Today's Jesus Thing

The guys who wrote the Gospels (first-hand eye witness accounts that were written only a hundred or two hundred years after the fact) - those guys knew they were spinning some big-time yarns.

They knew what the Old Testament prophesies were - eg: the messiah will enter Jerusalem on a particular sabbath riding an ass - and they said so: "We're telling you this is what happened because it fulfills the prophesy."

But the kicker - what I'm please to have realized today - (paraphrasing) "The virgin birth was God encoding himself into humanity." And suddenly something seems pretty clear:

Bible bear a striking and undeniable resemblance to Greek mythology.

God encodes himself into humanity through the virgin birth - just like Zeus takes the form of a swan so he can fuck Leda.

Everything is derivative. Everything evolves from and into something else.

Today I Learned

"The lost secrets of the ancients" is kind of an all-time favorite fantasy for an awful lot of people. I can admit having been sucked into that shit back when I was maybe 20 years old, reading Von Daniken's collection of fairy tales in Chariots Of The Gods.

And while you have to be careful not to lose your sense of wonder, and the willingness to believe there may be something way bigger than anything you've been taught before, you do have to grow up, and you do have to apply a little healthy skepticism to everything people are telling you.

Because people will fool you. Because people know we all want to be fooled some of the time.

We go to 'magic shows'.

We pay 20 bucks to watch 2 hours of super heroes prancing about in their PJs doing impossible things.

We go to church.

The willing suspension of disbelief is a warm and fuzzy thing in a world of harsh realities.

It's important to stay open to new ideas. It's important-er to check things out. ☯

Today's Math Lesson

...and History, and Philosophy too.

There are no lost secrets of the ancients. And there's no universal conspiracy to keep the truth from us.

But there is a thing called Pattern-Seeking that evolution has embedded in our firmware. So, sometimes - usually way more often than we like to admit - we think we've found what we went looking for, when actually, we're fooling ourselves into believing we're not just smash-fitting a conclusion in order to sync up with a romantic hypothesis.

see also:

pareidolia 

the tendency to perceive a specific, often meaningful image in a random or ambiguous visual pattern.

Black History Month 7 of 7

From Atlanta Black Star - 7 Lies Taught In American Schools

Slavery Should Be Separated From the Rest of American Capitalism

This popularly taught myth says that as an economic system — a way of producing and trading commodities — American slavery was fundamentally different from the rest of the modern economy and separate from it, notes historian Edward Baptist. He claims the widely disseminated stories about industrialization emphasize white immigrants and clever inventors, but they leave out cotton fields and slave labor, implying that slavery and enslaved African-Americans had little long-term influence on the rise of the United States during the 19th century, a period in which the nation went from being a minor European trading partner to becoming the world’s largest economy — one of the central stories of American history. Baptist explains why this thinking became popular: “If slavery was outside of US history, for instance — if indeed it was a drag and not a rocket booster to American economic growth — then slavery was not implicated in US growth, success, power, and wealth,” he wrote on Salon.com last September. “Therefore none of the massive quantities of wealth and treasure piled by that economic growth is owed to African Americans.”

Black History Month 6 of 7

From Atlanta Black Star - 7 Lies Taught In American Schools

Slavery Was Mostly About the Denial of Human Rights

A line of thinking that has gained popularity is that the institution’s worst crime was that it denied enslaved African-Americans the liberal rights and liberal subjectivity of modern citizens, according to historian Edward Baptist. Baptist pointed out that it did those things, of course, but it also killed people in large numbers, stole everything from those who did survive and made them live in terror and hunger as they continually built and rebuilt a commodity-generating empire. Baptist claims that once the violence of slavery was minimized, another voice could emerge, whispering that African-Americans, both before and after emancipation, were denied the rights of citizens because they would not fight for them.

