So I haven't updated the blog in over two months. I even skipped over my yearly post about the American Family Association's "Naughty or Nice List". I know that's unacceptable, but in my defense Skyrim exists and has been eating up an embarrassing amount of my time.
I'm working on a couple of new posts (honest), but for the time being I'd like to call attention to an important milestone that we passed last month with little fanfare. You see, December 22nd was just a few short weeks ago, which means we're less than a year away from an enormous deluge of excuses for why the world didn't end on December 21st, 2012. Indeed, I have a suspicion that December 22nd, 2012 is going to be a pretty strange day in some corners of the internet.
On the other hand, have you noticed that there's not been as much "2012 Apocalypse" nonsense getting mainstream attention lately? Not even the History Channel, of late a bastion of nonsense and pseudoscience, hasn't been running that many of its countless 2012 "documentaries". Hell, professional lunatic David Icke1, who under normal circumstances is all too happy to incorporate any conspiracy theory he catches wind of into his own staggeringly bizarre worldview, has denounced the 2012 hysteria as a hoax. Why do you think that is?
Well, as we've so recently learned from our eschatological friend Harold Camping, it doesn't pay to make end-of-the-world predictions that you, the prophet, are likely to live long enough to see disproved. As we get closer to seeing the backside of the 2012 nonsense, I suspect we'll see ever more defections from amongst the ranks of the apocalypse stalwarts in order to help them salvage a tiny vestige of credibility with their audience in preparation for the next big end-of-the world panic.
That's my prediction anyway, and one I'm willing to stick with to the end.
______________
1.) Yeah, the guy who thinks the world is run by a conspiracy of shapeshifting intergalactic lizard men and the Jews.
Monday, January 16, 2012
Saturday, November 12, 2011
A Ghostly Wager
Against my better judgment, I watched a bit of Ghost Adventures last night. It's no different from all the other ghost hunting shows that have cropped up over the years, and the fifteen minutes or so that I watched consisted almost entirely of night vision footage of a guy wandering around a darkened room waving an EMF detector around at a vase of flowers1. When the EMF detector reached "an incredible" 0.9 milligauss 1, the fellow with the EMF detector proudly declared something to the effect of "I've proven that ghosts are associated with EMFs because as the detector is reading higher, I'm actually feeling a presence here and my hand is going numb." Skip to about 1:33 of this clip to see what I'm talking about. 3
Right.
I should also note that for reasons that are inobvious to me, they had set up "vortex pumps" (EMF generators to the layman) throughout the building they were investigating for unexpected electromagnetic readings.
Without getting into the whole "we have no real evidence that ghosts, if they exist, generate electromagnetic fields" thing or the bit about how miniscule electromagnetic field changes like the ones described are not really anything worth noting, I'd like to propose a bit of an experiment. I'd like to see one of these ghost hunter fellows wander around with an EMF detector strapped to his forehead, like in Indian poker. That way the viewers at home could see the levels of electromagnetic energy being generated, while the ghost hunter could give a running account of his own impressions of any ghostly happenings.
I'd bet you a nickel that, when the EMF detector is invisible to the paranormalist, his "feelings" about supernatural presences around him will no longer synch up quite so nicely with "spikes" in the detector readings like they do on most of these shows. What would such an experiment prove? Not a lot, but I think it would drive homes the point that TV ghost hunters (The ones that aren't just acting, anyway.) tend to derive most of their "evidence" from equipment that they've no clue how to use.
_____
1.) The Ghost Adevntures guys use Mel Meter products, which are designed and marketed specifically for paranormalists. Just sayin'.
2.) That's right, 0.9 mG. Zero-point nine milligauss. As in 0.0009 gauss. The magnets on your fridge would register about 50 gauss each.
3.) Let me take this time to remind you that this fellow is claiming to feel something like an electrical current numbing his arm...in response to an electromagnetic field about 1/55,555th as powerful as a refrigerator magnet
Right.
I should also note that for reasons that are inobvious to me, they had set up "vortex pumps" (EMF generators to the layman) throughout the building they were investigating for unexpected electromagnetic readings.
