The phrase that means “God faked the age of the Earth”

I've run into more than a few fundamentalist Christians who have insisted that the Earth is only 6,000 years old. "Then please explain the results of radiometric dating," I typically ask, adding that even carbon dating can accurately date materials up to 60,000 years old, far older than 6,000 years. Most modern savvy Young-Earthers won't fight me on the general usefulness or accuracy of carbon dating. Instead, they will insist that A) God has created an Earth that only looks like it is billions of years old, and B) I need to have faith. That is how they would explain everything older than 6,000 years old, including the Old Tjikko tree in Sweden, which certainly appears to be 9,550 years old. God must have transplanted it from another universe when he made this universe. The Young-Earthers thus offer an provocative argument. I don't believe it, but there's would be no way for me to disprove it.

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Member of Congress moves protester to solitary confinement

Remember Tim DeChristopher? The latest news is that a vindictive member of Congress had him moved into solitary confinement.

Tim DeChristopher (climate activist currently serving a 2-year prison sentence for outbidding oil and gas companies at an illegitimate BLM auction in 2008) was summarily removed from the minimum security camp where he has been held since September 2011, and moved into the FCI Herlong’s Special Housing Unit (SHU). Tim was informed by Lieutenant Weirich that he was being moved to the SHU because an unidentified congressman had called from Washington DC, complaining of an email that Tim had sent to a friend. Tim was inquiring about the reported business practices of one of his legal fund contributors, threatening to return the money if their values no longer aligned with his own.

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“At least I can get accurate news on NPR.” Wrong.

For those of you who think that you are getting accurate U.S. foreign policy news stories on NPR, think again. NPR, like most other new outlets, has annointed itself a stenographer for the U.S. government. Glenn Greenwald proves this point beyond debate by dissecting a recent NPR store on Iran. It would all be laughable were the stakes not so serious. Here is an excerpt from Greenwald's story. I highly recommend following the link to his entire story:

This morning, Temple-Raston began her report by noting — without a molecule of skepticism or challenge — that Iran is accused (by the U.S. government, of course) of trying to assassinate the Saudi ambassador on U.S. soil (a plot traced to “the top ranks of the Iranian government”); there was no mention of the fact that this alleged plot was so ludicrous that it triggered intense mockery in most circles. She then informed us that Iran is also likely responsible for three recent, separate attacks on Israeli officials. These incidents, she and her extremely homogeneous group of experts from official Washington explained, are “red flags” about Iran’s intent to commit Terrorism — red flags consistent, she says, with Iran’s history of state-sponsored Terrorism involving assassinations of opposition leaders in Europe during the 1980s and the 1996 truck bombing of an American military dormitory in Saudi Arabia (note how attacks on purely military targets are “Terrorism” when Iran does it, as are the assassinations of its own citizens on foreign soil who are working for the overthrow of its government; but if you hold your breath waiting for NPR to label as Terrorism the U.S. assassination of its own citizens on foreign soil, or American and Israeli attacks on military targets, you are likely to expire quite quickly). All of this, Temple-Raston announces, shows that Iran is “back on the offensive.”

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What did Jesus look like?

I'm not yet far into Bart Ehrman's newest book, Did Jesus Exist?: The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth. Ehrman's answer, however (and he warns that his conclusion will annoy many non-Christians--of which he is one--and please Christians) is that a man named Jesus most definitely did exist. I'll be posting on Ehrman's book once I finish it. I should also mention that Frontline has produced a show on the search for the historical Jesus [Here is the video of the entire show]. Assuming that a man named Jesus once walked on the planet, what did he look like? At Popular Mechanics, Mike Fillon discusses what Jesus must have really looked like. Hmmm. He's not the tall blonde haired blue-eyed British-accented guy I've seen in more than a couple movies. Nor could he have been like any of the seven art images of "Jesus" created through the centuries. And what Jesus looked like is no academic exercise. There are real and serious real-world ramifications. For instance, Rudy Giuliani once became perturbed at an exhibit depicting Jesus as a black man. People tend to concoct the Jesus they worship in their own image and likeness. What is the method by which one might recreate an image of Jesus using other Galilean Semites of his era? It's the field of forensic anthropology, and the assumption guiding this enterprise is that Jesus would, indeed, look somewhat like most other men who lived in that area of the world.

With three well-preserved specimens from the time of Jesus in hand, [medical artist Richard Neave] used computerized tomography to create X-ray "slices" of the skulls, thus revealing minute details about each one's structure. Special computer programs then evaluated reams of information about known measurements of the thickness of soft tissue at key areas on human faces. This made it possible to re-create the muscles and skin overlying a representative Semite skull.
What Neave has offered, then, is not actually the face of Jesus, but how Jesus likely would have looked. Here is a video showing Neave at work. Based on this reaction, we have some confidence to say the following to European, African and Asian Christian congregations, each of which tend to display a version of Jesus that looks like themselves. "So sorry, but Jesus didn't look like any of you. Will you still worship him?" I'd love to run the following experiment. Let's put a big reproduction of the photo offered by Neave at the front of Christian churches all across America, right next to the altar. Then I'd like to observe church attendance over the next few months to see how dramatically it suffers. My prediction is that church attendance would fall by 50% within a year. For more on this topic see this article by BBC News. [Above Image by BBC].

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