(Above: since Moloch gets a run below, we thought we'd give an evocative attempt to imagine him a run too).There's simply no escaping 9/11 today. Everyone is at it, from Phillip Jensen filing for the Sydney Anglicans in Facing the Evil of 9/11 to Miranda the Devine explaining how she heroically flew into New York right after the attack in Ten years on from 9/11, terror has failed to defeat us.
Naturally the Devine is appalled by the official ceremony:
We can see the West's loss of confidence in the timid tone of the memorial ceremonies planned to mark the 10th anniversary of September 11 in New York. Mayor Michael Bloomberg has decreed there will be no prayers or religious observances. This on its own is a sign of the decline of American self-belief.
Yes, it would have just been Jim Dandy to see a few Muslims turn up to conduct religious observances in the name of the very same Abrahamic god worshipped by Christians.
But then the Devine is always expert at wearing blinkers:
It is also a slap in the face to the firefighters who gave up their lives on September 11, many of them Catholics, from Staten Island, Brooklyn and Queens. The first body carried out of the rubble was of their chaplain, Franciscan priest Mychal Judge.
Yes, and there were Muslim bodies carried out of the rubble too, but it's typical of the Devine to interpret a sense of discretion and common humanity and togetherness as a decline in American self-belief. When you're a rabid ratbag of the Catholic kind, there's absolutely no need for any discretion at all.
Meanwhile, over at the Anglicans, Phillip Jensen lathers himself into apocalyptic mode, and naturally drags in atheists, as if somehow atheists were responsible for the attack, rather than religious fundamentalists.
The good dean gets himself tangled in knots by rejecting materialism (all those meaningless and tiresome possessions, but oh no not the giant plasma screen surely), and then turns to the pond's favourite exercise in biblical doom and gloom, Ecclesiastes:
It is better to go to the house of mourning than to go to the house of feasting, for this is the end of all mankind, and the living will lay it to heart. Sorrow is better than laughter, for by sadness of face the heart is made glad. The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning, but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth. (Ecc 7:2-4)
Having delivered this gloomy judgement, the good dean immediately recants:
This is not for a moment to say that suffering is good or death is desirable.
Uh huh. And there we were thinking that death took you off to eternal paradise (well not for the pond, but for the chosen gloomy few), and so eminently desirable, and so making warfare in the name of god a terribly useful exercise as it hastens the blessed moment of unity ...
And reading that vanity, all is vanity text, hasn't it been saying, for a couple of thousand years or so, that sorry is better than laughter, sadness makes the heart glad, and whatever you do, best avoid the house of mirth.
Surely gloomy Calvinists have learned the lesson well. Naturally the good Dean has to twist this around into a story of lessons learned:
The wisdom we gain comes at the cost of pain and horror. It is the wisdom gained by seeing the evil in suffering and the wickedness of death. It is the wisdom that we learn from the awfulness of this world’s cruelty.
Of course a naughty person might say it is the wisdom that we learn from the awfulness of the good dean's god's wicked indifference, her absence and her tolerance of cruelty, pain and suffering.
But that would bring forth the good Dean's rage at wicked atheists, and most particularly the demonic Richard Dawkins, as close to the anti-christ as we can get outside the church of Rome.
For many atheists, the problem of suffering, especially unjust suffering, is the greatest argument against the existence of God. They usually fail to notice that it is an argument, not against the existence of all gods, or the supernatural, but only against the God of the Bible.
Well if you can make head or tail of that, please explain, since it would seem that an argument against the god of the Bible is precisely the point, but the good dean must, perforce, muddy the waters by dragging in other gods, before discovering a different god, which is to say a handy new rather than old testament god (oh ye bible literalists, stop now):
For it is the personal God who loves and is good and just, who is being called to account for the suffering of the innocent. Other gods that people worship are not necessarily loving, good or just – some like Moloch could be almost the exact opposite.
Uh huh, but if you can't hold a personal, albeit all-seeing, all-knowing creator of everything and ordainer of everything god, who is loving and good and just, equally responsible for the hate, and badness and wickedness and injustice in the world, who can you blame?
People? Created by a god who loves hate and badness and and injustice and imperfect creatures who act like they've been launched out of a Chinese factory without proper quality control? And filled the world full to overflowing with these squabbling tribes of wretches?
Speaking of Moloch, perhaps we should take a turn with him, if Manichaeism is out of favour.
