Stratovania

I think most of us with two brain cells to rub together realize that most arguments put forth by evolution deniers are total bunk, and often don't even agree with each other. Still, having recently read this post, I thought it would be worth summing up some of the dumber arguments made by this crowd.

This video is actually part of a longer documentary that I reviewed some time ago, but I can't hunt up my post. (Why is Google so bad at that sometimes?) Anyway, I have to wonder at people who say Creationism "makes more sense," like that one woman they show in the video. Think about it this way. Even the most fundamentalist of Creationists knows that, when living things produce offspring, those offspring are somewhat different from the parents. Even if there were no other evidence for evolution (which there is), it would still be extrapolating based on something we know to be true. On the other hand, when's the last time you saw any evidence of an intelligent being creating a living thing from scratch? If you have, don't hold out on the world, because it could be your ticket to fame and fortune. If God made every living thing individually at the beginning of the world, why isn't He still doing that? Deists think that God set the world in motion and doesn't interfere with it anymore. While most mainstream religions would be appalled at this idea, I'm not sure their own beliefs are all that different. Sure, they think God still intervenes, but only occasionally, like a retired guy coming back in to his old workplace when his expertise is needed. He doesn't show up to chat with people and perform crazy magic tricks like He did when the world was young. But why, if belief in God is supposedly just as important now as it was then? He's a tricky one, that God!

( Read more... )

Interestingly, within the past week or so, I found links to rumors about the locations of both Biblical arks, Noah's Ark and the Ark of the Covenant. I seem to recall that, when I first learned about these two arks, I didn't know why the translation used the same word for both, when the latter wasn't a boat. Except it kind of was, or at least a vessel used for conveying something.
( Read more... )

I don't have much to say about tonight's Simpsons and American Dad episodes, but they were decent enough. The friendship that developed between Homer and Chief Wiggum was interesting, but nothing really came of the subplot. The Battleballs themselves were an amusing concept, but the mistakes that led the school and Marge to think Bart was dealing drugs were rather predictable and not all that funny. I thought at first they were going to do something related to schools banning Pokémon cards, although I guess that's really old news at this point.

Also tonight, we watched a documentary called Protocols of Zion, which I believe I added to our Netflix queue a few years ago when revme mentioned it. I don't think he'd seen it at the time, and I'm not sure if he has since. As might be expected from the title, it dealt with the continuing popularity of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the infamous late nineteenth century forgery (and plagiarism, for that matter) detailing how Jews secretly rule the world. Apparently there was a bit of a spike in interest in the Protocols after September 11th, tied in with bizarre conspiracy theories about how no Jews died in the attacks, and how the Zionists were secretly responsible. Yeah, that makes sense, considering the rampant antisemitism in Al Qaeda strongholds. But since when do the beliefs of hate groups and conspiracy theorists have to be consistent? The film mentioned how the Protocols really just confirmed existing prejudice, and that a significant amount of antisemitic thought dates back to the beginning of Christianity. There was a clip of Mel Gibson insisting that people who have problems with The Passion of the Christ actually have problems with the Gospels. Hey, I have a problem with both, although at least the Gospels contain some good stuff to augment the cringe-worthy parts. But there's definitely a tradition of blaming "the Jews" for the death of Jesus, which only became worse as Christianity grew apart from its parent religion. While it seems that modern churches are trying to distance themselves from this idea, there's still a significant lunatic fringe that still holds on to it.

The myth of Arachne is one I can remember reading about in elementary school. It's apparently one of the later Greco-Roman myths to develop, and appears to have been found exclusively in Roman sources. Arachne was a weaver who lived in Maeonia in Lydia, whose skill was legendary, and who bragged that she was even better at it than the goddess Athena. In order to settle this, the goddess agreed to participate in a weaving contest with Arachne. Athena's tapestry portrayed both her competition with Poseidon for the city of Athens and scenes of mortals being punished for their pride, while Arachne chose to focus on the infidelities of the gods. While the myth never seems to identify an actual winner, Athena was jealous of Arachne's work, and tore up her tapestry and instilled her with a sense of guilt. This led Arachne to hang herself, but the goddess brought her back to life as a spider.


