ran its course.

The planet Kobol is the one of mythical planets in the Gallactica fictional universe. Kobol was home to 13 tribes of early humans. During a great catastrophe, they had to flee the planet.  Twelve tribes travelled through an energy barrier and settled on a group of habitable planets in a common stellar system. While the 13th tribe, went further and settled on a planet called Earth. The premise of the show finds the remaining survivors of the 12 tribes searching for Earth, what many of them believe is just a myth.

The inspiration for planet Kobol is planet Kolob which is found in the Books of the Mormon, specifically the Book of Abraham. Kolob is the heavenly body closest to the throne of God. In case you are curious what Kolob looks like, the depiction below is from the inner sleeve of an Osmonds album called "The Plan."  (Kolob is also the name of their short lived label/record company). This planet was discovered by Methuselah and Abraham by looking through a seer stone pair of glasses.  Earth was created near Kolob about 6,000 years ago, but then moved to its present location. I am not sure how that happened.  Maybe it has something to do with the hand of God (see image below).

In rereading this, it is difficult to tell which is science fiction and which is a religious belief. I find them both equally entertaining  ... maybe not, maybe equally interesting.  If Romney wins the election this November, I am sure we will have a good four years to learn more about Kolob.

September 11th, 1683 and 1697

Since the infamous terrorist attacks of 2001, a lot of speculation has been made as to why date September 11th was chosen for the attacks. There appears to be no definitive answer to this question. Those who know the significance are likely dead and if they are not, we have a lot more important questions for them.  Some speculate that it is because in America 911 is number we call on our phones for emergencies, which seem completely silly and just a coincidence. Some have said that it was due to the Camp David Accord being signed by Sadat, Carter and Begin in September but that was on the 17th, not the 11th.

Going way back to the 17th century, the Battle of Zenta was fought on September 11th, 1697 when the Hapsburg Imperial Forces made a surprise attack on the Ottoman Empire during the Great Turkish War in what we now know as Serbia.  In this attack,  which was the last decisive battle of the war, Prince Eugene of Savoy and his troops killed 20,000 Ottomans, took control over Belgrade, seized the Ottoman treasury and took ten of the Sultan's wives captive . After the battle, the treaty of Karlowitz was signed, in which the Ottomans ceded Croatia, Hungary, Transylvania, and Slavonia to Austria.  Could this be the date that influenced the terrorists?  Could something that happened such a long time ago really hold such significance? Considering the fanatical nature of the people involved, I think it is possible.  But it is probably more likely that Sept. 11th from six years earlier that is the date they held more significant.

The Battle of Vienna took place September 11th and 12th, 1683.  It is considered by many historians the date on which the West became Christian (as opposed to Muslim) or at least preserved their Christianity for centuries to come.  For two months, the Ottoman Empire had been besieging Vienna. If they could take Vienna, they could have possibly sweep through Europe.  The King of Poland, Jan III Sobieski, took joint control over the Polish, German and Austrian forces and retook Vienna.  Sobieski was called the savior of Western Civilization by the Pope.  This was the first of many humiliating defeats for the Ottoman Empire stopping their advances west.

The idea that the date September 11th has no significance is not one that many believe.  Fanatics usually don't do anything for no reason including what day to commit mass murder.  

Sci-fi and the Creation Myth

No form of fiction tackles the difficult subject of religion more than science fiction.  This might seem ironic to some, but science fiction has always been a good way tackle any subject, indirectly, because it gives the writer license to do whatever they want.  I once heard Ray Bradbury say that he used the Mars landscape as a setting so often not because he believe in Martians but that he was lazy and didn't want to do any research.  It was just easier to make things up.  Like Bradbury, a sci-fi writer can write about your religion without you even knowing it.  A writer can disguise a religious form of meditation in an alien religious group like the Bene Gesserit or Mentats in Frank Hebert's Dune.  They can write about a messiah like Robert Heinlein did with his character, Valentinen Michael Smith, in his Stranger in a Strange Land.  Millennialism and images of the devil are prominent themes in Arthur C. Clarke's Childhood's End.   Star Trek did it, Star Wars did it with the Jedis, ... heck... the latest Battlestar Gallactica series is just a very long religious elegy.  Every person that I know that is interested in religion also reads sci-fi.

