Froggy went a courtin’ in India

I started reading a book this morning called The 7 Laws of Magical Thinking by Matthew Hutson and so far it looks like it’ll be interesting. The point of the book is to outline how everyone, no matter if religious or atheist, will have odd beliefs that defy logic. This reminded me of an article that I read last week about a rain bringing ritual in India:

Farmers in Berhampur, India have staged a ‘frog wedding’ in an attempt to bring rain to the region.

After weeks of intense, dry heat, residents decided to carry out the age-old ritual, which is believed to please the rain gods.

A full Hindu wedding ceremony took place at a local temple, as attendees blew trumpets and sang songs.

The frog ‘couple’ were adorned with flowers and tinsel as locals chanted Hindu hymns and farmers put colourful streaks of powder on the female frog’s head.

It seems the custom may have worked, as reports suggest that the current weather in Berhampur is stormy with “100% chance of precipitation”.

Sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it? So does the notion that a person’s belongings retain an essence of the person long after they’ve died but people will still revere trinkets and clothing and upright pianos if we think someone important once owned or touched them.

We just seem geared toward making room in their heads for any and all kind of nonsense. I suppose that’s what makes us human. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do all we can to be aware of the absurdities of it, though. The more we know of the reasons why we react like we do, the more we can do to consciously override the worst of it. Assuming people have reached the point where they want to…

Jesus watches you pee outside and judges you

I’ve been waiting for another case of pareidolia and, by no surprise, the Daily Mail delivers Jesus appearing in the grit and crumble on the side of a take-away Chinese restaurant.

Mr Ridley, 39, immediately took a photograph of the bizarre sight outside the Mayho Chinese Takeaway.

He said: ‘We were a little drunk at the time and went to get something to eat.

‘We were waiting for our meal outside when we saw it.

‘It was Jesus looking right at us, we were shocked and couldn’t believe it. ‘It’s a miracle!

‘The best thing about it is the face is actually facing the direction of St Luke’s Church so it looks like it is supposed to be there.

‘Since I took the picture, we have shown it to loads of people and all of them can see it instantly.

‘It is amazing and they can’t believe it.’

I wonder if they tell their friends they’re looking at Jesus, or if their friends come to that (silly) conclusion without prompting. People always seem willing to believe it’s Jesus.

Side note, I was listening to a Skeptics Guide podcast a while back that mentioned something called audio paredolia. Quoting what Steven Novella wrote about it later:

Skeptics love talking about pareidolia, whether visual or audio, because it is right in the sweet spot of the skeptical skill set – understanding why people often come to dubious and even bizarre conclusions because they fail to understand the nature of the human mind. It’s also fun and easily demonstrated, and so it makes an excellent skeptical lesson – your brain can be fooled, you can be fooled, and in order to properly interpret this one needs only to understand a little bit about how our brains work. Our brain actively process sensory input, making many assmptions, and forcing fits to recognized patterns. Our brains do not give a truly objective and accurate representation of the world. It give a human one – full of pattern recognition – sometimes real, sometimes forced.

Also in there is a link to a video of a group of singers performing a gospel tune of some kind. The subtitles provided don’t match what they actually say, but what it could sound like they’re saying. What it sounds like they’re saying is nothing you’d expect…

“New” Mayan art contradicts 2012 deadline

Good news for those who might have been worried: archeologists in Guatemala have announced the discovery of a mural there that suggests the earth’s inhabitants still have another 7000 years to prosper.

Working with epigrapher David Stuart and archaeologist and artist Heather Hurst, the researchers noticed several barely visible hieroglyphic texts, painted and etched along the east and north walls of the room.

One is a lunar table, and the other is a “ring number”—something previously known only from much later Maya books, where it was used as part of a backward calculation in establishing a base date for planetary cycles. Nearby is a sequence of numbered intervals corresponding to key calendrical and planetary cycles.

The calculations include dates some 7,000 years in the future, adding to evidence against the idea that the Maya thought the world would end in 2012—a modern myth inspired by an ancient calendar that depicts time starting over this year.

“We keep looking for endings,” expedition leader Saturno said in a statement. “The Maya were looking for a guarantee that nothing would change. It’s an entirely different mindset.”