What's the lesson to be learned from this story? Well, the myth-makers would probably have said it was a message not to be done in by hubris, and to remain humble before the gods. But Arachne really WAS pretty much the equal of Athena as far as weaving was concerned. So the myth actually suggests that mortals can be just as skilled as the gods at certain tasks when competing on a level playing field. It's just that the gods are sore losers, and prone to cheating. It's not that you shouldn't brag because there's always someone better than you, but rather because someone else might get pissed off and turn you into a spider. It's sort of like how Jacob wrestled with God, and God had to dislocate the patriarch's hip because He just couldn't overpower the guy. I guess it's not that humans can't beat the gods, but that the gods just don't take well to it.

The line "release the kraken" from the commercials for the Clash of the Titans remake seems to have caught the attention of the nation, especially among people who think the phrase sounds like a euphemism for doing number two. I never saw the first Clash all the way through, and I'll probably wait until the remake comes out on video to see that. I do know that neither movie is really all that accurate to the original myths, so I'm sure it surprises no one that the kraken is not a part of Greek mythology. The monster that Perseus killed in order to save Andromeda is referred to as a "ketos," or in Latin form, "cetus." This appears to simply mean "sea monster" in Greek, but according to Wikipedia, the mythical monsters were portrayed as giant fish with some serpentine features.

The term has since been applied to whales, with our word "cetacean" obviously deriving from the Greek. There are several species of whale inhabiting the Mediterranean, and most of them are the toothed kind rather than the baleen variety (the fin whale is an exception), so I suppose they could theoretically eat a person. This also calls to mind the creature that swallowed Jonah, referred to as a "great fish" in the Hebrew, but popularly called a whale. I have no idea whether the author of Jonah would have known that whales weren't fish, or whether he had any particular species in mind for Jonah's captor.


The constellation Cetus is found among several others from the story of Perseus, so it's presumably supposed to be seen as the one slain by the hero. The group of stars is now typically called "the whale," although as with with most constellations, it really doesn't look like much of anything.

Still, its association with a sea monster is an old one, with ancient Babylonian astronomers identifying it with Tiamat.


The kraken actually comes from Norwegian folklore, and there are a few different indications as to what it might be. It appears that the earliest known mentions of the monster are from the eighteenth century, and refer to the kraken as a crab-like monster the size of an island, which eats smaller fish, but also nurtures their growth with its excrement. In popular culture, however, the kraken is generally thought of as a gigantic octopus, possibly based on the real giant squid. As with most mythical sea monsters, encounters with them are incredibly dangerous and usually fatal.

While I don't know about the new Clash film, the monster in the old one doesn't at all resemble an octopus or even a crab, so I guess they just used the name "kraken" because it's more familiar to modern audiences than "cetus."

It's well known that Jesus was not the first deity said to have been resurrected from the dead. The Egyptian Osiris was killed and brought back. Odin sacrificed himself on the World Tree for wisdom, which wouldn't have done him much good if he hadn't come back to life. Bacchus/Dionysus was resurrected in a rather different manner, with his mother having died and his being born from Zeus's thigh. Another deity I've seen mentioned in this context is the Phrygian Attis, but the evidence for this isn't fully convincing. A quick Internet search has resulted in some usually fairly thorough sources, like Wikipedia not even mentioning resurrection, but merely the preservation of Attis' body. Still, there do seem to be some parallels between the festival of Attis and the celebration of Easter, so it's as good a time as any to discuss this mythical figure.


Attis originated in Asia Minor, although some aspects of his worship later spread to Greece and Rome. His birth story begins with Cybele, the Phrygian Earth Mother goddess. She had as a child a hermaphroditic demon named Agdistis. The Greek version of the story says that Agdistis was conceived when Zeus, having his sexual advances toward Cybele rebuffed, resorted to masturbating on top of her. I'm inclined to believe this wasn't part of the original myth, but rather something added by the Greeks to tie it in with their own pantheon. And since the Greeks already HAD a Mother Earth figure in Gaia, Cybele seems to have been retconned as a more minor nature deity. Anyway, the gods were just as frightened by a double-gendered deity as many people still are today, and castrated the demon. The cast-off genitals grew into an almond tree, and when Nana, the virgin daughter of the river god Sangarius, pressed one of the almonds to her breast, she ended up pregnant. (See, I TOLD you abstinence wasn't an effective way to prevent pregnancy!) Nana left her son Attis out in the wild to die, but he was tended by a goat and later adopted by humans, although their names apparently weren't worth mentioning. Cybele fell in love with the beautiful youth, apparently not knowing he was, in bizarre convoluted fashion, her grandson. When Attis tried to marry the Princess of Pessinus, Cybele became angry at him, and either she herself or Agdistis showed up at the wedding to drive Attis insane. In his madness, he castrated himself, and for some reason his father-in-law (whom some Greeks identified as Midas, the guy who had the golden touch at another point in his life) followed suit. Attis then died, but Cybele managed to preserve the body. At least, that's what appears to have been the more common story, and the one that can be linked with Easter. The Lydian version says that Zeus, jealous of the people's worship of Cybele, sent a boar to kill Attis and other Lydians, which is why the Gauls of Lydia didn't eat pork.


