I was having lunch with Joe the Juggler at the City Diner earlier this week. He was showing me some papers he found in the wall of his house. The original owner in 1892 apparently was in the personal rubber products business. Back then, this was a euphemism for (shocked…
A committee has been selected in Texas to define the science curriculum for the next decade. The 6 man committee consists of 3 reputable scientists, two co-authors of a new Intelligent Design textbook, and one chemistry professor who is known for his Intelligent Design stance. Fair and balanced, right? Oh,…
BeliefNet is offering 10 free copies of Ben Stein's "Expelled" for the best answers to this question: "If you could intelligently redesign humanity, what would you change?" (This is the link to their post) Good until October 27, 2008 For this price, I'd watch it. Maybe in a double feature…
Sure it could. The same way fascism always happens. Not imposed, all of a sudden, from above, like a boot on your neck in the dead of night. It grows and festers in dark corners of society, feeding off the irrational fears and resentments and feelings of entitlement of an angry minority and growing ever stronger, with noone noticing it, until it bursts into pungent & infectious & malignant life, strangling its host. Fascism grows from the ground up and keeps growing uncontrolled until it stops – or is stopped.
Tim Wise at Redroom has written an eloquent and timely call-to-arms entitled “This Is How Fascism Comes: Reflections On The Cost Of Silence.”
Before you read the whole thing, I present some snacks to whet the appetite:
…If fascism comes it will dress like a hockey mom, or a NASCAR dad. It will believe Toby Keith to be an artist, Larry the Cable Guy to be a comic, and that the world was made in six literal days less than 6000 years ago.
If fascism comes it will come from the small towns; the ones Sarah Palin, quoting a famous racist and Jew-hater, said “grow good people,” and which occasionally do, but which, just as often grow provincial, isolated, fearful and superstitious ones.
If fascism comes it will come from faux populism, from anti-immigrant hysteria, from persons who have more guns in their homes than books, or whose books, when they have them, are principally volumes of the
On several prior posts, I’ve referred to Earl Doherty’s extensive website, Jesus Puzzle. I’ve visited Doherty’s site numerous times. I’ve pulled out a Bible and double-checked the passages he cites, especially those of the Epistles, the only Christian writings that were written during the 40 years subsequent to the alleged death of Jesus. I’ve admired Doherty’s writing for many reasons. He readily admits where he is engaging in speculation or where guesswork is involved. On the other hand, where he claims to have strong arguments, he backs up his claims with citations.
Doherty’s main conclusion is that the existence of Christiantity was not based on an historical Jesus. Rather, it was based on a mythological Jesus:
“Jesus” (Yeshua) is a Hebrew name meaning Savior, strictly speaking “Yahweh Saves.” At the beginning of Christianity it refers not to the name of a human individual but (like the term Logos) to a concept: a divine, spiritual figure who is the mediator of God’s salvation. “Christ,” the Greek translation of the Hebrew “Messiah,” is also a concept, meaning the Anointed One of God (though enriched by much additional connotation). In certain sectarian circles across the Empire, which included both Jews and gentiles, these names would have enjoyed a broad range of usage. Belief in some form of spiritual Anointed Savior—Christ Jesus—was in the air. Paul and the Jerusalem brotherhood were simply one strand of this widespread phenomenon, although an important and eventually very influential one. Later, in a myth-making process of its …