Without getting into the whole "we have no real evidence that ghosts, if they exist, generate electromagnetic fields" thing or the bit about how miniscule electromagnetic field changes like the ones described are not really anything worth noting, I'd like to propose a bit of an experiment. I'd like to see one of these ghost hunter fellows wander around with an EMF detector strapped to his forehead, like in Indian poker. That way the viewers at home could see the levels of electromagnetic energy being generated, while the ghost hunter could give a running account of his own impressions of any ghostly happenings.
Just imagine each of these guys with a $200 EMF detector tied to his head.
I'd bet you a nickel that, when the EMF detector is invisible to the paranormalist, his "feelings" about supernatural presences around him will no longer synch up quite so nicely with "spikes" in the detector readings like they do on most of these shows. What would such an experiment prove? Not a lot, but I think it would drive homes the point that TV ghost hunters (The ones that aren't just acting, anyway.) tend to derive most of their "evidence" from equipment that they've no clue how to use.
_____
1.) The Ghost Adevntures guys use Mel Meter products, which are designed and marketed specifically for paranormalists. Just sayin'.
2.) That's right, 0.9 mG. Zero-point nine milligauss. As in 0.0009 gauss. The magnets on your fridge would register about 50 gauss each.
3.) Let me take this time to remind you that this fellow is claiming to feel something like an electrical current numbing his arm...in response to an electromagnetic field about 1/55,555th as powerful as a refrigerator magnet
Friday, October 21, 2011
As always, it's the end of the world...
After the all the Rapture nonsense back in May, I almost feel a little dirty for bringing up Harold Camping again, but he's back in the news and I've nothing better to do, so here we go. As everyone no doubt remembers, Harold Camping and his Family Radio ministry spent the first half of the year burying the entire free world under a thick wallpapering of billboards proclaiming that the end of the world would take place on the 21st of May by way of a literally earth-shattering global earthquake. Many of Camping's followers quit their jobs and sold off most of their possessions in preparations for the Rapture, the bodily transportation to heaven expected by some Christian denominations.
Needless to say, this didn't happen.
Naturally Camping admitted his error, meekly begged forgiveness from his followers, and opened up his own coffers to help support the now-destitute members of his group.
Wait, no, that didn't happen either.
You see, as a card-carrying doomsday prophet, Harold Camping has essentially signed a blood oath to never admit that he's wrong, so instead he claimed that when he said that Judgment Day would take place on May 21st via a worldwide catastrophe, he actually meant that a "spiritual" Judgment Day with no visible or measurable consequences would take place. Makes sense, right?
In any event, he pushed back the actual end of the world to today, October 21st, 2011. That's a devastating date for the apocalypse if you're a gamer, since it means that we'd be denied the release of Battlefield 3 by four measly days, but thus far the planet doesn't seem to have exploded, nor has Jesus rung my doorbell and kicked me in the crotch when I answered.
Always kinda figured I'd go out like this...
Needless to say, this didn't happen.
Naturally Camping admitted his error, meekly begged forgiveness from his followers, and opened up his own coffers to help support the now-destitute members of his group.
Wait, no, that didn't happen either.
You see, as a card-carrying doomsday prophet, Harold Camping has essentially signed a blood oath to never admit that he's wrong, so instead he claimed that when he said that Judgment Day would take place on May 21st via a worldwide catastrophe, he actually meant that a "spiritual" Judgment Day with no visible or measurable consequences would take place. Makes sense, right?
In any event, he pushed back the actual end of the world to today, October 21st, 2011. That's a devastating date for the apocalypse if you're a gamer, since it means that we'd be denied the release of Battlefield 3 by four measly days, but thus far the planet doesn't seem to have exploded, nor has Jesus rung my doorbell and kicked me in the crotch when I answered.
Always kinda figured I'd go out like this...In any event, I'll be curious to hear what Camping has to say when we all wake up in the morning. I suspect that there'll be more talk of "spiritual judgment" and undetectable Armageddon. Maybe he'll at least have the courtesy to push the inevitable next date for the Rapture back to December 21st, 2012 so that we can kill two nonsense birds with one stone that day
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
The Horror, The Horror!
I recently had the privilege of guest starring in a pair of episodes of Joe's Awesome and Tommy Hates Everything, the first of which has gone live. It's a rollicking, and long, discussion of what makes a great horror film, and if you've got an hour and a half of free time you should check it out. As anyone who's read this blog for any length of time knows, I'm crazy about horror flicks, so it was a ton of fun to sit down with a film expert like Tommy and a quick wit like Joe and talk shop. Hope you like it.