Some consider Mary Shelley's Frankenstein a sci-fi novel.  The alternative title is the Modern Prometheus.  Like the Greek Titan Prometheus, Dr. Frankenstein creates a new form of life. Prometheus created humanity from clay and was punished for it, while his modern namesake, created life from the body parts from grave robbing. The creation myth seems to be everywhere in sci-fi these days.  Star Trek uses it with their android character Data and holographic character The Doctor where they confront their creators and fight for their rights as censured beings.  The Cylons in Battlestar Gallactica  rebel against their creators in what could be interpreted as a religious upheaval of the slave monotheists over their polytheistic creators.  The movie director Ridley Scott is not foreign to the creation myth, not only is his latest film Prometheus but his heady take on Philip K. Dick's Do Robots Dream of Electric Sheep? (aka Blade Runner) is all about a rebelling group of androids seeking their creator.  They are lead by Roy Batty (portrayed amazingly by actor Rutger Hauer) who seeks their creator so that they can remove the chip that  prevents them from being immortal.  

Scott's latest film, Prometheus, brings this to a new level. **spoiler alert** The so-called prequel to the Alien series gives us a married couple of scientists, Holloway and Shaw (who can't have children) searching for an alien species, called The Engineers, who they believe created humanity.  So they cannot create life themselves but they are obsessed with their creators who are not god but an advanced species from a distant moon.  The excursion is funded by an eccentric billionaire who never had a son of own.  He created an android son with the name he intended for that his biological son, David, much to the dismay of his daughter who may be an android as well.  The created is now, like the mythical Prometheus, the creator.  Like the gods of Olympus, the Engineers want to punish us or probably destroy us for what reason, it is not explained.  Shaw is also cast into the role of the creator.  She is somehow impregnated and gives birth a day later to the xenomorph species from the original series.  She freaks out and attempts to kill it ... again creator who is a destroyer and the created that creates. This film is full of plot holes, it is at times captivating and quite compelling but it is one of those films that you leave the theater thinking, "Did I miss something?".  It is clear that Scott was trying to say something about the creation myth.  What that is might be hiding somewhere in the fog of the 3D special effects or lost in one of the deep chasm plot holes.

Sunnis and Shias

Back in the 2000's I remember hearing, possibly from comedian Bill Maher, how President Bush (42nd) didn't know the difference between the Shia and Sunni Islam.  I don't know how true it was, but it made me shutter in embarrassment not only (for my President if it were true) but for myself because I didn't know either.  Since I am not and never will be the leader of the free world, I got over it pretty quickly.

I always assumed that the schism was over something that happened a long time ago, I just never realized how long ago.  When the Islamic Prophet Muhammad died in 620 C.E. the schism occurred over how succession would be handled.  The Shia wanted succession to be based on an election by the caliphs (basically, the leaders of Islamic communities).  The Sunnis wanted the succession to be handed down through the Prophets descendants.  This would begin with his cousin and son-in-law Alī ibn Abī Ṭālib. The two sects differ in a lot other ways since then.

A majority of all Muslims in the world are Sunnis (75 to 90%).  Only about 15% are Shia.  Other smaller sects are Sufism, Ahmadiyya, Ibadi, Quaranists, Yazdânism and the newest, the Nation of Islam.

Jefferson and Religion

The Smithsonian is publishing a new edition of the Jefferson Bible. I have blogged about the Jefferson Bible in the past. Thomas Jefferson wanted a version of The Bible that would stand up to the principles of the Enlightenment. He bounced the idea by several friends. He asked Joseph Priestley, the scientist that discovered oxygen, to take it on as a project. He wrote to friends abroad, the enlightened few of the era (often referred to The Republic of Letters). No one would go near it. To rewrite The Bible without the miracles and only validated history was controversial even back then. He ended up writing it himself and shared it with no one. No one saw the manuscript until after his death. John Adams would bother him often to take a peek at his secret project.