Bad news for “the usually picturesque and tranquil Pyrenean village of Bugarach.” Their village had been picked as the potential Noah’s Ark for scared hippies the world over. Back in March, the Independent reported that

Upwards of 100,000 people are thought to be planning a trip to the mountain, 30 miles west of Perpignan, in time for 21 December, and opportunistic entrepreneurs are shamelessly cashing in on the phenomenon. While American travel agents have been offering special, one-way deals to witness the end of the world, a neighbouring village, Saint-Paul de Fenouillet, has produced a wine to celebrate the occasion.

Jean-Pierre Delord, the perplexed mayor of Bugarach, has flagged up the situation to the French authorities, requesting they scramble the army to the tiny village for fear of a mass suicide. It has also caught the attention of France’s sect watchdog, Miviludes.

It’s believed by these people that aliens have a spacecraft inside Pic de Bugarach and that they have the capability to “beam away” anyone in the vicinity on that day. No wonder there’s some worry. Nobody wants to see another Heaven’s Gate happen. (Their website is still up and running, by the way.)

Pride week is not far away

But I found this now and don’t want to forget to post it. I found out about it via recordnet.com and their article about North Carolina’s gay marriage issue.

One hopes that plea is heeded. Vines’ speech is long – a little over an hour – but well worth the time, particularly for those seeking to reconcile first-century faith with 21st-century social concerns.

Many in North Carolina – many around the country – are swimming against the tide of human freedom and blaming God for it. Again, this is not a new thing. We saw it back when God was for segregation and against women’s suffrage.

How convenient it must be to lay your own narrowness and smallness off on God, to accept no responsibility for the niggardly nature of your own soul. Vines’ video is a welcome, overdue and eloquent rebuke of the moral and intellectual laziness of throwing rocks, then hiding inside Scripture. It is a reminder, too.

Old news: it’s official. Real Ark found… again

It’s in Turkey. Seriously. I mean it. Totally there. If you can believe the researchers, that is. Chinese researchers planted evidence on Mount Ararat when they went hunting for a documentary (wrote about that here) but the Pravda piece takes readers back through the history of the Noah’s Ark story and why people have concluded the ark really did land up there. It takes a special kind of person to want real proof that God’s mass genocide of every species on earth. I think these people must also love to think that they’re descendents of God’s chosen few. Never mind just how inbred humans would have been after several generations of nothing but close relatives to mate with; all that would have resulted was a race of people as bad off as Charles II of Spain. Yes? But anyway, on with quoting Pravda’s piece:

In 1960, Lihan Durupinar, a captain of the Turkish army, made several aerial photos. On one of those photos, Durupinar saw a strange object staying at the height of 6,350 feet in Ararat Mountains. The object was shaped as a ship and was nearly 500 feet long. A mission of US and Turkish scientists set off on a mission to the mountains soon after the photo had been published.

At the height of nearly 7,000 feet above the sea level, they saw a flat plot of land covered with grass. The plot looked like a ship indeed. The size of the plot of land was very close to that mentioned in the Bible. The scientists did not conduct a detailed examination of the site. They simply concluded that the strange formation was nothing else but a natural phenomenon.

And it’s a pity things didn’t just end there. Too bad a detailed examination wasn’t done to prove it truly was a naturally occurring plot of land that was vaguely ship shaped. An American doctor and amateur archeologist by the name of Ron Wyatt saw the picture and became obsessed with proving the Ark had landed up there. He managed a trek to the mountain in the ’70s and found rocks there that he believed had been used as anchors for it.

Ron had seen the photos of those rocks in archeology books before. The rocks with holes drilled in them served as anchors for ancient vessels. It turned out that there were crosses engraved on all local rocks.

Which makes me ask what difference the crosses make. Were these actually Noah’s rocks, the crosses wouldn’t have been on them when he used them since the cross as a symbol of God was something of a late addition. And let’s be honest — those holes could have been drilled in those rocks any time after 1960 once locals realized there were people gullible enough to think the ark had actually been there. None of those sensible ideas came to Wyatt at the time, though, and more treks to the site happened over the years, each excursion revealing more “proof” he was on the right track.

In December 1986, Turkish officials representing interior and foreign ministries, as well as a group of researchers from the city of Ataturk approved the official solution saying that the formation discovered by Ron Wyatt and his colleagues contained the remains of Noah’s Ark indeed.

Many discussions have taken place since the “official” discovery of Noah’s Ark. Some scientists say that Wyatt indeed discovered the Biblical vessel, whereas others deny this theory. The search for the Ark still continues.