Thursday, October 06, 2011
What's the Hubbub About Halloween?
It would seem that October is once again upon us, and with it comes horror movies (yay!), candy (whoo!), tasteful costumes (or not), and...weird religious people who are up in arms about Halloween. Similar, albeit rather less widespread, to the bellyaching about the secularization of Christmas, anti-Halloween sentiment rears its ugly head every fall, usually gets covered in one or two news stories, and then gets forgotten until October rolls around again the next year. I suspect this sort of thing is a little bigger around here in the South, where we've got no small number of homegrown churches with supernatural fixations who are convinced that Halloween is a soul-devouring trap straight from the freakin' Devil.1
Charlie Brown is coming for your soul.
That said, I'm always tickled when I read the articles posted on religious websites that talk about Halloween as if it's some big occult conspiracy. Check out this quote from an article on DemonBuster.com2:
The folks over at Christian Answers, another prominent religious website3, are less sanguine about the subject. Have a look:
To sum up, the main argument from the hardcore anti-Halloween crowd is that, because (they claim) the holiday has evil origins, any celebration that day that bears any resemblance whatsoever to Halloween is actually evil. The takeaway is that if you're planning to put on a rubber mask and go knocking on doors for popcorn balls, you may as well just skip the middleman and go out to the woods to sacrifice some goats to the Devil. It's an odd thing to think that when you're watching John Carpenter movies and passing out fun-size Twix on October 31st, you're actually delivering a fresh load of writhing, tender souls into the flame-blackened talons of Satan himself. It seems so innocent at the time...
But wait a minute...isn't all this just the opposite of the argument that gets made about Christmas every year? At Christmas time, the line of reasoning is that even if you think you're celebrating Christmas, you might actually not be celebrating Christmas if you're doing it wrong.4 How can that be? How does Halloween have some intrinsic, timeless, inescapable meaning that will inexorably turn you into a baby-eating cultist even if all you really wanted to do was go to a party dressed as Cobra Commander, but Christmas becomes completely debased and meaningless if an L.L. Bean ad calls December "the holiday season"? Am I the only one perplexed by this?
Both the anti-Halloween grumbling in October and the much louder "reason for the season" ranting in December are all about certain religious groups defining themselves by identifying (or creating) an enemy to fight. In October, they're fighting the forces of darkness by not trick-or-treating. In December, they're fighting the forces of darkness by...er...complaining about GAP ads...? Whatever the case, they're using a supposedly hostile out-group (the willing dupes of Satan at Halloween and the jack-booted foot soldiers of secularism at Christmas) to strengthen their own in-group ties. This isn't some unique foil of the religious; all social groups do this kind of thing, but I suppose I'm just struck by the seemingly contradictory assumptions of the anti-Halloween, pro-Christmas crowd.
Maybe...just maybe...holidays are socially constructed and have no meaning apart from that which we, the participants, assign them. I don't doubt for a second that there actually are kooks out there who worship the Devil (or Odin, or Cthulhu, or whoever...) on Halloween. Hell, I'm pretty sure I went to high school with some of them. That said, no one is somehow paying homage to the non-existent Devil by going trick-or-treating, so on October 31st throw on a costume and go get yourself some candy.
Or don't.
Like I said, all the more for me.
_____
1.) There are tons of Southern Baptist and Pentecostal churches here in Kentucky, as well as lots of local offshoots and do-it-yourself religious groups, some of which (to put it kindly) think of demons in very literal rather that metaphorical terms.
2.) With web design by the Joker, it seems.
3.) Christian Answers is also the source of all the hilarious Christian Spotlight on the Movies reviews that I occasionally comment on, such as one complaining about G.I. Joe for having too many black people in it.
4.) And yet these so-called traditionalists always ignore the Krampus.
Charlie Brown is coming for your soul.Honestly I don't have much of an argument to make if someone finds something distasteful. After all, personal choice is awesome. Don't like Halloween? Doesn't matter to me. Hate watching horror movies? Don't watch any. Think Satan's going to eat your kids if they dress up like Frankenstein and go 'round panhandling for Snickers bars? Don't let'em do it. It's no skin off my nose if you don't want to celebrate an awesome holiday, nor is it my place (or desire) to try and strong-arm you into it just because I think it's cool.
All the more candy for me, I say.