The festival of Attis, which lasted well into Roman times, involved cutting down a pine tree (the kind of tree under which the mythical character died), decorating it with violets (which sprang from Attis' blood as he died), and bringing it to a sanctuary, where the priests would cut themselves and sprinkle their blood all over the tree. These same priests were known to castrate themselves when entering into the order, in veneration of Attis' own actions. If you had a low tolerance for pain, Attis probably was not the god for you. Anyway, the worshippers mourned the dead Attis for three days, after which they had a wild celebration of his resurrection or bodily preservation. By the Roman calendar, this festival took place on the twenty-second through twenty-fifth of March, around the time of the vernal equinox. Although the date of Easter is based on a lunar calendar rather than a solar one, 25 March was often associated with Jesus' death, as well as his conception. There was a belief at that time that his living an exact number of years had to do with his being a prophet, or something like that, although I don't know how that idea originated. I'm sure it was no coincidence that this had him being born at the beginning of winter and dying at its end, nor that it meant Christian holidays could be transplanted onto existing pagan festivals. And the spring death does make sense, as Jesus is said in all known sources to have died during Passover. If Easter was influenced by the festival of Attis, that could explain why it's common rhetoric that Jesus was dead for three days before coming back to life, although the story as told in the Bible makes it only about a day and a half. It's also possible, however, that this figure is to coincide with Jonah's being inside the big fish for "three days and three nights." Or maybe it's both.

I guess Passover has started now, right? I'm not really that well versed in Jewish holidays, but from what I do know of them, they tend to have a greater sense of history than Christian ones. Christians often just seemed to say, "Okay, let's take this pagan holiday, throw Jesus in somewhere, and call it a day. Literally." While the primary Jewish holidays might not actually date back to Moses, they're definitely ancient. The Torah commands the observance of various festivals, including Sukkot, Shavuot, Rosh Hashanah, and Yom Kippur (the holiest day of the Jewish year). Passover has special connection with the Exodus, however, the name said to have come from the fact that the angel of God passed over the homes of the Hebrews when killing the first-born of Egypt. This was allegedly because the Hebrews smeared their doorways with lamb's blood, but since they were supposed to have lived in the Land of Goshen apart from the native Egyptians, I'm not sure why this was necessary. Couldn't God have just said, "Hey, skip over Goshen when on your killing rampage"? Regardless, the custom was to sacrifice and eat a lamb during Passover. Later, Christians introduced the idea that Jesus, who by all accounts was executed during Passover, was the new sacrificial lamb. But that's another story. Other foods eaten during the Seder include bitter herbs to symbolize the hardship of slavery in Egypt, charoset to represent mortar, and unleavened bread because the Hebrews left Egypt in such a hurry that they didn't have time to finish baking bread.