And it beats me why people bother. As a story it’s kind of a grim one. The rainbow connection (sorry) is just plain daft and again I bring up the fact that two – or even seven – pairs of each type of animal is not going to work to repopulate a world. “But it was a miracle!” Blah blah. It was a story, probably the spawn of several different stories told by cultures at the time attempting to explain why the world was how it was. I don’t think any of them should have been taken as real answers to whatever the questions may have been. It’s a waste of time, energy and resources to work on proving it all to be true.

Quotable Dawkins

When someone suggested to British evolutionary biologist and strident atheist Richard Dawkins that he pose questions about the big bang to a chaplain, Dawkins responded, “Why not the gardener or the chef?”

Why not indeed? Unless the chaplain has done the work as a physicist, he’s hardly going to have the knowledge required to give cogent responses to the questions. May as well ask him how to create the perfect soufflé while we’re at it. Unless he trained as a French chef at some point he likely won’t be able to answer that either.

The quote comes from a piece about the end of the world that isn’t going to happen in December of this year. The article lists a couple books that might be worth looking for — How It Ends: From You to the Universe by Chris Impey and Steven Pinker’s The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined. The latter sounds like a great suggestion for the author of an opinion piece I considered “debating” today. I’ve added the link for that piece to my collection of stuff to write about later. It was a hoot and a half to read, let me tell you. I didn’t have enough time this morning to sort out all the arguments against the author’s belief that the world’s in such a horrible state today because not enough people love God. Hopefully there will be a day I can do that and have some educational fun with it.

This again: Harry Potter and yoga are “evil!!eleventy1″

Demons being real or not, you kind of have to love the tenacity of exorcists. They’re so dedicated. Ridiculous, but dedicated. How many others can say the same about their passion for their chosen hobbies or careers? Gabriele Amorth is getting quoted in this Guardian piece. I’ve written about him before, too.

Reading JK Rowling’s Harry Potter books is no less dangerous, said the 86-year-old priest, who is the honorary president for life of the International Association of Exorcists, which he founded in 1990, and whose favourite film is the 1973 horror classic, The Exorcist.

The Harry Potter books, which have sold millions of copies worldwide, “seem innocuous” but in fact encourage children to believe in black magic and wizardry, Father Amorth said.

“Practising yoga is Satanic, it leads to evil just like reading Harry Potter,” he told a film festival in Umbria this week, where he was invited to introduce The Rite, a film about exorcism starring Sir Anthony Hopkins as a Jesuit priest.

There are Christians who’ve given up the notion of Harry Potter being the gateway to evil and instead embrace his story as a means of introducing the story of Jesus to people. The evilness of yoga is also a common theme among people who think like him. It’s beyond silly in this day and age and he’s showing his age by perpetuating these notions as things to actually worry about. Talk about a waste of time.

Without Jesus, who would people think they see in trees and breakfast foods?

I never seem to have to wait long for another example of pareidolia making headlines. This time around, the Daily Mail (among others) has reprints of an American tourist’s photo of the cliffs of Moher and if you stare at the picture just right, a face does appear to be looking out at the camera. It’s Jesus’ face, of course. And to make sure you see what Sandra Clifford saw, they provide you with the image of a painting of Jesus as he probably didn’t look in real life anyway.

The 42-year-old pilot from San Francisco couldn’t believe her eyes when she spotted an imprint of as she visited the famous County Clare tourist attraction.

She told Irish Central: ‘To me it was Jesus Christ straight away.

‘I am a pilot, so I am always skeptical of what I see, that is why I started grabbing people and asking them what they saw

Breaking in to note how completely opposite of skepticism Ms Clifford’s reaction to the rock formation was. Instead of, “hey, that kind of looks like a face. I should take a picture of that. It’s cool.” She immediately convinces herself it’s Christ she’s gotten a special look-at and can’t wait to tell the world about it.

It had been raining prior to the sighting and the pilot said it had been ‘a day of rainbows.’

And as everybody knows, at least everyone who thinks like this woman thinks (and atheist bloggers who do a bit of Googling), rainbows are considered visible proof of God’s mercy. It comes from the story of Noah and the ark and God rewarding the passengers with a rainbow after He killed every other living thing on earth by drowning them. The rainbow is supposed to symbolize God’s promise never to do it again, no matter how riddled with sin humans might be. Every rainbow is supposed to be interpreted as God reminding the world of his power and his grace.

And Ms Clifford is not alone in thinking her sighting is completely genuine.