All the more candy for me, I say.That said, I'm always tickled when I read the articles posted on religious websites that talk about Halloween as if it's some big occult conspiracy. Check out this quote from an article on DemonBuster.com2:
You can call a duck a horse, cow, cat, etc., but it is still a duck. You can call what you do a "fall festival", "alleluia party", etc., but you are still observing halloween, even if you dress up as bible characters. Halloween is the highest satanic holy day of the year.Right, so the lesson here is that no matter what you do, no matter what you dress up as or how you choose to party, if you do anything on Halloween, you're worshiping the Devil. To be fair, I don't think the folks at DemonBuster are exactly mainline. What about the folks at CBN? They're a huge Christian organization, and while they're undeniably culturally conservative, they probably represent a much larger segment of the Christian crowd that the DemonBuster guys. Here's what CBN writer Elliott Watson has to say:
There is no question in my mind that to those who believe and follow the practices of witchcraft, Halloween represents an opportunity to embrace the evil, devilish, dark side of the spiritual world...In all fairness, I should mention that Watson notes that only the true weirdos derive some kind of creepy evil meaning from Halloween. He also goes on to say that concerned Christians ought to think about creating "positive" alternatives to the objectionable bits of Halloween while still letting their kids have fun. Nowhere does he advocate publicly complaining about it. All in all, it's a pretty reasonable position.
....There is no lasting benefit to ignore a holiday that exists around us, but it also does harm to celebrate Halloween as it has originated and grown over the centuries.
The folks over at Christian Answers, another prominent religious website3, are less sanguine about the subject. Have a look:
...we need to teach our children that "the fight isn't against occultists , non-Christians, Christians who feel differently than we about Halloween, or institutions that promote Halloween, but" "against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places".That's right, we're back to the demons again. It's a strange day when I'm pining for the nuance and rationality of the CBN.
To sum up, the main argument from the hardcore anti-Halloween crowd is that, because (they claim) the holiday has evil origins, any celebration that day that bears any resemblance whatsoever to Halloween is actually evil. The takeaway is that if you're planning to put on a rubber mask and go knocking on doors for popcorn balls, you may as well just skip the middleman and go out to the woods to sacrifice some goats to the Devil. It's an odd thing to think that when you're watching John Carpenter movies and passing out fun-size Twix on October 31st, you're actually delivering a fresh load of writhing, tender souls into the flame-blackened talons of Satan himself. It seems so innocent at the time...
But wait a minute...isn't all this just the opposite of the argument that gets made about Christmas every year? At Christmas time, the line of reasoning is that even if you think you're celebrating Christmas, you might actually not be celebrating Christmas if you're doing it wrong.4 How can that be? How does Halloween have some intrinsic, timeless, inescapable meaning that will inexorably turn you into a baby-eating cultist even if all you really wanted to do was go to a party dressed as Cobra Commander, but Christmas becomes completely debased and meaningless if an L.L. Bean ad calls December "the holiday season"? Am I the only one perplexed by this?
Both the anti-Halloween grumbling in October and the much louder "reason for the season" ranting in December are all about certain religious groups defining themselves by identifying (or creating) an enemy to fight. In October, they're fighting the forces of darkness by not trick-or-treating. In December, they're fighting the forces of darkness by...er...complaining about GAP ads...? Whatever the case, they're using a supposedly hostile out-group (the willing dupes of Satan at Halloween and the jack-booted foot soldiers of secularism at Christmas) to strengthen their own in-group ties. This isn't some unique foil of the religious; all social groups do this kind of thing, but I suppose I'm just struck by the seemingly contradictory assumptions of the anti-Halloween, pro-Christmas crowd.
Maybe...just maybe...holidays are socially constructed and have no meaning apart from that which we, the participants, assign them. I don't doubt for a second that there actually are kooks out there who worship the Devil (or Odin, or Cthulhu, or whoever...) on Halloween. Hell, I'm pretty sure I went to high school with some of them. That said, no one is somehow paying homage to the non-existent Devil by going trick-or-treating, so on October 31st throw on a costume and go get yourself some candy.
Or don't.
Like I said, all the more for me.
_____
1.) There are tons of Southern Baptist and Pentecostal churches here in Kentucky, as well as lots of local offshoots and do-it-yourself religious groups, some of which (to put it kindly) think of demons in very literal rather that metaphorical terms.