With the exception of Isaac Newton, Jefferson believed that Jesus was the greatest man in history. This is why he thought that the King James Bible was not a sufficient document to show the story of his life. He thought Jesus, who was not divine, produced the greatest progress in ethics in world history, even more so than Socrates. Of all Jefferson's accomplishments, he believed that his greatest was the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom. This statute was the first of its kind in the world because it established the separation of church and state. So it may very well be his greatest achievement.

In his time Jefferson was widely thought of as a religious radical. At one point in his life, he predicted that, in 50 years, most young men in the nation would be Unitarians. I think he might be disappointed with our current makeup. As an ex-Unitarian myself, I find this amusing. During the election of 1796, it was believed that he was going to confiscate people’s Bibles. Perhaps one of the reasons why Adams defeated him. These types of stories always remind of the 2008 election when stories of Obama being a Muslim surfaced. Of course, these were untrue. Jeffferson believed in the neutrality of the government. He didn't care what people believed, he just thought they should have the freedom to pursue their own beliefs. This was indeed very radical at the time, even now in some circles.

Religion and Other Scary Things

All religions scare me. A group of people gathering weekly performing chants and singing to/for an invisible being that they believe has awesome power and created the universe ... yes, that scares the shit out of me. This could be added to the long list of things that I just don't get. Why do normally rational people check their rationale at the door of a cathedral? Scary things will always exist ... violence, death, clowns, etc. ... as long as they keep their distance not affecting me and my own, I am okay. I can go on with my life without really caring. But when the scariness spill over out of the walls of the cathedral, I get a concerned.

The scariest of religions to me are not the obscure ones. The Baha'i never bother me. Other than an occasional crappy NYC cabbie, the Sikh don't bother me either. The faiths that are large enough to influence government policy, influence what is taught in our schools, who can legally get married or what woman (aka free tax-paying citizens) can do with their own bodies ... those are the ones that scare me. You know who I am talking about. When I hear of protesters complaining of a mosque being built near Ground Zero and saying that Muslims are taking over our country, I really don't get it. Why should this scare me any more than any other religion having taken over my country? Are the Christians complaining about the Muslims because they don't want the competition?

I am generally tolerant to those that have different beliefs than I. Tolerant meaning that I tolerate them but I don't have to like them or hang around with them. As long as they leave me alone or don't try to impose their beliefs on anyone else, I am okay. We can get along by agreeing to be different. I think this is called freedom. Occasionally I hear stories in the news that make we cringe like this one: Soldiers Pass On Christian Concert; Get Punished: Report. Since soldiers make a vow to defend the Constitution, you think the fact the First Amendment's statute on the freedom of religion might be respected as well. That would only work if we were dealing rational people.

I wish as a child I had learned more about world religions. I grew up as a Catholic in a mostly Catholic town. I knew nothing about other religions. Once I had soured on Catholicism, I was extremely cynical about religion as a whole. It took me decades to voluntarily enter a church again. In Wellesley Massachusetts, the public schools have the right idea in teaching comparative religion as part of their social studies program. The middle school kids learn about world religions as a whole and not favoring one over another. If I had children I would want them to attend a school that addressed religion in this manner. It would allow the child to learn but not have any one idea forced upon them. The idea is learning not indoctrination. This seems to be the rational approach. The class trips in Wellesley include visits to a church, synagogue and even a mosque. Even a rational approach like this is attacked by the crazies in this country. The attacks against the teacher and the school administration are all over the net. We are supposed to be a tolerant nation respecting individual freedoms, but this seems so far from the truth sometimes. Especially when you let the crazies take over the discourse.

Some are striking back, Mike Weinstein is a former JAG officer and White House counsel in the Reagan Administration. He and his foundation, the Military Religious Freedom Foundation has sued the US Air Force Academy and Roberts Gates among others for the imposition of Christianity upon non-Christian military. Weinstein fights for the rights of Jews and Muslim among others in the military as well as for the rights of atheists. You would think in an institution of discipline like the military would actually have some .... umm ... discipline on this matter. Apparently, that is too much to ask in this political environment.