Black History Month 5 of 7

From Atlanta Black Star - 7 Lies Taught In American Schools

Slavery a Southern Phenomenon

Slavery in the United States is often thought of as a “Southern problem.” Indeed, many students, and even teachers, are unaware of the role the North played in the history of American slavery or the extent of slavery in New England because it is often ignored in textbooks, according to Sarah Kreckel, a curriculum writer at Brown University. Long thought of as the birthplace of abolitionism, New England has a more complex history of slavery and the trade in enslaved people than many realize. Colonial North American ships began to participate in the slave trade as early as the 1640s. Almost all of colonial America’s slave ships originated in New England. As pointed out by Herb Reich in the book Lies They Teach in School: Exposing the Myths Behind 250 Commonly Believed Fallacies, the first colony to legalize slavery was Massachusetts in 1641, where slaves worked in the vast tobacco fields.

Black History Month 4 of 7

From Atlanta Black Star - 7 Lies Taught In American Schools

Praise for the KKK

In the third edition of the textbook United States History for Christian Schools, published by Bob Jones University Press in 2001, it says “The Klan in some areas of the country tried to be a means of reform, fighting the decline in morality and using the symbol of the cross. Klan targets were bootleggers, wife-beaters, and immoral movies. In some communities it achieved a certain respectability as it worked with politicians.” Considering the reign of terror the KKK inflicted on Black people in the South for nearly a century after Reconstruction, including thousands of acts of racial terrorism in the form of lynchings, this statement is so incredible it qualifies as ludicrous.

Black History Month 3 of 7

From Atlanta Black Star - 7 Lies Taught In American Schools

Downplaying Slavery’s Cruelty

These are the words contained in a textbook called United States History for Christian Schools, second ed., published by Bob Jones University Press in 1991: “A few slave holders were undeniably cruel. Examples of slaves beaten to death were not common, neither were they unknown. The majority of slave holders treated their slaves well.” As noted by historian Edward Baptist, large numbers of enslaved Black people were killed during slavery.

Black History Month 2 of 7

From Atlanta Black Star - 7 Lies Taught In American Schools

Abraham Lincoln Was Strongly Opposed to Slavery

Abraham Lincoln is often put on a pedestal in American textbooks as one of the greatest opponents of slavery for freeing enslaved people with his Emancipation Proclamation in 1863. But in fact, he struggled with conflicting and ambiguous views on slavery during his entire presidential career. This fact is confirmed by his own words: “If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union.”

Black History Month 1 of 7

From Atlanta Black Star - 7 Lies Taught In American Schools

Many African-Americans Fought for Confederacy

A textbook distributed to Virginia fourth-graders in 2010 said that thousands of African-Americans fought for the South during the Civil War — a claim rejected by most historians but often made by groups seeking to play down slavery’s role as a cause of the conflict. The author, Joy Masoff, who is not a trained historian but has written several books, told The Washington Post she found the information about Black Confederate soldiers primarily through Internet research, which turned up work by members of the Sons of Confederate Veterans. “As controversial as it is, I stand by what I write,” she said. “I am a fairly respected writer.”

Ever Mindful Of Poe's Law

I can't wait to hear some knucklehead try to make the argument that we can't allow refugees into USAmerica Inc because it's too easy for them to get guns and start killing us.

Some guys have their heads so far up their asses they can't even see their own shit anymore - and no matter what anybody like me is apt to make up outa nuthin', it'll sound like something one of these mushbrains would say.

Poe's Law (in case ya fergot) is an Internet adage which states that, without a clear indicator of the author's intent, parodies of extreme views will be mistaken by some readers for sincere expressions of the parodied views. 

--update

And then up jumped the devil, via Think Progress:

A Texas state legislator wants the U.S. to stop allowing Syrian refugees into the country. His reasoning: They might be able to buy guns in his state.

Rep. Tony Dale (R) made this argument in a television interview on Monday and in letters to Texas’ U.S. Sens. John Cornyn and Ted Cruz (R) and U.S. Reps. Michael McCaul and John Carter (R).

“While the Paris attackers used suicide vests and grenades,” Dale wrote, “it is clear that firearms also killed a large number of innocent victims. Can you imagine a scenario were [sic] a refugees [sic] is admitted to the United States, is provided with federal cash payments and other assistance, obtains a drivers license and purchases a weapon and executes an attack?” He urged the lawmakers to “do whatever you can to stop the [Syrian refugee] program.”

The Vaxxer Thing

There's no "other side" of the vaccination thing.  