2.) With web design by the Joker, it seems.
3.) Christian Answers is also the source of all the hilarious Christian Spotlight on the Movies reviews that I occasionally comment on, such as one complaining about G.I. Joe for having too many black people in it.
4.) And yet these so-called traditionalists always ignore the Krampus.
Tuesday, September 06, 2011
Another Shameless Plug
By the way, my friends Tommy and Joey the Axe have started a hilarious podcast called Joe's Awesome and Tommy Hates Everything. It's primarily movie-themed, with the occasional brief digression into comics or video games, and if that's your bag at all you owe it to yourself to check it out.
Wherein We Define Skepticism...Again...
I was recently talking to one of my coworkers about the movie Paranormal Activity 2 when she asked me a question that caught me off guard: "Why do you like those kinds of movies if you don't believe in ghosts?".1
In real life, my off-the-cuff reply was probably something involving Godzilla, but in a better, hindsight-informed world I might've said something like "well you watch Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer at Christmas time, but you don't believe in flying alpine ungulates with spotlights for noses."
Okay, so maybe that's not a great retort either, but the point is that tons of people watch movies that they know are ridiculous and still enjoy them, so it struck me as odd that someone would assume that I'm somehow such a scowling, closed-minded prig that I can't even enjoy a horror movie.
When in fact, I own a couple of horror films...
The fact of the matter is I like the Paranormal Activity films because they're fun to watch. The first one particular was a fairly effective distillation of everything I think is creepy. It doesn't really matter whether or not I think there are actually ghosts out there trying to eat people - if there were it'd be freakin' scary.
My movie tastes notwithstanding, I've found that some folks assume that skeptics don't want there to be paranormal things in the world. I've got a friend who used to dabble if amateur ghost hunting who's made statements to that effect before, and you hear it all the time from True BelieversTM on the internet: "Skeptics don't want there to be aliens because it would change the face of science." "Skeptics don't want telekinesis to exist because it would force a reevaluation of the current models of physics". "Skeptics don't want Bigfoot to be real because it would have potentially world-shaking ramifications for anthropology and evolutionary biology." Think I'm kidding? Check out this guy. Early on in his anti-skeptic diatribe, he claims that "Skeptics seem to like their world small and static; change upsets them."
Right.
Let's think for a second here. If psychic powers were proven to be real, we would have to rethink pretty much everything we knew about physics. If another race of sentient, tool-using, habitually bipedal hominids were discovered, it would radically change the face of anthropology. If alien life - not just intelligent alien life, but alien life AT ALL - were proven to exist...well, it would probably be the most important scientific discovery of all time.
You know what else? All of those things would be Totally. Freaking. Awesome. I can't speak for anyone else, but I'd love it if extraterrestrial life was discovered or a live dinosaur was pulled out of the Amazon...but I'm not going to confuse the degree to which I might want something to be true with the amount of evidence that it actually is true.
Skepticism isn't, as some people like to claim, about saying "that phenomenon can't be real", it's about saying "I'm not yet convinced that the phenomenon in question is real". Bigfoot's a good example of this- There's no biological reason that large, tool-using, habitually bipedal primates can't exist. There's 6 billion of them on the planet right now. However, there's also not a lot of good reasons to think that a heretofore unknown species of a large, habitually bipedal primate really is stalking the woods of the American Northwest while never leaving a corpse, never getting hit by a car or shot by a hunter, and never appearing in front of anyone who can hold a camera steady. Bigfoot could exist...but right now there's no good reason to think that it does.
Skepticism isn't about making claims of what can or cannot exist, it's about making honest evaluations of what is or isn't likely to exist given the available evidence. Hand-in-hand with that is the understanding that one's desire or distaste for something is irrelevant when considering this evidence. The article from Area 51 which I linked to above laments that skeptics "can't imagine a world in which the fantastic is plausible". That's an odd statement in the sense that it's simultaneously sort of true and incredibly misleading. Fantastic claims, even the ones we really want to be true, are inherently implausible...unless they're backed up by real evidence. Forget that at your own peril, lest you end up calling CNN on Christmas morning to announce proof of Santa's existence in the form of half-eaten cookie.
_______
1.) Yeah, that's right, I bought Paranormal Activity 2 despite all my bellyaching on Twitter about how the first one was a prime example of a good movie that should never, ever have a sequel. I saw it theatrically too. Sue me.