Later that evening Ms Clifford, who was holidaying with her friend Fiona Fay, went to Gus O’Connors Pub in Doolin, where locals whole hardheartedly agreed with their diagnosis.

Teresa O’Flaherty, who owns the bar with her husband Patric, told IrishCentral that they couldn’t believe their eyes when they saw the snap.

‘I was like, wow, I actually thought it was a picture of a picture, I was shocked,” she said.

‘It’s very definitely an image of Christ,” she said.

Ms Clifford maintains the images are 100 percent legitimate and points out the original photograph are still in the camera, which she passed around in the Co. Clare pub that evening.

This is a case of skepticism and sense going the way of the dodo. I don’t know why these are the conclusions people want to jump to all the time. What does it say about their mental state? I don’t mean they’re nuts or anything, I just wonder why they think they see what they see. Why didn’t she see a troll in the cliff face? That’s what it reminded me of and I didn’t even have a troll folklore upbringing. I did see Return to Oz, though, so it also reminds me of the Nome King who wanted to steal Dorothy’s ruby slippers.

So I suppose that’s my answer. People see what they see because they’re building it out of past experiences. They see Jesus because they’ve been inundated with imagery of Jesus from a very young age and it’s become automatic for them to holler, “It’s Jesus!” as soon as they see anything that remotely resembles their remembered idea of what Jesus looks like.

It reminds me of something…forget when it would have been, but I’m assuming university. I was shown a picture that was just black and white but the shape of both on the page made it resemble something very “familiar” and I blurted the exact same thing, even though I’d never been anything remotely like a true believer. The person showing me the picture said something like, “Are you sure?” and I remember taking a mental step back and changing my answer. “Sorry, right, it just looks a bit like a man with a beard.” I don’t think I really thought of the image as an image of Christ, but no one’s truly immune from cultural conditioning. A few years of Catholic school + a few relatives with bible inspired art on the wall + a random face with a beard = Jesus Christ. Sad, really.

It was kind of eye opening for me, though, how quick a person can make an assumption based on fuck-all for evidence. That’s probably why I like finding these stories and writing about them. I think more people need to have the same kind of eye-opening/mental step back that I had.

I feel kind of bad for Reverend Peter Anamo

Maybe he’s getting more press locally in Ghana, but there’s not a lot to be found online about him and his predictions for the end of the world this month. Harold Camping and his followers certainly knew how to stir the waters and got a hell of a lot more press. I can’t find much about Anamo’s predictions beyond this article from April.

Promising to do better than biblical men of steel, Prophet Anamo said he was relying on numerology to make his prediction. “Numerology is the mystery of numbers which the Church does not know but that is unfortunate because our divine God is God of numerology that is why the Bible has a whole book on numbers.”

“I am a prophet; my job is to make sure God is able to redeem a lot of people in November.” Grounding his argument, Prophet Anamo cited Japan which was hit by a disastrous earthquake on March 11 and also on April 11, and that that was a prelim to what will happen to the world on 11 November (the 11th month of 2011).

There is this interview, though.

He uses the Book of Daniel as the basis for all his goofy numerology math, and 5/6 minutes in he uses some other funky number trick on the woman doing the interview. She adds up 80 (1980 being the year she was born) and her age (31) and gets 111 for an answer. He tries to sell this as a sign the end is nigh because everyone who tries the same thing will get the exact same number and the longer he goes on, the more loony he starts to sound. I’m almost surprised he got to speak as long as he did but I suppose everyone’s allotted a certain number of minutes for their segment no matter how ridiculous they may get.

It’s stated in the article that he’ll turn himself in if his predication fails so I’ll make sure to check if anything gets written about him later on. Statistically speaking, he may wind up right by accident about an earthquake hitting this weekend, especially since he isn’t being very specific as to where it’ll be. The National Earthquake Information Center registers at least 50 a day with their sensitive equipment and it’s also noted that if it seems like we’re having more earthquakes these days, it’s mostly because we have a lot more equipment around the world tracking the earth’s constant shifting.

In 1931, there were about 350 stations operating in the world; today, there are more that 4,000 stations and the data now comes in rapidly from these stations by telex, computer and satellite. This increase in the number of stations and the more timely receipt of data has allowed us and other seismological centers to locate many small earthquakes which were undetected in earlier years, and we are able to locate earthquakes more rapidly.