Now, I recently finished reading the book Who Wrote the Bible?, by Richard Elliott Friedman, and it makes a good case for how portions of the Torah were added or revised to support the points of view of the authors. The golden calf story is a good example. In Exodus 32, it's said that while Moses was chatting with God on Mount Sinai, his brother Aaron made an idol in the form of a young bull (translated "calf" because apparently English doesn't have as many words for the bovine life cycle as Hebrew does). If you read ahead to 2 Kings 10, you find more golden calves as symbols of God, this time placed in the cities of Bethel and Dan by King Jeroboam of Israel. Obviously, the more traditional priests weren't too fond of this, and it's thought that one of them might have composed the golden calf episode in Exodus as a response to this. It's sort of like saying, "See? We aren't the only ones who hate representing God this way. Moses himself hated it as well!" In addition, by making Aaron the wrongdoer in the piece and leaving Moses as innocent, it might well have been a way to promote the priests who traced their ancestry to Moses over those who claimed to be descendants of Aaron (although the Aaronid priests won out in the end). So why do I mention this? Partially just because I found it interesting, but also because it shows that the Torah probably doesn't all date back to Moses. Passover, however, does seem to be legitimately old. I have seen it suggested that it might have evolved from a more generic spring festival, but I guess that's really neither here nor there at this point. Interestingly, according to the Wikipedia article, "Pesach" might more accurately translate to "hover over," which casts some doubt on its getting its name from the angelic assassin.


One item that interested me about the Seder is how it's traditional to leave your door open and set a place for Elijah. Obviously that doesn't relate to the Exodus, since Elijah wasn't around until several centuries after that. So how did it come about? Well, part of it is that Elijah is said to have ascended bodily into Heaven, which presumably means he never really died. The book of Malachi ends with a prediction of his return on the "Day of the Lord," which came to be interpreted as meaning he'd show up back on Earth shortly before the arrival of the Messiah. Followers of Jesus identified John the Baptist with Elijah, since he more or less heralded the coming of Jesus (or at least that's the way it seemed, since Jesus' ministry began around the same time John was executed). People who think the Messiah has yet to arrive would probably say that Elijah hasn't yet returned to Earth either. So I would imagine that's why believers would expect to see Elijah and not, say, Moses, who's more closely associated with the festival but also is said to be dead and buried. There's also a tradition that Elijah will settle the difficult questions of Judaism when he arrives, including that of whether four or five glasses of wine should be served during the Seder. Since the question has never been officially resolved, the fifth cup is poured but not drunk, and said to be left for Elijah. This in turn developed into the idea that Elijah might actually show up to have a drink. If so, I hope he doesn't stop by too many houses. I don't even want to know what a guy who can bring down fire from the heavens is like when he's drunk.

Since I already wrote about Rainbow Brite today, I might as well keep the rainbow theme going with my weekly mythology post. In Greek mythology, the goddess of the rainbow is Iris, the daughter of the sea god Thaumas and the sky nymph Elektra. Like Hermes, she serves as a messenger for the gods, sometimes between themselves and other times with the mortal world. Some sources suggest she typically served as the personal messenger and herald for Hera, but Homer has her delivering several messages for Zeus. She is usually portrayed with wings, and is said to be married to Zephyrus, god of the west wind. In the Percy Jackson books, the children of the gods communicate via Iris-messages, which can be sent through any rainbow with an offering of money.


In Norse lore, the name for the rainbow is Bifröst, and it is used as a bridge between our own world of Midgard and the gods' abode in Asgard. The color red at the top is a burning flame, which prevents the frost giants from crossing it. The guardian of Bifröst is Heimdall, son of Odin, who keeps constant watch over the world. During Ragnarok, the giants will finally manage to cross over the rainbow bridge, and it will shatter with their weight. There's apparently a school of thought maintaining that the bridge between Earth and Heaven was originally thought to be the Milky Way rather than the rainbow, but common association still identifies Bifröst with the colorful arch.


The rainbow is also featured in the Biblical book of Genesis. After the great flood (you know, Noah's Ark and all that), God placed the rainbow in the sky as a sign that He'd never flood the entire world again. It's a good thing we have the rainbow, then, because otherwise He'd probably be causing worldwide floods every other week. The big guy must have memory problems, but that's not surprising for someone His age.


So what about the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow? I'm not sure exactly how that started, but it seems to have originated in Europe, and is especially identified with Ireland. One possible origin is a story about a leprechaun who grants a wish to a poor couple, and when they wish for riches, he tells them that their prize is at the end of the rainbow. Since it's impossible to get there, they never actually get the money, which is the leprechaun's punishment to the couple for their greed. This page says that some versions of the legend say that only a naked man can claim the gold, which sounds like it could be another leprechaun trick. The identification of leprechauns and pots of gold with rainbows is now so culturally ubiquitous that it can safely be referenced in children's cereal commercials.