In real life, my off-the-cuff reply was probably something involving Godzilla, but in a better, hindsight-informed world I might've said something like "well you watch Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer at Christmas time, but you don't believe in flying alpine ungulates with spotlights for noses."
Okay, so maybe that's not a great retort either, but the point is that tons of people watch movies that they know are ridiculous and still enjoy them, so it struck me as odd that someone would assume that I'm somehow such a scowling, closed-minded prig that I can't even enjoy a horror movie.
When in fact, I own a couple of horror films...The fact of the matter is I like the Paranormal Activity films because they're fun to watch. The first one particular was a fairly effective distillation of everything I think is creepy. It doesn't really matter whether or not I think there are actually ghosts out there trying to eat people - if there were it'd be freakin' scary.
My movie tastes notwithstanding, I've found that some folks assume that skeptics don't want there to be paranormal things in the world. I've got a friend who used to dabble if amateur ghost hunting who's made statements to that effect before, and you hear it all the time from True BelieversTM on the internet: "Skeptics don't want there to be aliens because it would change the face of science." "Skeptics don't want telekinesis to exist because it would force a reevaluation of the current models of physics". "Skeptics don't want Bigfoot to be real because it would have potentially world-shaking ramifications for anthropology and evolutionary biology." Think I'm kidding? Check out this guy. Early on in his anti-skeptic diatribe, he claims that "Skeptics seem to like their world small and static; change upsets them."
Right.
Let's think for a second here. If psychic powers were proven to be real, we would have to rethink pretty much everything we knew about physics. If another race of sentient, tool-using, habitually bipedal hominids were discovered, it would radically change the face of anthropology. If alien life - not just intelligent alien life, but alien life AT ALL - were proven to exist...well, it would probably be the most important scientific discovery of all time.
You know what else? All of those things would be Totally. Freaking. Awesome. I can't speak for anyone else, but I'd love it if extraterrestrial life was discovered or a live dinosaur was pulled out of the Amazon...but I'm not going to confuse the degree to which I might want something to be true with the amount of evidence that it actually is true.
Skepticism isn't, as some people like to claim, about saying "that phenomenon can't be real", it's about saying "I'm not yet convinced that the phenomenon in question is real". Bigfoot's a good example of this- There's no biological reason that large, tool-using, habitually bipedal primates can't exist. There's 6 billion of them on the planet right now. However, there's also not a lot of good reasons to think that a heretofore unknown species of a large, habitually bipedal primate really is stalking the woods of the American Northwest while never leaving a corpse, never getting hit by a car or shot by a hunter, and never appearing in front of anyone who can hold a camera steady. Bigfoot could exist...but right now there's no good reason to think that it does.
Skepticism isn't about making claims of what can or cannot exist, it's about making honest evaluations of what is or isn't likely to exist given the available evidence. Hand-in-hand with that is the understanding that one's desire or distaste for something is irrelevant when considering this evidence. The article from Area 51 which I linked to above laments that skeptics "can't imagine a world in which the fantastic is plausible". That's an odd statement in the sense that it's simultaneously sort of true and incredibly misleading. Fantastic claims, even the ones we really want to be true, are inherently implausible...unless they're backed up by real evidence. Forget that at your own peril, lest you end up calling CNN on Christmas morning to announce proof of Santa's existence in the form of half-eaten cookie.
_______
1.) Yeah, that's right, I bought Paranormal Activity 2 despite all my bellyaching on Twitter about how the first one was a prime example of a good movie that should never, ever have a sequel. I saw it theatrically too. Sue me.
Saturday, August 06, 2011
Kind of Cross About the 9/11 Cross...
I'm a week or so late with this, but the continuing attention being devoted to the so-called Ground Zero Cross utterly baffles me. It's been in the news recently because American Atheists has filed suit regarding in its inclusion in the National September 11 Memorial and Museum, and lots of religious folks are outraged that this "miracle" is under attack. There have been more than a couple of letters to the local paper around here by Christian folks practically pulling their hair out about the whole thing. That's not really surprising, considering that people tend to get a bit worked up about religion. Once you throw something like September 11th into the mix, emotions are bound to run high.
Somehow the memorial to the victims of the worst attack on U.S. soil
has devolved into a battle over the presentation of a piece of debris.