The Jefferson Bible

I love hearing stories about the American founding fathers. They are some of the most interesting people in history. I can't imagine any of them existing in our current political environment. Most of them would be considered eccentrics, on the fringe of political life, possible not in political life at all. The story I heard today of the Jefferson Bible is a perfect example.

Like Washington and Franklin, Jefferson was a deist. He basically believed that God created the universe but did nothing in the way of intervening with humanity. He respected the teachings of Jesus but only saw him as a prophet and a philosopher but not divine. He didn't believe in the trinity. He believed much of supernatural events in the Bible were added to attract the pagans to Christianity. So he attempted to rewrite the Bible from a deist point of view. He took a razor to his copy of the King James Bible and cut out all the supernatural events in the New Testament. He also put all the events chronological order. He begins with the birth of Jesus (hold the angels) in Luke 2 and Luke 3, then follows with Mark 1 and Matthew 3 etc. No miracles. No son of God.

Can you imagine a modern US politician doing anything like? His/her career would be over the moment they took the razor blade to the book. It wasn't published until after his death, but it was no secret what he was doing during his lifetime.

The Lunatic Fringe and Al Smith

The lunatic fringe seems to have taken over American politics. The Tea Baggers protest comparing the US president to mass murderers like Hitler and Stalin because he wants to spend healthcare to those who need it. We have other nuts saying that he is a Muslim or a terroist or even a foreigner. Now that the healthcare bill has passed, we have Democratic Senators and Reps (aka people dedicating their lives to service to this country) getting death threats because they voted for the bill. This is crazy stuff but it is no different than any other era in US history. In the 1990's we had the militia movement, in the 1890's we had people who feared that the free masons were taking over and we have had over 100 years of irrational anti-Catholism in American politics. I have often heard about how many Americans feared John F. Kennedy because of his Catholism, but I had never heard of Alfred E. Smith until today. I grew up Catholic so much of this is foreign to me. I have been a confessed atheist for almost three decades now. I don't fear Catholism anymore than any other religion. I fear them all equally.

Al Smith was the first Catholic in the US to ever run for President for a major party. He was the 42nd Governor of New York and he lost his presidential bid to Herbert Hoover in 1928. He only took Massachusetts and Rhode Island mostly due to their highly Catholic population. He lost miserably but you could say that he paved the way for Kennedy. The term "tunnel to Rome" came out of the Smith election. This was a hyperbolic term that was spread by his opponent making people fear that he would take advice and/or commands from the Pope because he was Catholic. But others took it literally believing that he wanted to build a tunnel under the White House leading to Rome. This sounds ridiculous today but no more than Obama being compared to Hitler because of his taking the lead on healthcare.

Considering how bad a president Hoover was, one has to wonder how different the 1930's would have been if Smith had been elected. The little amount of reading I have done today says that his election helped for the base of FDR's support and the beginning of the New Deal. After losing the election Smith went into the private sector and was one of the people behind getting the Empire State Building built in Manhattan.

The Rock n' Roll Jihad

When I was younger, college age, my friends would refer to me as a rockologist ... basically someone who knew a lot (probably too much) about rock 'n roll. I am in my 40's now and I still maintain some knowledge of current rock and pop music, but I am not like I used to be. I am not a fanatic like I was, but rarely do I find out that one of the best selling rock n' rollers in the world is someone that I never heard of.

Salman Ahmad is a Pakistani rock 'n roller. He grew up in New York City listening to rock music, the same rock that I grew up to. When he was a teen, his parents asked him what he wanted to do with his life. He pointed at a poster of Jimmy Page. His parents were not too happy about this and sent him back to Lahore, Pakistan after he graduated high school to study to become a doctor. He studied medicine and, today, is technically still a doctor. In the time that his family left Pakistan, it had changed drastically. The Taliban had become more popular in his absence and Sharia law was being enforced in much of Pakistani life. He once pulled out his guitar at a talent show at school and played Eddie Van Halen's Eruption. This was his first run in with those that thought music was incompatible with Islam.

He gave up practicing medicine after his band, Vital Signs, first album, Vital Signs I, sold over a million copies in 1989. They are commonly known as Pakistan's first rock band. His current band, Junoon, is having similar success. They often have to appear under different name because their music is banded in Pakistan.