Pugwash

So, if someone says "you're in my prayers" or "I'll pray for you" what are they hoping to achieve? I've never got this one. Sorry, I've gone vastly off-topic.

I saw it at the Grosvenor Cinema in Glasgow. Afterwards, there was a discussion about it with Stuart Braithwaite of Mogwai and the head Psychiatrist of a local loony bin. Highly interesting and an excellent movie.

What, in that case, is the point of prayers?

Yes, but evidence looked at through a 2000 year old lens doesn't corroborate divinity. The problem I have with faith-based history is that you start with a conclusion and try to fit the evidence to the divine truth. You're guaranteed to be prejudiced to any conflicting evidence. Still, there's nothing wrong with it as long as you don't delude yourself. I don't want you to think I don't think religious people can't be historians. For instance, how did God let the Spanish Inquisition or the Cathar Massacre[1] happen? If there were a God, how could he have allowed this to happen in His name? This is the kind of stuff I find interesting. [1] "Kill them all, the Lord will recognise His own."

I'm interested in history, too. I find it hard to believe people can keep their faith when they study religious history, but that's because I don't have any myself.

SAFFRON: Do you know the myth about Earth-that-was? WASH: Not so much. SAFFRON: That when she was born, she had no sky, and she was open, inviting and the stars would rush into her, through the skin of her, making the oceans boil with sensation, and when she could endure no more ecstasy, she puffed up her cheeks and blew out the sky, to womb her and keep them at bay, 'til she had rest some, and that we had to leave 'cause she was strong enough to suck them in once more. WASH: Whoa. Good myth.

Only if you're two at the same time. You too were a different user, remember. As long as this guy doesn't out us, I see no harm in his Thesis. We're not a secret community, I'm afraid.

Hey, 1899 and 1900 are the same century!

Resurrection is a nicer way to look at rebirth than all that bonking. One theory is that it's designed to take the creation power away from Women.

Gnostic Gospels, Dead Sea Scrolls, etc. The Bible isn't history and you know it, all I can do is give you contemporary documentation with the same validity as the Bible. Will that do? New Testament apocrypha, basically. Non-canonical works.

Yeah, apart from the fact I knew the guy who made the whole thing up. No, really ...

Fact? No, just the same level of evidence as anything else in the Bible. The difference between the Gnostic Gospels and the New Testament is what the Roman Emperor Constantine chose to keep and discard. Before the First Council of Nicaea, 325AD, there was all sorts of stuff in the bible that was edited out (under the guidance of God, allegedly ...) to make it more palatable for the Church as was. Mostly, they decided on whether Jesus was God or whether he was merely a perfect creation, but in debating this, they deliberately forgot to tell one whole sector of the Church that they'd decided to meet earlier than previously agreed. They met, closed the doors and left the Arians outside, unable to present their point of view. They also moved Easter[1] to a new date, as previously it was the Jewish Passover. This council also introduced a whole pile of laws, designed to stop priests from having fun, essentially. Oh, and they excommunicated the people they locked out. Nice. [1] Easter: Um, yeah, this one will make your head spin. Eostre is a pagan goddess that represented the Spring Equinox. The rabbits represent having lots of sex. Yes, it's an age old fertility ritual to celebrate the coming of spring. Not a lot to do with Jesus, but they tagged his resurrection on a f*ckfest in an effort to clean things up.

Other cheap gens in my watch box:

If Jesus weren't married at the age of 30, he would never have been trusted. For a Rabbi not to have been married at his age would have been exceedingly unusual, if not impossible. As for his wedding, it's at Cana and he married Mary Magdalene. The duties he performed were those of a groom. This is fairly well-known stuff if you read the stuff removed at the first council of Nicaea, like the Dead Sea scrolls and the like.

I'm wearing a cheap gen today. ETA 2824, Tritium paint ... sweet.

No-one knows when he was born. It's all just guesswork, to be honest. They don't even know the year! That and the fact no-one notices Jesus's wedding in the bible makes for a lot of confusion amongst fundamentalists.

...apart from Die Hard 4 and three seasons of Deadwood?

It was the midwinter festival. The whole Christianity conversion thing used old festivals to try to get pagans to become Christians, and the best way to get them celebrating was to steal midwinter as the founder's birth. An awful lot was stolen from Sun worship, to be honest.

I've had this one on all week. Radioactive!!!

I was going to comment how gay this thread was, then I realised all the people posting could snap me like a twig. So, not gay. Oh, no, definitely not gay. Nope, still not gay.

Here's a picture of a Moon Bus: Just as likely. Here's a photo of what the view from the Moon Bus should be like:

...over SSL?

That's easy. "Dude, STFU. I'm on the phone!"

Sheesh, if I showed cartoons about flying cars, would you be discussing their fuel consumption? By the time Nokia even get to the proof of concept on this one, batteries will have the power of fusion reactors and we'll be telling our robots to hand-deliver letters instead of phoning people. Jeevesbot, please deliver this missive to RWG, forthwith!

Correct. I filed the outside, the inside and the part where the crown meets the case, then sanded it with fine grit and polished it with a dremel and rouge. way too much work, but fun to do once.