What the controversy, such as it is, boils down to is that American Atheists is concerned that the cross will be displayed at the memorial in a fashion indicating that it's a gen-u-ine miracle and want items from other faiths displayed alongside it. You know, because that somehow...counteracts...the stupid...? Meanwhile the religious folks, while arguing that, as an artifact of the terrorist attacks, it has good reason to be in the memorial, are apparently worried that it might not be presented as a holy relic shaped by the hands of Jesus Christ himself. Former mayor Rudy Giuliani himself made pretty much that exact argument, claiming that the cross definitely needs to be included because of its historical value...but also that it's a magic sign from Yahweh. Right...
For all its value as an historical artifact (and sometimes as a scandalously cynical marketing ploy), the Ground Zero Cross is a piece of debris created when World Trade Center One Collapsed into World Trade Center Six. It's made from the remnants of a column tree connection. Given that every single building at the WTC site was built using a similar internal structure of welded crossbeams, I'm honestly surprised that more "crosses" weren't recovered from the site. There's nothing especially "miraculous" about its formation - when a building made out of crossed girders collapses, there's probably going to be some cross-shaped remnants left over.
I'm not convinced of the value of adding more religious iconography to the 9/11 museum either, be it the non-specific memorial American Atheists has proposed, the Star of David (welded from WTC steel) that's already planned to be a part of the exhibit, or something else entirely. I really don't see the point. 2,977 people lost their lives during the September 11th attacks, and watching people squabble over how many gods are or aren't going to be represented at the 9/11 Memorial is frankly just stomach-churning. The memorial is, or should be, about the people who died that day - the victims and the heroic first responders who sacrificed themselves trying to save lives - not about which god does or doesn't control the universe.
Here's what I say: put the girder cross in the memorial sidewise. Yeah, that's right, on its side. That way it'll be included in the memorial and whatever historical significance it may hold will be preserved. Then we can scrap all the other religious iconography that doesn't need to be there and everyone can quit bitching about the manufactured controversy. Maybe then the focus can shift to making a tasteful, solemn tribute to the innocent lives that were so brutally ended that terrible day.
Somehow the memorial to the victims of the worst attack on U.S. soilhas devolved into a battle over the presentation of a piece of debris.
What the controversy, such as it is, boils down to is that American Atheists is concerned that the cross will be displayed at the memorial in a fashion indicating that it's a gen-u-ine miracle and want items from other faiths displayed alongside it. You know, because that somehow...counteracts...the stupid...? Meanwhile the religious folks, while arguing that, as an artifact of the terrorist attacks, it has good reason to be in the memorial, are apparently worried that it might not be presented as a holy relic shaped by the hands of Jesus Christ himself. Former mayor Rudy Giuliani himself made pretty much that exact argument, claiming that the cross definitely needs to be included because of its historical value...but also that it's a magic sign from Yahweh. Right...
For all its value as an historical artifact (and sometimes as a scandalously cynical marketing ploy), the Ground Zero Cross is a piece of debris created when World Trade Center One Collapsed into World Trade Center Six. It's made from the remnants of a column tree connection. Given that every single building at the WTC site was built using a similar internal structure of welded crossbeams, I'm honestly surprised that more "crosses" weren't recovered from the site. There's nothing especially "miraculous" about its formation - when a building made out of crossed girders collapses, there's probably going to be some cross-shaped remnants left over.
I'm not convinced of the value of adding more religious iconography to the 9/11 museum either, be it the non-specific memorial American Atheists has proposed, the Star of David (welded from WTC steel) that's already planned to be a part of the exhibit, or something else entirely. I really don't see the point. 2,977 people lost their lives during the September 11th attacks, and watching people squabble over how many gods are or aren't going to be represented at the 9/11 Memorial is frankly just stomach-churning. The memorial is, or should be, about the people who died that day - the victims and the heroic first responders who sacrificed themselves trying to save lives - not about which god does or doesn't control the universe.
Here's what I say: put the girder cross in the memorial sidewise. Yeah, that's right, on its side. That way it'll be included in the memorial and whatever historical significance it may hold will be preserved. Then we can scrap all the other religious iconography that doesn't need to be there and everyone can quit bitching about the manufactured controversy. Maybe then the focus can shift to making a tasteful, solemn tribute to the innocent lives that were so brutally ended that terrible day.
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