If I were to refer to a giant, you'd have a pretty good idea what I mean, right? Or would you? While giants are all big and humanoid, they vary in a lot of ways. Some are only slightly larger than normal humans, while others are truly huge. Goliath's height is given in different versions of the Bible as "four cubits and a span" (about six and a half feet) and "six cubits and a span" (about nine and a half feet). The Nephilim are said in the Book of Enoch to be 300 cubits (about 450 feet) in height. The Gigantes and Hecatonchires were presumably large enough to move mountains. Most of the Norse Jotun didn't seem to be much bigger than humans or Aesir, but their ruler Utgard-Loki had a glove that Thor and his companions mistook for a building, and the primordial giant Ymir must have been planet-sized. When a creature can vary from eight feet tall to positively Himalayan, they're probably not all the same species, are they? Then again, using scientific terminology for beings that couldn't really exist, as the Square-Cube Law means a human frame that big would collapse instantly, might not be the best idea.


So what about ogres? As far as fairy tales go, I don't know that there's a whole lot of difference between giants and ogres. Well, that's not entirely true. It's more that there doesn't HAVE to be a difference. A large being that's basically humanoid but with grotesque features that eats regular-sized humans could be called either a giant or an ogre. The thing is, however, that some giants of mythology and folklore are friendly, helpful, intelligent, and even beautiful. Ogres pretty much HAVE to be mean, ugly, and dim-witted, or they wouldn't be ogres. I guess they could be considered a subset of giants that are less human than their fellows. The Wikipedia page says that the term dates back to twelfth-century French, and gives several possible derivations.


There is, perhaps, even more confusion over trolls. These creatures of Norse mythology are often more or less interchangeable with giants and ogres, but other traditions say that they are essentially human-sized dwellers of forests and underground caves. Trolls are generally considered to have magical powers, and in some parts of Scandinavia, the stories told about them were similar to ones about fairies in other parts of Europe. Modern popular culture still provides several different takes on trolls. The Scandinavian folk tale of the Three Billy-Goats Gruff makes its troll a ravenous creature that lives under a bridge and is easily fooled, which would make it not all that different from your typical ogre. But we also can't forget the troll dolls that gained popularity in the early sixties and have enjoyed occasional resurgences since then. I remember them being big in the mid-nineties, when I was in high school. These trolls are hardly ogrish brutes, but instead cute creatures with brightly-colored hair. Tolkien's trolls are large and uncouth humanoids that turn to stone in the daylight, a trait that he probably took from tales of the Norse dwarves. Terry Pratchett's Discworld series expands upon this idea of Tolkien's by having trolls made of rock, and saying that they freeze up in the daylight because they can't handle the heat. Their silicon-based brains are similar in operation to computers, so trolls in warmer areas tend not to be very bright. Sunscreen and devices like the cooling helmet Sergeant Detritus wears have enabled trolls to function more smoothly in cities. Oh, and for what it's worth, the term "troll" for an Internet agitator presumably comes not from the monsters but from the fishing term, although it works pretty well with both definitions.

Who wrote the Bible? This is a question that's been debated considerably over the centuries and millennia, and there's plenty of information online and elsewhere supporting different views. Since it's a topic that interests me, I intend to devote a few posts to it, despite the fact that I doubt I'll be saying anything new. To many, the authorship is a moot point, because God wrote the whole thing. Why God would work in so many different styles and espouse different philosophies isn't clear, but that's another issue. Others believe that the Bible was simply inspired by God, or that it was entirely the work of humans. Not surprisingly, I take the latter view. Whether or not the Almighty was at the helm, however, the books were obviously written down by different people.


The first five books, known as the Torah or Pentateuch, have long been considered to be the work of Moses. The thing is, however, that even if you accept those books word for word, nowhere in there is there an indication that Moses wrote them. He's said to have written various things, but not those entire books. And how would he have written about his own death, which is recorded at the end of Deuteronomy? Indeed, it isn't even written as if someone just added this part shortly after Moses' death, as the final chapter of Deuteronomy implies it had been some time since then. It's reported that no one knows Moses' burial place "to this day," and that no other prophet as great as Moses has arisen since, neither of which would have made much sense unless a considerable amount of time had passed. So how did the tradition of Mosaic authorship develop? Really, it's so old that I don't think we can determine the true answer, but Wikipedia indicates that both Josephus and Philo proposed it during Roman times. It's more likely that the books were the work of several different authors, and the Documentary Hypothesis proposes at least four original documents that were combined to make what we now know as the Torah. Among the differences between these authors were what they called God (Yahweh vs. Elohim), which of the two Jewish kingdoms they supported, and whether they focused on Moses or his brother Aaron. The book of Deuteronomy has a particularly interesting history, as it is typically identified as the scroll found in the temple during the reign of Josiah of Judah. Skeptics suggest that it might have actually been written in Josiah's time, with the priests successfully managing to pass it off as the work of Moses.