Uh oh, what does the good book say about Moloch?
Yes there's nothing like a good old-fashioned stoning to death to set a tone of compassion, morality, justice and kind-hearted love.
By the end of Jensen's piece, we reach a truly convoluted position:
Weird, but at least it seems the Jews are off the hook these days.
Even weirder, some actually continue to believe they drink god's actual blood and munch on his actual flesh, in the way some of the more remote tribes in New Guinea once celebrated victory in war. And they say atheists have got problems ...
But speaking of weird, brooding about religious fundamentalists is likely to bring on acute depression - yes they weren't angry atheists, they were maddie religous fundamentalist loons who hijacked the planes, and so not worth the brooding, unless you too are mad enough to think flying aeroplanes full of people into buildings full of people is the way to fix things in the world ...
So let's instead segue to the world of conspiracy theorists, and handily it turns out that Slate's Jeremy Stahl has been running a series of interesting pieces on 9/11 conspiracy theories.
The latest is Why Trutherism Lives On, The 9/11 conspiracy movement has faded, but the conspiracy will never die, but there's another five of them, all conveniently linked to by tabs at the start of the piece, and beginning with Where Were You When You First Heard?
For the record, the pond doesn't think 9/11 was an inside job involving George Bush and/or Dick Cheney and/or the CIA, the FBI, the Mafia, the Pope, or Walt Disney's cryogenically frozen and preserved head.
But the pond is working on a thesis that the same capacity for wilful paranoia and conspiracy is at the heart of religious cultism, with splitters, in-fights, purges, and when principle contentions prove manifestly false, a doubling down and an insistence that doubters be silenced.
Try talking about the silliness of miracles and transubstantiation to true believers and you'll see the same effect. Try talking to a fundamentalist Islamic about the virgins waiting in paradise - since there seem to fewer by the day on earth - and try hard not to giggle ...
Anyhoo, Stahl's pieces are well worth the read - a much better way to spend the Sunday than reading the brooding Phillip Jensen, and yes Cardinal George Pell because we've simply scrubbed him off the list after reading through his unctuous simpering praise of dads in his week-old Father's Day piece. This from a church which discourages its priests to marry and become fathers and mothers and so save the world ...
Instead we'll end with Peter FitzSimons' little note and homage to this site, Loonies are lost for words, which surely should have read that Loonies are never lost for words.
FitzSimons is gloating, in an unseemly way, about how he hasn't heard lately from moon conspiracy theorists, now that NASA has released photos from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, showing the buggy tracks, footsteps and litter left on the moon by the now long ago landings.
Naughtily FitzSimons doesn't provide a link to the photos, but you can find a couple of samples here at NASA Spacecraft Images Offer Sharper Views of Apollo Landing Sites. Of course there is no actual evidence to hand that these images aren't clever, heavily photoshopped fakes ...
Just saying. This is a site called loon pond, after all ...
Feeble humour aside, on days like these it's worth remembering what science - and the United States - has offered the world by way of lunar exploration (and by way of other scientific and technological marvels). To savour fully how science has helped us understand the world involves putting aside religious fanaticism, though marvelling at the capacity of humanity for delusional conspiracy theories might still be allowed ...
Once you get in amongst NASA's site, you'll find it hard to leave, because it's rich in resources and stunning views of the universe, way more humbling, wondrous and awe-inspiring than any imaginary being suggesting neighbours should be stoned to death for worshipping a different god ...
Start with the image of the day gallery, or head off to the latest on the universe and images from Hubble ...
Has any one supposed it lucky to be born?
I hasten to inform him or her it is just as lucky to die, and I know
it.
I pass death with the dying and birth with the new-wash'd babe, and
am not contain'd between my hat and boots,
And peruse manifold objects, no two alike and every one good,
The earth good and the stars good, and their adjuncts all good. (Walt Whitman, Song of Myself)
I hasten to inform him or her it is just as lucky to die, and I know
it.
I pass death with the dying and birth with the new-wash'd babe, and
am not contain'd between my hat and boots,
And peruse manifold objects, no two alike and every one good,
The earth good and the stars good, and their adjuncts all good. (Walt Whitman, Song of Myself)
Frank Devine's daughter and Philip Jensen may both wish to ponder Job 38.2
ReplyDeleteAh the clergy, if they didn't wear dresses would they still be funnier than their followers?
ReplyDelete