Another factor has to do with just how many humans are on this planet (we’re nearing or past the seven billion mark already) and the fact that some of us can’t help but live in regions where earthquakes have a higher probability of being large enough to be damaging. The site lists more explanations than these, too.

Bottom line, I think the bulk of us will be able to rest easy on Friday and spend the day however Remembrance Day tends to be spent. I expect mine will go quietly; I’ll be away to Dial Up Land for the weekend since it works out to be a long one. Aside from getting my fix of Canasta and Hoarders, I have no plans.

Why not picket the New Jersey Devils then?

According to folklore acquired via Wikipedia:

Most accounts of the Jersey Devil legend attribute the creature to a “Mother Leeds”, a supposed witch, although the tale has many variations. According to one version, she invoked the devil by saying “let it be the devil” while giving birth to her 13th child, and when the baby was born it was named Lucas, it either immediately or soon afterward transformed into a devil-like creature and flew off into the surrounding pines.[2][3]

The Jersey Devil remained an obscure regional legend through most of the 18th and 19th centuries until a series of purported sightings in 1909 gained it press coverage and wider notability. Today, the Jersey Devil is considered to be more in the realm of popular culture than folklore.

The site lists the amusing series of “sightings” of this thing over the years. Makes me wonder what might be in the water in New Jersey, but no matter. Onto what I was really going to write about.

A pastor in Georgia took issue with a local school’s devil mascot and decided to picket over it. That was back in August of 2010.

Donald Crosby, pastor of God’s Kingdom Builders Church of Jesus Christ in Macon, was charged with disorderly conduct, a misdemeanor, for “excessive noise” for using a bullhorn to shout across the street and disrupt students, said Tabitha Pugh, public information officer for Warner Robins police. Crosby, 36, was released on a $150 bond, Pugh said.

Crosby was arrested Monday outside the school and charged with disorderly conduct and picketing without a permit, both misdemeanors, after he refused to comply with officers’ requests to leave, Pugh said. He was released on a $650 bond.

Thursday, Crosby had a permit to picket. However, the city’s separate noise ordinance prohibits the use of the bullhorn while on a public street, sidewalk, city park or other public place, City Attorney Jim Elliott said.

And as one who’s dealt with noisy neighbours in the past, I think that’s a fair law. He had a right to picket with a permit, but he should have been respectful and kept the protest down to a reasonable volume so he didn’t alienate the people he hoped would support him.

What do you think has been the result since then? More politely law-abiding protests of the school’s team? Tail between the legs? Preaching doom and damnation from the pulpit every week on account of a whole town supporting devil worship?

Any, all or none of that, I don’t know.

What I do know – he’s suing the city of Warner Robins, claiming he’s the victim in this because his First Amendment rights were violated.

Crosby said in the lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Macon, that he was shaken by the experience [of being arrested] and forced to move out of the central Georgia town for fear of continued harassment.

“Maybe I’m completely crazy and I don’t know what I’m talking about. Or maybe all of their allegations are true,” Crosby said in an interview. “But the fact of the matter is I believe I have the right to be heard.”

He does have the right to be heard – but at a reasonable volume. Clearly people were bothered by his louder than necessary derision of the school mascot, and team name in general, and had every right to get authorities involved to quiet him a little.

Crosby said he was unfairly targeted by city officials who disagreed with his message.

“The majority of the community applauded the demon and here I was going against it,” he said. “They wanted me silenced and they were willing to bend the law to make sure it happened.”

His attorney, Gerry Weber, called the city’s restrictions “blatantly unconstitutional,” an argument Elliott vowed to vigorously fight. Crosby, for his part, is treating his brush with the law as a point of pride.

“I felt honored getting locked up. Every hero in the Bible, every apostle, every prophet, every real preacher got locked up for standing up for Christ,” he said. “I’m not ashamed it happened and I’d do it again.”

They were disagreeing with the need to be that bloody loud while preaching the message, guy. If it’s a point of pride, why did he turn tail and leave town then? Now that he has a lawyer on his side he feels a bit bolder, I guess.

What was a protest going to do except make them look juvenile and silly? “That demon mascot is making baby Jesus cry!” If he has a problem with the school team name and its mascot, why not take it up with the school itself or get a petition going or something? Don’t just stand around, waving signs and screaming about it. See what the whole community thinks about the name, if they feel it degrades their faith too much, or whatever they want to believe the problem is. I think it’s a daft thing to get worked up about, myself.