It's kinda like: "eating pancakes doesn't make you gay".  Nobody is on the other side of that one either.  Cuz there's no other side to be on.

The Carrie Prank

Remember back in the 70s, when The Exorcist came out, and suddenly there was a whole rasher of "real life" stories (planted by the PR guys) that popped up in newspapers - about mysterious and unexplained behaviors that just maybe might be possibly "demon possessions"?

Well, taking it up several levels:



What do you think you can't be manipulated into believing?

hat tip = All In with Chris Hayes

Another One Bites The Dust

hat tip = Democratic Underground

It suddenly occurs to me that all those goofy emails that fly around with all those Urban Myths about kidnapped kids and sharks attacking helicopters and rocket-powered Chevy Impalas are actually pretty useful when it comes to getting certain people prepared to accept and internalize certain political indoctrination.

The notion of tax flight “is almost entirely bogus — it’s a myth,” said Jon Shure, director of state fiscal studies at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a nonprofit research group in Washington. “The anecdotal coverage makes it seem like people are leaving in droves because of high taxes. They’re not. There are a lot of low-tax states, and you don’t see millionaires flocking there.”

Despite the allure of low taxes, Mr. Depardieu hasn’t been seen in Russia since picking up his passport and seems to be hedging his bets by maintaining a residence in Belgium. Meanwhile, Russian billionaires are snapping up trophy properties in high-tax London, New York and Beverly Hills, Calif.

Read the whole thing at NYT.

The Power Of Myth

Seems like this shows up on facebook every few months.  I've debunked it more than a coupla times, and it just never sinks in - the same guys keep putting it up in ever so slightly different iterations.

"Conservatives" are usually pretty big on trying to boil down the problems (of government, or culture, or people) to one overarching concept.  You know the drill:
"the problem with the economy is too much government regulation"
"the problem with the schools is the Teachers Union"
"the problem with unemployment is that taxes are too high"

So here's mine:  The problem (with everything) is the insistence on remaining ignorant.

And btw, why do "conservatives" always cheer when Romney inveighs against "wealth envy", and then piss and moan about some imaginary retired senator getting a fat pension?

About That Liberal Press Thing

Couldn't remember if I'd posted the graphic when it came out, so just in case I missed it, here it is.

And BTW, this isn't some kind of outlier.  The basics that lead to these results don't ever change more than a few percentage points.

I remember Pew doing the same thing after the 2000 election, when the heat was really on - seemed like the nutters couldn't stop howling about how the press was constantly trying to put Gore in the White House.  Well, guess what, boys and girls?  Pew's research in 2001 showed a bias in favor of Bush positives and Gore negatives in every major newspaper - it all worked out to be something like 7-5 against Gore.  And of course it got practically no play outside of Academe.

Guess what else?  The effect this slanted coverage has on our thinking actually has a name: "Media Priming", and while it's news to me, it's been around for a very long time.

Here's a fun little appetizer from Melissa Dahl at msnbc.com:

It's called media priming -- the idea that the things we watch or listen to or read influence our emotions and our behavior, perhaps more than we realize. This particular study may be the first to use fictional characters in a narrative to show an effect on people's cognitive performance, says lead author Markus Appel, a psychologist at Austria's University of Linz.

And from a guy named Scott London, a good breakdown of "Framing":

In his book Is Anyone Responsible?, Shanto Iyengar evaluates the framing effects of television news on political issues. Through a series of laboratory experiments (reports of which constitute the core of the book), he finds that the framing of issues by television news shapes the way the public understands the causes of and the solutions to central political problems.

Since electoral accountability is the foundation of representative democracy, the public must be able to establish who is responsible for social problems, Iyengar argues. Yet the news media systematically filter the issues and deflect blame from the establishment by framing the news as "only a passing parade of specific events, a 'context of no context.'"

--more--

In their 1977 book, The Emergence of American Political Issues, McCombs and Shaw argued that the most important effect of the mass media was "its ability to mentally order and organize our world for us." The news media "may not be successful in telling us what to think," the authors declared, "but they are stunningly successful in telling us what to think about."

There are no accidents when it comes to what goes on in our politics.  It's being carefully scripted for us, and we have to find ways to countervail it.