Moving on to Joshua, this account of the conquest of Canaan is also credited to its main character, Joshua himself. Archaeological evidence has cast a considerable amount of doubt on the idea that the conquest was accomplished in such a neat fashion in a short amount of time, which suggests that Joshua either didn't write it or was exaggerating his own accomplishments. The book also reports the death of its protagonist, with Aaron's son or grandson traditionally identified as the one who wrote this part. I tend to think that even that is pushing it, however, due partially to more "to this day" references (see the story of the twelve stones in Joshua 4, for instance), and also to the mention of the mysterious Book of Jasher in Chapter 10. This book, the title of which literally means "Book of the Upright/Just," has never been found, despite claims that were later found to be forgeries. And this isn't its only mention in the Bible, as 2 Samuel 1:17-18 says, "David intoned this lamentation over Saul and his son Jonathan. (He ordered that The Song of the Bow be taught to the people of Judah; it is written in the Book of Jashar.)" This is from the New Revised Standard Version, and other translations make it less clear exactly what was recorded in Jasher. If it's the song that immediately follows, however, it mentions Saul and Jonathan by name, and hence couldn't very well have dated back to the time of Joshua. Maybe there was more than one book with that name (I've seen indications that Genesis was sometimes known by that title, although it obviously isn't Genesis being referenced in either of these cases), or it was updated like an almanac. If we do consider the two books to be the same, though, it means that Joshua as we know it couldn't have been finished until after the death of Saul. As with the Torah, that doesn't mean that parts of it might not date back to eyewitness accounts, but we're obviously looking at a document that had undergone at least some revisions. As for the attribution to Joshua, could he even write? I'm not being flippant here, but merely pointing out that the Biblical account has Moses raised as a prince and Joshua as a slave, so there presumably would have been a significant difference in educational level between the two.


Thankfully, it doesn't look like anyone has tried to attribute the book of Ruth to its main character. Instead, the traditional view holds that it was written by Samuel, as were significant portions of Judges and 1 Samuel. It would make a certain amount of sense for Samuel to have popularized the story of Ruth, as he was promoting Ruth's great-grandson David as the next King of Israel. On the other hand, the story indicates that David was of Moabite ancestry, which might not have gone over too well. As for the books of Samuel, 1 Samuel 9:9 explains how prophets used to be called seers, while 10:12 explains the origin of the expression, "Is Saul among the prophets?" Both of these would presumably have been unnecessary if the book had been written by a contemporary of Saul. And Samuel is dead by the beginning of 2 Samuel, which not only means that he couldn't have written the book, but that whoever came up with its current name was quite likely an idiot. I know some versions of the Bible group the books of Samuel and Kings together and call them 1-4 Kings, which really makes more sense.


Collectively, the books of Joshua through 2 Kings (not counting Ruth, which appears later in the Tanakh) are known as the Deuteronomistic History, due to their views and concerns being similar to those in Deuteronomy. The kings and people are judged by how closely they conform to the laws put forth in the last book of the Torah. Some scholars have proposed that the compiler (and perhaps even writer) of these books was Jeremiah. Not only is the style similar to that of the book of Jeremiah, but this prophet was also known for blaming the hardships of the Jews on the deeds of the kings and their people. The reports of the kings are given from a specific viewpoint, and most are not intended to be complete (the accounts of Saul, David, and Solomon perhaps being exceptions). Indeed, the books of Kings constantly refer to the Annals of the Kings of Israel and Judah, which were presumably much more detailed sources. Unfortunately, these Annals have been long since lost to history.


If there's any interest, I'll continue this series in later weeks. Until then, you can read more about the topic here and here.